Hey there everyone! As some of you may know, the developers hold weekly Twitch sessions every Friday at 3 pm EST (9 pm CET., search online for a time zone converter to find out your local time) in which you can talk to them about game mechanics, plans for the future, harpoons, boarding, sky whales, and whether they prefer boxers or briefs. No, but seriously, you can ask them pretty much anything - there are also some.. less game related questions towards the end.
You can see the Twitch stream at
http://www.twitch.tv/gunsoficarus - you can open the page in the background on Friday and it will automatically start playing when the stream comes online. The chat on the right side is used for talking to the devs - you need a Twitch account to send messages.
You can also view the past dev chats from the video archive at
http://www.twitch.tv/gunsoficarus/profile/pastBroadcasts - and from now on, I'll do my best to keep this forum thread updated with most relevant announcements and answers from the developers.
Let's get started on last week's chat. The first announcement is the saddest, but also the most important one.
Announcement: A valued member of the community, TimmyB, has recently passed away due to brain cancer. There is a tournament coming up in his honor, and people are encouraged to donate to the American Cancer Society in his name.
https://donate.cancer.org/index?campaign=legacy&dn=mem&fn=Timothy&ln=BlumerAnnouncement: After PAX there will be a significant update. UI changes, a new header, a new community - this is all something that should be coming in April. Nice stuff incoming.
Question: How will player performance be measured in matchmaking?
Answer: Player performance will be measured with Glicko 2, a well-known and often used system. If a player is up against a highly rated player, likelihood of loss is increased, so the points he loses and his opponent gains are low. However, if the lower ranked player wins, the opposite happens. Furthermore, as there was discussion on how Glicko 2's win/loss based functionality works in team games, the devs assured that there are several balance factors that can be adjusted that have to do with point distribution.
Question: How does matchmaking work with ratings? Are people with similar ratings put together, will it try to balance the average team ratings, or are the ratings ignored when formung matches?
Answer: So far the matchmaking tests have not included any ratings functionality. Only the core functions and mechanics have been tested. The balancing functionality will be added later.
Question: There was talk about a child's play charity tournament, and how people have reacted negatively towards it.
Answer: The devs have worked together with Child's Play, but haven't signed up for the tournament process yet. There may be problems on their end.
Question: What does awkm do?
Answer: awkm is the systems and combat game designer and is mainly responsible with how the in game mechanics such as weapon functionality work. He will also be the person you can flame (pun intended) if flamers go from being broken in a bad way to being broken in an even worse way.
Question: Can we expect some weapons with unique mechanics like temporary engine disabling?
Answer: No, probably not - at least in the near future.
Question: The UI in the dev app has problems. What gives?
Answer: The UI was unfinished. We kind of broke it. It wasn't the focus of testing though, this is not going to be its end state.
Question: The harpoon. (It doesn't work properly)
Answer: A harpoon fix has been designed. It is a matter of implementation.
Question: There are problems with clouds and the functionality of captain's spot.
Answer: Clouds are tricky. Their hitboxes don't perfectly match with the graphics, and it's hard to fix. When the grey fog rolls in, it means you're in the cloud proper. We will look into this.
Question: People can join the ship as a 2nd gunner or a 2nd pilot which causes problems. Is there a fix incoming?
Answer: Matchmaking will fix this.
Question: Apparently there were 3 tiers of guns before: light, medium and heavy. The current weapons with "heavy" in their names are considered "medium" by some, including the GoIO wiki. Any plans on bringing the actual heavy weapons back?
Answer: Heavy weapons won't appear in skirmish. They would have been the size of a ship, soooo...
Question: Could you improve the social lists so you could flag people or add comments, or organize the lists somehow?
Answer: There will at least be functionality to make finding your clan easier, possibly also other improvements, in the future.
Question: Kitty decals for ship balloons!
Answer: Ship cosmetic customization is on its way!
Bonus information: Matt's favorite screwup in Guns of Icarus was the day they accidentally removed global chat.
Alright, that concludes the dev chat for 21th March! We'll be back next week, remember to tune in if you have time!
Hey there, time for the Q&A and announcements from this Friday's (March 28th) dev chat. A lot of questions this time!
Announcement: It can be a good idea to ask questions that were already answered before, and it definitely isn't frowned upon. Especially now that we have this thread. However, please avoid asking questions already posted here. Unless, maybe, they're about sky whales.
Announcement: Saturday, April 5th is probably the next date for testing matchmaking. Those of you who participated in the last test, there were problems. There have been a lot of improvements and fixes. It is awesome now.
Announcement: Please send bugs to feedback@musegames.com !
Question: Skywhales!
Answer: We put it in the last patch man! You gotta look closer man~. There is a skywhale constantly behind your character. Unfortunately, when you turn, it will still be behind you..
Question: Boarding.
Answer: No. (Refer to the FAQ)
Question: Could there be a button on the UI to direct people to the forums?
