General Changes Buildings can now have a demolish award. Demolishing a Triplex will now award 200 Nanites. This gives you a method to convert 225 energy into 150 nanites on demand. Added display area for subscribed map pack author name and icon in the play menu. Added "Capture Mo
General Changes
Buildings can now have a demolish award. Demolishing a Triplex will now award 200 Nanites. This gives you a method to convert 225 energy into 150 nanites on demand.
Added display area for subscribed map pack author name and icon in the play menu.
[Community Feedback] Added "Capture Mouse" option to general options
Tweaks and Fixes
[Community Feedback] Fixed Float parser so that typing ".2" turns into "0.2" instead of incorrectly becoming "2".
Fixed a bug whereby setting a map icon wouldn't work the second time.
Fixed Capture Energy/Nanite Award action modifiers not properly applying.
Notice: The Creator Contest will close in less than two weeks on September 30th!
Do you have what it takes to make an awesome Byte Lynx map? If so, then enter your map to our Byte Lynx Map Builder Competition for a chance to win prizes and prestige! The competition runs from September 1st to September 30th, with winners announced on October 14th. Not looking
Do you have what it takes to make an awesome Byte Lynx map? If so, then enter your map to our Byte Lynx Map Builder Competition for a chance to win prizes and prestige! The competition runs from September 1st to September 30th, with winners announced on October 14th.
Not looking to make maps yourself? Search the Steam workshop for the "2023 September Map Builder Competition" tag to try out everyone's submissions and participate in the Community Votes portion of judging.
All Participants: Added to Map Builder Competition Steam Workshop collection.
Rules
The competition runs the entire month of September (ie. 9/1/2023 - 9/30/2023). Once the competition has ended there will be a two-week play period where the community can rate the submitted maps on the Steam Workshop. Winners will be announced on October 14th!
All submissions must be published and public on the Steam Workshop with a tag to denote the pack’s participation in the competition. See the How to Submit section below.
Map creators can submit a total of up to 3 map packs to the competition with each pack containing however many maps you want. If you submit multiple maps only the highest-rated one will qualify for placement.
Due to legal reasons users from Brazil, Croatia, Egypt, or Italy cannot participate.
Winners may choose to receive their prize via PayPal which may be necessary for international (outside the US) prizes.
All NSFW, Gore, Political, and Drug-related content is forbidden.
Judging Criteria
Maps will be judged on two criteria. Community votes and judging categories from the developers. Every submitted map pack will receive a score between 0 and 10 stars ★. Five of those stars come from user votes on the Steam workshop while the other five stars come from the judging criteria.
If a map pack has a small number of votes, its star score is capped to a maximum. (5 stars)
Show details
Vote Count
Score Cap
Less than 5 votes
3.0 max stars
Less than 10 votes
3.5 max stars
Less than 15 votes
4.0 max stars
Judging Categories (5 stars)
★★ Fun Factor: How much fun is the map pack to complete?
★ Polish: Is the gameplay experience smooth with no errors or softlocks?
★ Story: Is the dialogue, themes, and/or plot of the map pack engaging, funny, or otherwise enjoyable? (Note: This does not mean you need a strong story, plot, or characters. Good usage of objectives, dialogue, and map actions to acknowledge the player’s actions will grant you a high score in this category.)
★ Novelty: How original or interesting is the map pack relative to the current campaign or example map packs? (Note: This is not general originality! A rogue-like, visual novel, or turn-based map pack is very original and interesting as a Byte Lynx map pack even if those genres are well-tread in the broader games space.)
Score Exceptions
If you update your map after 9/30/2023 you will receive a one-time 0.5 star ☆ penalty. Note: This does not mean you can submit new map packs beyond 9/30, but you may update an existing submission. Any updates may or may not be judged depending on the order in which we play/test the maps.
If we receive more than 50 submissions for the contest. Only the top 50 by star scores by user criteria (listed above) will be judged.
How to submit a Map Pack
To submit your map pack to the Map Builder Competition you need only check the “Submit for Map Builder Competition” toggle in the in-game publishing menu. This will add the “2023 September Map Builder Competition” tag to your Steam Workshop item.
If you have any questions about the competition or would like to connect with other map creators, please join our Discord.
New Content: Custom Maps Jail Break : Break free from prison by corrupting other prisoners to your will and avoiding or deactivating security. Byte Command : A Missile Command style arcade map where you defend with your base with rays from approaching enemies. Gari’s Game : Play
New Content: Custom Maps
Jail Break: Break free from prison by corrupting other prisoners to your will and avoiding or deactivating security.
