Hello Readers! I hope that you are all enjoying your Easter holiday weekend and being safe during these unique times! Those who follow the release schedule for this column have noticed that it’s been a bit erratic these past few months, and that’s likely to continue for the foreseeable future, but I’ll get to them when I can! For now check out the latest happenings from around the BYONDsphere!
BYOND
BYOND Developer Lummox JR has been working from home (which isn’t unusual in any way) and progress has been made all over the map. Layer sorting is undergoing a large revision, maptext has been shored up, and the color picking tool is better. Animations required a bit of wrestling, and some skin parameters weren’t saving. Under the hood at Patreon, he covers a variety of technical subjects, animations, topographical sorting, the parser, and garbage collecting.
BYOND Games
F0lak has been using the opportunity to get back to work on Hazordhu! The tutorial has been refinished to help players get into the roleplaying game, the user interface has been replaced and requires testing, animal AI will catch hunters by surprise, and capturable settlements are on the radar. F0lak has been doing livestreams regularly, and keep up on his Patreon for all of the latest.
Eternia 3 completed their Timeskip, turning the page of the Chronicles of Esshar 50 years into the future, with the fall of the Essharan Empire and where the once large city has split into three, and conflict easily erupts. Spells and races have also evolved throughout the timeskip!
Poplava is up over 300 hours into his new Lootgrinder project. You can follow his daily updates on the DreamCrafters Discord. Multiplayer is currently out, but a framework to launch stories and tutorials is in, and turn-based conflict is also! Bosses have special considerations and dish out lootboxes upon defeat.
The darkly and beautify crafted Transcend has been released for free, as was announced by Exentriks Gaming. To download the game, you’ll want to use the zip option. The first four chapters of the game are available to play, detailing the beginning of the player’s journey to the afterlife. While the game is uncompleted and may crash (from my experience from two years ago), with the price tag crossed out, I highly recommend enjoying what may be one of the most graphically immersive games to ever hit this platform.
Sigrogana Legend 2 has seen some quality of life improvements to automated shopkeepers and several axes have been altered. Shopkeepers load items faster, paginate their wares, and are able to be sorted by category. Bonus damage has some slight changes, and axes do more damage and scale differently.
Cowed Revival is a continuation of a revival of an original BYOND classic where the player takes on a character who is the personification of a cow in medieval times! To help jumpstart players into the roleplaying game, Cowed_Revival has posted a quick-start guide.
Magicosm: Characters welcomed. And with the recent addition of configurable points and thirsty characteristics, players can customize their traits to their heart’s content! A whirlpool has appeared, and for players who are in-tuned with their fishy-side, the enlarged City of Atlantis is accessible! For land-lubbers, an ability to forecast the weather might be in your best interest.
Magicsofa has created a trailer for Ovum, a clever post-apocalyptic puzzle game where the player uses plants to erode away the remnants of humanity. The trailer features brief snapshots of many of the levels and taunts the adventure and the prize.
Kozuma3 is transforming into a chicken, bunny, and other monsters in Elora! They are also transforming the lands with the addition of a building system, so players can construct their own homes and buildings. Items have weight, players get hungry and thirty, the minimap gives an overview, jobs can be selected, and a whole lot more than can be covered here!
BYONDSocial is the beginning of a chat environment where users can communicate with one another through text! Users are awarded in the form of bytes, which can be given to other players. Future revisions plan to expand on the bytes points systems, with gambling, bots, and auctions. Press Enter to speak.