Greetings friends!

This time we have several really good news lined up!

First up, to continue from the last week - we are practically done with all the technical backend improvements mentioned before. It enables us to finally release CryoFall and new version of VoidExpanse, among other things.

And VoidExpanse is exactly the topic of today's blogpost!

Obviously it nothing super major, but we have completed a lot of small improvements and changes in this update. Some of them are:

• New game option for static camera (the camera won't follow the mouse cursor, as you guys asked us to add!)
• Video setting improvements and compatibilities with Ultra HD and 4k displays.
• Large expansion of modding and scripting capabilities as requested by people who are modding VoidExpanse. You can now create devices to interact with space objects (such as debris), and a lot of other API methods.

You can find the complete list of changes of here.

But that's not all of course!

We've updated our site with all the necessary stuff needed for the CryoFall Alpha launch. With that we can safely start inviting people to the game. Cross your fingers! If everything goes well we will open CryoFall to public in just a couple of days! :)

We've also updated our AtomicTorch Game Launcher so that it can be conveniently used with CryoFall and all of our previous games. You can download it right now.

We will see you in a few days with a new blogpost! Stay tuned!

Greetings friends!

It's been awhile since we last posted an update on the progress of CryoFall development. That's because we were making the game ready for the open alpha. And today we're going to make several pleasant announcements. So, let's begin!

First of all, the game is practically ready for the open alpha, we have completed everything that we wanted to finish before public release. There are of course things that would need further improvements, but we will work on them during the Alpha stage, when you'll provide us with feedback on those features. Bottom line is - the game is now ready!

Secondly, we are now working on our backend system and master server. And it, unfortunately, takes a bit more time than we would have liked. Still, good news is that all of our previous games will benefit from this update as well, including VoidExpanse. Plus, we are also updating VoidExpanse with all new bugfixes and improvements made over the course of several months based on your feedback and reports. We're also providing our modders with extended Modding API.

Lastly, and most importantly, we want to reiterate that during the open alpha stage, CryoFall will be fully accessible and available for everyone for Free on our website! We will soon publish a separate blog entry, explaining how you can download the CryoFall Alpha client and connect to one of our servers.

Thank you for following us and stay tuned for the updates!

Greetings!

CryoFall open alpha is approaching and we're making final preparations! We've decided to make the game completely free during the initial soft-launch period to gather player's feedback and continue improving the game before the release!

So, today we'd like to talk about some very interesting technical solutions that we've just finished implementing for the game backend and specifically - cloud game servers.

As you probably know, many online and multiplayer games quite often experience various issues on launch such as not being able to secure enough server resources (should there be too many players), latency bottlenecks, long waiting lists, etc. This mostly stems from the lack of ability to scale server infrastructure quickly to meet demand and management difficulties.

Naturally, we are a much smaller team and it is unlikely that we will see ten million players on launch, still, being a multiplayer game it is very important for us to be able to scale our servers easily. Consequently, doing it manually is simply out of the question.

Our approach for dealing with this problem is to use Docker containers and .NET Core running on cloud servers provided by Vultr!

How does it work? First and most important point is that we created a completely automated management solution that allows us to quickly deploy and manage any number of cloud server instances. Secondly, this will allow us to avoid any latency-related issues as well, as we can use cloud servers specifically from the regions where our players are actually located to provide the best connection speed and quality.

Here's the result of our first test deployment of cloud infrastructure:

And it took just a few minutes to deploy!

What's more, in the future this system will allow us to add player-owned servers for a very reasonable price - for those of you who might be interested to run your own world. We will manage the servers for you and provide technical support - including automatic updates and scheduled maintenance and backups to ensure the best experience. Naturally, you will be able to host any servers yourself too, even on your home computer.

For the soft-launch we will run only a couple of servers, most likely in North America. But from there we will be gradually increasing their number with the growth of the community as needed.

We were hoping to soft-launch CryoFall in January, but it looks like we will have to push it to February. There's still a lot of things to prepare for launch.

