We have written this post to summarise current and recent development work and to give more information on launch content for the game as we are still a number of weeks from publishing the next Steam build.



We plan to start testing the next build (build 0.7.0) from next week and have scheduled support from Babel, Coatsink, and Double Fine to help with the identification, documentation, and fixing of a small number of persisting issues preventing the release of the next Steam build (and to facilitate and optimise testing cycles).

The 0.7.0 build has a glut of fixes and modifications made to optimise, standardise, and refine gameplay, menus, messaging, networking, matchmaking, menus and other UI, interstitial game screens (hint screens, loading screens, and score screens etc.), the following is a summary of key game content modifications in the coming 0.7.0 beta build with information on the work left to finish before the full launch of the game.



Online

The minimum limit for private online sessions was set at 4 players for testing when support for private online sessions was published in late September (concurrently with the move to Multiplay's server architecture), a limited number of issues surfaced with the matchmaking process during the Steam Free Weekend stress test and also in October but Coatsink have been aggressively addressing these issues and we expect to lower the minimum concurrent player limit for private sessions from a minimum of 4 to a minimum of 2 in the 0.7.0 beta build.

We expect to talk with Double Fine, Coatsink, Multiplay, and other partners later this month to make a full review of current server provision and capacity, please email support@boneloaf.co if you frequently have issues connecting to online servers in the 0.7.0 beta build (for reference support for private online sessions replaced the private server tool in September as the private server tool is not compatible with current client builds, support for the private server tool will be reviewed later this year).



Localisation

The game has been localised for 7 languages, the supported languages in the full release build are Brazilian Portuguese, English (UK), US English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, (the UK English and US English localisations share most strings) with a small number exceptions that we expect to have localisations for soon, support for other languages will be added post launch. For reference we currently expect localisation support to be the 0.7.0 beta build and we will post information on other planned localisations to the FAQ section of the gangbeasts.game site as we confirm support.

Input

We're currently working on localisations for input references (for keyboard, mouse, and officially supported game controllers) but still need to standardise the UI for input mapping sequences with the rest of the game. The lack of support for mapping mouse button inputs is a temporary issue and we current expect this to be fixed in the next 0.7.0 beta build.

For reference support for VR touch controls is planned to come with full VR support next year.

Climbing

We have made multiple passes on the climbing implementation and supporting geometry to make climbing less difficult and more immediate in recent builds in preparation for a last pass on stages to add specific support for complex structures (examples of complex structures are the small billboard structures on roof, the buoy structure on buoy, the truck body work on trucks, and the turbine on vents), for reference some section of complex will have a lower targeting priority than expected until this work is finished.



Spawning

We need to set explicit spawn patterns for game mode configurations to balance gameplay and modify patterns to fit the selected game logic, specifically we need to implement set spawn patterns, for example gangs spawn patterns need to be on opposing sides of the selected stage (in 2 vs 2, 3 vs 3, or 4 vs 4 gang mode games).

Stages

We have finished work on the geometry for launch stages (excluding a small number of superficial modifications and props), stages identified as launch stages have had passes to optimise performance, standardise colour schemes, and address gameplay issues, the stages with significant modifications made to geometry are billboard (new billboard sign and catwalk structure), chutes (lowered catwalk and modified pipe works), grind (new meat slurry implementation, new pipework, new articulated grinder implementation, and new catwalk), subway (new scene with modified hanging lights, staircase, prop, and platform geometry) and trucks (new truck geometry and some minor cosmetic modifications).



Camera

We have transitioned to Cinemachine procedural camera framework and are currently working to improve support for user modification of the single player camera, group tracking, geometry clipping, camera bias, lerping, and dampening etc. but are seeing significant improvements over the previous camera system. We are also working to standardise the presentation of player information and the post stack implementation (specifically the default parameters for graphics setting).

For reference the issues with settings and resetting inputs, graphics, and other menu settings is being addressed and is expected to be fixed in the 0.7.0 build.

Modes

We are working on minimising the steps and time it takes to configure and start game modes and game sessions, and on exposing more support for game mode customisation, we are also experimenting with a longer window for identifying draw states. We are also working on making character, costume, and gang / team selection less confusing in the game mode configurations screens.



Costumes

We have been working on exposing more costume customisation parts and the UI and flow of the costume customisation screen, we have also been working to fix physics stability issues and gameplay exploits associated with specific costume parts. We have also exposed an additional four character colours and made multiple passes to improve colour and colour tints (and minimise clashes with the colours for non-character geometry).

Thank you

Thank you for staying with us we push to get to the full launch of the game, we're working on some fun holiday content for next month, and are excited that the full game will be out soon.

If you have questions, please comment on this post or Tweet @boneloaf. We plan to make a post with information on testing for the 0.7.0 build later this month with any additional information we can give on the next builds and full release content.

