Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition News

Hello again hunters!

Today we've rolled out a patch to resolve a few issues that had been reported by the community.

The changelog is as follows:

[h3]Added[/h3]

• Added warning message after selecting to use Escape as Bat and Escape as Mist before one is able to end combat using them
  

[h3]Fixed[/h3]

• Fixed Dracula being able to pass using keyboard shortcuts
  
• Issues with being unable to select regions or sea zones after certain dialogs reopened during their closing animation
  
• Using Wolf Form to move to a Lair now moves the Lair onto the trail
  
• When manually changing players while Speedy Telegraph is in play, characters will automatically react to their status effects, rather than only when they are automatically changed to
  
• Placing a Dracula Marker during the Dracula phase no longer re-activates the Hunter's action buttons
  
• Fixed an issue with it being possible for an extra player to join an online room which prevented the game from being started until the extra player leaves
  
• Fixed Jonathan Harker being invoked when the new sixth trail space already has its location card revealed
  

Happy Hunting! 🧛

Hello hunters!

As promised, I’ve got an update for you all regarding the ongoing work we’re doing to bring 1v4 multiplayer to you all in Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition. We know you’re all keen to get your hands on the update, which is why we want to keep you in the loop on how it’s coming along!

[h3]Internal Testing[/h3]

Every day after lunch, we get 5 people from our team to sit down and play 1v4 online on the latest internal build for Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition that has 1v4 enabled. As the internal build is changing so often, playing it daily is important to make sure we can feedback on what has been fixed and what issues are still there. With our highly skilled QA team leading these sessions, they know exactly what to look for as well.

Thanks to all this testing, we’ve also been able to firmly confirm that our QA tester Stephen is the best Fury of Dracula player in the whole office. If we had to run some kind of Fury of Dracula tournament, he’d be the one we put forward!

We've also been able to recreate known issues to help narrow down what is causing bugs for our development team, which is a big help with development!

[h3]Current Development[/h3]

Right now, Sam, our official Master of Everything Online, is working on getting 1v4 ready for you all. He’s already implemented a huge load of features, including problematic cards like ‘Speedy Telegraph’.

Whenever our internal testing encounters a bug, we make sure to throw all 5 player logs and save files at Sam so that he can identify what happened to each player, and where the error came from. For example, we encountered an error where AI hunters would move to different locations to different players - the game would then crash once it realised the mistake had been made and it got conflicting reports from different players. With the logs from every single player involved, we can narrow down the exact moment when the bug occurred, and get it fixed.

We’ve already made it so that while in the online lobby, you can see how many people are currently in a single room. Handy for when you want to see if 4 people are waiting for one more player!

As Sam has been doing so much great work, we’re happy to report that we now have most of the features we need to make sure online works with 5 players - which means we can start looking at bugs and gathering information on what currently doesn’t work!

[h3]Current Bugs[/h3]

Speaking of bugs, right now trading between players causes the game to crash for everyone involved - there are a fair few steps involved in the trading process between the players doing the trade, and then making sure that the trade is properly reflected on every else’s games. We’re grabbing lots of player logs to see what is causing issues, which means we’re doing a great job of ironing out these bugs so far.

And while we have made Speedy Telegraph work in 1v4, using it to move to a location that is on the trail also causes a whole heap of issues that we need to resolve. Once we can identify what the game is doing differently when it’s a trail space, we can get to work on making sure it works correctly.

[h3]Closed Beta Rollout[/h3]

As of Thursday, 3rd December, we’ve officially handed over a beta version of Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition to our closed beta testers that features 1v4 multiplayer. This will be a massive help in finding bugs and issues, and just generally giving feedback on how the feature performs.

Our beta testers were massively helpful during the run-up to Fury of Dracula releasing in November, and a lot of them have stuck around to continue helping us out - which we very much appreciate.

[h3]Public Beta Rollout[/h3]

While we do have a good number of beta testers already, we’re well aware that there are a bunch of people who are itching to get their hands on 1v4 and help us iron out any bugs. We’re going to look into how feasible it would be for us to do a public beta, and if one would be needed.

We’ll keep you updated on what we decide to do, as it mainly depends on how development progresses!

[h3]5 Copies Bundle?[/h3]

If Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition is going to be 5 player, it makes sense to put out a 5 player bundle right? Well, it would… but there are some problems with that.

