The Praedian Records

J.G. Phoenix

Current Projects

Chapter 2 1st Draft 30%

Remnants of the Elders

Yamato 60%
Hermes 5%
Yorktown 80%
Victorious 30%
Maya 5%
Blücher 70%
Prinz Eugen 10%
Seydlitz 85%
Lützow 10%
Magdeburg 5%
Prinz Heinrich 5%
Konigsberg 5%
Type 34 Destroyer 90%
Type 36 Destroyer 80%

Favorites in Fiction

MS-14Jg Gelgoog Jäger

YF-29 Durandal (WIP)

My Thoughts on Generative AI: Part 1

by | Oct 25, 2023 | ,

It’s taking me way too long to finish up a particular blog post I’m working on so I’m going to post it in three or four parts. Later on I’ll compile them into a full article.

This has been a hot topic, and for obvious reasons. My take on it comes after testing a whole bunch of different LLMs, art generators, and voice synthesizers.

A quick note before we jump in. As part of the point I want to make, I enlisted a couple of the AIs I regularly use, GPT-4 and Claude to help outline this article. They also have something to add, but more on that later.

Rise of the Titan

It’s everywhere now and it feels like it happened literally overnight: ChatGPT and DALL-E, Claude, Midjourney, Chatsonic, NovelAI, Autogen, this that and the other thing. The scary part is that you can generate fully realized copy or artwork with these in an instant. The more reassuring part is that most AI is as bad at drawing consistently good hands as most humans, and just as likely to spit out your own questions phrased slightly differently than someone who’s only pretending to listen. Hmm, I wonder how that happened.

What we’re currently shorthanding as ‘AI’ is progressing so fast, it’s nearly impossible to stay on top of it all. Something revolutionary probably slipped right under the radar and we’re not going to realize just how important it was until farther down the road. Now, we’ve got a bunch of people panicking about the potential AI has to replace humans altogether. Or … you know, the classic blow us all to smithereens line of reasoning.

As someone who has to do other people’s jobs for them because they’re not meeting management’s expectations and therefore can’t do my own job, and consequently having to watch day after day as my own work piles multiple meters off the ground, I couldn’t care less if half my coworkers suddenly turned into bots running GPT-4V.

Phoenix ranting on Break

Anyway, I want to weigh in on the AI issue for the record and talk a little about it, the good, the bad, and the downright hilarious. When all’s said and done, I believe that the AIs we’re using today are powerful tools that will help those who are willing to embrace them achieve their goals much faster than they would have been able to otherwise. For others, impossible goals could now become possible, and some people who wouldn’t dare to dream of entering the creative world will now have the means to.

This is more of an introduction than anything. I’ll be really diving in from part 2 onward.

Expanding Kaiser Lore

by | Oct 16, 2023 | , ,

One of the most annoying things about fleshing out these World War II inspired factions is that there isn’t enough territory in the setting to go around. I mean we’ve got America, the UK, Germany, France, Japan, etcetera. There are only a handful of habitable worlds, though. That said, there’s another thing I’d like to touch on another time. It’s the reason my Aeon setting is limited to the Sol System. Back to Space Engineers though!

I was thinking that the Kaiser faction would be a literal empire and not just a relatively large militarized group of colonists. This is where the ‘subfactions’ would come in. Think of Vichy France for example. The Kaisers would have conquered other colonists to reach their current size. This does two things for me. One, it lets me incorporate other factions without having to make them independent forces, and two, it allows me to make ships from other factions in the same style as their host faction.

Two really important ships that come to mind are the Dunkerque and the Jean Bart, which I’d like to make in the style of Star Blazers. For that, they’re going to need to be at least related to the Kaisers.

Anyway, those are just my thoughts and I figured I’d jot them down while I’m on my break.

Auf Wiedersehen und au revoir pour le moment!

M.A.S.S. Builder: What’s Next 0.11.0

by | Oct 15, 2023 | , ,

M.A.S.S. Builder – What’s Next 0.11.0 – Steam News
First of all, before anything else, we must announce that we’re shifting our development engine to Unreal Engine 5 for the next version. Now now, we must ask that you don’t panic and assume the game is going into a development hell of reworking on each and every part of the game. That won’t happen.…

Onward

You can just tell how used to quick and negative reactions VD has gotten. Most gaming studios have to deal with that at some level, and it says a lot about them that they don’t brush it off or overreact to it like some larger companies I know.

Unreal Engine 5

So they’re switching up the game’s engine. That’s not a small thing, even if it’s going from one version of an engine to a newer one. They’re right to try to head off people’s fears that M.A.S.S. Builder’s heading for development hell. VD doesn’t let us down often, so let’s go ahead and let them do their engine upgrade. It’s a win-win for the players, even if it takes a little while to hit release.

