Midweek update: Incoming ship, gun, and release

Codenamed: The Fjords

Only four days till release and it’s all hands on deck in the office.  We’ve been very happy with how the beta has gone. We want to thank everyone on how patient they’ve been hunting out glitches and issues for us. We hope you’re ready for the final leg of the journey.

You’ll notice in the next patch that weapons are going to have fancy new names.  We wanted to give a little more flavor than “Medium Carronade.”  So every weapon will be getting a new nickname.

We are also changing the name of the Missile Launcher to the Rocket Launcher and the Rocket Launcher to the Rocket Carousel.

The last change is small and medium weapons will be renamed to light and heavy weapons respectively.

We’ve revamped the tower ship, now the Spire, and it’s going through the final flight tests and will be out tomorrow.  We decided on three light weapons and one heavy weapon which will require a strong crew to use effectively.

Along with the Spire coming out tomorrow is the the Hwacha missile launcher which fires a bunch of rockets for area-of-denial effect while damaging components. The Lumberjack is still in the art pipe and getting particle effects added despite Sgt_Spoon’s great suggestion.

Plan B

There is also be a new vanity camera is being added so you can see your character in third person and enjoy how brave and noble your character looks against the backdrop.

We are also pleased to announce a new 2v2 map currently codenamed “The Fjords” which is currently in the works.

For news on the server front, Conrad and Alex have locked themselves in a room tending to the servers. We toss food in every so often, but they told us they’re not coming out till release. We got almost everything in place except a bad switch in Europe, but we think we’ve tracked it down and it should be fixed soon.

Server Slowdown

Tortoise or the hare?

Yup, we know there’s server slowdown and it’ll be happening until we’re able to bring more instances online.  We’ve currently ordered them but not sure how long that’ll take to deploy.  This is due to the EU server being slammed like cray.

But basically this is all good news.  More players are coming!  And we have that other video cast this weekend too… holy crap!

Hello Yogscast!

You may have noticed that the site and forums were unavailable yesterday evening into this morning. It was for the best of reasons!

The popular video podcast Yogscast posted a review of Guns of Icarus Online, and the resulting traffic apparently crippled our webserver. The process of upgrading to a better server also ran across some unexpected complications.

We’re now running on a new, improved webserver, and if something like this happens again it won’t take nearly so long to upgrade next time. Sorry for the interruption!

Beta 0.16 Update and Things to Come

In the new patch, your hard work in sharpening your skills will not be in vain thanks to the addition of the new Achievement System. All 3 roles (gunner, pilot, engineer) will have their own set of 6 mission chains that contain an array of achievements to unlock. With each achievement you unlock for each role, you’ll be also leveling up in the ranks and earn titles that will be displayed for you and everyone to see. Wear your rank and title with pride as you challenge your friends to see if they have what it takes to even get close to your fine skills.

Gunners also have something new to look forward to in the new patch. Gunner skills now all function as special ammunition that affects a whole clip at a time, and are changed by reloading the gun. Imagine unloading a full clip of your own special brand of might into the your enemy’s ship, showing what it really means to be the sharpest shooter in the skies.

These along with some fixes and tweaks will have you looking at your ships and crews in a new light as you ready yourselves for battles that will earn your both pride and honor.

On the development team today, things are taking shape in the form of targets for the soon-to-be-released updated Sandbox map for the game. Here players can practice things like shooting and steering out of the usual combat scenarios in order to perfect their craft. AI bugs are also being tackled and fixed so that we no longer need to worry about the AI being “less than reliable”. (ex. AI!?!?!?!?!?!)

Beta 0.15 Release Notes

quinceanera!!

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.

Thunderdunes Highlights Video

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.)

Eurogamer Wrap-Up

Shut up, I'm obsessed with the Queen.

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…

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Post-midweek update: Balance!

The weirdest image I found while Google searching 'balance'

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

Midweek update: New ship! New gun!

Build 0.14 may have just touched down, but build 0.15 is already on the way! Here’s a peek at what we’re currently working on for version 0.15 and beyond…

Introducing the Tower.

Beta 0.15 will continue matchmaking fixes, but will also bring some exciting new toys to the table and some improvements to the interface. Let’s start with the part that caught your attention first: the toys. Details about the new ship and more after the jump!

Continue reading “Midweek update: New ship! New gun!”