Grave Stakes news & patch notes

• Fix crashes when playing random games

• Audio | Correct Sound Class for music played during Double or Nothing so it is correctly silenced in Streamer Mode

Hello Contestants!

We've been hard at work adding and perfecting the games for Grave Stakes and literally making hundreds of fixes and improvements. We're thankful for all of the feedback we've received during Early Access and for all those brave souls who have signed up to be contestants in it's earliest states.

The game currently has 5 different Games in different areas with individual Executioners...er, I mean Game Masters.

MELODY - Follow the music...but don't miss a move!

BLACKJACK - Play against the other contestants until only one remains.

BALLOON MEYHEM - Don't let the balloons fall into your area!

KNIVES - Bid on how many knife strikes you can make before time runs out.

YAKUZA - Identify all the Yakuza before they kill all the citizens!

We've also just added Double or Nothing that the winning player can elect which is more of a simple physical challenge of escaping a maze in order to double your winnings...that's all, nothing to it really.

Double or Nothing - Escape the Maze!

As we prepare for launch we hope to see in you in the game and as always, any feedback, bugs or suggestions can be sent to [email protected].

Much appreciated and thanks for playing!

New Area - Colosseum!

There's no more fitting location for a mortal struggle than an ancient Colosseum where gladiators battled to the death!

New Game - Knife Strike

A delicate game of seeing how many times you can strike between your fingers with a knife before the time runs out. Bid on how many times you think you can strike but if the next player calls your bid you better be ready to perform. Callers beware, if you call a player and they are successful you will be eliminated instead. It's a high stakes game down to the last player.

New Game Master - Dominus!

The Colosseum and Knife Strike game are overseen by the game master, Dominus! This gladiator has a peerless record in the arena and is very efficient in administering the game rules. He's so quick you'll barely feel a thing...better to win and not find out.

We've been extremely hard at work over the past weeks. For those of you interested in the fine details, a list of fixes and improvements is included at the bottom of this announcement.

More to come and thanks for playing!

Warren

Wild West Games

Bug Fixes and Improvements:

• Bots spawn at a much faster rate, reducing popping when added to the game

• Adjusted difficulties of all bots so they are less likely to fail early

• Improved dismemberment of players and bots

• Fix characters beginning ragdoll before their death animation has completed

• Fix cases of executioner walk animation not playing

• Fix pop in animations first-play on players and bots

• Shuffle voiceovers used when players fail instead of choosing randomly, reducing repeats

• Fix volume sliders, changes not re-applied on startup

• Fix more shutdown crashes that may occur when using alt+f4

• Players and Bots will toss their held items when executed

• Added Invite-only and friends-only lobby types

• Display correct placement for Yakuza players that did not win

• Fix missing characters with fonts used by sub titles

• Fix cases of stuck UI when waiting for more players and/or returning to the lobby

• Change game result to only show "Yakuza win" or "Civilians Win" dialogue for 1st place winners

• Fix index out of range error in yakuza gameboard when failing remaining citizens

• Fix knife game bar scaling when bids exceed 50

• Host options widget fixes for client

• Prevent bidding over max

• Knife game does not end the current round if max bid is hit

• Increase max knife game bid to 100

• Replace rich text widgets on W_Captions with advanced right text

• Replace instances of ? (code page 0x92, character 146) with a standard apostrophe ' (0x27, character 39) and re-run localization

• Improve blending of gladiator blendspace when walking

• Fix Knife game turn issues caused by wrong host/non host nodes used

• Disable print to screen on noisy logs

• Change location acceptance radius for attack target locations from 25 to 10 to help Cletus get closer to pressing the car lift button

• Adjust camera for Simon up by 5 centimeters to improve clipping when pressing far buttons

• Add blend time for first-played momentary animations

• Handle null reference in B_Card

• Add damage causing anim notifies to garage car lift victim animation

• Animation | Add more variance and improve timing of anim notifies for Cletus attacks/victim animations

• Correct Saw characters base health so they are killed correctly with their victim montage anim notifies

• Clear more invalid mesh weights on dismembered appendages that cause stretching