The Story

I don’t know why, but hearing that they’re wrapping up the story missions relatively soon makes me kind of sad. I’d like the campaign to be longer if possible, but VD’s right:

New story missions.
We’re adding 3 new story missions and will end our story there. We mentioned how we’ve the story with filler missions in the Afterwords and after deliberate discussion among ourselves, we’ve decided to stop having those and focus on completing the story missions up to the final piece of the game. This will allow us to fully work on more polishing, QoL improvements, customization contents, and multiplayer in full in 0.12.0 next year. This will also allow us to fully rescale our enemies to a better status line.

VD

Once the main story’s finished, VD can consolidate their time and resources even more. Besides, you never know, once the story’s finished, that may present opportunities in the future for more enhancements: Reworked scenes, additional dialogue, etc. They’re already implementing voice work, so there’s room for improvements in other areas of the story along the way. I’m hopefully optimistic regardless.

Jumping Back In

Anyway, those were the two big things I wanted to address. You can read the rest of the article for yourself if you like. Sometime this week, maybe Tuesday or Wednesday, I’m going to start up a new campaign for M.A.S.S. Builder (because the old one was lost with my old PC). I’ll be posting anything interesting that happens here on the blog. I need to look into some things on the site’s backend as well, since I want to start uploading a lot more gameplay footage.

If you’re tuned, stay that way.

Project Wingman Development Continues

by | Oct 12, 2023 | , ,

Project Wingman – BETA BRANCH UPDATE #1: Platform Update 2.0 – Steam News
Project Wingman Beta Branch Major Update

This is big news, but it didn’t show up in my feed until well over a week ago. Toss in how busy I am and I’m only now getting around to writing about it.

The Beta Branch

This is the version I’m currently running and I’m planning to try it in depth sometime this week. This is supposedly the 2.0 state of the game, so I’m looking forward to blasting my way through the campaign (Prez only planes because “WSOs before foes”) and having another go at the conquest mode.

User Generated Content

Now this is the hidden gem in the 2.0 news from PW. The game’s already quite moddable, but imagine something more streamlined for actually using them like the Steam Workshop. Even I might get directly involved at that point. This isn’t just for skins like in Ace Combat 7, either. New slots for completely custom aircraft would be a literal gamechanger. Imagine starting up the game and then playing a few missions with a Valkyrie or a Viper MKII … or even a Cosmo Falcon!

Seriously looking forward to this if PW fully implements it.

Details

Most of the rest of the post is patch notes and an important reminder that PW’s intended to be a game-game, and not like all these live service games that are constantly caressing your wallet with new content.

Thanks for that.

The Patch Notes

They changed quite a lot, holy crap.

PROJECT WINGMAN 1.0.4D -> 2.0.11 CHANGELOG

PROJECT WINGMAN 1.0.4D -> 2.0.11 CHANGELOG

WEAPONS:
-UGB-L blast radius doubled from 90m -> 180m.
-UGB-L ammo count doubled.
-UGB-S blast radius doubled from 45m -> 90m.
-GBS blast radius doubled from 45m -> 90m.
-CBU16 blast radius doubled from 45m -> 90m.
-BML-U projectile count has been reduced by 1 (this was not a balance decision this was a bug)
-BML-U should now launch correctily with the orientation of the player aircraft.
-Railgun rounds now penetrate through most objects.
-Bombs now have a 10m activation detection radius.
-Bomb behavior has been significantly altered.
-Reworked bomb drop behavior.
-Gunpods are now classified as a dumbfire multi purpose weapon in the weapon selection screen.
-ASM is now classified as a multi-purpose weapon in the weapon selection screen.
-Fixed an issue where bombs would occasionally spawn misaligned to their hardpoint.
-Fixed an issue where missile and bomb racks would appear in virtual HUD view.

GAMEPLAY:
-Added Camera Padlock tracking speed switch. Users can now switch between a faster camera speed or the standard camera speed the game shipped with when holding the targetting button to track an enemy.
-Adjusted the interpolation speed post AoA maneouver in “unlocked” camera mode. Should result in a smoother transition after the maneouver.
-Significantly increased combat effectiveness of both Diplomat/Hitman 2 and Comic/Hitman 3
-Player death sequence has been updated.
-Added controller force feedback when in clouds.
-Slightly adjusted afterburner force feedback effects.
-Added NEXT indicator for the next targettable unit in the target list sequence.
-Reduced the update rate of target list so it can select new targets more often rather than going back and forth between 2 targets.
-Slightly adjusted where “center” is for the next target system. It should now more reliably target what’s currently the perceived center of the screen. (Which is actually slightly lower than true center of the screen.)