Byte Command: A Missile Command style arcade map where you defend with your base with rays from approaching enemies.
Gari’s Game: Play both sides of a battle and defeat a player of your choosing as quickly as possible.
Byte Bound: A Bound or Frogger style map where you must avoid a series of hazards to reach the end.
Grand Stand: Protect your base from waves of enemy attack and between rounds buy buildings and upgrades.
Steam Workshop support: One-click subscription makes it easy to play and share community made map packs!
Map Editor
New Game Mechanics
Player actions (Turret, Energy Reactor, Relay, etc…) can be assigned a cooldown, charges, and max charge count. Charges are refunded upon demolishing a building of that type.
Retaliation Damage: When a building takes damage it can reflex a fraction of that damage back to the attacker.
Mid-level action modifiers: Modify your buildings mid-level for wacky effects, powerups, and super abilities.
Editing
Quick and Easy map creation tools!
Fully Customizable player action bar and configurable building modifiers.
Editor Actions: Mirror, cut, paste, undo, and more make level design easy!
Programmable player AI actions, responses, and difficulty ramping.
Player Action Recording and Playback
Map Scripting: Enables map packs of equal or greater complexity to the main campaign. For a full list of features visit our Editor Guide.
Persistent state across maps in a map pack enable cross-map choices and effects.
Buildings
Blockade: New building deals retaliation return damage to attackers.
Shield: Now featuring hundreds of bubble placement configurations.
Turret: Quad attack enables attacking multiple (up to 4) directions at once.
Turret: Attack chaining to connected buildings
Destroying or capturing a building can now provide resource bounty in custom maps
Constructions (non-destructible buildings)
Relays (up to 8 relays in a network)
Energy Reactor
Nanite Fountain
Terrain
Pits
Walls
Tutorial Videos
We've recorded some tutorial videos to get you started with the editor. YouTube Playlist
Byte Builder Competition
Do you have what it takes to make an awesome Byte Lynx map pack? If so, then enter your map to our Byte Lynx Map Builder Competition for a chance to win prizes and prestige! The Competition runs for the month of September!
Major Gameplay Changes
Added destroyed building SFX/VFX feedback for all buildings in the game.
Improvised player Input handling.
[Community Feedback] Dialogue now has reader options so that you can configure its behavior. Defaults to (Pause game always) and (Click to advance). The previous behavior is still available if you change the the settings to (Pause game on hover) and (Auto advance).
Tweaks and bug fixes
[Community Feedback] Slight tweaks and bug fixes for Impact Mission.
[Community Feedback] Altered voltage dialogue in Prologue: Traitor Mission.
[Community Feedback] New upgrade for Prologue: Traitor Mission.
[Community Feedback] Fixed Bug related to gossamer being captured in Backdoor Mission.
[Community Feedback] “Get Resources” AI cards fixed, both in editor and campaign. It should now work more consistently.
[Community Request] Added new tab to Main Menu Editor called Workspace Management which makes managing your Workspace a bit easier. Especially if you wish to switch between working on different map packs.
Updated Journey map template to include a ping trail.
Fixed major AI targeting bug.
Added “Kill” and “Mourn” trigger type to Building Triggers. Kill will fire when a specific player receives kill credit for destroying a building (killing blow). Mourn will fire once the Target Player’s building is killed by another player. Could be used for tracking kills or to differentiate between destroyed (via demolish) and killed buildings.
This time around we have a larger patch than usual. While working on the map editor we made a bunch of quality-of-life improvements we wanted to share with you while you wait for the big update in a couple months. Major Gameplay Changes Surgers now have a “shift” line mode that e
This time around we have a larger patch than usual. While working on the map editor we made a bunch of quality-of-life improvements we wanted to share with you while you wait for the big update in a couple months.
Major Gameplay Changes
Surgers now have a “shift” line mode that enables you to build multiple Surgers in a single click. Surgers built this way will synchronize their charges.
Players may now queue up build actions based on the dependency of other active build queues. This means you can chain multiple wire lines together without needing the last line to be completed before queuing the next. Additionally, when building a single space building (ie Lance, Surger, Turret, Shield, Blockade) the build process may automatically build wires. This means that you can build a line or rectangle of buildings out from a controlled space without first needing to build the wire.