• Add missing host-only node on knife game board causing the game to stop working

• Correct redundant hits on detached limbs for Cletus; preventing his attacks from spawning vfx at 0,0,0

• game detects when knife strike rounds began with out a caller/callee and end that round

• Knife game only draws failure attempt once, before striking begins and if deciding to faill will not attempt failures until 50% through move sequence

• Add per-round curves for knife game bots

• Timeout in Knife game implementation changed to follow blueprint flow

• Change macro for creating widgets so player controllers may track all widgets; resave all widgets using this macro

• Resubmit L_Test_Game with no background level

• Update post process material list on all maps

• Action cards set their custom depth value based on usability

• Post process materials for rim shaders wite, green (usable) and red (not usable)

• Blueprint Interface for action card game ability, API - GetHandIndex

• Fix issues with transition to spectate for last remaining player(s)

• Hide hyphen in player status widget

• Use explicit animation scaling in Cletus blendspace (max 1.25x)

• Add synchronization delay to B_Knife for bots

• Add optional debug UI to knife game bar

• SawGameBoard filet interface API - IsKnifeInMargin also returns seconds until margin change occurs

• Fix bots never failing due to lua stomping over failure indicator

• Contextually play/skip turn failed audio (e.g. Caller of Knife strike rounds)

• Play audio when passing knife strike

• Support deterministic random audio playback of quips

• Fix potential null reference in saw game state

• Knife game bar illustrates time and strikes remaining

• Fix copy/paste typo causing bots to use their call-chance curve as their strike-chance curve and fix players having to click an extra time to complete their move

• Fix knife game reduce score card/correct item identifier

• Fix audio spam when initial items/equipment spawned and equipped

• Make Cletus executioner cage based on events not delays

• Introduce map macro now ignores bots and reduced host wait from 1.0 seconds to .5 before playing entry VO

• New bell ring audio for calling

• Contextual stencil rendering for cards, which are now always enabled during a players turn and change custom stencil/shader when hovered

• Fix rich text markup showing on hud move messages

• Fix asymetrical scaling of player bracket UI

• Blueprint | Superfluous overlapping node cleanup

• Game | Fix grinder trap anti vacuum not pushing balloons away

• Prevent player status from showing losing players that have not lost

• Handle null references in FollowThePath BP function library

• Disable Lyra feature on bots 'bDestroyOnDeath' which is not desired and causes errors

• Fix more players killed in Balloon game each round then intended

• Level sequence player components register/unregister themselves with GameState; used by B_LevelSequencePlayer to check for other players in the map when determine if the sequence can be played

• Add scaling axis and velocity analysis to Cletus' walk and run blend space

• Play bell sound when player is called

• Navigation | Fix insufficient nav mesh bounds volumes in Cathedral

• Prevent Filet game bids from going down when game is reversed

• Increase lighting in Colosseum maze

• Resave Colosseum maps after reperforming delete duplicates/duplicate

• Collision pass on colosseum to fix nav to maze

• Replace ForEachLoop instances in BP with FastForEach

• Prevent possibility of knife strike rounds setting the next player to one of the called/calling players

• Filet game board overrides ShouldEndRound and returns true for knife strike rounds once either player fails

• Run and sprint animations for Samurai/Akuma

• Monk run and sprint animations

• Hook up new host options 'Invite Only' and 'Allow Join via Presence Friends Only' to game create/host option UI

• Lions in Colosseum start the game sitting or lying down until the game begins

• Add floor collision to lion cage so it can modify navigation area

• Reduce non-navigable area surrounding players in game mapsStub in of Lion in Colosseum

• Replace collision on cage with boxes

• Move cards placed on knife game board to center for either handedness

• Prototype lantern attached with sockets in colosseum maze

• Simple prototype feature to spawn actors on sockets in the maze generator

• Bots spawn with 1/10th the delay of players

• Remove sample smoothing and correct analysis bone orientation of Gladiator blend space

• Minimize delay waiting for the initial load screen to drop and the mouse cursor to show

• Locale selector mutes subtitles for both 'en-us' and 'en' locales

• Fix sound mix class overrides not applied at startup/between maps loads

• Resave maps with new map intro macro

• Macro to introduce maps waits up to 10 seconds on the client to synchronize timing with the server, polling every tick until the sequence has replicated or maximum time occurs

• B_SawGameState tracks time of sequence events and expose that time via API - I_SawGameState_HasSequence

• Adjust Knife game wager camera so it cannot reveal your headless player

• Filet game board uses explicitly tracked players for Calling, Called and Next Wager players as opposed to using implicit, mutable data that is often wrong.