Anyway, stay tuned for more news and don't forget to join our forums and follow us on the usual social media: Facebook, Twitter, Reddit for all the important updates regarding launch!

Friends, this week we've finally completed our work on a new and very important mechanic of land ownership in CryoFall.

This is hugely important for the future development of the game as it functions as a foundation for all planned additional features, but let's not get ahead of ourselves and start from the beginning! :)

As many of you know land claims or "base ownership" mechanics in other games help players control a certain territory on a map or a particular building to create a stable dwelling there. Usually, land claims also allow construction of advanced buildings and give you an opportunity to protect your loot behind solid walls. Basically, land claims are used for base ownership.

This is the most basic effect that land claims offer in CryoFall. There's much more to it, however.

In the very beginning you will have a rather small land claim which can function as a core of your base, but with its continuous upgrades and base expansion it will allow you to control larger and larger territory around it. It ensures that no other players can build anything in your claimed zone or deconstruct any of your existing buildings. As long as your land claim is there you can be sure that your base is protected from other players.

Of course, if they breach your defenses and walls and actually get to the land claim they can destroy it and with it remove the protected status from the entire base. It is absolutely essential to ensure that your landclaim is well protected.

Now, this all sounds good and all, but what if you are not online and some other players are snooping around your base with not the most friendly intentions in mind? We wanted to avoid situations of complete territory loss just because someone needed to finally get some sleep. That's why there's a "damaged" state for the land claim structure. If someone damaged your land claim significantly enough it won't be completely destroyed at once, instead there will be a time window when you can repair it and restore its full protection (or move you stuff away from such unfriendly neighbors). This protection timeout depends on the upgrade level of the land claim and increases with each level.

Of course, you can be the sole owner of everything that's built on the claimed territory, but you will also be able to manage permissions and allow your friends to interact with the objects there. There's a list of owners that you can manage for each land claim.

We believe that land claims in CryoFall have an incredible promise - groups of players can create cities and small towns, with walls to protect the land and a lot of good stuff hidden inside from the outside world, so that those, who prefer to take, rather than build, could have some fun as well (and by fun we mean raiding). Cities and isolated dwellings will further trade between the towns, shuttles will need protection and mercenaries to defend the cargo. And all of this will make the world of CryoFall even more immersive!

Anyways, that's it for today, soon you will able to try land claims on your own! Subscribe and stay tuned for the updates in our blog!

Don't forget, you can also follow our development roadmap here.

Hey there!

Today we'd like to share with you another update on CryoFall development. We're progressing at a nice pace towards the first public release and besides the general mechanics we're also working on a number of visual candies to make the world more diverse in its presentation.

As you know, there are different climate zones in the game (biomes) and each will have different visual presentation and gameplay elements. So our first three props are craters, fallen space debris and even some kind of an aircraft or a shuttle after a crash (could that be your ship?). These props were designed with a futuristic, sci-fi nature of the game in mind, and we think they communicate that feel quite well.

Now, there are also a few more props for a more finished look of the landscape in temperate regions of the map. We've had a lot of trees done before, but after a couple of playtests it became clear that more details were needed to properly convey the "wilderness" feeling. And while the work on actual landscape is nowhere near finished (and will be continued after release) we have now added a few variations of tree stumps and fallen tree trunks among other things. Well, technically these are not props, because you can harvest them with your axe, but they do make the forest look much better.

Well, that's the gist of it for this week's update, we'll keep updating our blog with new entries, so stay tuned for more news!

Hey there, friends!

Today we'd like to share our latest feature - face customization system. We know that everyone wants their character to be unique, or resembling themselves or just to be random and fun. Well, with this system done we can all have that, or at least try :)

Naturally, there are both male and female options available right now, and you'll be able to change your hair and other features as well. Currently though, the system doesn't allow changing the hair and skin color, but we will implement the color sliders on the next iteration of the system. But for now we're quite pleased with the current solution.