RENDERING:
Clouds 2.0
-The cloud and sky system has been completely overhauled! Allowing us to have much more control over the artistic direction of the skyscape and drive our skies further. It’s still a largely work in progress so feedback is appreciated!
-Added an additional cloud resolution setting labelled [EXTREME] resolution. (Caution, potentially slow on some machines)
-Cloud resolution setting has been slightly overhauled. The following settings now correspond to the following resolution. Due to the change of the default scaling, you may notice a reduction in performance due to the setting going up a tier.
-Low
-High
-Very High
-Extreme
-Adjusted overall brightness of the game.

VISUAL FX:
-Adjusted rain opacity on the canopy. Greatly improving visibility in cockpit view while its raining.
-Improved snow weather effects.
-Improved missile smoke particle effects.
-Improved aircraft destruction smoke particle effects.
-Adjusted and optimized several explosion particle effects.
-Debris mesh has been fixed for both Airships and Air units.
-Debris particle orientation for airships has been fixed.
-Particle orientation for gun impacts now align correctly.
-Improved water splash particles.
-Added a special afterburner category for the VX-23 which conforms with the nozzle shape of the VX-23.
-Fixed F/C-16 engine size smaller than the nozzle opening.
-Gun firing smoke no longer appears in virtual cockpit.
-Afterburners no longer appear in virtual cockpit.
-Landing gears no longer appear in virtual cockpit.
-Lightning strikes now should consistently appear under cloud cover.
-Gun impacts now should work properlty when hitting ship hull and airship hull.
-Railgun and railgun trails now emit light.
-Improved rain particles.
-PW-Mk.I Monarch uses no longer have mini cordium inerter built into the engine.
-Adjusted gun impact particles.
-Reduced falling wreckage material glow.
-Adjusted rain effects on player aircraft.
-Adjusted default values of lightning spawners.
-Adjusted lightning particles to have supporting lightning step leader.
-Improved Countermeasure flare VFX and behavior.
-Transport/AWACS now can use flares as a visual effect. Although just like regular fighters, it’s only there as visual flair(heh).
-Aircraft destruction effects has been slightly adjusted.
-Aircraft destruction effects now has a more gradual onset.
-Improved ships fire effects.
-Adjusted ship sinking rate upon destruction.
-Improved aircraft fire effects.
-Fixed an issue where weapon racks would receive decals.
-Fixed an issue where Motion Blur would occasionally distort during world origin shift.
-Fixed an issue with EUFB particle orientation when viewed from above.
-Fixed an issue with the Cordium explosion in Mission 1 being see through.
-Improved radar visibility.
-Missile smoke no longer follows head rotation.


VIRTUAL REALITY:
-Separated video settings between when the user plays in VR or on regular screen. Saving the settings depending which display option is used.
-Rain canopy effects has been slightly reduced in VR for improved visibilty.
-VR now defaults to Round Robin occlusion.
-Subtitles in VR now only rotate on one axis instead of second. This will prevent users from constantly “chasing” the UI element they want to see.
-Subtitles now adjust to size with the HUD size options in the Interface settings.

UI:
MENU INPUT OVERHAUL
-Menu input has been overhauled. A new set of “Menu” bindings has been added to the game and should provide a much more tactile and responsive menu interactions.
-Gamepad mouse style navigation has been permanently disabled.
-Upon startup, the game will reinitialize several default menu bindings. It shouldn’t conflict with any of your other bindings.
-Fixed an issue where certain aspect ratio would fail to display the Debrief screen properly.
-Fixed an issue where certain aspect ratio would fail to display the Briefing screen properly.
-Added reconnaisance data to the hangar screen for better loadout decision making incentive.
-Added an indicator whether an aircraft has a WSO available or not.
-Legacy UI element sizes made more consistent with the New UI element sizes.
-Legacy UI now should scale correctly depending on the UI scale setting.
-More elements in Legacy UI now uses the screen space projection as opposed to the world space projection which now includes
-Gun reticle
-Horizon Indicator
-Velocity Indicator
-Cockpit UI
-Files/Codex primary info section font has been changed for something more readable in general.
-Mission images has been added to the mission select screen.
-Bomb prediction widget now turns red when it detects a target.
-Fixed an issue where lock on elements will get stuck on screen upon firing missiles.
-Lock on indicator size is now much more consistent with the target size UI element.
-Made UI transitions much more consistent with the rest of the game.


CAMPAIGN LEVEL ADJUSTMENTS:

FRONTIERS:
-Adjusted weather sequence.
-Adjusted level lighting.
-Fixed an issue where a skin is applied incorrectly to some aircraft in the level.

HOMESTEAD:
-Fixed landscape casting oddly lit lighting.

UPHILL:
-Landscape has been overhauled to use a new experimental workflow.

SIRENS OF DEFEAT:
-Fixed an issue where the environment would have inconsistent lighting between Low and High Post Processing setting.

EMINENT DOMAIN:
-Fixed cloud illumination under cloud cover.

