Sands of Salzaar News

Travelers of the desert:
It's been a while!

We've mentioned in a previous update preview that we would add a new feature: Captives. It's been under development for a while now, and we're happy to announce that it's going live with this patch!

In the current build, once you defeat an enemy army, they will be able to rebuild a large army in just a few days and begin attacking you anew, which has led to overly frequent battles in the late game. Plus, war has been the only means with which to annihilate your foes once and for all. Thus, we've thought of adding the Captives mechanic to enable players to make captives of the enemy's wounded units.

If you want to learn more about the ins and outs of the new feature, or if you have any questions or worries, feel free to check out these two development journals where we go into greater detail and answer a few common questions.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1094520/view/4041486102480343224
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1094520/view/4211502058701959226

What's more, the game is on sale at a price equal to our historical lowest price point for two whole weeks on all platforms. This new update will hit mobile devices in two days.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1094520/_/

[h2]Sep 06 Update Log[/h2]
●Addition: Captives Feature
Upon being victorious in combat, you make captives of the enemy's wounded units, with a chance to make NPCs your captives. There is a cap for how many Captive Squads you can have, and upon exceeding this cap, you have a 30% each day to lose 1-5 captives. However, should you fall in battle, the enemy may also lay claim to your heroes and soldiers.

You can check any NPCs and units you've captured by tapping the Captives tab in the Party menu. Here you may choose to either Convert or Release captives. NPCs and soldiers are converted differently, however. Once a few days have passed, you receive Conversions, with which you can convert selected soldiers.

NPCs take a longer time to convert and comprise several phases: during each conversion you converse with them, having a chance to progress onto the next conversion phase (this also triggers a cooldown). Complete several of these phases successfully to convert an NPC.
Please be noted that the function of auto-generating NPCs based on event won't be on live until next patch.

●Addition: Dungeon
We've added the [Dungeon] to the town, where captured heroes will be imprisoned. You can choose to either retrieve captives for a cost or—attempt a jailbreak. However, there might be a price to pay for jailbreaks, successful or not, so proceed with caution!



●Addition: Ransom Broker
We've added a new merchant character too, the Ransom Broker, who will conduct a new form of business: the trading of captives.

●We've reworked the Settings menu and added more quality options.
●Support for different resolutions has also been added.
●Fix: Fixed a bug where the Yaya DLC character's skills could lead to limitless health or instant death.
●Fix: Fixed an issue where ordering a character in a city owned by another faction would also cause that faction's units to deploy.

If you have encountered any problem, feel free to join our Discord to get in touch! Our managers will try their best to help you out.

Travelers of the desert:

Hi everyone! The Steam Summer Sale is about to begin, and our 50% off discount will be kicked off across all platforms from Jun 25 to Jul 11. Additionally, we’ve brought you the TO BE A HERO Bundle with Hero’s Adventure and Warm Snow. May all travelers be able to experience the joy of life!



We are also going to have the following bugs fixed next week:

Fixed the bug where Puncturing Giant’s Smasher had no range stat
Fixed the bug where the display of UI on some mobile screens was partial
Fixed the bug where the EN voice acting was accidently removed
Fixed the bug where part of the EN text was missing
Added the Dynamic Lighting feature back
Updated the UI of Ember Workshop


During the past months, we’ve been working on the development of the Captives feature. As this function involves a wide range of stuff, there are also many adjustments and designs required. Nevertheless, we hope to launch a more complete and more playable Captives function, bringing a richer gaming experience to everyone.

So many thanks for your patience, and feel free to join our Discord to get in touch.

Travelers of the desert:

Travelers of the desert:
This time around we've continued to remedy lag. We came to realize that some art assets weren't fully integrated which in turn led to them taking up unnecessary RAM. This will be resolved with the ver. 1.0.45 update.

What's more, we're adding further support for the mod editor. For this new expert version, we'll be making available most UI menus so that modders can replace or change these out. We'll also provide a feature where you can upgrade simple mods to expert ones and make it easier to create resource packs.


Fixes

●Fixed a progression-halting bug with the Spirit Witch's [Catch Burak] story:

This bug has been present in our localized versions and was caused by section breakers. The issue should be resolved in the new version; yet, this isn't the only place in the game where this has been happening. We'll look over our localized versions again and make changes where needed.

●Fixed an issue on mobile devices:
where the game would appear vertically for some players.

●Fixed two issues with the text.

●Fixed an issue with Anniversary mod Zombie x Squirrel, where you didn't gain EXP as intended.

