Guns of Icarus Online at London Eurogamer Expo!

Juggling boxes of GoIO swag, and with promises to bring back plenty of tea and jam, Eric, Howard, and Joe are off to London today for the Eurogamer Expo! We’ll be on the show floor from Thursday to Sunday at the Guns of Icarus Online table, with four game screens for visitors to try their hand at a few rounds of airship combat.

They’ll need something to shoot at, so it would be a big help if as many players as possible can join us during the daytime (London time) while we’re exhibiting and give us a good show. Look for game events on the Steam group during peak times, and come play!

And of course, if you’re attending the Expo, be sure to swing by our booth and say hello!

(Show floor map after the jump…we’re in the “Rezzed” section in the upper left!)

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Beta extended to October 29th; New launch trailer

This has made the rounds seemingly everywhere except our own blog, so first, let’s have a look at our epic new launch trailer!

As you may have noticed if you’ve visited our Steam store page lately, the official launch date has moved back a month to October 29th. We’ve decided to take the extra time to fix bugs and polish the game so we can make sure everything is in a good state and ready for release. What this means is an extra month of beta, and everyone with beta access will be able to keep playing through to the new launch date.

This seems like a good point to pause and thank all of our beta players so far who have helped us test shared their valuable feedback and suggestions. We couldn’t do it without you, and your input has helped shape the game and change it for the better. There’s just one more month to go, and with your help we’ll do our best to give this game the awesome launch it deserves.

To the skies!

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Beta v. 0.13 release notes

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

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Weekend update

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!

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Thunderdunes Wrap-Up

First of all, I want to give a big thanks to everyone who participated, helped organize, streamed, or tuned in to watch the tournament on Saturday. Special thanks are due to Thomas, who served as match coordinator, and to refs Dynemanti, ATeddyBear and Sgt.Spoon, who also handled signups. This was the first-ever tournament for Guns of Icarus Online, and we’re immensely grateful for the wonderful turn-out and level of excitement for the event. There were a few hitches, and we can’t thank everyone enough for suffering through them and for bearing with us as we learned some hard lessons. We will make sure that we do things much better for our next tournament. Overall though, we had some great matches, saw some really interesting competitive play, and had a lot of fun.

I’ll discuss some of the details in a moment, but first, congratulations are due to our winners! Here are the final standings (brackets and complete results here):

First place and the title of Champions of the Dunes go to the crews of Saint Rocket and the Ergonomic Cog, captained respectively by Dr.Spaceman and LieutenantHindenberg. The Squid-Goldfish team put on a stunning show, blasting their way through the competition to emerge undefeated!

Second place goes to Baron’s Pride and the Qwerty, a Pyramidion double act captained by Queso2469 and Qwerty2jam. Following a first-round defeat by Homebrew and Fail-Midion at 5-2, they powered all the way through the loser’s bracket to face Saint Rocket and the Ergonomic Cog in the final round, and fought a close battle to land in second with a score of 5-3.

In third place we have Durandal and Red Herring, a Pyramidion-Squid team captained by Vayne and Bauhaus. With an impressive flawless victory against Calamari and Negotiator in the first round and a default win in the second, Durandal and Red Herring defeated Serenity and Kraken 5-2 in the third round. They put up a good showing against Saint Rocket and the Ergonomic Cog, losing 5-3, before finally going up against Baron’s Pride and The Qwerty in a sudden-death elimination round that sent Baron’s Pride and the Qwerty to the finals and earned Durandal and Red Herring a hard-fought third-place finish.

A more in-depth response to the tournament follows after the jump…

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