Cross of Auria News

Let me start this one by saying thank you to everyone who stopped by today! It was a pleasure to get some work done and be live at the same time. Who knows, maybe I'll make this a regular Friday thing.

If you missed the streams and want to check them out, they will be available for 14 days at:
Stream 1: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/615040132
Stream 2: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/615132997

Almost this entire update was created during these two streams, so feel free to have a look at the development process that goes into making CoA!

Without further nonsense, the 3.2.2 notes:

3.2.2 [Build #74, Release Date: May 08, 2020] New:
- Vendor Stock updated for the Item Shop in Auria/Visitor District.
- A new 75 Point set is now available from The Phoenix Ash in Lvell.
- The pylon at the Research Shack in Auria has awoken!
- New field spawn enemies are on the prowl in Alpha Ruins.
Fixes:
- Fixed a missing image error in Agartha. To remove the error, save outside of the main Agartha zone, then reload the file and go back in. This fix also repairs the ability to go into the Pit building.
- Fixed several audio loading errors in Agartha.
Changes:
- Congealed Frost now have a chance to drop from various Frost Forest enemies.
- Frostbrood Tokens now have a chance to drop from Frostbrood enemies.
- Schematic: Mech Shield now has a chance to drop from Mechs in Hell’s Gate. The tooltip for this item has been changed.
- Schematic: Snow Shield now has a chance to drop from Ice elementals in Frost Forest. The tooltip for this item has been changed.
- Ice Shards now have a chance to drop from Ice enemies in Frostbrood zones.
- Field spawn units in Alpha Ruins now trigger battle on contact. Some enemies now chase Ruby upon entry to the zone.
- Congealed Fire now has a chance to drop from elementals in Scarlet Cavern.
- All enemy events in the Colosseum now trigger battle on contact.
File Size:
- Added test data for Scarlet Fire / Pit integration.

Occasionally, I'll do one of these for my twitch people, but I seem to always forget letting you guys in on the secret. Today, the secret's out.

In about two minutes from the posting of this, I will be going live @ www.twitch.tv/hardytier with a few hours of development on Cross of Auria. If you want to see how things or done, catch a sneak peak at the Orc War stuff, or ask some questions - feel free to stop by!

Hope to see some of you there!

Cross of Auria should be back online for all Windows players! Please restart Steam and allow the download to finish.

Somehow in the last update, the game files were excluded from the build. Due to this fix, the update will be larger than usual (~600MB). However, the total file size for the game remains the same since the last update deleted these 600MB worth of files.

Sorry for the inconvenience! If there are any more issues, please keep in mind that Discord is the best way to reach out! Invite link: https://discord.gg/5zhdNsd. I do see the comments and posts here on the Steam community website, but sometimes they do not give me notifications, which goes to them being unnoticed for longer than usual.

Get out there and slay some bad guys!

Mac
Earlier this week, we talked a little bit about functionality for MAC (see thread here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/764180/announcements/detail/2211773821814366841). Today, I'm going to follow up on that with some hopeful information.

It seems that it is possible for me to continue to make exports for mac in a different way than I do for Windows. However, it is greatly time consuming as I originally predicted. For that reason, the store page for CoAE1 has had Mac support unlisted for the time being. That being said, Mac players will still receive periodic updates, but not on the same time-frame as Windows users. Usually whenever an issue comes up, I jump to patch it right away - this won't be the case for issues on Mac. Instead, I'll be looking at monthly or even story based checkpoints for Mac only. Where Windows might see 3.3, 3.3.1, 3.3.2, and 3.4, Mac users may only see 3.3 and 3.4.

Some quick notes:
- The current MAC build is 3.2.1.2, which is an extension of the 3.2.1 build (notes here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/764180/announcements/detail/2211773821813899258) but with the added bonus of the ninja patch which is available to all.

3.2.1.2 [Build #72, Release Date: April 29, 2020] Fixes:
- Fixed an issue with the Innkeeper causing errors after the Room Key was obtained.