We've also taken into account various hats your hero might be wearing during the game - when that happens the facial system will "hide" the hair under the hat. And of course there's a randomizing function as well if you don't really want to get into that.

There are currently around 400 Male and Female faces that can be set with this system, thanks to our talented artist, who worked on all of those to make them look good and fun. Some of the options look just the right amount of silly :)

Anyways, that's it for this week's update, stay tuned for more news and don't forget to join our forums!

Greetings, friends!

Today we would like to present you the CryoFall Development Roadmap! As we've always done with our blog, we want to make all of our ideas, planned features and information about current progress public.

Using this roadmap, you can vote on things you'd most like to see in the game sooner. With your input we will have better idea of what's important. Obviously it will go hand in hand with discussions on our forums. So you can create topics about any of the planned features to discuss them in greater details or offer your opinions.

Stay tuned for the updates and share the news with your friends!

Greetings friends!

Today we'd like to share with you our final big feature we've completed for CryoFall before the public release. And that is being the lighting system!

Do you remember our previously shared screenshots? Even though those looked rather nice (if I do say so myself), they were all taken during daytime - that's because they were taken before implementation of the lighting system. In fact, the image was rendered without any post effects or other visual changes. Thankfully, all of that is finally addressed!

With the lighting system addition, we can now positively state that there's now a working day\night cycle in the game as well. With that you can try sneaking up to people at night, and doing all sorts of interesting stuff! Or get eaten by wolves who quietly snuck up to you at night ;)

What's more, the new system also fully supports dynamic and multi colored lighting. Now all the flares from guns shooting or electricity flecks are looking really cool, especially in the night!

And as the system allows for (and requires) night lights to maneuver around dangerous fauna, we've added torches, oil lamps and flashlights.

For those with eyes keen for detail, we want to note that shadows are still something we need to work on, but those will be added to the game later on as well!

And with that we can conclude that yet another step was taken towards the first public version of the game, so stay tuned for our news updates and don't forget to share your opinion with us on the forums!

Greetings, friends!

This will be a short update on a small, but widely-used feature! Today we've finally added a separate layer for Ambient Occlusion effect to the game, which should make most of the buildings and other static objects on the ground seem more realistic and having more depth.

Here's a screenshot of "before" and "after" the effect. As you can see - it makes quite a difference. Without the shadow it looks like the crates just float in midair.

Anyway, this is only the first features related to visual presentation that we are currently working on for the upcoming public release. Soon to come are shader effects, dynamic lighting and more!

As always, let us know what you think in the comments below or on the forums.

Today we'd like to continue with the topic of previous post and tell you more about the related features and mechanics.

To be specific - this time we'd like cover medical items in CryoFall. We've mentioned some of those items in some of our previous blog entries, but this time we have much more to show and talk about.

So, without further ado, here's a picture of some medical items currently used in the game:

As you can see there are numbers of different items from the basic herbs to a cutting edge anti-rad treatments and stimpacks. What are those for?

• Herbs are used as a basic remedy for the everyday simple needs.
• Concoction is a more advanced treatment used to restore health.
• Hemostatic and Bandage are your first priority needs when bleeding.
• First aid kit restores more health and removes some of the negative effects mentioned in our previous blog entry, like nausea, bleeding, etc.
• Splint is used to fix the broken bones. Of course, as we have told you before - running is not an option when your leg is broken.
• Painkillers are used just like in real life to remove the effects of pain - another negative you can get, when, say, your character's leg is broken.
• Stimpacks are used when you want to restore your health very fast. But be wary: overdosage of stimpacks will lead to addiction and other negative effects!

Now we're getting to the interesting part! As you know, CryoFall will have places with technogenic effects like Radiation or Toxic pollution. Of course you will need to treat those somehow. But this is much more difficult, taking into account how dangerous those effects can be.