Answer: Yes, it's coming in the new UI, probably after PAX. We will also have links in the footer, etc. Modern UI design!
Question: ETA on the harpoon fix?
Answer: As soon as possible. However, the harpoon needs to make a comeback. When it makes a comeback, it's gonna be stupidly awesome.
Question: Harpoon mouseover text says it deals massive damage to hulls.
Answer: I (awkm) will fix that.
Question: How is the clan in-game system coming along?
Answer: It's coming along really well. A lot of the server side functionality exists, we are finalizing the UI and the user flow. We try to make it part of your social profile, and the latest test version I (awkm) saw looks really good. You can also chat with your clanmates with the new clan functionality. You will be able to see a lit of available clans, and click to apply to them. Recruiters can invite people to the clan, etc. For all the current clans, we will try to make sure that no clan tags get stolen with the new clan system.
Question: Are clans going to get voice or text chat?
Answer: Just text chat. With large clans, voice chat for everyone would not be a good idea.
Question: Any more details on the clan system? Maybe a way to advertise the clan in game?
Answer: If you are a good clan, you can get commendations (thumbs up) from players. There will also be leaderboards in the game. Basically, you win a lot of competitive games? You're on top of the leaderboard, and people will be able to apply to the clans through leaderboards. We will keep an eye on potential thumbs up abuse. There will not be an option to upload a clan logo - nor a ship decal - for various reasons. There will be an option to put links to teamspeak, clan pages, rules, etc. in the clan information page though. Let us know if you have more ideas.
Question: Will there be prerequisites to make a clan?
Answer: No. However, if you do not get five players to join the clan within five days, the clan will dissolve.
Question: How do you plan on contacting current clans that may not be active?
Answer: Probably by E-mail. We have peoples' E-mail addresses due to the registration system. We will also try to find the members manually if needed. We will do everything we can to ensure everyone gets their clan. Also, if the clan leader or the whole clan goes AWOL, we will probably uphold the leader's status or hold the clan in the database for an unspecified amount of days, but nothing is set in stone yet.
Question: Can you be in multiple clans?
Answer: No. It would make things confusing.
Question: Is there any way that Muse could ever make or moderate a subreddit?
Answer: There is already a subreddit, but it is not actively moderated by Muse. Awkm may have moderator privileges on it. It is currently not a high priority and it can be difficult to keep track of all places where our players post, but we may look into it in the future if needed.
Comment: Thanks for handling the steam comments well, especially negative ones. Too many devs are trying to censor them nowadays.
Answer: Yeah, we've seen that happen real time. Yeah, it's strange that there are developers that censor their customers' opinions. We accept and embrace criticism, and communicating even with the trolls can actually be good PR.
Question: Any word on how ship customization is coming?
Answer: Ship customization should be coming after PAX. For ship customization, you will get a figurehead to choose from, ship themes, etc. The royal and militant themes are currently being worked on. A lot of different decals are being worked on.
Question: Can you fix the weird lag issues with "ghost projectiles" and warping around the ship, or not being able to repair/buff components?
Answer: E-mail us with information. feedback@musegames.com
Question: Can we get the option to choose a different ship name depending on the layout, and possibly different costumes for different engineering/gunner/pilot loadouts?
Answer: That is a good idea. We will definitely take a look at it.
Question: What is on the ideas board? Can you share a picture of it?
Answer: There's a LOT of stuff there. It would take ages to tell you everything. No pictures, sorry! Examples: Adding iron sights for the zoom function of every gun, make chat names hyperlink-style, crew composition on hud.
Question: Balance. Is it a balance issue if some layouts (gat+mortar etc.) get used very often? Will the balance patches keep rolling in at the same pace?
Answer: Yes, it's definitely a balance issue. When it comes to usage percentages, they do not always mean that one gun/setup is clearly superior. We are trying to bring the light flak back in the game for instance. The balance changes will be slowing down, because there were a lot more balance issues in the beginning which were hard to test because there weren't enough players to test the numbers with. Today, there are a lot of different viable builds, and there are only a couple of "overused" builds. Viability is our goal. We're still working on gunner/engineer balance and such though.
Question: The opening title of the GoIO title is low quality.
Answer: It is already on the ideas board!
Question: Are we ever going to get those new ammo types that were in the dev app?
Answer: They are technically still there. We will re-activate them in the dev app at some point. We are trying to make the gunner more viable. Special, situational ammo types could help this.
Question: Will there be an option to control the brightness in game? Clouds and flares are exceptionally annoying.
Answer: It's complicated because of how our lightning system works. We are definitely going to take a look at it, and the spot outlines definitely need some work, regardless of what happens with the lightning system.
Question: Ladders, sometimes people get stuck. Can this be fixed?
Answer: We've looked at ladders on several occasions, and we will do it again. Send in reports and evidence of the bugs if you can. Latency may be to blame in some cases, that would be harder to fix.
Question: Can we change the color of our in-game hud, such as crosshairs and stuff?
Answer: That's on the ideas board already.