We have written this post to summarise current and recent development work and to give more information on launch content for the game as we are still a number of weeks from publishing the next Steam build.



We plan to start testing the next build (build 0.7.0) from next week and have scheduled support from Babel, Coatsink, and Double Fine to help with the identification, documentation, and fixing of a small number of persisting issues preventing the release of the next Steam build (and to facilitate and optimise testing cycles).

The 0.7.0 build has a glut of fixes and modifications made to optimise, standardise, and refine gameplay, menus, messaging, networking, matchmaking, menus and other UI, interstitial game screens (hint screens, loading screens, and score screens etc.), the following is a summary of key game content modifications in the coming 0.7.0 beta build with information on the work left to finish before the full launch of the game.



Online

The minimum limit for private online sessions was set at 4 players for testing when support for private online sessions was published in late September (concurrently with the move to Multiplay's server architecture), a limited number of issues surfaced with the matchmaking process during the Steam Free Weekend stress test and also in October but Coatsink have been aggressively addressing these issues and we expect to lower the minimum concurrent player limit for private sessions from a minimum of 4 to a minimum of 2 in the 0.7.0 beta build.

We expect to talk with Double Fine, Coatsink, Multiplay, and other partners later this month to make a full review of current server provision and capacity, please email support@boneloaf.co if you frequently have issues connecting to online servers in the 0.7.0 beta build (for reference support for private online sessions replaced the private server tool in September as the private server tool is not compatible with current client builds, support for the private server tool will be reviewed later this year).



Localisation

The game has been localised for 7 languages, the supported languages in the full release build are Brazilian Portuguese, English (UK), US English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, (the UK English and US English localisations share most strings) with a small number exceptions that we expect to have localisations for soon, support for other languages will be added post launch. For reference we currently expect localisation support to be the 0.7.0 beta build and we will post information on other planned localisations to the FAQ section of the gangbeasts.game site as we confirm support.

Input

We're currently working on localisations for input references (for keyboard, mouse, and officially supported game controllers) but still need to standardise the UI for input mapping sequences with the rest of the game. The lack of support for mapping mouse button inputs is a temporary issue and we current expect this to be fixed in the next 0.7.0 beta build.

For reference support for VR touch controls is planned to come with full VR support next year.

Climbing

We have made multiple passes on the climbing implementation and supporting geometry to make climbing less difficult and more immediate in recent builds in preparation for a last pass on stages to add specific support for complex structures (examples of complex structures are the small billboard structures on roof, the buoy structure on buoy, the truck body work on trucks, and the turbine on vents), for reference some section of complex will have a lower targeting priority than expected until this work is finished.



Spawning

We need to set explicit spawn patterns for game mode configurations to balance gameplay and modify patterns to fit the selected game logic, specifically we need to implement set spawn patterns, for example gangs spawn patterns need to be on opposing sides of the selected stage (in 2 vs 2, 3 vs 3, or 4 vs 4 gang mode games).

Stages

We have finished work on the geometry for launch stages (excluding a small number of superficial modifications and props), stages identified as launch stages have had passes to optimise performance, standardise colour schemes, and address gameplay issues, the stages with significant modifications made to geometry are billboard (new billboard sign and catwalk structure), chutes (lowered catwalk and modified pipe works), grind (new meat slurry implementation, new pipework, new articulated grinder implementation, and new catwalk), subway (new scene with modified hanging lights, staircase, prop, and platform geometry) and trucks (new truck geometry and some minor cosmetic modifications).



Camera

We have transitioned to Cinemachine procedural camera framework and are currently working to improve support for user modification of the single player camera, group tracking, geometry clipping, camera bias, lerping, and dampening etc. but are seeing significant improvements over the previous camera system. We are also working to standardise the presentation of player information and the post stack implementation (specifically the default parameters for graphics setting).

For reference the issues with settings and resetting inputs, graphics, and other menu settings is being addressed and is expected to be fixed in the 0.7.0 build.

Modes

We are working on minimising the steps and time it takes to configure and start game modes and game sessions, and on exposing more support for game mode customisation, we are also experimenting with a longer window for identifying draw states. We are also working on making character, costume, and gang / team selection less confusing in the game mode configurations screens.



Costumes

We have been working on exposing more costume customisation parts and the UI and flow of the costume customisation screen, we have also been working to fix physics stability issues and gameplay exploits associated with specific costume parts. We have also exposed an additional four character colours and made multiple passes to improve colour and colour tints (and minimise clashes with the colours for non-character geometry).

Thank you

Thank you for staying with us we push to get to the full launch of the game, we're working on some fun holiday content for next month, and are excited that the full game will be out soon.