CLEAR SKIES
-Adjusted cloud sequence.
-Adjusted level lighting.
-Reduced the brightness of the landscape.
-Landscape layering has been adjusted.

PILLARS OF COMMUNICATIONS
-Landscape layering has been adjusted.

COLD WAR:
-Fixed cloud illumination under cloud cover.

MIDNIGHT LIGHT:
-Adjusted cloud sequence.
-Adjusted moon appearance.

WAYBACK:
-Galaxy no longer follows you since it’s not consistent with the dialog he says. Now he flies directly to Rowsdower.

NO RESPITE:
-Greatly increased ground visibility by reducing contrast and increasing sun intensity.

RED SEA:
-Adjusted overall mood to be closer to a twilight sunset.
-Adjusted the speed of the friendly and enemy vessels in the area to emphasize the chaotic and desperate nature of the engagement.
-Adjusted player spawn position.
-Adjusted lighting.
-Fixed an issue where mission would end earlier than intended because airships would not be included in the target pool.

TRACKIR:
-Added TrackIR support. (Thank you Nicholas Chalkley!)

CONQUEST:
-Reunified Conquest implementation with the main game. Now it’s no longer a separate instance.
-Fixed a critical issue where modifiers would not load when continuing a save file.
-Fixed a critical issue where airships would occasionally fly outside the map boundaries.
-Fixed an issue where player skin doesn’t load upon loading a game.
-Fixed an issue where bloom would display incorrect values during Conquest runs.

