Knock, knock, travelers! We’re declaring Friday notes open! Let’s hurry up and see what this week has brought to us. [h2]Look, It’s a Honey Badger[/h2] Last time we showed you our animators’ work on Vanadis’ pets Prince and Waggytail. This week, the charming honey badger, Tulip, has finally acquired some upgraded movements, too. Next in the line is the wise raven Hoogin, but more on that in the next diary, stay tuned. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36881171/e1366185176ceb87963623391e3b740729d47f1f.gif[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36881171/77082ffd72a16ee240987f6b436fb24d2262cca1.gif[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36881171/aa3ee3455a3766036bc5ac7dacf2e7be96b9a44c.gif[/img] [h2]Man’s Best Friends[/h2] Animals, mixed in with work on Vanadis, have taken a secure place among our tasks. For example, we continue to work on the pets’ energy design, and there are already some preliminary results. We can’t help but share the process with you. However, we’ll keep it interesting and won’t tell you about everything at once. Which of these animals do you like the best? Tell us your impressions in the comments! [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36881171/6bc41188e6c7037f136e084708dc5b722464f50e.jpg[/img] [h2]Work On Mistakes[/h2] Sometimes we receive quite interesting comments from our players. We gladly take these comments and use them in our work. One of them was about the Archdruid, a Frontier boss, and his attack ‘Dumbfound’, which deals damage to the hero while also adding a bad card to the deck. Although this action is not unique among the opponents in Midian, it nonetheless calls for a unique movement animation. Otherwise, it just won’t have the right effect. Let’s not forget about the devil in the details and things like that. So we thought a little, tried out a few options, and decided to teach the Archdruid a new spell – he’s got a whole staff for that. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36881171/a202d3c3375241f9d28588669892b4e0173cea2b.gif[/img] [h2]Finishing Touches[/h2] A few short words on our preparations for the grand finale. Alas, we can’t show you many of the things, but we can let you have a peek at how we’re preparing the throne hall for the last battle. We’ve already said that it’s going to be epic, haven’t we? Well then, nothing more to add here! [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36881171/aadf3c9a355abffbb24a60f002a7125ef8824650.gif[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36881171/eea43484ccd4eb821d54bdba29f136ef78cf1b7a.gif[/img] [h2]How About Some Chit-Chat?[/h2] Andrew aka Innrey, the founder of RedBoon, is here with you again. Today I’m going to tell you a story about a game bug. Once upon a time, there was a bug. It wasn’t just a bug, it was magical and had something to do with potions. It was doing nicely until it was discovered. After that it agitated the public, from the players to the whole developer team. What did the bug do? An experienced player might have already guessed. The bug caused the following – potions either disappeared for good at the worst possible moment, or were placed in slots and kept returning to the inventory; some of them could even be used many times without disappearing! Some magic, for sure! A critical situation, especially considering the fact that potions and other magical quest items that can be put in the slots can drastically change the outcome of a battle or even a whole game. “This is bad,” – we thought and got down to catching the bug and testing. With the help of the players, we found and seemingly fixed many variants of that bug, but something new kept showing up again and again. We’re stubborn, so if we start doing something, we’ll see it to the end. We equipped our most daring developer and set him out to search for the cause. For several days, he looked for the root of that evil and finally, he found it. It turned out that the biggest problem was hidden deep in the code, since times long, long ago. Anyway, one day, we came up with the idea to secure potions in their slots where players had placed then. Because why not? It’s convenient. But that is where all the problems started :) The idea was put into the game, but we somewhat overlooked the way it worked. Yes, we admit, things like that can happen. It all led to errors growing like a snowball and leading to soft-locks. During the search for the causes we discovered that, when changing the mechanics of potion usage in battle, we didn’t take into account that there are two ways for said usage: clicking on a potion and dragging it onto a hero. This diversity ruined the whole picture. The investigation turned up another hitch: in some spots, the comparison mechanism wasn’t changed in the best way possible, which added to our problems. Then these two causes started intertwining, so we decided to end this vicious bug circle. We had to do it radically, by re-assembling the whole system for potions and slots. After that we had to test it, and test it, and then test it some more. The results of that hard work are in the latest patch. We’d like to believe that this bug has been defeated and it won’t bother our players anymore. BUT if you see, on the off chance, that potions are behaving weirdly, then make sure to report it! By the way, we’re starting preparations for our next video-diary, and we’ll soon need your help with it. I’ll give you a tiny spoiler: we’re going to invite the very same daring developer from the story above! Don’t miss an opportunity to ask him questions about a developer’s life, or maybe some technical details. More news on that next week. And with that, we might as well wrap it up. We wish you a nice weekend, and as few bugs as possible in your runs ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀[url=https://discord.gg/7vXH5RGbJ2][img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36881171/999be5602473c0520b12e7eeef4c5743e698da7b.png[/img][/url][url=https://twitter.com/RedBoonstudios][img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36881171/f7cf749814a0d87fd9de5e40e490e272d0e842b7.png[/img][/url][url=https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS9cNulwJPvziO_CaBFS1Kg][img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36881171/081cd3fb97e20bebb3e3f630054fab323e74cec1.png[/img][/url][url=https://www.twitch.tv/knock_on_the_coffin_lid][img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36881171/96a282065e536bf6aec7b42c4b490de298fe20e2.png[/img][/url]