Author: Admin

And here we go!

Release Notes b15

NEW

• Rejoin functionality.  If you are dropped from a game, you have the ability to return to it from the main menu within a window of a few minutes.

CHANGES

• Rebuild times are no longer strictly proportional to part health: longer for guns and engines, shorter for balloons
• The captain of the ship can always take the helm back from another crewmember
• Junker and Squid health/armor rebalance.  Total health and armor are relatively unchanged but their ratios have.  Squid has less armor and more health to emphasize a support/hit-and-run play style.  The Squid takes the same number of direct Medium Flak shots (5) before dying as before but you’re taking most of it to hull therefore you can’t repair it (you need to be careful).  Junker has more armor and less health giving it the ability to tank… but not to the extent of a Galleon.
• Galleon manoeuvrability decreased a smidge to compensate for increase Flak effectiveness.
• Medium Flak has a slightly decreased muzzle speed and increased gravity.
• Minor Mortar tweaks to decrease its DPS (reload time and rate of fire).

• Custom Games no longer exist in their original incarnation.
• All games are listed in the Match List, which is a new button replacing the “Custom Game” button
• Running games are now listed in the Match List, allowing for more granular selection of mid-match game

FIXES

• Fixed a problem with projectile networking that would cause shells to remain invisible for up to half a second after they were fired
• Fixed a number of effects leaks that would cause performance to degrade over the course of a match
• Fixed a timing bug that would occasionally cause the server to never send some changes to some clients.

Let us present the promised highlights from the Thunderdunes Tournament! Twitch.TV lost some of the footage so matches one through ten unfortunately couldn’t be included despite some wonderful play from those captains.

The Muse team has been hard at work creating new content and attempting to balance the old, so I had the opportunity to put this together for them.

I want to reiterate how thankful we are to everyone who was a part of it whether through participating, watching the stream, or even hosting their own. A second special thanks to Thomas, Dynemanti, ATeddyBear and Sgt. Spoon who made the tournament possible through their work.

I hope everyone had as much fun being a part of it as I did trying to put out fires on the Qwerty.

— CA Keyvias

(The song is “I dunno” by Grapes and is free for commercial use.)

We finally finished up Eurogamer.  I wanted to post some updates on the road but the lack of internet really hit us hard.  Even though there were an abundance of wi-fi hotspots around the city, you have to pay for them all or be a British Telecom user to log in.  Either way, we had our hands busy anyway.

More after the jump…

Continue reading “Eurogamer Wrap-Up”

So I haven’t been at a work computer for a week now.  We may move fast with all our updates and patches but we don’t move THAT fast.  Now I’m back in NYC (omg coffee, bagels, food with spices, and IPA beer) and I’m catching up.

Here are some initial changes that y’all should be aware of:

• We’re moving away from standardized 1v1.  There, I said it.  The Duel at Dawn will be a 2v2 called Hunt at Dawn.  By having a supported 1v1 map means that we are balancing ships to fight 1v1 in a balanced situation.  This is far from the truth.  Think of ships being similar to classes in TF2.  How many guys does it take to kill a Heavy Weapons Guy?  A few at least.  Or… a Scout who knows what he/she is doing.  We’re moving towards the same kind of thinking.  This is in line with our initial goals for supporting teamwork.  Now you have it on your local ship as well as on a global team.
• Junker and Squid armor/health values have been tweaked.  Squid has high health and low armor, this focuses play styles more towards hit-and-run type strategies.  Junker has low health and high armor, this means the Junker can tank a bit of damage and if your engineers are on top of everything you should be fine… if not, then you’ve got problems.
• Rebuild rebalance: kind of complicated but in general the time it takes to repair balloons has been drastically decreased (30s to 19s for Rubber Mallet) while an additional 1-1.5s for other components across the board.

That’s all for now, I’ll be testing for the remainder of the week and early next.  Keep you posted.

Eric

New build today! Here are all the details:

– A new main menu UI flow distinguishes customization, matchmaking (“quick game”), and custom games
– Simpler and more automatic matchmaking flow to join random map for quicker starts (use custom games for finer control)
– Crews stay together after matchmade games
– Networking: state changes are packed into fewer UDP packets, this should improve connection stability and networking performance considerably
– Fixed a bug with projectile attacks that would cause the damage dealt to decrease significantly with each hit
– Fixed a case that could cause game state changes to never get sent to clients under certain timing circumstances
– Fixed a case where Hydrogen would allow you to reach and stay at altitudes not normally possible
– Fixed broken Fire Tarp model
– Effects for double-barreled guns play on the correct barrel more frequently
– Effects: fixed flares that did not clean up (mysterious floating lights)
– Hole in Dunes collision mesh fixed
– Simplified nav-mesh for all ships (improves AI pathing)
– Missile Sling has new reload and fire animation
– Jump animation bug fix
– Weapon fire animation time scale bug fix
– New 1v1 map, Duel at Dawn
– Balance: Gatlings are now primarily effective against hull armor, and Carronades are primarily effective against balloons

We’ve got a new build coming out next week, and while we’ll have some more complete release notes when it drops, I wanted to give you a quick run-down of what’s coming down the pipe.

First, you’ll notice a new matchmaking flow that’s designed to get more players into the action quickly, with less waiting around for matches to start. Unless you choose to create or join an existing custom match, you’ll be sent to a single “instant action” pub match with a rotating selection of maps. Instead of all Dunes, all the time, now you’re equally likely to get a good match going quickly on Water Hazard or Flayed. (And if you still want to stick with Dunes, just start a custom game!) There are some other flow changes — for instance, character customization now lives on the same three-panel page with class and ship loadouts (respectively, Look, Role, and Ship).

Second, new map! We’ll be debuting a new 1v1 map, Duel at Dawn. It takes place on the Dunes, but to avoid confusion, we’re not calling any more maps Dunes. On a related note, Scrap on the Dunes is being renamed to Desert Scrap.

Third, there are some big balance adjustments. The role of Gatlings and carronades has been switched, with Gatlings becoming primarily effective against hull armor but not balloons, and carronades more effective against balloons, but not hull armor. But the biggest change will be the removal of a bug we discovered that was causing projectile damage to be drastically reduced. Flaks, mortars, and Howitzers will all become significantly more powerful after this fix.

Fourth, a bunch of bugfixes. Most notably, we’ve tracked down one of the major causes of disconnects, which should drastically reduce connection problems.

In addition to those changes for the next build, we also have a bunch of big features in the works that should be ready to roll out in the next couple weeks, including a detailed stats screen and in-game friends list with options to add, join, and message friends. There’s also a new ship under construction that’s nearing completion. Once the paint dries and some finishing touches are applied, it’ll be ready to leave the shipyard and sail into battle…

Finally, in community news, I’d like to welcome our three newest Community Ambassadors to the fold: Imperator_RZ, MetaFive, and Keyvias. If you see them in game, be sure to stop and say hello (or blow them out of the sky, depending on what ship you’re on)!

So that’s pretty much what we’ve been working on lately. As you can see, there’s lots in store. Hope everyone has a good weekend, and we’ll see you in the skies!