• Bots send set bid and call bid call events to all players, including dead ones

• Game State ignores level based turn delays for the first-turn of any round

• M_SwitchBool; FlipFlop like behavior but gate direction is controlled explicitly

• Fix hard-coded identifier for reduce score in filet game

• All players set their cards down on the first round of knife game

• Filet game board reverses overridden turn array if turns are reversed

• Retopoligize holes in gore meshes and remove skin weighting from external bones that cause stretching

• New rootmotion blendspace for maximus turn in place anims

• Colosseum brick wall textures

• Relocate action cards on filet game board to top of board

• Fix bots playing more knife strikes then they actually played to complete their turn

• Correct turn limit expired during wager round behavior     - If the player is the first to bid and turn expired, bid is set            - All other players will call by default

• gladiator audio from Ambush to its correct animation, Execution1

• Increase damage done by Cletus attacks so they kill the player and add more variance

• Re-add Ragdoll call to anim notify

• Fix Saw Characters attempting to ragdoll before dead, on first anim notify. Also replace ForEachLoop calls with FastForEach

• Mask over-play of knife strikes by capping subtracted by at 0

• Correct card identifier for reduce score

• Filet game autoplay accounts for "extra" moves generated to avoid failures, removing this extras when completing the turn (prevents bots from over-playing knife strikes)

• Fix knife strike flagging player as failing when they completed successfully

• Filet gameboard cleanup; remove debug print, correct determination of players completing knife strikes and ensure all players bids are cleared when clearbids is called

• Fix Knife strike setting bid higher in both Wager and Strike rounds (should be wager only)

• Filet game API DropNonCalled bids also drops failed players bids

• Correct comparison for call chance in knife game

• Fix bots not informing host if dead about their calls

• Fix bug causing filet knife game to continue perpetually if the host player dies

• Fix 2 cases of invalid handling of player bids; when clearing all bids include failed players and exclude failed players when considering players to be called

• Bots have a chance to bid 1-5 each wager round of knife game

• Fix votes called set to wrong value

• Fix console knife widget always showing the local player as the top player

• Action cards used in filet game correct the players score to what it was previously to their turn starting

• Fix incorrect bids set in knife game

• Bots have a 15% chance to increment their bid since the game increments by 1 on every players behalf as of CL # 7122

• Filet game board ensures bids are incremented and never set to the same as the previous

• Fix null reference issues and behavior of knife console widget

• Fix regression in BP_PlayerStart causing the console to not load

• Macro M_FastForEach with array length cached in local

• Correct implementation of B_SawFunctionLibrary API - GetNearestInt

• Knife game even round turn begin delay override to default 1.5

• Correct display of top bidder

• Prevent players from bidding over the max in knife game

• Fix knife game console screen never showing your own player as the top bidder

• Accelerate playback of move announcements as queue grows

• Level/round specific turn delays

• | Fix miss-pin call to interface to clear control value of knife, causing the knife to never reset

• Hide editor-only mesh on filet game board

• Hud displays Console begin turn messages with a non-empty format

• B_SawGameSettings API - 'Begin Turn' text for parity of 'End Turn' and 'Fail Turn'

• New gameplay message 'Message.Saw.Game.Move.Begin' for turn begin parity to *Move.Pass and *Move.Failed

• Prune redundant checks in "CanPlay*" APIs

• Base ability blueprint does not allow activation when the round is over

• Fix lua wrapper code from potentially returning invalid values from non-existing curve entries

• Correct item identifier for Filet game reverse card so it can be played again

• Fix low player count warning starting too soon and becoming stuck on even when back in the lobby