The Demolish action now has a “shift” rectangle mode that lets you demolish many buildings in a single click.
The Rotate action now has a “shift” rectangle mode that lets you rotate many buildings in a single click.
Added new Hover Health Bar. Hovering the cursor over a building will show its health and capture status.
The player’s construction grid visualization now has a configurable size and can now be put into full-screen mode. The construction grid visualization has also been altered to improve readability.
Buildings now gain health exponentially while under construction. (previously linear)
Wires and Platforms now take longer to reach maximum health when building. They become operational/active at the same time as their previous build time.
Tweaks and bug fixes
HQ’s laser can now be fired from captured HQs and has a new upgrade to add 1 action charge on level 3.
Tweaks to in-game UI to improve readability.
New lance upgrade for mission Prologue: Traitor
You can now inspect Energy Reactors and Nanite Fountains to know how many resources/surplus they contain.
The line builder now supports multiple segment builds along a straight line.
Fixed bug whereby a miner could be built on a resource patch without a controlled wire beneath it.
Fixed a performance bug that caused frame drops when entering the Profiles menu.
Fixed bug whereby click and drag to rotate didn’t work when off the edge of the map.
Added game update log to the main menu.
Added new and unique upgrades to the campaign.
Secrets
Added super secret cheat codes
Completing a level by using cheats does not contribute toward the best time record(s)
Existing: Hold WIN + press Enter --> Instantly complete level
New: Hold PLZ + press Enter --> Gain energy and nanites
New: Hold LOCK + press Enter --> Unlock all buildings
Sorry for the long silence! We've been hard at work adding way more features to the map editor than originally intended. We don't want to confirm any features until they're in and working up to our standards, but there's a lot of cool stuff in there that we think you'll have a gr
Sorry for the long silence! We've been hard at work adding way more features to the map editor than originally intended. We don't want to confirm any features until they're in and working up to our standards, but there's a lot of cool stuff in there that we think you'll have a great time with.
Something we are comfortable showing off is our mass edit features:
We want making maps to be much easier and faster for you than it was for us, and this is a major step in that direction.
We're also adding a fair number of things that will affect gameplay in custom maps. We're going to save the details on that for a future update and none of these are 100% guaranteed to be in the finished editor, but here are some things we've been working on: A trigger editor, Custom objectives, Custom upgrades, 1.5 new buildings, Mission packs
New schedule: Begin playtesting sometime in June, with a publicly available version sometime in August.
We've been hard at work making a map editor and we wanted to share our progress. So far we have expanded in-game building placement to support map-building items like Relays and resource patches. We've also made progress on UI for editing additional data structures like upgrades,
We've been hard at work making a map editor and we wanted to share our progress. So far we have expanded in-game building placement to support map-building items like Relays and resource patches. We've also made progress on UI for editing additional data structures like upgrades, players, and AIs. There's still a lot of work to do to bring it all together, but we're happy with the progress so far.
As for a timeline, we're expecting to have something we're testing with fans in about a month, with a version everyone can use sometime in April.
v1.0.7 Bug Fixes Fixed issues on mission Lost Cause and Invasion when some Excessive difficulty modifiers were enabled. Fixed Issue on mission Invasion whereby hard difficulty wasn’t enabling properly. Community Requested Added the fastest time for each completed level and a sum
v1.0.7
Bug Fixes
Fixed issues on mission Lost Cause and Invasion when some Excessive difficulty modifiers were enabled.
Fixed Issue on mission Invasion whereby hard difficulty wasn’t enabling properly.
Community Requested
Added the fastest time for each completed level and a sum in the profiles menu. Only levels completed in this patch will display a "best time".
Tweaked Menu scrolling on Play and Settings to make them feel smoother.
Santa Lynx Update (v1.0.6) General Changes Added Steam community avatars. Level design tweaks to ‘Wanted’ and ‘Invasion’ missions to incorporate pits into the gameplay. Added visual indicators on platform block connectivity. Added seasonal Christmas Decorations (Shown till Jan 3r
Santa Lynx Update (v1.0.6)
General Changes Added Steam community avatars. Level design tweaks to ‘Wanted’ and ‘Invasion’ missions to incorporate pits into the gameplay. Added visual indicators on platform block connectivity. Added seasonal Christmas Decorations (Shown till Jan 3rd) Misc. visual/audio polish. New excessive difficulty modifiers: Garbage Collector, Make It Count, Wire Material, and Reactor Mode. Other Excessive Difficulty Modifier quality of life improvements.
