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Hello Readers! My apologies if some of these blurbs are untimely and out of date, as most were written two weeks ago, and have been hanging on my desktop ever since. I’ve once-over'd them, but I'm still fighting off a nasty flu and a bit wracked in the mental power department. But anyways, let’s find out what sick advancements have been happening in worlds BYOND this month!

BYOND

Snow has been on the mind of BYOND Developer Lummox JR, as he fiddles with getting particles working effectively! But while he works through the brain fog of the past few weeks, bug fixes and crashers have received their fair share of resolution, and color gradients for particles in 514 are now supported. Over on Patreon he drives into speed-ups, rounding corners, and crushing trees.

BYOND Games

The Black Knights have learned half a dozen new skills in Sigrogana legend 2! These new skills allow the class to plague their enemies with fear, drain the health of their prey, and issue counter-attacks and sacrifices. Additionally, Black Beasts will be more vocal in their raid targets, skills are easier to identify, and volcanic weapons have an added benefit.

Another few weeks ago by, and a few new refactors for PopLava’s LootGrinder! He reports that core systems appear to be stabilizing and heavy work has begun on the world map and game progression. As the game grows in excess of 300 individual files, he has dived into evaluating the most practical way to manage a project of that size, cleverly utilizing unused loop labels for quicker navigation.

Pixel Realms officially took Eternia: Chronicles of Esshar live and open this weekend! Changes to the setting and Roleplaying points have been made, and new RP features and quality-of-life improvements can be found in the latest patch logs.

Bravo1 may be a rising star at his day job, but he is still finding time to work on his hobby here in BYOND! He explains the recent addition of Responsive Decals, effectively reactive background graphical effects that while not gameplay affecting, give the world a dynamic and fluid feel. Changes were made to the way objects were generated in the background, players and enemies can forge teams, and weapons can be found around the Idaho.

Domdavden is back with the latest happening in Magicosm! The Rogue's Den is now open for players who can find the elusive location, and for those who can navigate and survive the den, the thievery skills can be unlocked, allowing players to steal from NPCs. Additionally, new interface options provide more Roleplaying and customization options.

Development on Judgement has been resumed by KuroChi, making many key additions to the open-world player-versus-player game. Many map additions have been made to Earth, Heaven, Hell, and the Moon, and towns have become populated. Players can now choose from six classes, equip gear, grow crops, and lift weights. Fireballs explode on contact, Water blasts leave puddles behind, and whirlwinds pack a punch.

Re-purposing the end result of his 2016 Game Jam, and with a bit of merge, mix, and match magic, Fat Albert has announced the creation of KingdomFall. The game takes the gameplay of a modern MOBA game and tosses the concept into the BYOND tower-defense classic, Castle. He reports that development is going swiftly, and will be hosting online testing as early as this week. And if all goes well, host files will be made publicly available soon.

For those who aren’t adventurous (or risky!) enough to explore the comments of Within BYOND, Ter13 dropped a slew of screencasts about his newest project (and a blurb about an issue with his mouse library). The presently unnamed and single-player project appears to be an adventure into the frozen tundra, and the color scheme and lighting effects are screaming to be in a horror film. He demonstrates his space-conscientious inventory system, dragging and dropping to rearrange. Keep up on his progress on the BYONDiscord!

Raffile has gotten himself into another Game Jam, this time held to the limitations of the original GameBoy. Villain was the final result, ranking 238th of 264 entries! The game follows Futilis, determined to become the world’s foremost supervillain via giant heaters and melting icebergs... Anyways, take down the Good Guys on your way through the city, forests, and mountains, and then claim your place as the king of the new ocean planet.

TooWavedToDaze Games was in search of the community’s favorite RPG skills for Eonology. Eonology sets players in a world with a series of familiars, each specializing in one of five basic elements. Players are also tasked with growing these familiars in skill, battle, and ability, mixing and matching to create and grow the strongest familiar, while also growing in their own skills. As to what skills players have? You can find the results over here.

BYOND Discord
Dream Crafters Discord
BYONDdiscord
Reddit
Villain was cute, quite enjoyed developing it and think I am going to use Gameboy like graphics more often. The game however barely got played *kicks dirt in sadness* but compared to my last jam game I believe it came out really well. More from me later! Doing a multiplayer Pirate vs Marine game right now for fun lol. Keep up the good work Higoten and the rest of byond!
These are all looking great! Thanks for the mention and once again for keeping us updated!
I'm loving the lighting in Ter13's project.
Why don't you guys ever mention SS13? The game has 1500-2000 players daily while others barely reach 100
In response to AcidMind
Hi AcidMind, Is there a particular development around Space Station 13 that you would have liked to seen mentioned? I've extended my thoughts and an offer on SS13 coverage in the past, but was met with lackluster interest at the time. That offer still is valid.
As the post Higoten linked mentioned, there are a bunch of separate branches of SS13 developed pretty much separately, and each of them handles publicizing their updates themselves. And I can guarantee most of them wouldn't be happy if updates for one in particular started being highlighted here.
In response to AcidMind
AcidMind wrote:
Why don't you guys ever mention SS13? The game has 1500-2000 players daily while others barely reach 100

This is a feature on projects in development, not a popularity contest. The point is for us to support each other. Nobody should be comparing themselves to SS13.
In response to Magicsofa
Fair, just found it strange SS13 was never mentioned.
In response to Higoten
There's a new server in development which will feature a persistent map which will last almost a year before the round ends. It's been picked up by a new dev team and the name's changed to "Persitent Outreach 13".

The two previous rounds I played both lasted many months, that combined with the high Roleplay expectations allowed for wacky and interesting stories to be written.

It's suppossed to come out by the end of 2020.
In response to AcidMind
With the kind of chaos a round of SS13 can produce, I'm curious how that's possible. This is a game where over the course of a round pretty much everything in the game universe can be destroyed.
In response to Lummox JR
You're not supposed to destroy everything just because you can, it would break character.

Here's the discord link for more info.
https://discord.gg/9stPGHs
In response to AcidMind
If you can find players that dedicated to strict RP, more power to you. But I would think you'd need safeguards out the wazoo and systems to perform cleanup (including bots putting things back where they go) to keep massaging things back into homeostasis and avoid catastrophes. SS13 is built on catastrophes after all, and I'm sure the way things can radically get out of control is one of the things that attracts many players. Thing is you can't fully avoid getting one of those players and need contingencies if they appear.