• Change Warning widget Z order to -1 since its not interactable and remove it from the check of IsRequesterOpen

• Prevent focus of Warning widget (not interactable)

• B_GameInstance - Fix null reference with updating UI when below minimum player count but before the UI has loaded

• Change calls to game settings for knife curve lookups to per-round (was dividing by 2, treating knife rounds as separate)

• Change game settings knife bar margin to 1.0 until round 2 (first knife strike round)

• Fix default value on filet game board causing knife bar to swing before rounds have started

• Macro API - M_GameRoundKnifeStrikeWager          Fix potential false negative for determining wager/strike round before any rounds have started

• Re-add knife counter to console "Now Playing" during knife strike

• Guard against null game state in B_SawGameMode::LogOut

• Fix false positive and false negative issues in filet game script

• Fix curves swapped on some bots causing them to call and/or fail instantly and re-tune all knife game curves

• Lua API - saw_game_board_bot_can_use_action_card() now correctly returns false for unusable action card(s)

• B_SawGameAbility blueprint interface with API - CanActivateAbility

• Rebase knife curves to starting round 2

• Convert knife game settings and bot settings for knife game to round based curves

• BP Function library API - GetNearestInt(int32, int32\[]) returns nearest <= value and index or -1, -1

• Remove bad false positive preventing bots bids from incrementing correctly

• Fix filet game board verify_move and finish_move

• Move announcements on HUD

• Scale game brief animation by VO duration length

• Current bidder text on knife game console does not show previous or unknown bid

• Filet game and Balloon game hit counters hidden by

• Correct item ids for sit out action card

• Fix bots stopping their knife strikes when avoiding a fail

• Fix clients not setting cards down in filet game

• Reduce log level of LogOnlineVoice and LogVoiceEngine from All to Warning

• Improve readability of filet game console widget controls

• Gore system animation blueprint falls back to leader pose if snapshot invalid

• Fix visibility of detached limbs

• _Cosmetic copies gore settings to attach parent gore system

• Add missing right thumb bone to body health map of B_SawCharacter

• Add artery vfx to dismembered finger bones

• Add simple collision to gameboards so they receive decals

• 7058    jasone Internal | VFX | Reduce size of tiny blood splatter

• Correct bone names hit by FFA animations

• Reduce size of tiny blood burst niagara systems

• Correct data entry for gore system finger dismemberment and assign unique vfx

• Knife stays in players hand once failed until death

• Knife game board handles end of turn announcement for bid set

• Loc text for knife game move status

• Remove generic turn end message from knife game

• Console supports not displaying turn end messages (assumed when message is empty)

• Add logging to Knife game lua script for action card usage

• Knife gameboard updates its local counter when setting tits replicated knife value

• Fix knife game console widget not updating hits as players use their knife

• Make B_SawGameAbility_ActionCard1 API null safe - TestCanActivateForTurnAndRound

• Correct skips card identifier

• Fix stale text "Bid Set" as player turns change, which now switches back to "Now Bidding"

• Prune unnecessary equipment definition classes

• Decrease font size of top player bid UI to make room for messaging

• Add .5 second delay before attaching knife on bot turn begin

• Slow down bot turns in filet game with delays before and after move playbacks

• Visibility of top bidder is always available but bid is hidden until valid

• Action card ability overrides API - TestCanActivateForTurnAndRound     Check for round based card use

• Change icons on add turn limit and protect turn

• Unique action card art for all cards

• Filet game has copies of skip and reduce score with disambiguation from base/other game identifiers

• Knife game specific version of reverse card, only useable in odd (wager) rounds

• Knife game fixes           - Delay reduction for knife strike beats and delays                - Fix bots using aciton cards during knife strike round not doing anything after    - Remove double-call to finish_move when completing a sequence

• Fix Turn Begin setting initial player bid to 1 only working if host was first player to bid

• Adjust Maximus blendspace and anim graph to remove hitches in walking and turning

• Clients and server update cache of player bids, moving host-only code to the right of this data updation

