Okay here goes the details for this weekend’s beta testing.
- 11:23AM EST—Servers are live.
Servers are expected to be up at approximately 12pm EST on Friday May 25th and will go back down at about 11:59m EST on Monday May 28th. We’ve decided to extend this weekend’s beta due to the fact that it’s a public holiday on Monday (Memorial day) and many of you have told us that y’all will be out of town during the weekend.
More after the jump…
Bug Reporting
For everyday bugs:
https://getsatisfaction.com/musegames
For complicated bugs:
FEEDBACK@MUSEGAMES.COM
We are compiling bugs here in a Google Doc Spreadsheet. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0As7KK0xlixIbdDNNUDRUc0taTXVFVmJRZTBKLTVHTVE&single=true&gid=2&output=html
Try to remember to put “Guns Bugs: ” at the beginning of the subject.
- Date and time (including timezone for people outside EST) the incident occurred. This will make it easier to locate relevant server logs.
- Unity client logs. Go to C:\ProgramFiles\Steam\steamapps\common\
guns of icarus online\GunsOfIcarusOnline_ Data, look for output_log.txt. Replace “C:\Program Files\Steam” with the location of your steam install if it’s someplace funny. - Avatar name of the user in question.
- Which gun/engine/ship/map etc the problem occured on or with.
- Reproduction steps, as specific as you can. If you can get to the point where the issue happens reliably when X,Y, and Z are done, you will be a great help in fixing it.
For just chatting with us:
http://webchat.quakenet.org
Channel: GunsOfIcarusOnline
Installation/First-Steps
- Open up Steam
- Click on Game in the top menu
- Activate Product On Steam
- Copy and paste the key from the email
- Profit
- Don’t forget to set your Avatar name is Avatar Customization otherwise you’ll have gibberish when you chat
New Gametype
The biggest update this beta is that we’ll be testing a new gametype, domination. Some call it resource race, others just know it by Arathi Basin in World of Warcraft. The main reason why we’ve held off on testing new gametypes is that they require a lot of players and this weekend is our biggest population before we start opening the betas up a little more (see, we’re still trying to give some love to our backers here). King of Flayed Hills will require 8 ships, so a minimum of 8 Captains with their AI crew. It’ll be a max of 32 players in each match. We’ve only had a handful of 4v4’s so things will probably break in some areas. We’ll keep a watchful eye and fix things as needed.
With 5 possible capture points in KoFH, it should provide some very frantic gameplay. It’ll take some seconds to capture a point, but once you do you’ll automatically start gathering resources whether a ship is there or not. So you can run to the next point once you’ve made a capture. Do you stick around to defend? Or speed towards the next to hoard as much as possible? Once a team reaches the required # of resources, they win the match.
*We actually may still have Dunes available. Dunes has some clouds added for stealth even though it doesn’t make too much sense (water clouds in desert, what? We just don’t have our cool sandstorm assets yet 😀 ).
Skills
Skills have been experienced a major overhaul. The interaction model we used previously was causing some confusion as to how to use them. Originally you would hold a thing in your hand and use it on a component. Basically, there were several exceptions and made the whole ordeal to complicated. We’ve streamlined skills as follows: to simple put it, we have active and passive skills. Active skills are things that you must use on a component. For example, you take your wrench out and smack a gun to do something to it. Passive skills are active once you have them selected and are engaged with the right component. There are two types of passive skills, on-gun and on-helm. For example, if I’m running around the ship and I select my Ammo Crate skill it doesn’t do anything. When I engage the helm, nothing happens as well. However, when I engage a gun the gun will receive a larger clip size. The same applies for on-helm passive skills, except on the helm only of course. You will be able to switch passive skills while engaged with the gun or helm by pressing your 1-4 keys, just as if you were choosing them in the first place. Skills are context sensitive meaning different skills (1-4 keys) will become available based on what you’re doing. As a gunner, running around you’ll have your repair tool out. While you’re on the gun, you’ll have all your gunner skills available and etc…
Each class will have 5 skill slots that will be customizable. That’s right, you will now have a selection of skills that you can choose from. Each of the three classes will be able to a choose a subset of each kind of skill: active repair, on-helm, and on-gun.