If you have questions, please comment on this post or Tweet @boneloaf. We plan to make a post with information on testing for the 0.7.0 build later this month with any additional information we can give on the next builds and full release content.

Update at 20:30 BST on Friday 21 September

We've been working with Coatsink and Multiplay for the last 24 hours to fix server performance and matchmaking issues identified in the first span of servers tests. There are still some minor issues and annoyances with the process for starting online game sessions but the key issues compromising the stability and performance of the matchmaking service has been addressed and patched.

The matchmaking service has been taken down in the last 30 minutes for some minor fixes but is coming back online currently and should be availanble for a second batch of stress testing in the next 10. Connecting to the current online multiplayer implementation requires updating to the 0.6.2 build.

Sorry that we were not able to provision servers in less time and the interruption in access to online games, we don't have the volume of players using the unstable builds to fully stress test the new networking scheme and needed to publish the server testing builds as default Steam builds to make testing valid but we're now close to having a stable and scalable hosting platform that supports both public and private game sessions and can support other online game modes.

Update at 3:20 BST on Thursday 21 September

Coatsink have identified the issue as a deadlock in one of the client threads when it receives a high volume of requests; the issue has been isolated to an authentication process.

The matchmaker is available currently but it will continue to ignore some request until Coatsink can finishing patching in the morning (the time in the UK is approx. 3.20am), apologies for the interruption, this is an issue we didn't identify in internal testing or testing in the "unstable" build as we could not manufacture the volume of concurrent users.

We will post an update to this post as soon as we have an estimated time for the second stress test (we currently expect the second stress test to require downloading a new client build, Steam should prompt you to download when this build is available).

Update at 23:30 BST on Thursday 21 September

Coatsink have identified a single issue to fix before we can push the matchmaking update, we will post more information soon.

Update at 20:25 BST on Thursday 21 September

Coatsink have temporarily taken the matchmaking server offline to patch some issues identified in the first batch of tests, will post an ETA for when they are back online soon.

Patch notes for the Gang Beasts 0.6.1 beta build and Steam Free Weekend

Since the Gang Beasts online beta in August 2016, Boneloaf have been working with a small team at Coatsink to finish the content and systems for the full game, a significant part of this work has been to transition to Multiplay’s dedicated game hosting solution and Hybrid Cloud Orchestration technology to give official Gang Beasts servers a scalable, low-latency, managed hosting platform maintained by a specialist team of game server experts.



We have published the Gang Beasts 0.6.1 Early Access beta to Steam in the last hour and have made the game temporarily free on Early Access as a Steam Free Weekend game from 10am PDT / 6pm BST on Thursday 21 September to 1pm PDT / 9pm BST on Sunday 24 September to stress test the new server architecture and networking scheme and support for private sessions on official servers.

Please see the post at beef.city/060 for information and a changlog listing the key modifications and fixes in the 0.6.0 unstable build. For more information on Multiplay please see the Press press release at beef.city/multiplay

For reference we expect to have some inconsistencies with server availability and stability in the next hours as we transition to Multiplay's servers and scale server capacity.

Update at 20:30 BST on Friday 21 September

We've been working with Coatsink and Multiplay for the last 24 hours to fix server performance and matchmaking issues identified in the first span of servers tests. There are still some minor issues and annoyances with the process for starting online game sessions but the key issues compromising the stability and performance of the matchmaking service has been addressed and patched.

The matchmaking service has been taken down in the last 30 minutes for some minor fixes but is coming back online currently and should be availanble for a second batch of stress testing in the next 10. Connecting to the current online multiplayer implementation requires updating to the 0.6.2 build.

Sorry that we were not able to provision servers in less time and the interruption in access to online games, we don't have the volume of players using the unstable builds to fully stress test the new networking scheme and needed to publish the server testing builds as default Steam builds to make testing valid but we're now close to having a stable and scalable hosting platform that supports both public and private game sessions and can support other online game modes.

Update at 3:20 BST on Thursday 21 September

Coatsink have identified the issue as a deadlock in one of the client threads when it receives a high volume of requests; the issue has been isolated to an authentication process.

The matchmaker is available currently but it will continue to ignore some request until Coatsink can finishing patching in the morning (the time in the UK is approx. 3.20am), apologies for the interruption, this is an issue we didn't identify in internal testing or testing in the "unstable" build as we could not manufacture the volume of concurrent users.

We will post an update to this post as soon as we have an estimated time for the second stress test (we currently expect the second stress test to require downloading a new client build, Steam should prompt you to download when this build is available).

Update at 23:30 BST on Thursday 21 September

Coatsink have identified a single issue to fix before we can push the matchmaking update, we will post more information soon.

Update at 20:25 BST on Thursday 21 September

Coatsink have temporarily taken the matchmaking server offline to patch some issues identified in the first batch of tests, will post an ETA for when they are back online soon.