- If you're having trouble launching the game on Mac, right click Cross of Auria from the steam library -> Manage -> Browse Local Files -> open "x.Cross of Auria" folder -> open the Game application.
-- If there are any issues with launching the game on Mac as of this update, please reach out to me ASAP. I'll see what I can do, but on the whole, Mac development isn't well supported by the RMMV engine.

- One final thing for Mac users - the download size should be significantly decreased. My depots were setup improperly which called for Mac users to download the windows only "www" folder, which is basically all the contents of the .app package an entire second time. However, due to the change in encryption, the initial download size may be somewhere in the 500MB if you are updating from more than three or so patches ago.

Linux
- To anyone who owns the game for linux, the "Game" file has always been made available. I don't have a way to test this on my own, but the engine suggests that all the files are included within the package. As you may know, official support was discontinued many months ago due to my inability to test or understand it. With any luck, I'll be able to change that when the game enters post production.


Other
- On the whole, there hasn't been any other development yet this week. I'm focusing a lot on my projects for youtube for right now. That being said, I usually get most of my work done for CoA on Saturday mornings. When I do get back to it, I'll be continuing mostly on the new Orc War campaign, so there may not be another update again until next weekend.

- Due to the frustration of trying to fix issues for Mac users this morning, the x. Patch Notes file has been left in disarray, but this gives you a chance to see what I have planned in a more detailed look if you want to see it. As always, these things can change.

- I need to make a MAC version of the demo first and foremost this weekend, so this will take up some of my scheduled development time. When I made it, I was unaware of the current issues. At least I know how to work around it.


Thanks for stopping by, and as always - report those bugs! Please keep in mind that Discord (invite link: https://discord.gg/j4pZKuv) is the best way to report bugs. I don't always get notifications here on the steam forums and even when I look manually, some comments get buried for no reason until months later when they suddenly appear at the top. Strangely enough, this has been the case with several negative reviews for the game as well as a few bug reports.
Facebook is a solid secondary way of reaching out (@ www.facebook.com/crossofauria), but occasionally I'll get notifications saying I have messages, but the messages won't be there. This was the case over the last few days, so if it was you that reported something on fb, I'm terribly sorry but FB won't let me see it.
And finally, Twitter should be the last case scenario in reporting bugs, as I generally never log into CoA's twitter. BUT, you can reach out to me directly @hardytier on twitter, which is one I actively log into all the time. (But seriously, if we can start using Discord for bug reporting, that would actually be the best for me personally >.>)

Anyway, that's it for this huge wall of text, thanks for stopping by, and I hope everyone enjoys their week!

//hardytier

While preparing and testing the 3.2.1 patch, it has come to my attention that the game has become unstable, if not completely unplayable on certain versions of Mac operating systems. For that reason,
Mac support is suspended indefinitely.

I'll level with you all here for a minute - we were lucky to be able to release the game for Mac and Linux for as long as it was out there. A few months ago, the Linux builds became unpredictable, and now, I'm finally seeing that the Mac one has joined it. I'm not using a traditional engine in the creation of CoA like Unity or Unreal where I can code around and dig in and see what's going on. RMMV is an... all in one good luck to those who use it kind of endeavor. I work to create the game and updates on a windows desktop from which i export both a Windows build and a Mac build. For a long time, the mac build work. I can't say for sure when it stopped working since there were no reports, but I can confirm that as of today the project doesn't open at all. This -might- be because of when my version of RMMV stealthily updated from 1.5.1 to 1.6. Since I don't know when that was, I don't know how much of the project I would have to recreate from scratch in order to reincorporate Mac going forward.

The short version of this: At some point in time, both the Linux and Mac exports from the engine broke. Windows support will continue for the time being with the schedule discussed a few weeks ago, but Mac and Linux will no longer receive updated builds. I'm very sorry about this. If my understanding of Steam is correct, your key is still good to download the game on any windows machine or any virtual Windows OS with Steam on it.

I'm very sorry about this issue. If you have any suggestions, feel free to reach out.

//hardytier

Edit: 3:19PM APR 27
1. When the game is in its "completed" phase, I'll make all attempts I know how to in order to also port the game to both Mac and Mobile. Since these methods are very time consuming, they aren't worth attempting until production on the project comes to a close.