ADDITIONAL FIXES:
-Updated Credits Text.
-Fixed a coordinate mismatch for Presidia.
-Fixed an issue where not having the window on focus upon startup would crash the game.
-Fixed an issue where the intro sequence would not skip properly causing rare cases where the player stays on a black screen.
-Fixed a location mismatch for Briggs range in the briefing for mission Clear Skies.
-Fixed lava field glow showing through clouds on some levels.
-Restored Vibration/Force Feedback on Afterburner input from early demos.
-Fixed an issue where colliding with turrets or ground units defies laws of physics and stops the aircraft on the spot. Player aircraft will now correctly destroy itself as nature intended.
-Fixed an issue where Ship units do not report their velocity to attached units thus throwing off missile and gun prediction paths.
-Adjusted the amount of time airship destruction cracks to appear.
-Airships will now crash into the landscape in a more graceful manner.
-Fixed an issue where airship smokes do not align with the falling trajectory.
-Fixed an issue where cloud shadows on some level do not dissapear.
-Reduced the amount of cloud flicker in VR. However the issue is not fully fixed yet.
-Increased the brightness and frequency of building signal lights.
-Cannon projectile hit radius now compensate to see whether the object is destroyed or not. Doing a strafe run now should no longer result in bullets being “caught” on already destroyed objects due to their hitbox. That being said, it is only a hitbox reduction so it still will hit if the projectile is close enough.
-Adjusted Hangar camera field of view.
-Adjusted nozzle material in the hangar screen.
-Fixed an issue where some landing gear models are still visible despite the gear being extended.
-Fixed an issue where a highway element would not have its collision properties applied.
-Missiles no longer phase through airships when the airship is destroyed.
-Improved NPC Carrier textures.
-Various particles and sound effects should now correctly die out when the player dies.
-Slightly improved cockpit visibility during rain.
-Fixed F/C-15 misaligned flaps.
-Telemetry check interface should correctly fade out in the game settings page.
-Fixed an issue where hangar models would sometimes use a higher LOD on lower settings.
-Disabled Screen Space Reflections due to HUD occasionally being reflected in SSR.
-Adjusted “blue” HUD color for better visibility.
-Fixed audio concurrency issues where music and UI elements wouldn’t play properly.
-Motion blur should no longer activate while changing camera.
-Fixed an issue where certain weapons would fly sideways from the hardpoint.
-Adjusted Cockpit HUD bloom intensity.
-Adjusted Velocity HUD bloom intensity.
-Adjusted Horizon HUD bloom intensity.
-Adjusted Enemey Indicator HUD bloom intensity.
-Increased the volume of Lock on sounds.
-Fixed an issue where crawling text would occasionally flash the completed state.
-Fixed an issue where crawling text would fall back with the timings of the text fade in and fade outs.
-Smoothed out mouse controll rolls.
-Smoothed out AI aircraft rolls. Should prevent wobbles while fighting the player.
-Dialog sequence should no longer interrupt each other when a new sequence is starting.
-Adjusted pitch ladder behavior.
-Cockpit HUD altitude and speed notches should now correspond to the correct selected measurement values.
-Overhauled weapon selection appearance in cockpit mode.
-Removed random “turbulence” in mouse flight and in AI flight. Made it look glitchy rather than aerodynamic.
-Fixed an issue where some thunder sounds ignored volume sliders
-Fixed several instances where the pilot models were clipping into the instrument panels.
-Fixed shadow banding on the player missile lights.
-Improved sharpness of cockpit instruments.
-Reduced the brightness of MFDs to not take focus away from gameplay UI.
-Reduced the brightness of some colored instrument panels to not take focus away from gameplay UI.
-Fixed an issue where Airships do not properly loop their waypoints.
-Fixed an issue where railgun circular booms do not appear on lower settings.
-Generally improved visibility at high altitudes.
-Reduced altitude limit to 10000m
-Optimized various shaders that had a high cost.
-Optimized various particles that had a high transluscency cost.
-Optimized various UI elements overdraw.
-Removed any unecessary GPU calculations for some particles.
-Switched over the overall post processing tonemapper to use a film tonemapper.
-Fixed an issue where players can “speedrun” the game by pressing the SKIP button during end of mission sequences.
-The player now may only unpause the game using the main pause key in the main pause menu.
-Fixed an issue where the Railgun particles would detach itself from it’s parent too quickly causing shifts in its appearance during origin rebasing.
-Adjusted button colors in Telemetry Check.
-Enabled Temporal Anti Aliasing for higher Anti Aliasing settings. (You can still use FXAA via Anti Aliasing Low)
-Improved the appearance of shadows on lower settings.
-Significantly improved targeting systems.
-Mouse cursor will no longer center itself upon the start of the game.
-Fixed strange loading behavior where sometimes audio would play before loading is finished.
-Fixed Kings fade screen sometimes not reaching full whiteout stage before fading out.
-Improved several water related particle effects.
-Fixed an issue where hangar actor would occasionally dissapear when viewed at certain angles.
-Flares are now disabled while landing gear is out.
-You can now change angle of the VR hangar by pressing the change camera button.
-Increased the render resolution of VR cutscenes.
-Adjusted camera sway configuration.
-Updated english localization to reduce the amount of typos present in the game.
-Fixed a few scaling issues with the primary UI in the game.
-Fixed an issue where the user can perform actions while the game is paused in VR.
-Fixed a green dot appearing in several menus in VR (leftover from Gaze menu controller)
-Fixed an issue where Conquest items would appear outside of the map..
-Fixed debriefing UI from crawling over towards the score screen.
-Fixed an issue where HUD appears before the completion of a startup sequence.
-Fixed mission completion state not turning green once mission is completed at a specific difficulty.
-Fixed debriefing text from crawling over to the score card.
-Fixed an issue where conquest UI was still ticking even when not focused.
-Fixed an issue where interface setting do not reflect the new settings when the default key is pressed.
-Fixed an issue where ground and air assets appear outside of map boundaries.
-Fixed an issue where conquest modifiers do not appear as a list in Conquest.
-Fixed an issue where hangar is still selecting aircraft via an invisible cursor in VR.
-Highlighted Decline by default for the Data Processing screen.
-Fixed an issue where aircraft pitching at -90 or 90 degrees would completely break the camera and force it onto a gimbal lock.
-Brought CQ_Vineyard map to parity with the new ENV_Vineyard material in M04.
-Removed all holes in CQ_SteppingStones
-Fixed CQ_PGF altitude not adjusting properly to the new origin rebasing system.
-Brought CQ_Coul_1 map to parity with the new ENV_Vineyard material in M04.
-Potentially fixed an issue where dev mode and shipping dialog would differ in execution by interrupting each other.
-Fixed broken subtitles.
-Fixed several typos in Mission 21.
-Several QA localization corrections.
-Fixed an issue where you could override the number of CQ allies.
-Fixed an issue where enemy units could spawn outside of the boundaries in Conquest mode..
-Fixed an issue where bomb camera loses tracking completely if it followed a weapon until end of life.
-Migrated mission completion flags onto a new system. Should not require any intervention from the user and does not make the player lose progress.
-Fixed an issue where chainlink fence does not have collision.
-Fixed an issue where the return button on difficulty screen wasn’t selectable on gamepad for PC version.
-Fixed several issues where several entities were still moving despite the game being paused in VR. This was due to the limitation of the pause system in VR not being able to do a “real” pause.
-Reduced the flash intensity of “nuke” defined explosion to reduce strain on the eyes for VR users.
-Fixed an issue where a Conquest area was not accessible from its neighbors.
-Fixed several trees appearing inside the highway take off tunnel for the main campaign during the takeoff sequence.
-Fixed conquest territory not being accessible from certain neighboring territory.
-Fixed an issue HELMET RADAR IN COCKPIT setting does not restore the previous state of radar visibility. It should now refresh itself properly depending on which setting is selected
-Fixed the language tab missing in the settings menu
-Fixed an issue where hiring den could provide players with more than intended allies.
-Fixed an issue where missile cam would completely bug out when following a weapon until its end of life.
-Fixed an issue where localization menus did not have gamepad support.
-Exit button should no longer be selectable in the main menu of the base game.
-Fixed an issue where language apply and back buttons are the wrong way around.
-Removed spoken language tab in the language section.
-Fixed skip button appearing in Conquest
-Fixed a strange mission appearing when skip button is pressed in Conquest.
-Fixed Conquest hiring den being able to access a hidden button.
-Adjusted default VR interface size values based on playtesting.
-Attachment spawning in Airships and Ships are now staggered to reduce stutter.
-Fixed UI appearing and dissapearing with an animation on pause.
-Reduced instances where the sun is visible through the cloud.
-Reduced the amount of contrast on iced water to make it easier on the eyes.
-Reduced all performance overhead in the game in general.
-Updated some localization files.
-Fixed an issue where the enemy spawner keeps spawning.