Patch notes for the Gang Beasts 0.6.1 beta build and Steam Free Weekend

Since the Gang Beasts online beta in August 2016, Boneloaf have been working with a small team at Coatsink to finish the content and systems for the full game, a significant part of this work has been to transition to Multiplay’s dedicated game hosting solution and Hybrid Cloud Orchestration technology to give official Gang Beasts servers a scalable, low-latency, managed hosting platform maintained by a specialist team of game server experts.



We have published the Gang Beasts 0.6.1 Early Access beta to Steam in the last hour and have made the game temporarily free on Early Access as a Steam Free Weekend game from 10am PDT / 6pm BST on Thursday 21 September to 1pm PDT / 9pm BST on Sunday 24 September to stress test the new server architecture and networking scheme and support for private sessions on official servers.

Please see the post at beef.city/060 for information and a changlog listing the key modifications and fixes in the 0.6.0 unstable build. For more information on Multiplay please see the Press press release at beef.city/multiplay

For reference we expect to have some inconsistencies with server availability and stability in the next hours as we transition to Multiplay's servers and scale server capacity.

Since the last Gang Beasts build was published in July we have been working with Coatsink to migrate the official Gang Beasts servers to a scalable low latency hosting solution, we have also made a series of significant optimisations and modifications to progress the performance and stability of the matchmaking , UI, and character systems. We have been testing potential 0.6.0 builds with Coatsink, Double Fine, and support from a QA team at Babel since the start of September, the matchmaking system, new server architecture, networking scheme, and costume fixes are at a stage where we need to test at scale to identify issues that are difficult to find when testing in the office.



Currently we are working on standardising the optimised UI, localisations for French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese (support for other languages is planned), costume fixes, post processing, achievements, a modified implementation of the current camera system (built on Unity Cinemachine procedural camera system), and additional game modes (the 0.6.0 unstable build has the first public implementation of the local gang game mode, the gang mode is not supported online currently).

The 0.6.0 build as an unstable beta with this post for testing and patching before it can replace the current default Steam build (build 0.5.7a), to test the 0.6.0 build right-click on the game name on the Steam library page and select 'Properties' from the dialogue window that opens, from this window select the 'BETAS' tab then the "unstable" option from the dropdown menu (the menu labelled 'Select the beta you would like to opt into:’).

Please note the 0.6.0 unstable build has been explicitly made for stress testing servers and only has support for the melee (local and online) and gang game modes (local only) and has some UI settings and other content disabled.

We are testing stage wins in preference to stage rounds in the 0.6.0, the implementation is similar to the previous implementation but a new stage is loaded after each stage win (currently the win parameter is set to 2 wins for public online games and limited to 1-4 wins in local and private online games.

The key modifications and fixes made in the 0.6.0 unstable Early Access beta build are:

• added a force that applies when releasing grabbed characters and objects (the force is applied in the same velocity vector as the released character or object (making throws more forceful)
  
• added an limited input deadzone to mouse input (to ignore small mouse movements and minimise conflicts with other input sources)
  
• added contextual support scripts to dynamic objects to improve stability, and character and object interactions (dragging, lifting, hanging etc.)
  
• configured stages to use the modified targeting system (significantly lowering the number of hidden colliders in each scene)
  
• fixed an exploit where devices with support for rapid-fire buttons gamed the concussion system
  
• fixed an issue that erratically applied movement forces when jumping from climbing states
  
• fixed an issue where the grab system could fail to reset temporary joints in some contexts
  
• fixed an issue with character sliding movement that could lock the character in an endless sliding state in some contexts
  
• fixed an issue with concussion length scaling
  
• fixed an issue with force and direction calculations (to make glancing blows less frequent and increase the number of successful blows)
  
• fixed an issue with the character system that gave NaN and INF errors (triggering a fatal exception)
  
• modified force parameters for the character support geometry increased physics stability
  
• modified inertia tensor properties for character body parts to stabilise character on character interactions (and other interactions)
  
• modified physics calculations for damage to account for optimisations to the character movement system
  
• modified score sequence to render on stage end with background blurring (currently implementation disables input soon after the win state is met, this will be reviewed in a coming build)
  
• modified secondary character moves (diving headbutts, dropkicks, and sliding kicks) to carry more damage, failing to land a more forceful move can concuss the assailant temporarily
  
• modified the character costume colour cycle sequence from yellow, green, blue, red etc. to red, blue, green, yellow etc.
  