●Fixed a bug where a test segment would appear when opening up the Class Shop in the Eclipse Hive DLC.

All of the above changes will be updated on all platforms.


[h2]Captives - New Progress[/h2]

We've been working on the new Captives feature as of late, and we've been keeping an eye on your questions and worries. So, we'd like to share our progress and answer some questions in the process, naturally, feel free to leave even more feedback too!

[h2]Captives Gained From Battles[/h2]

[h3] (not representative of the final version)[/h3]


There's a chance to capture NPCs when defeating other tribes in battle, which just so happens to be the main way in which to acquire captives. We'll also consider whether to add more ways in which to acquire captives once the feature's been released, such as attacking traveling NPCs or exchanging captives with other forces. However, be sure to quickly toss any excess captives into the dungeon lest captives might begin escaping should you exceed your captive cap.

Apart from capturing NPCs, we're also planning on perhaps making soldiers capturable. However, that would require adjustments to several UI menus and we'll need time to discuss and think about whether or how we'll make this work.

[h2]What Use Are Captives?[/h2]



Following our last update log, many of you have been asking what captives are used for. They're honestly similar to how they are in many other games: they can be sold for gold to slavers, executed (after which that NPC will be permanently gone from your game), or released. Or, you can even draft them into your own team (with some restrictions, of course).

Soldiers of a higher level and NPCs of a higher status are naturally worth more. You'll also be able to hand over nobility captives when interacting with other factions to meet their demands. Each such you add increases your diplomatic weight and can be used to force them to concede land, pay tribute, or even surrender.

There's plenty of content that can be added to a system like this, however, we only have so much time and energy, so we'll begin by working on the most important parts first and perfect what we have in future iterations. Naturally, we also want to add functionality interfaces so that you, our community, may expand upon what's there, by perhaps adding the ability for captives to break free from jail, or so that you may... do untoward things with those you've captured.

[h2]Can Captives Be Executed? Would That Make the World Empty?[/h2]



A good question indeed. That's something we had plenty of discussions around before we even began developing this feature. To remedy this, we added in our last update the ability to auto-generate NPCs based on events. And we'll be adding a new set of families and NPC generation with the new version too.

As the months tick by, the world will once again bustle with life no matter how many NPCs you execute. However, newly generated NPCs are based on models and might only have access to a few set talents and skill pages, meaning that they'll be inferior to the original NPCs.

We estimate that this will become available for free with the next update.

[h2]Mod Workshop Support[/h2]

The Mod Workshop has been and always will be an integral part of Sands of Salzaar. And so, without further ado, we'll be providing more tools and support. In this version, we'll incorporate most FGUI menus to Expert mods, giving you the ability to edit the design and change assets for almost every menu. We'll also make available configurations for the base game's maps along with another batch of reference content.



The new mod editor will contain a function where you can upgrade simple mods to advanced ones. What's more, you'll be able to quickly make resource packs via a Unity editor from within the settings of advanced mods (you'll need to install any Unity dependencies for this to work).

GUI Location:



But that's not all. During our work to adapt the game for multiple platforms and continued development, we've upgraded the game's Unity version. This has naturally caused changes to the game's Unity action models. While most older mods should still work, some advanced mods that contain actions for new characters might need to upgrade to the 2020.3.48 Unity version and repackage their asset packs.

To simplify this process, we're providing the ability to directly upgrade old advanced mods from within the editor. However, we'd still like to extend our apologies to all you modders out there for any inconvenience caused.



Another thing that's been on our mind as of late, is the fact that each new update affects our mod community one way or another. Some mods might become unavailable until a fix is released, or even worse, mods where the authors have discontinued update support may become unusable entirely. Plus, every update also comes with its own bugs.

Our plan is that starting our next update with Captives, we'll provide stable access to old versions so that you may choose for yourself whether to use the latest version or an older one. This means that even as we update the game, you'll still be able to use the mods you've grown fond of.

Naturally, we won't have versions available for all the small updates that we make but only for major updates. We'll make sure to keep a branch available of each major patch going forward that should be compatible with most mods created during that time.

That's all for this update! Feel free to join our Discord to get in touch! Our managers will try their best to help you solve any issues you encounter in the game!