• Filet game lua script not finishing move on timeout during knife rounds

• Hide Bid button on knife game console until player has bid at least once

• Adjust right handed player card position on knife game board

• Move filet action cards to below console screen

• Change game begin VO on Knife game

• Knife game action card support; Reduce Bid  (50%), Reverse, Sit Out and Skip

• Increase spread of Lucky1's bot setting and add point on knife success curve to increase chance at 18 hits

• Remove small collision and fix gaps on circus chair

• Fix issues with relative look at

• _Player defaults to sit instead of stand

• Filet game handles time out - Increment and set bid for the 1st player    - Call if no controls set for any subsequent player      - Set bid if incremented by player bot not set

• BP function library API - SawGetPlayerName, new param 'BotFormat' (override)

• Rich text for larger bot name and corresponding rich text format string

• Handle all players sitting out for a round of knife game, causing the round to end

• Knife game set bid button disabled until player has bid once and improve readability, increase size of buttons, text, etc.

• Increase all font sizes for knife game UI

• Add Saw nav path generator to L_Test_Game and default_game

• Saw version of Follow The Path BP that creates nav based path to the entrance of the maze, stopping when overlapping that entrance

• Saw maze generator interface to add/remove delegates to overlap events of the maze

• Modify "Maze Generator" marketplace blueprint to support events of pawns overlapping the entrance and exit

• Modify Blueprints from "Follow The Path" marketplace assets to support overrides of getting the target player and location

• Correct level reference for don goal level transform

• Blueprint door for Colosseum

• Filet game action card code move to function and delay bot turns

• Contextual controls clear themselves from the control queue when released

• Fix check for playability of action cards (copy compare code to other case)

• Improve knife strike hit counter updating

• Prevent bots playing 1 extra knife strike move and only allow self echoes of moves

• Cleanup verify_move of filet game script

• Knife console screen reflects hit bid - hit count

• Action card ability increments round value for ended rounds if an ability is attempted to be played during that time

• Saw filet game board replicates owning control knife value

• Enable bots using available action cards during wager round of filet game

• Filet game provides turn array override for sit out players

• Change action cards for Filet game so that skip is Wager round only and Auto Play is knife round only

• Support even-round only and odd-round only action card flags

• Add turn_limit_expired() and turn_end() handlers to filet game

• Update game preview images for filet and random

• Colosseum to both editor and development map rotations

• Filet gameboard implements GetPlayerTurnArrayOverride to provide the correct players during called knife strike rounds

• Knife plays back echoes for AI

• Add support for echo playback in filet game

• Game round end also clears knife player value

• Clear bids at end of round

• Move OnGameRoundEnd and OnGameRoundBegin from B_SawGameBoard_Yakuze to parent class B_SawGameBoard

• Adjust bot settings to prevent early calls

• First functional loop of knife game with all bots

• Knife game broadcasts sets and calls

• Expose saw_game_board_knife_strike_chance() and saw_game_board_knife_strike_call_chance() to Lua

• Bids set and called are displayed on console; bids called are also displayed on HUD

• Curves for bots to call players based on knife strike bids

• Add API to override level-based turn limits per-even/odd rounds

• Success rate curves for knife game strikes

• Correct round end behavior for knife game

• game auto play for striking rounds and correct wager ai behavior

• Fix potential inifite call loop with a delay until next tick

• Fix gamestate responding to player votes when not in yakuza

• Improve readability of Knife Strike UI by moving controls to vertical boxes

• B_SawGameBoard utility method 'GetAssociatedPlayerScore'

• Saw player and bot controllers enforce incrementing bids raises current high bid and not just that players self bid

• Increase font sizes for Knife Strike UI

• New text for bidding titles

• Correct local variable assignment

• Macros to copy to other game board classes

• Knife game ends wager rounds based on max bid

• AI autoplay functionality for filet game wagers and knife strikes

• disconnected attachment and bad visibility setting of knife

• Unify Player and Bot blueprint interface API for bids

• Lua api exposed to filte game script: saw_game_board_bot_increment_bid(), saw_game_board_bot_set_bid(), saw_game_board_bot_call_bid()

• Filet game board has separate wager/bidding round, followed by knife strike round

• Saw player controller BP interface API to increment, set and call bids

• Lua Machine States to expose Knife game Lua API saw_game_board_knife_round_is_wager

• Players now are in default free-look camera making it easier to look during a game.