• modified the character movement system to optimise performance and standardise mass, drag, and force parameters
  
• modified the character systems to remove tags use and string comparisons (to reduce the number of game object in scenes and improve scene loading times)
  
• modified the characters arms configurations to minimise contexts where arms can get stuck behind characters heads
  
• modified the hoisting implementation for climbing to inherit the direction of character movement
  
• modified the pause menu to limit input to the device the menu is invoked from
  
• modified ropes on the ring stage to stabilise interactions with characters and objects
  
• modified the targeting system to remove the need for assistive geometry and set hierarchical priorities for body parts, objects and surfaces (assistive geometry is still used for specific contexts)

The key issue with the 0.6.0 unstable Early Access beta build are (this list will be updated as we collate information on issues):

• camera rotation in game menus can over rotate in some contexts
  
• message strings can clip stage and character geometry
  
• parameters for rope break tolerances need modifying to make breaking
  less difficult
  
• escalation patterns for some stage need modifying to improve gameplay

Since the last Gang Beasts build was published in July we have been working with Coatsink to migrate the official Gang Beasts servers to a scalable low latency hosting solution, we have also made a series of significant optimisations and modifications to progress the performance and stability of the matchmaking , UI, and character systems. We have been testing potential 0.6.0 builds with Coatsink, Double Fine, and support from a QA team at Babel since the start of September, the matchmaking system, new server architecture, networking scheme, and costume fixes are at a stage where we need to test at scale to identify issues that are difficult to find when testing in the office.



Currently we are working on standardising the optimised UI, localisations for French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese (support for other languages is planned), costume fixes, post processing, achievements, a modified implementation of the current camera system (built on Unity Cinemachine procedural camera system), and additional game modes (the 0.6.0 unstable build has the first public implementation of the local gang game mode, the gang mode is not supported online currently).

The 0.6.0 build as an unstable beta with this post for testing and patching before it can replace the current default Steam build (build 0.5.7a), to test the 0.6.0 build right-click on the game name on the Steam library page and select 'Properties' from the dialogue window that opens, from this window select the 'BETAS' tab then the "unstable" option from the dropdown menu (the menu labelled 'Select the beta you would like to opt into:’).

Please note the 0.6.0 unstable build has been explicitly made for stress testing servers and only has support for the melee (local and online) and gang game modes (local only) and has some UI settings and other content disabled.

We are testing stage wins in preference to stage rounds in the 0.6.0, the implementation is similar to the previous implementation but a new stage is loaded after each stage win (currently the win parameter is set to 2 wins for public online games and limited to 1-4 wins in local and private online games.

The key modifications and fixes made in the 0.6.0 unstable Early Access beta build are:

• added a force that applies when releasing grabbed characters and objects (the force is applied in the same velocity vector as the released character or object (making throws more forceful)
  
• added an limited input deadzone to mouse input (to ignore small mouse movements and minimise conflicts with other input sources)
  
• added contextual support scripts to dynamic objects to improve stability, and character and object interactions (dragging, lifting, hanging etc.)
  
• configured stages to use the modified targeting system (significantly lowering the number of hidden colliders in each scene)
  
• fixed an exploit where devices with support for rapid-fire buttons gamed the concussion system
  
• fixed an issue that erratically applied movement forces when jumping from climbing states
  
• fixed an issue where the grab system could fail to reset temporary joints in some contexts
  
• fixed an issue with character sliding movement that could lock the character in an endless sliding state in some contexts
  
• fixed an issue with concussion length scaling
  
• fixed an issue with force and direction calculations (to make glancing blows less frequent and increase the number of successful blows)
  
• fixed an issue with the character system that gave NaN and INF errors (triggering a fatal exception)
  
• modified force parameters for the character support geometry increased physics stability
  
• modified inertia tensor properties for character body parts to stabilise character on character interactions (and other interactions)
  
• modified physics calculations for damage to account for optimisations to the character movement system
  
• modified score sequence to render on stage end with background blurring (currently implementation disables input soon after the win state is met, this will be reviewed in a coming build)
  
• modified secondary character moves (diving headbutts, dropkicks, and sliding kicks) to carry more damage, failing to land a more forceful move can concuss the assailant temporarily
  
• modified the character costume colour cycle sequence from yellow, green, blue, red etc. to red, blue, green, yellow etc.
  
• modified the character movement system to optimise performance and standardise mass, drag, and force parameters
  
• modified the character systems to remove tags use and string comparisons (to reduce the number of game object in scenes and improve scene loading times)
  
• modified the characters arms configurations to minimise contexts where arms can get stuck behind characters heads
  
• modified the hoisting implementation for climbing to inherit the direction of character movement
  
• modified the pause menu to limit input to the device the menu is invoked from
  
• modified ropes on the ring stage to stabilise interactions with characters and objects
  
• modified the targeting system to remove the need for assistive geometry and set hierarchical priorities for body parts, objects and surfaces (assistive geometry is still used for specific contexts)

The key issue with the 0.6.0 unstable Early Access beta build are (this list will be updated as we collate information on issues):

• camera rotation in game menus can over rotate in some contexts
  
• message strings can clip stage and character geometry
  
• parameters for rope break tolerances need modifying to make breaking
  less difficult
  
• escalation patterns for some stage need modifying to improve gameplay

In the hours immediately following the distribution of the 0.5.7 Gang Beasts Early Access build (publish on Thursday 29 June) we identified some performance issues on the Gang Beasts public servers, these issues escalated on over the subsequent days on populated servers triggering administration scripts to force server instances to restart and abruptly end game sessions on servers with the issue (the administration scripts are necessary to stop servers from terminally failing).