In Closing

Since I’m starting to push back into using PR as intended, I’ll be ‘documenting’ any progress I make in 2.0, so expect more posts about it, and maybe even some gameplay in the coming weeks.

M.A.S.S. Builder: 0.10.4 Fix Notes

by | Oct 8, 2023 | ,

M.A.S.S. Builder – 0.10.0 Afterwords + 0.10.4 Fix Notes – Steam News
First, before anything else, let us provide you all with the final patch notes before we move on from update 0.10.0 to prepare for the "What’s Next" for M.A.S.S. Builder next week. 0.10.4 Bug fixes Significantly reduce enemies HP and shields in later stages especially on M.A.S.S. enemies.…

There will be bugs, and thankfully, people to fix those bugs. Anyway, here’s a list of what VD took care of:

  • Significantly reduce enemies HP and shields in later stages especially on M.A.S.S. enemies.
  • Multiplayer mode [Normal] missions has significantly lower multipliers. It’s still recommended for 4 players but will be much easier than before.
  • Fixed various bugs regarding customization parts
  • Fixed a small discrepancy in lock-on tracking. Still, it’s a soft-lock system and players may still miss their shots especially weapons with small bullets.
  • Fixed some parts providing more stats than intended
  • Fixed a ton of collision bug in the new volcanic area missions
  • Fixed profiles showing wrong chapters in selection page
  • Fixed damage showing in the wrong spot in some missions against some enemies
  • Fixed players able to get stuck within a crystal in the new mission

I’ve been too busy to hop back in, but I’m kind of glad I did, at least up to this point. Some of those bugs sound really annoying, especially that last one.

VD also has a few things to say about the road ahead, which is always good to see.

With those out of the way, let us first say, hello everyone. It’s us, the Vermillion Digital team, once again with our post-patch message. Thank you for another year of your interest in our game, even though it’s still an unfinished dream that we’ll continue working on. At this point, the game is almost ready to be called version 1.0.0 right? There’s a patch or two of campaign missions left, and few features here, a few additions there… that shouldn’t take more than the end of next year right? And then we can start working on all the other fun stuffs like other legs… oh wow it’s so far away… but fret not we’re here to stay working on it, being committed to our dream.

So! Once again, many of you must have the question, why did it took almost a year for a patch to be done again? Honestly, there’s too many things to fix and many things we wanted to do, as well as a shift mid-development and heated discussions with you supporters to change many of the things we showed during our WIP (and we’re grateful for that, since it bettered the game during the time we can still change things around easily).

One of the main things that took time to work on was new missions. We wanted something new, something that looked different than before, and something that fits the game. Creating these new missions was a task managed by two of our team members, designing the levels, designing the newer Quarks, and designing the mechanics of each mission itself. You might’ve seen the new type of in-game cutscene in one of the later missions that moved away from a total cut to a smoother transition as well. Those took time, and then after missions, they went on to made new Quarks, new animations, new attacks, new parts, new everything content related. Such is a pain of a small team and we wasted no time working on everything to a point where we think it’s enough of an update to be released.

Now let’s look at the update reception (at least, our understanding of the reception so bear with us here). 0.10.0 was not a satisfying update. We know, we understand there’s a lot to be desired from M.A.S.S. Builder and maybe leaving it in the oven for a few more months could do the trick. We’d like to say it can’t. We released 0.10.0 in this state, as there are some of the things that needed to happen which we’ll talk next week during the “What’s Next” but for 0.10.0 we deem this is where we should stop and release the update. It’s still the things we promised you with, a lot of missions, fixes here and there, many of the requested features and parts made it in, to a point where we think this is good enough, not what we wanted for the best, but good enough.

What’s not to the point we wanted things to be? Let’s see. How about melee combat?

Melee combat received its major update, a bump into attack speed, and that’s something we thought was good. It honestly plays much better and its well received by most of you guys trying it out and playing around with something newly added. Still, it’s not in a most-desired state yet. We wanted more, we wanted it to flow better. There are things like going too far with the combo, missing hits when crossing with a Quark and “sliding” attacks that looked weird. Those will require something much more and we have a plan for them in the coming days.