• Fix cases of Executioners becoming stuck and/or not turning toward their target

• Fix delays in Executioners responding to player failed turns

• Fix bots releasing their game board controls while still playing their turn

• Change sit animation in Balloon game and correct alignment of sitting in the chair

• Players now drop their action cards on death

• Players now collide with the environment when rag dolled

• Fix cases of left/right-handed animations being used together

• Improve blending of Executioner walk animation

• Fix cases where players do not hear the correct audio on game loss

• Fix sounds not always loading/playing when cued

• Fix Poundy sometimes spawning partially in the ground

• Fix players dismembered appendages from blocking navigation of the Executioner

• Fix Blackjack displaying previous round card(s) when brackets change

• Fix game crashes when VR equipment is attached (game does not yet support VR)

• Fix player camera transitioning to an inactive camera causing a black screen

• Address some GPU stalls and PSO creation crashes on startup

• Improve readability of text on the HUD (e.g. color changes, outlines, font size increases)

• Fix inconsistent multiline text wrapping on game dialog windows

• Fix some cases of being unable to spectate other players

Lots more to come. Thank you for your help in making the game better!

Warren

Wild West Games

Grave Stakes is now 1-8 players!

We’ve added Bots that allow a single player up to 8 players to play in a full game.  These Bots are programmed to give you a very competitive game in any of the arenas so make sure you play to the best of your ability if you want to survive.  Don’t worry, new players can still easily join your game with Bots being automatically replaced when they join.  Starting your game with Bots is an easy way to start playing even while waiting for other players join.

New Game – Yakuza

Some players will be given the honorary role of Yakuza while the rest will fill the roles of civilians.  Each round you will need to decide who is one of the Yakuza and vote them out.  Of course, the Yakuza win by killing all the civilians.

Yakuza – Target Citizens for elimination

Citizen - Doctor – Can save a citizen that has been attacked by Yakuza.

Citizen - Police – Can investigate other players to determine their roles.

Citizen – Need to discover and vote out the Yakuza before they are eliminated.

New Game Master – Akuma

Akuma is a Samurai warrior and protector of the Temple in which you will be playing.  He’s not pleased with your presence and will take every opportunity to remove you from the premises so beware. 

General fixes

Our small team has been hard at work fixing a slew of bugs and gameplay issues.  Thank you to all who played during our EA launch and helped us identify them.  We’ll continue to work hard to correct and improve the game further as we work our way to a full launch.

We are currently working on more content including new games and areas so be sure to stay tuned for our next updates.

Thanks,

Warren

Welcome to Early Access! As a token of our appreciation, all recruits...er, contestants will receive two Golden masks that are only available during Early Access.

This first EA version includes:

• Garage Location with Cletus featuring the game MELODY!

• City Circus Location with Poundy the Clown featuring the game Balloon Mayhem!

• Cathedral Location with Father Pain featuring Blackjack!

• 30 Masks - including 2 EA "Golden Masks"

We will be adding lots of new content during Early Access including new locations, games and masks so stay posted! PLEASE SEND BUGS OR SUGGESTIONS TO: [email protected]

Thanks again!

Warren - Wild West Games

DISCORD:

https://discord.gg/4pvdw8UfRu

"Grave Stakes" Playtest begins tonight.

Participants who signup will be notified when the game goes live.

What to expect:

• 3 Maps with 3 different Games

• Other maps are in development and may be included depending upon how testing goes.

• BUGS! - We're a very small team and while we've tested the best we can we know we haven't caught everything. Rest assured we will do our best to fix things quickly as you find them!

SEND BUGS OR SUGGESTIONS TO: [email protected]

DISCORD: https://discord.gg/4pvdw8UfRu

We look forward to having you in game and really appreciate your time to help us with this playtest.

-Warren