Engineer—3x Active Repair, 1x On-Helm, 1x On-GunGunner—3x On-Gun, 1x On-Helm, 1x Active Repair
(The UI to customize didn’t make it, you will have some defaults to play with)
The Captain is a special case due to the SpyGlass.
- Captain—Spyglass, 2x On-Helm, 1x On-Gun, 1x Active Repair
And these are the skills we’ll have:
Active Repair
- Open-Ended Wrench—Short activation time, small health, small rebuild
- Pipe Wrench—Medium activation time, medium health, small rebuild, able to perfect repair
- Fire Extinguisher—Fire extinguishing tool
- Rubber Mallet—Big activation time, big health, big rebuild
And for now, we have temporary Perfect Timed repairs for engineers. The engineer game needs a lot of work so everything about is subject to change.
- Hull—Increase armor HP.
- Balloon—Decrease chance to ignite.
- Gun—Increase projectile speed or increase raycast range.
- Engine—Increase max HP.
On-Gun
- Heavy Gauntlets—Eliminate recoil at cost of rotation speed
- Incendiary Rounds—Add or increase chance to cause fire
- Ammo Crate—Increase clip size by 50%
- Burst Rounds—Explosive rounds gain AoE at the cost of reduced damage (Equipped on Engineer)
On-Helm
- Kerosene—Greatly increase forward acceleration at the cost of engine damage over time. (Equipped on Gunner)
Hydrogen Canister—Greatly increase vertical acceleration at the cost of balloon being extremely susceptible to fire for duration.- Lucky Phoenix Claw—Greatly increase turn speed and top forward speed at the cost of engine damage over time.
- Drogue Chute—Greatly decrease forward speed while damaging balloon over time.
Hull Armor
We had a wacky 3-hull repair point system, then made in one repair point but still retain some of the previous nonsense. Forget all that, it’s simple now. Think of how Protoss armor worked in Star Craft. You could recharge your shields but not the unit’s health. Damage, for now, will hit your armor first and once it’s depleted will start killing hull health. You’ll be able to conduct normal repairs on armor. A perfect repair on the hull will repair its health.
Weapons
The Small Howitzer has been tweaked so it’s not to powerful now. Definitely still the best long-range killer out there but we’ve tuned it a little bit to keep it just to long-range.
We’ll have two new additions to the weapons lineup, the Medium Carronade and Small Harpoon. The original Carronade is the king of balloon destruction. This will be more or less the same but more deadly. The harpoon will provide some very unique gameplay as you’ll be able to use it and reel in other players closer to you so you can use guns like the Medium Carronade (close-range).
And no, there’s no boarding. That’s not going to happen right now.
Stealth
We’ve finally gone ahead and put some clouds back in the game. You’ve seen them in our trailers and now it’s the first time that they’ll be able to player with. Captains are able to spot enemy ships, which not only gives a useful visual indicator for gunners but it also increases damage taken. Entering into a cloud removes the spotted status from your ship. This way you’ll be able to sneak up or lose your enemies making piloting much more tactical.
Related to stealth, we are adding in the Flare Gun. Any ship that is lit by a flare will emit a glow allowing you to see them through clouds. Furthermore, they apply a similar damage bonus if you get lit.
Steam Invites/Matchmaking/Chat
Inviting friends and joining friends through the Steam overlay should work now. We changed a bunch of stuff to our matchmaking last round and we couldn’t change Steam inviting fast enough. Please note, you must have the game already open in order to do this.
Also small tweaks to matchmaking, ever improving the experience.
Better voice chat is here. You can chat to your crew with ‘X’ or whatever key you bind. Captains can chat with other captains on their team with ‘C’.
What’s Not In
- Character customization is still limited, just don’t forget to put your name in
- Probably more stuff I can’t think of… lol.