Travelers of the desert:

With the last updates, we've been making a range of adjustments to combat performance in the mid to late game, including:

●Restructured the code of our Tournament DLC to resolve progress blocks and some missing rewards;

●Reworked the logic behind combat text numbers to remedy combat lag in the mid to late game;

●Made changes to attack speed, improved attack hitboxes and the feel of attacks to further remedy lag and stutter in combat;

This time around, we've made changes to pathfinding logic and some map areas to remedy lag and stuttering experienced while exploring the map.

We've also further fleshed out the Tournament DLC with new content, and then we want to start a discourse with you, our players, regarding what other plans we have.

What's more, the base game will be available at 50% OFF and the DLCs at 33% OFF between Feb 4 and Feb 18 during the Spring Festival.


[h2]Optimizations[/h2]

Most of our focus for the last while has been on improving mid and late-game performance. However, such changes often require us to make changes to the underlying code and we have to break down and tackle each issue at a time.

Following our changes to improve performance in combat, we'll now be putting our focus on the map, as that is an area regarding which we have received plenty of feedback. These include:

●NPC Generation:

Improving the computing costs used for pathfinding when new parties are generated and optimizing some features to stabilize FPS while exploring the map;

●Map Pathfinding:

We've realized that whenever you use auto-pathfinding to move on the map, the game will lag and the party's movement reset whenever you pass a pathfinding point. To solve this issue, we've improved the cooldown for movement resets and temporarily added motion slowdown to the camera to counteract the visual discrepancy of the movements.

●Party Collision Calculations:

Previously when exploring the map, every party member would be computed as a collision target. This led to plenty of extra calculations being made and could also lead to you getting stuck on certain terrains.

We've reworked this, so that only the party leader is used for such calculations, effectively removing a lot of unnecessary computations and fixing some pathfinding issues.

●Combat Maps:

To further fix such terrain issues, we've also removed and modified obstacles and collision zones on the two following maps:

Redstone Valley: Removed most terrain obstacles.



West Docana Desert: Switched the location and collision zone of the stone pillars that previously blocked the view.



●Siege Pathfinding Optimization:

reworked the pathfinding logic on siege maps.



[h2]New Tournament Content[/h2]

While the Tournament does grant the winner a ton of rewards, you are unlikely to achieve victory in the early to mid-game. To smoothen out the overall experience, we've added two new tournaments with this update: Trials and Showdown.

·Trials: A tournament that can be held in any type of town. Speak to the Arena Keeper to start a round of 3v3 battles. You can take on this tournament as many times as you'd like, with the victor taking home some gold.

·Showdown: A tournament which is held in any town that is not a village every once in a while. While similar to the Tournament itself, this one is fairly frequent, but is smaller in scale and offers less handsome rewards.





Captives Preview
In the current build, once you defeat an enemy army, they will be able to rebuild a large army in just a few days and begin attacking you anew. This has led to overly frequent battles in the late game. Plus,
war has been the only means with which to annihilate your foes once and for all. Tons of repeated battles in a short amount of time have had an overall negative impact on the experience.

To remedy this, we are thinking of adding a mechanic called Captives in a future update, and would like to discuss our inspiration and ideas for this with you all:

·Once you've defeated an enemy army, you capture their hero and may choose to persuade or execute them.

·Once you've defeated an enemy army, you capture their soldiers and you may then choose to sell them for a ransom or force them to join your cause.

·Add a Prison to the town.

·To capture the enemy's leader and force them to cease their hostilities or surrender.

Apart from the aforementioned, we also have other ideas which we're considering. Anyway, it would mean the world to us if you left your valuable feedback in the comment section below!

That's all for this update! Feel free to join our Discord to get in touch! Our managers will try their best to help you solve any issues you encounter in the game!

[h2]Soldier Gems Fixes[/h2]

After the last update, we received many bugs from players about Soldier Gems not installing even after the conditions were met, this will be fixed in this update.



Other fixes：

1.Fix Saqie gender setting error
2.Fixed an issue where heroes without sorcery qualifications, such as Alaf Jahim, could not equip Fatalis Wizar's Demise.

[h2]Localization Module Support Trailer[/h2]

Sands of Salzaar has always only supported Simplified Chinese and English, and we know that some of the community players have created their own localized mods for players to use, and we are very thankful to these players for their support of the community.

In subsequent updates, we will consider opening up localization-related interfaces, so that players can localize their favorite mods, as well as make it easier to localize the game's content.

In addition to this, we will continue to update the game and gradually optimize the gameplay, as well as lag and flashback issues.

That's all for this update! Feel free to join our Discord to get in touch! Our managers will try their best to help you solve any issues you encounter in the game!