Ranged combat also received some number adjustments, AUTO was reworked and it’s said to be a better choice for single target now, being able to forego stamina damage towards just pure damage through aiming. That’s good in itself, but leaves something else that we can’t do this update, more shooting methods. That’s something to be expected to come next update, we’ll talk about it next week.

See, we’ve planned the game to last around 22 missions, shifted it to 24, and now it’s… 26? 27? Around that number, but we haven’t rescaled our enemy stat’s growth back. Tier 6 was meant to be used for ending the game and tier 7 was a victory lap tuning. Stretch the mission counts out and now Tier 6 isn’t going to be powerful for the final missions. That’s something we understand made players feel like enemies became too much of a spongy HP tank than ever. We’ll acknowledge it’s a problem here.

One last thing before we end this Afterwords, feel free to suggest anything. We’ll read it but won’t respond as it’ll turn into a back and forth of demand and not compromise between us and you. Unless of course if you’d like to discuss things with us, we’ll have someone to take the feedback to our team and discuss it with you in our discord.

Until next time!

Vermillion Digital Team

Since my free time’s pretty scarce right now, I’m going to try to set aside specific things for specific days going forward. That’s the only way I’m going to be able to work M.A.S.S. Builder and other games I want to cover on the blog back into my schedule. That still comes out to only about one session per week, but that’s better than the nothing the blog’s been experiencing for so long now. Maybe it’ll be Tuesdays or Wednesdays where I focus on it. We’ll see; I need to give this a lot more thought before I make any hard commitments.

M.A.S.S. Builder: Update 0.10.0 Release

by | Sep 30, 2023 | , ,

M.A.S.S. Builder – Update 0.10.0 Released + Patch Notes – Steam News
Surprise surprise! We were able to finish our bug hunt and final polishing sooner than expected and we’re ready to release our update… so why wait? It’s been a really long development cycle this time and we hope we’re able to meet some expectations you people have for us.

That was unexpectedly early! That means one of the biggest content droughts we’ve had in a while is over for the moment. Since I’ve already been covering everything VD teased for this update up to today, I’ll bring over just the ones I’m personally interested in and let the article link do its job.

Photo Mode Update

  • Added a few new Photo Mode backgrounds
  • Added a few new Photo Mode poses

New Missions

  • 5 new Campaign missions. Take the fight back to the Cyclops and continue your resistant against the Quark threat. New enemies are added into the game for a more interesting experience. The end is nigh.
  • 2 new Hunt missions. One featuring M.A.S.S. units enemies for a fun session fighting against enemies spamming bullets, missiles, and beams at you. The other is a large arena in the volcanic rift with tons of enemies trailing you about for a non-stop bout. Have fun.
  • 3 new-old multiplayer missions as requested by our players. These are the same missions you’ve played in 0.9.0 but with a much lower difficulty. They’re labeled as [Normal] and the old missions are now labeled as [Hard].

New Enemies

  • Added new machine enemies. These include new Cyclops mech variant and drones. They don’t do much damage, but will spam their bullets and missiles a lot.
  • Added 12 new Quarks, some with a unique moveset that doesn’t just run and crash into players. We’ve also reworked some enemies and some boss patterns and we hope they’re more fun to fight against.

New Customization Parts

  • Added a few new melee parts to the game
  • Added simple melee parts with minimal dimensions and the simplest polygons for players to mess around with using the accessory system to create something of their own with ease.
  • Added a few new Accessories to the game

Improvements

  • Aiming Mode Camera – When players enter aiming mode (default: hold down right click) and boost, the camera will now hold towards the side when players first boosted as much as possible and not bounce between left and right. Players still cannot lock it to one side but it’ll bounce much less and we intend to keep it this way for future dynamic usage of walls and covers allowing players to hide behind and shoot out from both sides, but we’ll be improving on it as we go.
  • Combo Speed Ramping – When players use melee weapons and enter into a combo, they will swing faster with each attack up to a certain cap as long as they remain attacking in the combo. This attack speed resets whenever the combo end, but will be reapplied if a player chooses to chain their combo into another combo chain (like entering an extended or empowered combo after a normal combo string).

    We’ve also merged parts of the extended combo into the base combo and they can still move into another extended combo for this feature to fully shine.
  • Boosting Momentum retains acceleration direction – Whenever players boost towards a direction and stops boosting, they will now accelerate towards the direction they last faced instead of forward where the camera is aiming.
  • Optimized Multiplayer latency and crashing issues.
  • We’ve reworked most of the game’s audio. It’s now much more dynamic, appropriate for both Quarks and the weapons, and should not have anything too overbearing.