On Monday 3 July at approx 8pm BST we made the decision to take down the servers to address and patch for stability issues (and some matchmaking and connection issues) and have subsequently made multiple tests with a series of client and server builds. We have publicised the 0.5.7p1 build concurrently with this post and have provisions number of public servers at for testing.

Sorry for the protracted unavailability of public servers this week, together with Coatsink we have tried to maintain a high level of availability for public servers for the Early Access community by aggressively patching servers but were unfortunately not able to avoid taking public servers offline in this instance.

Other Information

For reference the key issue compromising the headless Linux server builds (that run on AWS architecture) was a severe memory leak that made disconnections, stage loading failures, and other stability issues more frequent until server administration scripts triggered the server to restart.

We were not able to reproduce the memory leak in testing before publishing the 0.5.7 Early Access build and the associated public server builds last Monday (the issue was only identified when public servers were populated with a high volume of concurrent players).

For reference the 0.5.7p1 builds is a separate branch to the coming 0.5.8 build and has no modifications from the 0.5.7 Early Access build (other than being built from Unity 0.5.6p1 not 5.6.2f1 and having online support for the incinerator stage temporarily disabled for this build).

In the hours immediately following the distribution of the 0.5.7 Gang Beasts Early Access build (publish on Thursday 29 June) we identified some performance issues on the Gang Beasts public servers, these issues escalated on over the subsequent days on populated servers triggering administration scripts to force server instances to restart and abruptly end game sessions on servers with the issue (the administration scripts are necessary to stop servers from terminally failing).

On Monday 3 July at approx 8pm BST we made the decision to take down the servers to address and patch for stability issues (and some matchmaking and connection issues) and have subsequently made multiple tests with a series of client and server builds. We have publicised the 0.5.7p1 build concurrently with this post and have provisions number of public servers at for testing.

Sorry for the protracted unavailability of public servers this week, together with Coatsink we have tried to maintain a high level of availability for public servers for the Early Access community by aggressively patching servers but were unfortunately not able to avoid taking public servers offline in this instance.

Other Information

For reference the key issue compromising the headless Linux server builds (that run on AWS architecture) was a severe memory leak that made disconnections, stage loading failures, and other stability issues more frequent until server administration scripts triggered the server to restart.

We were not able to reproduce the memory leak in testing before publishing the 0.5.7 Early Access build and the associated public server builds last Monday (the issue was only identified when public servers were populated with a high volume of concurrent players).

For reference the 0.5.7p1 builds is a separate branch to the coming 0.5.8 build and has no modifications from the 0.5.7 Early Access build (other than being built from Unity 0.5.6p1 not 5.6.2f1 and having online support for the incinerator stage temporarily disabled for this build).

[UPDATE] For information on the current server unavailability see the pinned post at http://steamcommunity.com/app/285900/discussions/0/1368380934285718547/

Patch notes for the Gang Beasts 0.5.7 beta

In June we have continued working with Coatsink to address performance and stability issues and other annoyances, part of this work can be tested in the 0.5.7 Early Access build and associated server configurations (published with this post). The key patches and optimisations in the 0.5.7 build are specific fixes for the character distortion and freezing glitches introduced in the transition to Unity 5.6 (and other physics stability issues), a significant decreases in CPU use, numerous networking and matchmaking stability fixes, and reduced build sizes.



Other work included in the 0.5.7 build includes modified and optimised city geometry for the background of exterior stages (only in the blimp and girders stages currently), modified and optimised geometry for the girders, incinerator, and wheel stages, Rick and Morty character costumes and multiple new character costume parts [1], large enemy AI body types for enemy AI (in the current waves stages), an improved AI for the waves game mode (AI aggression and throwing still need additional work but can be tested in the grind and incinerator stages), and a modified colour tinting system to support more variation for costume customisations.
https://youtu.be/2T26tXGRhCY

Other work that is partially exposed in the 0.5.7 build includes the implementation of a custom atlasing system for scene optimisation (this is the last stage in the stage optimisation workflow, only the gondola and wheel stages use this system in the 0.5.7 build but the other stages are being moved to the atlas system currently), a custom buoyancy system (only exposed on the wheel stage in the 0.5.7 build for testing but will be moved to the other stages that have water or meat paste volumes when the current buoyancy parameters have been modified and standardised).