The main one is that according to the lovely folk at Valve, most of these ‘multiple game’ bundles just get purchased by people looking to turn a profit by selling those extra copies on grey market reselling websites. So for the time being, we’re not going to be offering a discounted bundle that includes 4 giftable copies of the game.

So that is where we’re currently at! If you want to stay tuned for more updates, reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook or our official Discord! I’m also lurking in the Steam group chat for Fury of Dracula, if you want to reach out to me there!

Hello Hunters!

We've just rolled out a new patch for Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition. Our focus continues to be on squashing bugs you've all been kind enough to report to us. Every single bug report helps us narrow down issues faster and improve the game for everyone!

Today's patch includes the following updates:

• Performance options in the Graphics settings UI for enabling V-Sync along with a V-Sync delay or applying a fixed target framerate of either 30, 60, 90 or 120 FPS.
  
  • Setting the V-Sync to be enabled with a 0 frame delay or using a fixed target framerate of 120 FPS will increase GPU energy consumption.
    
  • Setting a V-Sync delay will reduce the FPS depending on the monitor resolution refresh rate.
    
  • Setting a fixed target framerate is not guaranteed to be achieved and will depend on the system configuration.
    
• Added feedback when Dracula uses Plotting to cancel Punch, Dodge or Escape
  
• Added feedback when an Ally card's effect is invoked
  
• Added feedback when there are no Dracula event cards to draw from when maturing Hoax
  
• Added a round counter to combat
  
• Added a button in combat to display the cards of each character in the combat
  

• Disabled auto-progression on some tutorial messages
  
• Weakened hunters are no longer prompted to change their revealed cards whenever their item/event card hands change, only when they are required to do so
  
• Combat cards now only flip to show their backs after a new round starts, when a character is removed or when they select a new combat card
  

• Fixed being able to select the Dracula marker button while cards are being resolved
  
• Fixed hunter status effects above their map models being inverted
  
• Fixed Holy Bullets offering to be invoked when the vampire is already defeated
  
• Fixed Heroic Leap resulting in a Dracula victory if Dracula and the hunter are both defeated by using it and this caused the influence to reach 13
  
• Fixed Dracula not healing when moving to Castle Dracula via Wolf Form
  
• Fixed Sister Agatha appearing as a combat effect when Dracula is not in the combat
  
• Fixed Great Wolf, Vampiric Influence and Blood Transfusion being able to target defeated hunters
  
• Fixed Great Strength being playable when there is no combat occurring
  
• Fixed Dracula action buttons not being disabled while Dracula is moving a hunter
  
• Fixed Excellent Weather being playable while the hunter cannot move by sea (E.G. when blocked by a Fog token)
  
• Fixed Sense of Emergency being playable while the hunter cannot move by road (E.G. when blocked by a Fog token, or on Cagliari)
  
• Fixed lighting remaining dim after cancelling movement selection
  
• Fixed Dracula's Brides' Corrupt ability not indicating which location to place the encounter card on
  
• Fixed Dracula's Brides as an ally not drawing an encounter card if Dracula has over 5 encounter cards in hand
  
• Fixed Lucky Find not discarding excess item cards if the hunter went over their hand limit
  
• Fixed Spy displaying an empty "cards revealed" dialog if the target hunter had no item or event cards
  
• Fixed Hoax's mature effect keeping "immediately" event cards in Dracula's hand
  
• Fixed select region prompt showing too early in basics tutorials
  
• Fixed Tutorials progressing while paused and clicking through pause menu.
  
• Fixed Hideout revealed guide box starting too small and getting bigger with each message
  
• Fixed Region selection highlights active when continuing game after Game Setup tutorial has completed
  
• Fixed Escape as Bat sliding the trail rather than clearing the first hideout
  
• Fixed Hide failing to reveal and halting the game
  

Happy hunting! 🧛‍♂️

Hello hunters!

Recently we put out the call for questions from the community for our team to answer. We got a load of different questions, so we hope you’re ready for a load of different answers! And if you’ve got a question that wasn’t answered here, you can reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook or our official Discord!

So without further ado, let's get to those questions:

[h3]Twitch:soerenkepler from Steam writes:[/h3]

Q: There is alot of disappointment first on foremost on not being able to play 4v1. When will it be available?