Game Balance Changes

Generic Adjustments
With the latest adjustments, some shooters and launchers have fallen too far from grace. While still usable, it required too much investment to work while some other ones have been too prevalent. We’re buffing the underperforming ones while also nerfing the overperforming ones with low investments extremely slightly.

  • Magazine load and Energy cap ceiling is raised from 1500 to 2000.

AUTO shooters have been reworked:

  • Lowered AUTO shooters’ damage per round.
  • Increased AUTO shooters’ shooting speed. It now fires roughly 15 rounds per second, even faster than its 0.8.0 counterpart.
  • Increased AUTO shooters’ ammo stock cap gained from Magazine Load and Energy Cap status. This is to compensate for the increase in firing speed as well as provide a more comfortable experience in using them.
  • Bullet and Energy Shooter’s AUTO mode now gains a substantial difference. ES will fire much faster than before, but will require some time to regenerate all its ammo. BS, on the other hand, just require players to reload to fully gain back all of its ammo.
  • Increased SINGLE Damage by around 2%.
  • Increased DETONATOR Damage by around 3%.
  • Increased DETONATOR Stamina Damage by around 10%
  • Increased SLASH Stamina Damage by around 5%.
  • Decreased RAY damage by around 2%
  • Decreased SPREAD damage by around 2%
  • Decreased Wave damage by around 5%
  • Increased PHOTON, NUKE, HOMING, damage by around 10%
  • Quantum Break: Enhanced has its duration extended by 2 second. It now lasts 5 seconds more than other forms (up from 3 seconds).

Ranged Tech nodes

Base powers of ranged styles have always been high and even with scarcity in their techs, has been a prevalent playstyle in our game up until the latest update where melee was finally in a good place alongside Quantum Break based builds. We’re not in a hurry to buff ranged as a whole with how safe it is to just always be out of enemies’ range of attacks while still able to constantly take them down. With that said, we also wanted to provide more playstyle towards shooters and give them some small improvements overall.

  • Added in a new sub-unit called Close Combat Pointmarker. It reads: Gain increased 13% PIERCING and PLASMA Atk. while there are at least 1 enemies nearby. Lose 7% PIERCING and PLASMA Atk. when there are no enemies nearby. Please experiment with it as a close combat shooter node.
  • Full Metal Jacket and Binary Monarch are combined into one node called Full Metal Monarch. Downsides are removed to not brick the other side but upsides are lowered in values to compensate the power gained. The node now behaves just like an automatic ammo pickup every few seconds. The node now reads: Gain 12% Bullet Shooter ammo stock every 12 seconds and 2% Energy Shooter cells stock every 3 seconds.
  • Micro Ammunitions-Factory Maximum Durability and Shields increased from -85% to -75%
  • Seismic Propulsion Damage is increased from 400% to 450%.
  • Frontal Unloader I Damage is increased from 25% to 37%.

Enemy Changes

  • More fodder enemies will be spawned in every mission, especially in challenge missions.
  • Sandstorm Glutton’s mission boss melee attacks damage lowered by around 10%
  • Sandstorm Glutton’s mission mechanics damage lowered by 20% in NORMAL and 10% in HARD difficulty.
  • Shields and health numbers have been adjusted for all enemies. They are lowered by a substantial amount in NORMAL and around 10% less in VERY HARD.
  • Shields regain to full after refilling stamina in Normal has mostly been removed (there are still some bosses that have this as a part of their identity) from NORMAL difficulty. These bosses will have significantly lower HP than other bosses.
  • Bosses’ ultimate attack cooldown has been increased. They now uses the ultimate attack less, but they does more damage and some are harder to dodge in higher difficulties.
  • All co-op missions had their scaling lowered by around 25%. They are now easier but we still recommend players to achieve at least tier 5 units and sub-units first before challenging them.

Rewards Changes

  • Raised the credits reward at the end of mission of EASY, NORMAL, and HARD to be almost identical to VERY HARD
  • Raised the bonus credits rewards at the end of mission of EASY, NORMAL, and HARD to be almost identical to VERY HARD

The New Voice System

I had to look up who Tequila was and they seem like a solid pick to help implement the system. VD’s planning to add a lot more voiced content to the game so this aspect is definitely something to keep an eye on.

Closing

This is looking like an overall great update, but I still need to dive in and start reclaiming my old progress. I’ll be back with my thoughts on that as soon as I can.

M.A.S.S. Builder: WIP 0.10.0 New Photo Mode Poses

by | Sep 25, 2023 | ,

M.A.S.S. Builder – WIP 0.10.0 New Photo Mode Poses – Steam News
Another short update this week as we prepare for the upcoming patch (hint: it’s coming in a few weeks now). This week, showing some new poses coming to the photograph mode! As part of the continuous update, new poses is a must in every coming update.

What’s an update with new photo mode backgrounds without new poses to go along with it?

These are right up there with FFXIV’s ranger poses.

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