So, there are two main types of medication for these ailments:

• Pre-exposure treatments - these are taken before the contact with polluted areas. They will drastically decrease the amount of exposure you will get while in the polluted area. There are Toxin pre-exposure treatment and Radiation pre-exposure treatment. What are they needed for? Well, those are needed to make you actually survive the contact with the pollution and make it out alive to get the next kind of medication!
• Emergency treatments - these are taken after your exposure to either radioactive or toxically polluted areas. Effects of being exposed to either kind of this pollution are rather long-lasting, and negating those will help your character to get better faster. And of course, he or she won't die and won't be shining in the dark after taking those meds.

As you can see, the medical aid system is finally getting into its finalized shape. It might be somewhat complicated, but as the game is quite realistic we wanted to make the ailments and their cure as close to reality as possible! Plus it just adds more depths to the game when you need to consider different consequences and possible course of action.

Anyway, don't forget to join our forums or leave your comments here!

It's been a while since our last update... Sorry about that :)

But we've been working hard on a lot of new additions to the game in preparation for launch!

Wait... "Launch"?!

Yes! We are planning to make CryoFall public relatively soon. We feel there's enough content to keep people entertained for a while and we are constantly adding even more content, so it seems a good time to finally make the game available for public! Currently, I won't go into too much details regarding our release plans, but we will have a detailed post with more information within a few weeks. So, make sure to follow our blog!

Anyway, now onto the main topic for today. And that is character status effects!

It looks something like this in the game. Now, obviously you won't ever see madness like the above, at most I expect people to have 2-5 active status effects at any one time, but for the testing purposes I added most of the status effects that are available in the game just to show you how it looks :)

So, let's get into a bit more details about the stuff currently in the game.

We can start with the negative status effects (or "debuffs"):

• Bleeding - This is probably one of the most common status effects in this type of games, so the explanation is unnecessary :)
• Broken leg - This one is also pretty self explanatory. You can use a splint to fix the broken bone and this will change the status effect into Splinted leg, which will heal after some time. You can't run with either of the two effects.
• Dazed - If you've been hit hard you will get this status effect for a few seconds. During that time you can't move or do anything else.
• Hunger - If your food meter goes all the way down you will get this status effect. It simply means that you are losing health slowly.
• Thirst - Similar to hunger, but the effects are more severe (as in real life).
• Nausea - If you eat something bad there's a chance to get this status effect. When that happens you can't eat or drink anything else for some time.
• Pain - This is quite an interesting one. You will get this effect as a consequence of some other effects and when you get hit. It doesn't do that much on it's own, but it indicates that "something is not right". Still, you can use some painkillers to completely remove it.
• Psi - Now it's getting interesting! There are some areas and creatures in the game that will have psi powers! This is as much as I can say right now! :)
• Radiation - This is the amount of accumulated radiation in your body. Essentially radiation poisoning or "dose". The higher the level the faster you will lose health.
• Toxins - Similar to radiation, but the source of the influence are toxins. Quickly use some anti-toxin meds!

There are obviously some positive effects, including:

• Energy rush - After drinking an energy drink or taking stimulants your fatigue recovery will be much higher and you can run for a very long distance without getting tired.
• Healing - This simply means that you are recovering your health. Usually as a result of using a healing item (such as medkit).

And finally there are some "neutral" effects that don't do anything by themselves, but affect other things:

• Drunk - This status has a bunch of different effects ranging from reduced pain to protection from psi.
• Medicine overuse - If you keep using meds non stop - eventually your body will tell you "Enough!". In game terms it is simply a measure to stop players from abusing the meds and giving them excessive advantage.
• Protection - From bleeding (by using blood coagulants), pain (by using painkillers), psi, radiation, toxins, etc. Essentially a protection from some influences.

And that's more or less it. Next time we will cover the actual items that help with those status effects (medicine).

And don't forget to join our forums or leave your comments here!

Hey there, friends!

Today we'd like to announce our second closed alpha test for CryoFall!

It's been quite a while since we launched our first closed test back in January, but after half a year of continuous development we have finally reached second stage of the project!

So, the test will take place quite soon (in about a week or so to be a bit more precise) and we'd like to invite as many people as possible. We will announce the exact date in a few days, so please follow the forums and our twitter.

