General news.
[p]So as everyone might have noticed, news and updated dropped off some time early July.
The reason for this was threefold. First off I really needed a holiday with the family, secondly I needed some time away from Bulwark to work on the Falconeer Remaster (still un-announced but what the heck) and thirdly I needed some time to do bizdev and prep for the remainder of the year.
Here's a little sneek-peek at the ingame Falconeer remaster. That is coming later this year. ![]()
[/p][h2]Solodev Survival, it's a messy business[/h2][p]
So all that kept me occupied and I also simply needed to recharge and gather energy. This also in lieu off how the industry is proceeding to be harsher and harsher, with across the board sales in games down 10% according to some readings. And this is compounded by a lot of folks playing only Fortnite or Roblox. This means experimetal and uncompromising weirdo solodevs like me, we are suffering. So I needed to come up with a way to be able to keep working on Bulwark and the Falconeer Remaster is one long gamble to be able to do so. Offcourse I also wanted to bring it up to modern/bulwark standards and fix many of the criticisms. There is also more or less an end in sight to the micro DLC sstrategy, getting some more comments that it's a "paradox-like" strategy that is turning people off. I don't have an answer to that, perhaps raise the price, perhaps make a patreon, who knows?
Tho I have decided that I really want to make one official BIG expansion for the Freebooter faction. New towns, new faction, new buildings, houses , walls , the works. it's gonna be intense. And I'm working with the publisher to see how I can afford to make that. (I cannot at the moment). The remaster might help, but I also might come up with one of these Supporter DLC's that's truly just for support and to fund the expansion.
Anyways its tough out there and working hard to not let Bulwark slip thru the cracks, I hope even folks who had complaints can see so much work is still being done and has been done over the last 18 months post-release. I am scratching and clawing into long term survival ;)[/p][p][/p][p]if you wanna see a video registration of me chatting about this stuff, showing of all the new work: check out my youtube channel
[dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][h2]Behemoth update[/h2][p]
Lets get to it, the behemoth update finally has a good feature list I am happy with. Lets run it down.[/p][h3]
1. behemoth surveyor.
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[/carousel][p]The Caddilac of the Falconeer Universe, the 'Behemoth' or otherwise known as the Empress her own flagship which got shot down at the start of the Falconeer (you bet that's already in the Remaster).
A three tiered flagship which you can upgrade in stages at the appropriate mechanic. There will also be a good fight or two to acquire this.[/p][p][/p][h3]2. Entagon subterfuge events[/h3][p][/p][carousel]
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[/carousel][p]A comment-er on steam requested a way to fast track the acquisition of the last few remaining settlements after you conquered them. It is a bit of a grind. I am actually combining this with 2 other subterfuge events (acquiring a hostile commander/traitor ans sabotaging a hostile fleet). The Nonagram are a similar group to the smooth talking sacred step diplomats, but in this case sneaky bastards. Here is there unqiue building (might be a location in the world haven't decided). The interactions themselves will be similar to the sacred step diplomatic blimp events. [/p][h3]3. Arbology, trees on the Ursee
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[/carousel][p]Dotted across the fringes of the map (and beyond) you will find new islands, that harbor a freebooter/cavedweller experiment. The ash-faced faction mostly absent from Bulwark is defending their organic splinter based tech that spawns trees. Use these cosmetic towers to repopulate trees on the Ursee. Acquiring these will require fighting leveled freebooter forces that defend these Arbology towers.[/p][p][/p][h3]4. Curved wall sections[/h3][p][/p][carousel]
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[/carousel][p]So a new update means some new architecture options, and this time its adding curved wall sections and curved gates for the wood and iron tier walls. These existed for stone but no equivalent for the other tiers existed, until this update.
[/p][h3]5. Unit purchase-upkeep and Supersample AA options
[/h3][p]A long time user had this on his in depth feedback, some form of upkeep for units. I've decided to include a upkeep addition in the purchase price. So simply put a unit that costs 100 splinters when you only have 10 will cost 300 when you have a fleet of 50. This is a balancing attempt to still keep a chill and simple economy but a bit more risk to massive fleets.
Additionally I've added per request a super sampling mode at 150 and 200% for those who want to melt their GPU with god tier not AI driven smooth rendering. A brute force method if you will.
Likely more additions will be made , little improvements and micro QoL features, but at the moment this is the gist of it.
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Conclusion:
[p]I am back to work and making good progress, I apologize if it isn't up to my usual regular cadence. But as you can read I am back to work and the time I took away from Bulwark was all in order to further grow Bulwark. I cannot do it without your support, my games never are mega-sellers but the response for the players and supporters has sustained this journey, so once again thank you for your past and hopefully future support.
and let me know what you think off all this!
[/p][p]Cheerio,
Tomas
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