Community feedback changes Added wide and ultra-wide monitor support Removed an energy miner that is off the edge of one of the maps. [Discord Game Suggestion] Some terrain on missions with pits/water/drop-offs now does not block the line of sight, enabling attacks over the otherwise un-buildable terrain. Fixed a bug whereby lances would sometimes bypass a shield bubble and damage the second space for a single attack. Fixed a bug whereby a moving platform that gets captured would glitch out. Fixed AI on Aftermath [Expert] where it wouldn’t do anything.
Byte Lynx v1.0.5 General Changes Added Excessive Difficulty Modifiers to Profile Menu. (100% on Expert to unlock) Added modifiers: Turn off firewall Overclocking Shields Only Windows XP Fair and Balanced Added in-game time display. Added profile stat for total time playing on tha
Byte Lynx v1.0.5
General Changes
Added Excessive Difficulty Modifiers to Profile Menu. (100% on Expert to unlock)
Added modifiers:
Turn off firewall
Overclocking
Shields Only
Windows XP
Fair and Balanced
Added in-game time display.
Added profile stat for total time playing on that profile.
Byte Lynx Patch v1.0.4 General Created a Gameplay Overview video to explain the basics of Byte Lynx! Added transition from Campaign/Profiles to the Play Menu so it’s easier to select than play a specific campaign slot. Improved stability of Steam-related features. Developers acqu
Byte Lynx Patch v1.0.4
General
Created a Gameplay Overview video to explain the basics of Byte Lynx!
Added transition from Campaign/Profiles to the Play Menu so it’s easier to select than play a specific campaign slot.
Improved stability of Steam-related features.
Developers acquired some sleep, no longer running on empty.
User feedback driven changes:
Fixed an issue on Invasion that had the player’s input stop working.
Improved visual feedback on the play menu for completed levels.
Upgrade Balance: Surger instant capture upgrade is now -30% slower (was -25%).
Fixed some bugs on Lost Cause which enabled the player to capture the Dragon Crew’s base.
Changed the name of the menu from “Campaign” -> “Profiles” to improve clarity.
Byte Lynx is officially released! What's next for Artful Games? EDIT (10/21/2022): After listening to community requests and conducting a poll we are making a level editor instead of a free 3-5 mission mini-campaign. The editor will come with a few ready-to-play example levels, j
Byte Lynx is officially released! What's next for Artful Games?
EDIT (10/21/2022): After listening to community requests and conducting a poll we are making a level editor instead of a free 3-5 mission mini-campaign. The editor will come with a few ready-to-play example levels, just not up to main campaign quality.
Join our Discord (https://discord.gg/CmpSMpKRca) for updates and input on the level editor and more details on editor functionality.
If the game does really well we would love to make a sequel and bring you our most requested feature: Multiplayer.
In the short term, we'll be fixing bugs, balancing levels, and maybe, just maybe, catching up on some sleep.
Every day from October 11th to the 14th we're doing a live stream from 4:30 pm-6:30 pm PST on Twitch. Come by to see live playthroughs by one of the developers. We'll be doing audience Q and A, showing off interesting play-styles, and raffling off keys to the views. Come check us
Every day from October 11th to the 14th we're doing a live stream from 4:30 pm-6:30 pm PST on Twitch. Come by to see live playthroughs by one of the developers. We'll be doing audience Q and A, showing off interesting play-styles, and raffling off keys to the views. Come check us out at https://www.twitch.tv/the_artful4
We're going to be at SIX online on September 24th! Come and chat with us live on Twitch as we show off the game and provide live commentary on the game, our design process, and our development history.
We're going to be at SIX online on September 24th! Come and chat with us live on Twitch as we show off the game and provide live commentary on the game, our design process, and our development history.
Byte Lynx got accepted into the Seattle Indies Expo (SIX)! We'll both be there showing off a beta build of the game. Anyone is welcome to come by and talk to us or try out the game. We'd love to see you there! Attendance is free (even if you're not going to PAX) and it's a short
Byte Lynx got accepted into the Seattle Indies Expo (SIX)! We'll both be there showing off a beta build of the game. Anyone is welcome to come by and talk to us or try out the game. We'd love to see you there! Attendance is free (even if you're not going to PAX) and it's a short walk from the main PAX building.
For more information on the expo, check out their website: https://six.seattleindies.org/
