Hi, everyone. Welcome to another week's developer's diary!
Before we start, I shall send out some congratulations.
First, I shall once again congrats the winner of the Age of Wonders 4 Give-Away.
More details can be found here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1519140/view/3681173395655085909
The 5 passwords are:
#1 Evil invades Earth once again.
#2 Atrocities committed, people die.
#3 Yet, on the darkest night, stars still shine.
#4 Heroes take arms and counter-offense starts.
#5 The tyrant will fall, and the justice will be restored.
You know what this little story is about. :)
I consider this giveaway quite a successful one as I gathered meaningful feedback with information including the playtime that reaches the end of our current main story (which is about 20 hours.) and confirmation on there are no game-breaking bugs that stop a player from reaching there.
As I respect everyone's privacy, I will never put any tracking system in the game to gather data from you. Even if such data tracking methods usually can help a game developer a lot. Even if I personally worked on the data tracking system in many most profitable Gameloft mobile games back then. NEOLITHIC must be a clean game. All data are yours and stored locally. You shall never worry about anyone else who can suddenly find you doing even the most messed up things in the game unless you are willing to tell others. Thus, the feedback from this giveaway is very precious to me. Once again, thank you for participating. :)
Second, I shall congrats the Heroes of Ukraine.
I heard great news from Bakhmut. Such great news inspires me tremendously as at this very moment my little operation to spread the truth in China is facing increasing difficulty. Some of my accounts got crackdown again. But, that does not matter. The game itself still contains a copy of the latest news from Ukraine. And from this day on, I will also add a link to a 3rd party website outside of the range of censorship while still accessible in most Chinese networks. Here is an example: https://controlc.com/d0688f56
I know the "get paid to paste" on this website sounds quite fishy. But, that's currently the only website I can find that does not censor information while still can be accessed in China. Even Pastebin censors.
Meanwhile, I will be totally honest with you:
One of my major income sources is the stock market, and I think I am somewhat good at it. It can be considered as one of the major reasons that I can put in almost infinite development funds over almost 19 years into the development of this game.
I don't need to rely on this game or any content I created to live.
Instead, I have donated more money than 10 times what I can get from this game.
Slava Ukraini! As Winston Churchill said, "The destiny of man is not measured by material computations." I don't think how much money I have matters afterward. To ensure the victory of Ukraine, to save people, to bring back justice is what matters.
Ever since the invasion begins, I have met many like-minded great people. It's easy to support Ukraine when you are in a democratic nation. But, even in China, in Russia, in Belarus, I know we have stars shining even on the darkest nights. I have no doubts the dawn will soon come.
Now, let's go down to the content update we get this week.
First, about Kung-Fu, the Beggar King is now included in the gift system and you can learn skills from him. He is always drunk. So, he developed a nice Drunk-Fu stance you can learn from him if your relationship with him is good enough. The skill turns all the disadvantages of being drunk into advantages. For example, normally being drunk will reduce your evasion. But, in case you also have the Drunk-Fu Stance, you get increased evasion instead. Although, some of the most famous Beggar Gang's Kung-Fu skills based on classical Chinese Wuxia novels are still missing at this moment. We now have a system in place to expand in the future.
Meanwhile, Harold got additional material arts skills to teach such as the "Calm Heart Extinguishes Fire."
Second, about Gun-Fu. The system now covers all the guns available in the game and the modules become more powerful and can change a lot more attributions of a gun. All special attributions a weapon can have can now be modified by a module. A gun's crosshair and headshot damage rate can now also be changed. New mechanics have been added to guns, namely the Penetration Rate. It allows your guns to bypass enemy ballistic resistance without the need to increase the raw power of your guns. Many different modules have been added to test all those changes. The cat that carries a gun in the Dragon's Treasure now also becomes a gunsmith that can help you modify guns.
Third, time to back to our story development. New game features and systems are cool. But the show must go on. Thus, we are back to the outside areas of the Black Pyramid. The sacrifice circle can now be interacted with. If you have a teammate that can pass the dark elemental skill check, you can get some nice rewards. If that does not work out, some vengeful spirits may spawn.
That's for this week. Have a nice weekend. I am looking forwards to hearing more good news from the frontline. I shall pray for the success of those heroes even if I am not usually a religious person.
Today's change:
############Content################
[Item Window]When you select an item to use to solve a story encounter, none of those items will be grayed out anymore even when you cannot use them in normal circumstances.
[Item Window]Weapon modules are no longer grayed out when checking them under the item module category.
[Gun Modification]When you select a module to attach to a gun, the available modules will no longer be grayed out.
[Outside the Black Pyramid]You can now interact with the sacrifice circle. You can try to harvest its power by selecting a character in your group to do a dark element proficiency check. If success, you gain the loot. If fail, three vengeful spirits will spawn.
############System#################
[Item Window]Added additional control parameter to tell the item window not to gray out items even if those items cannot be used.
[Character Selection Window]Added new functions to show everyone's elemental proficiency during selection.