Question: Some of the collision boxes in game exceed the actual collision boxes in game when walking around guns. Can this be fixed?
Answer: We will take a look at it. It should be on the ideas board.
Question: Will we get dark maps, where we could use flares to see stuff?
Answer: We are getting towards that in co-op etc. It's not night time yet, but there will definitely be different lightning designs.
Question: Can the rangefinder be useful some day? Maybe it could highlight the components your gun is effective against?
Answer: An interesting idea. It should currently do what it's supposed to do. If you want to give feedback on what you would like it to do, feel free to share your ideas!
Question: A map that takes place in a lightning storm?
Answer: Lightning actually got shown off during some of the dev games. The audio for it will be worked on later this week, and lightning is already in co-op.
Question: A mermaid or a fairy figure head?
Answer: I cannot comment on any on that. We will be suprised together.
Dev comment: On co-op/adventure mode (re-check stream!): Two to three weeks ago, playing the co-op test build was painful. It's gotten a lot better. Right now, specifically we're trying to fine-tune the difficulty on certain things, especially considering there will be first-timers trying it out at PAX. Testing takes time since we need to play the same level over and over and over again.
Question: For the end of game information, can there be two performance sheets, one for engineering, one for gunning?
Answer: We're slowly starting to take a look at the end game screen after/along with matchmaking. We'll need to rework a lot of stuff. We have plans!
Question: Are you guys planning on promoting the sky league somehow?
Answer: We did some steam announcements and such before. We will definitely be talking about it on the Facebook page and such if we get to join the Sky League tomorrow on Saturday.
Question: Is there an easy way to access patch notes?
Answer: In the forums under News and Announcements (on the child board called Release Notes), there's a stack of patch notes.
Question: Any chance of a windowed full screen option?
Answer: I can't comment. I don't know.
Question: Could we as players be able to vote to increased or decrease the current lobby size if needed?
Answer: We're trying to roll out matchmaking, so there will be a timer until the match starts in the lobby, players will be able to vote to extend the timer to a certain extent, the match won't start if you don't have all captains when it reaches zero, etc.
Question: If you could have any ship or gun in the game what would it be? You don't have to care about balance.
awkm: It's sort of already in there. Not in the dev app though. We fixed the flamethrower. If you do the math, the flamethrower will be insane. It is just.. unbelievably crazy right now. It is awesome. It is exactly what the math says it should be. I like that a lot. Unfortunately I will have to change it. That makes me sad.
Bubbles: I would like a tesla gun. We also had a beam cannon, the "god lamp", which was really satisfying as you could just carve up a ship.
Keyvias: Red Alert 2, the Soviet flak guns that just fire in the air. Long range, balloon shredding craziness.
awkm: I just want an airstrike button.
Bubbles again: It's not really a gun, but a skill; the kamikaze skill. I activate the skill, I cannot turn it off, and I have 5 or 10 seconds to charge into enemy territory, then I will explode. If I hit a ship, it would do massive damage.
Question: Any ideas for making the engineer's job more complex? It seems their job is relatively simple compared to the pilots' and gunners' jobs. There is currently no way to separate a good engineer from a great engineer.
Answer: This might be a problem with healer classes in general. What is your playstyle as an engineer? How can we add preventative engineering mechanics, aside from chem spray? We currently only have reactive engineering regarding hull damage, so we could try to add preventative to that. In the first prototype we tested, there were a lot more status effects. It was really, really hard to play. We needed to simplify a lot of things, since it was really hard to keep up with what was happening on the ship. Currently, a good engineer mainly needs to prioritize, and evaluating that is hard.
Dev comment: Aprils fools idea: We will put in a costume called ghost, and people will have to find a way to activate it.
Question: Will there ever be changes to the squid's movement system? Now it drives like a tank, which makes it hard to circle around the enemies at high speed.
Answer: Strange, since I (awkm) seem to be able to circle around enemies. It is tank like since you are in the air - there is drift. Think about lowering the throttle, even putting it in reverse, for quick turns. If you go full throttle, you will steer like a tank, this is intended.
Question: In Wilson's notes, the reload speeds are very strange.
Answer: Strange. There have been strange things with Wilson's notes, we will definitely add it to the bugs list.
Question: Rough sales figures of Guns of Icarus online?
Answer: We are doing reasonably well. 333,000 copies sold.
Question: Can we expect a third paint slot for costumes, maybe something for pants? What about goggles?
Answer: Goggles has been talked about and it is being looked into. Costumes? Not so sure.
Question: Will we ever get a "healing" gun?
Answer: There was an idea of a "repair arm", but how would you dock next to a friendly ship, how would it work? We really did not want a "healing beam".
Question: Carronade AoE - is it working? Do burst rounds affect carronades?
Answer: We will try to fix it. If Watchmaker says it's not affected, it's not affected. (i.e. no AoE) The animation of the gatling is irrelevant, the raycast weapons function irrelevant of projectile animations.