Also, if you participated in the previous test - you are already set! Just download the updated client when the test is live. Otherwise you can sign up to be a participant on our forums right now. Anyone is welcome! :)

Either way - just follow the guidelines on the forum and you'll be good to go!

We hope to see you in the game!

Update:

The test is now live! Please update your client and join us in the game! You can also find more information about the test in the same topic on the forums!

Hey there!

Just a short one today. A small update on CryoFall visual content development and specifically environmental assets, decorations or just "props" as we call them.

If you were a part of our previous closed test you might have noticed quite a lot of different assets that made up one of the abandoned bases. Now, we continue working on those.

However, in this case the most interesting part is the fact that they aren't really just decorations - they do in fact have a very specific purpose in the game. And that is their radioactivity!

Besides cool rugged looks that our artist managed to depict quite well, they will also be emitting a substantial amount of radiation wherever they're placed. So, old laboratories or abandoned bunkers (with lots of loot) could be quite dangerous - beware!

Greetings friends!

In today's blog entry we'd like to tell you a bit more about the production chains in CryoFall.

So, imagine your character is in dire need of a new suit of armor. Now, what can you do? Well, you can make the most with with what you have, but something more advanced will certainly require a whole set of advanced materials, right? But how can you get those?

That's what the production chains are about. From the very beginning we said that we wanted to create a bit more involved crafting with interesting production chains, complex recipes and also keep it as close to real-world equivalents as possible.

So, let's see that on an example. What do you need to create water-and-gas-proof fabric for your new hazmat? Well, you will need some kind of rubber, right? Combined with a woven fabric base you will get your composite material. But where do you get the rubber? For that we will first need to find a rubber tree!

Then in a chemical laboratory you can cure the natural rubber with sulfur to produce vulcanized rubber (the kind or rubber we mean when we say "rubber").

Now, combine it with a fabric base and the end result will give us tarpaulin, which can then be used in other manufacturing recipes, like the hazmat suit mentioned earlier.

This case in point brings us to the following notion: if you enjoy games with involved mechanics (and not only crafting) CryoFall will provide you with ample opportunities to tinker with things. Although, doing it all entirely on your own might be a bit difficult, just enough to stimulate various degrees of interaction between players, like specialisation, trading and, well for those who just wants the world to burn - brigandism and marauding to either re-sell the goods or to use those themselves.

Anyway, that's all we wanted to share with you today! Please follow our blogs for more updates on CryoFall and stay tuned for our second closed test that's happening this month!

Hey there, friends! Today we have some tasty news to share with you - we've completed our cooking system and are now adding more tasty recipes to it. Now your character can eat not only some meat cooked on a stick over a fire, but also some proper and tasty things as well. Let's get more into it.

Let's take a look at the image above. It is taken straight from the game and highlights some of the many recipes and ingredients currently available in the game.

So, how it all works? First of all, you will need some basic components for cooking, like berries - then, after some cooking magic is done and other components added you can make it into a jam. And after that, this jam can be used in other recipes as well (or eaten right there on the spot). So, what it means is that there's going to be layers of recipes that can be used in other recipes, and the results can be rather unique. Obviously, different food will have different effects and nutritional value as in real life.

We are also trying to balance the system in such a way to make it interesting for everyone, there are going to be many recipes and they will all be useful, so even if you personally don't want to become a full blown chef, you can always do it as a hobby and\or to get some additional income by selling the food to other players.

And lastly, we'd like to remember about our previous entry - Farming. As you can understand, these two systems will be intertwined with each other deeply, creating a sort of ecosystem where either one player can be involved in all of this or provide one more basis for players' cooperation and interaction, where players can divide their duties and specialize in something. We believe that adding to and expanding this ecosystem will make the world of CryoFall feel more natural and more involving. We want to give everyone something they could find interesting. And more importantly we want to give you something new to do every time you start a new game!

So, what do you think? Share your opinion with us in the comments section below or on the forums and tell about our game to your friends!