A: We definitely understand that there are people out there who are waiting for us to add 4v1 online multiplayer to the game, which is why it’s the first feature we’ve been working on post-release. We’ve already got to the point where we can test it internally and we’re now gearing up to roll it out to our beta testers. A feature like this involves a lot of different moving parts that need to be checked are working correctly, which is why having our beta testers get their hands on it will help massively.

So at this point, it really depends on how many issues we/our beta crew come across when testing 1v4 online. After we’ve had some more time with it, we’ll be able to give you all a firm date on when it should be available - but we don’t want to promise anything before we know for sure.

In the meantime, we appreciate all of the patience people have shown while we continue working on this much requested feature!

[h3]Spockhelp from Steam writes:[/h3]

Q: Which table top edition is this based off of?

A: It’s based off the 4th Edition of the table top game! We’ve made some very minor changes where rules weren’t 100% clear in the physical version, but other than that, the game is a 1-to-1 adaptation of the 4th Edition.

[h3]Gorgo Primus and Opsrey26 from Steam write:[/h3]

Q: is it possible to get an option to skip or speed up animations in the future? // I would also like to see an option to fast forward the visual attacks and stuff.

A: So depending on which animations players find too lengthy, we may already have unreleased ways of decreasing the wait time. For example, there is a slider in the developer build which controls the speed of the character wheel (the animation you have to wait for when switching characters, finishing your turn etc.)

There is no way for players to use this currently of course, but we wouldn't object to giving the players the option to adjust this themselves. We could also potentially allow other animation speeds to be controllable through the settings menu - we just need to identify the long-winded ones that players find frustrating.

[h3]Gorgo Primus from Steam also writes:[/h3]

Q: Why did you decide to not have text on what a card did when you drew it or in your hand, but only when you went to play them?

A: So when we looked at how to show players new cards that they had received, we had two options:

1. Show you the card and what it does, and ask players to confirm once they’d read the card
   
2. Show you the name of the card, and after a few seconds automatically progress the game
   

We decided to go with the second option, as it means there is less input required from the player and a game can progress more smoothly. Also, you can look at your hand during your turn and see what the cards do, so there is still the ability to read what cards do before you play them.

We do acknowledge that there are going to be certain players that would rather it function like the 1st option, so we’re going to look into giving players a choice in the settings menu to toggle between the two options.

[h3]Shawn.hollon from Steam writes:[/h3]

Q: Will there be support to play this on Mac in the near future?

A: At the moment we don’t have any plans to bring Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition to Mac, as the amount of time it takes to develop a Mac version of the game wouldn’t justify the number of people who then would buy the game.

However, we’re currently looking at other options such as Nvidia's GeForce Now which would allow Mac players to play Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition with minimal development time from us.

[h3]Opsrey26 from Steam writes:[/h3]

Q: Please decrease this size of the player piece. They are too big. Also, add some artwork fro the towns and villages.

A: At the moment, the player pieces on the board will automatically scale down whenever there are multiple characters in a single location. We’ve designed them to visible even when you’re zoomed out to see the entire board, to help you see at a glance where everyone is.

As we get closer to the release of the mobile version, we can take another look at the sizes of player pieces, and if we need to give players the option to adjust the ‘default’ size.

[h3]Billyzero from Steam writes:[/h3]

Q: How do you use Speedy Telegram in game? I know the effect but I don't know how the computer game's mechanic works (ie, how do I get Mina to go first instead of Goldaming when the card is in play?).

A: If you click on the different character avatars over on the left side of the screen, you’ll be able to switch between the different characters and perform their actions!

[h3]Red Commander from Steam writes:[/h3]

Q: Is it possible to add the list of players actions during the game?

A: Yes! We’re actually working on this right now, with ‘The Journal’ feature. It will be a running log of everything that has happened in the game, and you’ll be able to refer to it as you play. You can read more about it in our ‘What’s Next for Fury of Dracula’ blog here.

[h3]Red Commander from Steam also writes:[/h3]

Q: [Can there be] an opportunity to choose the leading hunter in a combat? He is being chosen automatically now, due to the sequence of hunter`s turns.

A: If there are multiple hunters in Dracula’s current location, each hunter chooses a card. Then, before cards are revealed, Dracula chooses one hunter to be the engaged hunter - so Dracula is the one responsible for choosing who the ‘leading hunter’ is in combat.