Other work not exposed in the 0.5.7 build includes modified and optimised geometry for the alley, grind, towers, and roof stages, optimisations to the character and prop physics implementations to significantly lower the frequency of physics calculations made per frame and stabilise collisions.
https://youtu.be/RuIpfufwZEM
14 of the 16 public stages support online in 0.5.7 build, the key priorities for July are to execute the current QA schedule, finish the last modifications and optimisations and add online support for the chutes and towers stages, finish the last modifications and optimisations for the alley and roof stages, make a last pass to standardise character, prop physics optimisations and climbing, fixes and improvements to matchmaking, game modes, UI, localisations, and post processing.

The list of modifications and fixes made in the 0.5.7 Early Access beta build are:

• added modified and optimised city geometry to the blimp and girders stages
  
• added 17 new costume customisation parts and cat, panda, penguin, and rhinoceros kigurumi costumes
  
• added food production worker 1, food production worker 2, boiler suit, and security guard costume presets for enemy AI on the grind and incinerator stages
  
• added large character body types for enemy AI in waves mode
  
• added modified and optimised geometry for the girders stage (with local and online support)
  
• added modified and optimised geometry for the incinerator (with local and online support)
  
• added modified and optimised geometry for the wheel stage (with local and online support)
  
• added multiple stage escalations to the wheel stage
  
• fixed a significant physics issue that made character geometry distort and freeze
  
• fixed an issue that stops clients from joining servers if they had previously disconnected from a server in the same game session
  
• fixed an issue where characters could pass into the grinders on the grind stage without entering the concussive state
  
• fixed an issue with trains SFX ignoring the game SFX volume settings
  
• modified and optimised city geometry to blimp and girders stage
  
• modified concussion SFX to only trigger if characters are subjected to a concussive blow (concussion SFX should not trigger for falling and sinking hazards)
  
• modified the colour system to support tinting (to support costume customisations variations)
  
• modified gondola and wheel stages to use a custom atlasing system for performance (this work is the last batch of planned optimisations for the stage geometry)
  
• modified server configuration to automatically restart less frequently (restarts is necessary for clearing memory)
  
• modified some trigger volume tests to optimise performance and make detect specific character interactions and events (for the achievement implementation)
  
• modified the climbing implementations for online and local games to standardise
  
• modified and optimised UI for the character selection and character customisations screens
  
• reduced memory usage
  
• reduced the game file size by approximately 40% / 1.25GB
  
• removed some redundant code from the client for optimisation
  
• replaced buoyancy with optimised custom implementation (objects float before sinking. characters float but lose stamina, concussed characters sink)
  
• temporarily removed the game over messaging for local single melee player games
  
• temporarily removed support for the waves mode for the grind stage

The list of key issues identified with the 0.5.7 Early Access beta build are:

• issues with camera on wheel stage (we are working on implementing support for the new Unity Cinemachine 2.0 CinemachineTargetGroup to improve the tracking of multiple characters)
  
• issues with colliders on the pier on the wheel stage (online only)
  
• costume parts can show through other costume parts in some context with some costume configurations
  
• the implementation for the bridge deformation in vents needs modifications to stabilise the bridge
  
• water implementation is not standardised
  
• modified and optimised Beef City geometry is not standardised for external
  stages
  
• large enemy AI characters can get stuck in doors on the grind and incinerator stages

[1] the full list of costume parts FastFood_foodHygieneForageHat, FoodProduction_01_foodHygieneHat, FoodProduction_01_foodHygieneJacketWithGloves, FoodProduction_01_foodHygieneShoes, Garbage_hiVisVest
Garbage_militaryCap, GroundsKeeper_overallsBottom, GroundsKeeper_overallsTop, Paremedic_bumbag, costume_tophat, costume_fez, costume_sombrero, costume_denimVest, costume_denimjacket, IceCreamVendor_iceCreamManShorts, Construction_hardHat, and Construction_dungarees

[UPDATE] For information on the current server unavailability see the pinned post at http://steamcommunity.com/app/285900/discussions/0/1368380934285718547/

Patch notes for the Gang Beasts 0.5.7 beta

In June we have continued working with Coatsink to address performance and stability issues and other annoyances, part of this work can be tested in the 0.5.7 Early Access build and associated server configurations (published with this post). The key patches and optimisations in the 0.5.7 build are specific fixes for the character distortion and freezing glitches introduced in the transition to Unity 5.6 (and other physics stability issues), a significant decreases in CPU use, numerous networking and matchmaking stability fixes, and reduced build sizes.