[h3]Red Commander and El-DoX from Steam write:[/h3]

Q: One more thing. Can we have the better textures of the gaming board? It makes my eyes very tired even in full hd. // Are there some plans to improve the look of the game board, a different layout for instance with a DLC?

A: So far we’ve mostly seen people wanting it to look like the 2nd/3rd/4th edition physical boards. That could potentially be easy for us to do, but we’d need to talk to the different companies who made those versions of the game. Definitely a conversation we can start though!

[h3]Rogersdrums from Steam writes:[/h3]

Q: is there a possibility that you could manage to make a function in FOD that would allow players to make the game longer in its starting point duration? perhaps increase the evil influence number to 20 or so for example.

A: Whenever we look at adding house rules in the future, adding rules that change the duration of a game will definitely be on our list. We know that some people will appreciate a shorter game of Fury of Dracula, so adding some kind of ‘sliding scale’ that will adjust aspects that affect game length makes a lot of sense.

[h3]TenaciousD_ad from Steam writes:[/h3]

Q: Castle Dracula did not heal Dracula. Guys, did this really get beta tested?

A: This was actually a bug we noticed shortly after release! It turns out that Dracula healing after moving to Castle Dracula was being triggered by most of his movement options, but not all of them! For example, when Dracula used Wolf Form to move to Castle Dracula, he wouldn’t heal properly. We’ve now fixed this issue, and will be rolling out a patch for it soon!

Also, we most definitely did beta test the game! We had a team of nearly 100 beta testers who spent nearly 3 months playing the game and reporting on bugs. They're still giving us reports even now the game is out, so they're all mighty dedicated. ːheartː

[h3]Monica Rohtmaa-Jackson on Twitter writes:[/h3]

Q: Why did you decide to digitise Fury of Dracula in particular?

A: Part of the reason is down to the really good relationship between us and the lovely folk over at Games Workshop! Also, we’ve spent a lot of time working on more ‘traditional’ fantasy games with wizards and knights, so getting our hands on something with such a strong horror theme was definitely a welcome change!

[h3]Iain Briggs on Twitter writes:[/h3]

Q: Is there possibility we'll see it on the Switch?

A: Once we’ve released the mobile versions of Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition we’re going to properly investigate how much of an audience and how much demand there is for the game on Nintendo Switch. So right now, the best answer we can give you is a big, exciting… maybe?

[h3]John of Arc on Twitter writes:[/h3]

Q: When is the iOS version coming?

A: We’re still not 100% sure on how long some features of the mobile version of Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition will take, as we have a long list of small features and updates that we need to work on before we can roll it out.

When you have 4 massive things to work on, it’s a bit easier to gauge how long a project will take. Unfortunately, porting Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition to mobile is more like 4 massive things and 100 smaller things, and trying to work out how long those 100 smaller things is much more difficult.

We know that iOS and Android versions are something we get a lot of questions about, so we’ll be sure to shout loud and proud about a release date once we have one!

[h3]David Umstattd on Facebook writes:[/h3]

Q: We’re y’all fans of the board game before designing it? If so how many and for how long? What was the research process like for those unfamiliar with the game?

A: We had a handful of fans here in the office, and almost everyone had heard of the game to some capacity at least. When a game has been around for as long as Fury of Dracula, it’s hard not to be recognisable. For anyone who was unfamiliar with the game, we bought some copies for the office and we spent a good number of lunches playing through the game and getting to grips with the mechanics.

Games Workshop were also kind enough to send everything they had about Fury of Dracula which helped a lot with research about the game.

[h3]That's it for questions, but don't be shy about reaching out to us on social media or here on Steam![/h3]

Hello Hunters!

We've just rolled out a new patch for Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition. Right now our focus is on squashing bugs you've all been kind enough to point out to us. Every single bug report helps us narrow down issues faster and improve the game for everyone!

Todays patch includes the following updates:

• Added a toggle in the front-end and in-game settings to remember the camera zoom mode between games

• Encounter cards are now matured in the order of Dracula's choice
  
• Vampire encounter cards now clear their own hideout when matured
  
• Dracula can no longer play Hide with Wolf Form when Hide is unplayable
  
• Szgany Bodyguards' Mature effect
  
• Dracula's last played Combat card is no longer duplicated when combat ends before Dracula has played 6 Combat cards
  
• Fixed interactive guide box locations for all aspect ratios
  
• Fixed some inconsistency issues with the tutorial text
  

Happy Hunting! 🧛