Other work included in the 0.5.7 build includes modified and optimised city geometry for the background of exterior stages (only in the blimp and girders stages currently), modified and optimised geometry for the girders, incinerator, and wheel stages, Rick and Morty character costumes and multiple new character costume parts [1], large enemy AI body types for enemy AI (in the current waves stages), an improved AI for the waves game mode (AI aggression and throwing still need additional work but can be tested in the grind and incinerator stages), and a modified colour tinting system to support more variation for costume customisations.
https://youtu.be/2T26tXGRhCY

Other work that is partially exposed in the 0.5.7 build includes the implementation of a custom atlasing system for scene optimisation (this is the last stage in the stage optimisation workflow, only the gondola and wheel stages use this system in the 0.5.7 build but the other stages are being moved to the atlas system currently), a custom buoyancy system (only exposed on the wheel stage in the 0.5.7 build for testing but will be moved to the other stages that have water or meat paste volumes when the current buoyancy parameters have been modified and standardised).

Other work not exposed in the 0.5.7 build includes modified and optimised geometry for the alley, grind, towers, and roof stages, optimisations to the character and prop physics implementations to significantly lower the frequency of physics calculations made per frame and stabilise collisions.
https://youtu.be/RuIpfufwZEM
14 of the 16 public stages support online in 0.5.7 build, the key priorities for July are to execute the current QA schedule, finish the last modifications and optimisations and add online support for the chutes and towers stages, finish the last modifications and optimisations for the alley and roof stages, make a last pass to standardise character, prop physics optimisations and climbing, fixes and improvements to matchmaking, game modes, UI, localisations, and post processing.

The list of modifications and fixes made in the 0.5.7 Early Access beta build are:

• added modified and optimised city geometry to the blimp and girders stages
  
• added 17 new costume customisation parts and cat, panda, penguin, and rhinoceros kigurumi costumes
  
• added food production worker 1, food production worker 2, boiler suit, and security guard costume presets for enemy AI on the grind and incinerator stages
  
• added large character body types for enemy AI in waves mode
  
• added modified and optimised geometry for the girders stage (with local and online support)
  
• added modified and optimised geometry for the incinerator (with local and online support)
  
• added modified and optimised geometry for the wheel stage (with local and online support)
  
• added multiple stage escalations to the wheel stage
  
• fixed a significant physics issue that made character geometry distort and freeze
  
• fixed an issue that stops clients from joining servers if they had previously disconnected from a server in the same game session
  
• fixed an issue where characters could pass into the grinders on the grind stage without entering the concussive state
  
• fixed an issue with trains SFX ignoring the game SFX volume settings
  
• modified and optimised city geometry to blimp and girders stage
  
• modified concussion SFX to only trigger if characters are subjected to a concussive blow (concussion SFX should not trigger for falling and sinking hazards)
  
• modified the colour system to support tinting (to support costume customisations variations)
  
• modified gondola and wheel stages to use a custom atlasing system for performance (this work is the last batch of planned optimisations for the stage geometry)
  
• modified server configuration to automatically restart less frequently (restarts is necessary for clearing memory)
  
• modified some trigger volume tests to optimise performance and make detect specific character interactions and events (for the achievement implementation)
  
• modified the climbing implementations for online and local games to standardise
  
• modified and optimised UI for the character selection and character customisations screens
  
• reduced memory usage
  
• reduced the game file size by approximately 40% / 1.25GB
  
• removed some redundant code from the client for optimisation
  
• replaced buoyancy with optimised custom implementation (objects float before sinking. characters float but lose stamina, concussed characters sink)
  
• temporarily removed the game over messaging for local single melee player games
  
• temporarily removed support for the waves mode for the grind stage

The list of key issues identified with the 0.5.7 Early Access beta build are:

• issues with camera on wheel stage (we are working on implementing support for the new Unity Cinemachine 2.0 CinemachineTargetGroup to improve the tracking of multiple characters)
  
• issues with colliders on the pier on the wheel stage (online only)
  
• costume parts can show through other costume parts in some context with some costume configurations
  
• the implementation for the bridge deformation in vents needs modifications to stabilise the bridge
  
• water implementation is not standardised
  
• modified and optimised Beef City geometry is not standardised for external
  stages
  
• large enemy AI characters can get stuck in doors on the grind and incinerator stages

[1] the full list of costume parts FastFood_foodHygieneForageHat, FoodProduction_01_foodHygieneHat, FoodProduction_01_foodHygieneJacketWithGloves, FoodProduction_01_foodHygieneShoes, Garbage_hiVisVest
Garbage_militaryCap, GroundsKeeper_overallsBottom, GroundsKeeper_overallsTop, Paremedic_bumbag, costume_tophat, costume_fez, costume_sombrero, costume_denimVest, costume_denimjacket, IceCreamVendor_iceCreamManShorts, Construction_hardHat, and Construction_dungarees