Hello Everyone!

Today we’re bringing you an update for Besiege, V0.2, which brings the game to the Unity 5 engine.

In addition to Unity 5 we have added a new block into the game called a Pin. The pin can be used to anchor the block it’s attached to, preventing it from moving until you press its hotkey.
We’ve also introduced a new god tool, Infinite Ammo, which prevents flamethrowers from running out of fuel and allows cannons to be fired an unlimited number of times. You can now also place stuff on Grabbers!

Unity 5 brings with it significant improvements to performance as well as some changes to the game’s physics which, on the whole, make for a more stable experience. Our testing has shown up to a 400% increase in performance on some machines!

We put together a quick video to compare the difference in performance between Unity 4 and 5:
https://youtu.be/hYuPNmSnrB4

Unfortunately, due to the engine’s current state, there are some bugs which we haven’t been able to fix or workaround. Whilst these issues are currently unfixable, we will endeavour to speak with Unity and hopefully they will be able to offer a solution in future versions of the engine. We’ve thought long and hard about whether to release Unity 5 in its current state, but we’ve believe the performance gains outweigh the downsides.

The two biggest issues we have named “Wobbly Wheels Syndrome” and “Symmetrical Vibration Glitch”.

Wobbly Wheels Syndrome (WWS) means that in some cases the wheels bend on their joints, often storing up force and then suddenly releasing it or causing enough pressure to break the block that they’re attached to. Most of the time WWS doesn’t impact gameplay what-so-ever but because of this issue, some steering methods can become extremely unstable, especially if used on a very heavy machine.

Symmetrical Vibration Glitch (SVG) normally occurs when you build a symmetrical pattern that is suspended from 1 central block. The engine appears to have trouble discharging vibration energy if a pattern is symmetrical, allowing it to become more and more violent until it rips itself apart. SVG can be prevented by bracing between the opposite ends of a pattern.

There are also several other minor issues that we need to fix (unfortunately we just ran out of time) and perhaps even some that we failed to find during our playtesting. We hope that you, the community, will help us find and identify any other problems through our forums or the Steam forums.

We know that many of you will be disappointed that we haven’t managed to pack more content into this update. Whilst we have been working on several features alongside the port to Unity 5, it has taken up a lot of our time and we weren’t able to get all of them into this release.

Below you can find couple of the things we’ve been working on that you can expect to see in the next update:

Camera Block
We’ve been working on an invisible camera block that can be attached to your machine. You can configure it to behave in a variety of ways, switching to the view of the camera block using a hotkey and it can be used for things like chase cams.

Block Search Function
The block search function allows you to quickly and easily search for blocks across all categories, including blocks that you add to the game using added by mods!

I’d also like to take this opportunity to remind you all of the wonderful and ever growing array of mods created by the Besiege community. Our Forum’s Mod Pages offer the best way to browse through all of Besiege’s mods and they also contain a simple and guide explaining how to install mods. http://forum.spiderlinggames.co.uk/modcategories

We hope that you enjoy the update and we apologize for the delays in bringing it to you.

Von

Hello Everyone!

Today we’re bringing you an update for Besiege, V0.2, which brings the game to the Unity 5 engine.

In addition to Unity 5 we have added a new block into the game called a Pin. The pin can be used to anchor the block it’s attached to, preventing it from moving until you press its hotkey.
We’ve also introduced a new god tool, Infinite Ammo, which prevents flamethrowers from running out of fuel and allows cannons to be fired an unlimited number of times. You can now also place stuff on Grabbers!

Unity 5 brings with it significant improvements to performance as well as some changes to the game’s physics which, on the whole, make for a more stable experience. Our testing has shown up to a 400% increase in performance on some machines!

We put together a quick video to compare the difference in performance between Unity 4 and 5:
https://youtu.be/hYuPNmSnrB4

Unfortunately, due to the engine’s current state, there are some bugs which we haven’t been able to fix or workaround. Whilst these issues are currently unfixable, we will endeavour to speak with Unity and hopefully they will be able to offer a solution in future versions of the engine. We’ve thought long and hard about whether to release Unity 5 in its current state, but we’ve believe the performance gains outweigh the downsides.

The two biggest issues we have named “Wobbly Wheels Syndrome” and “Symmetrical Vibration Glitch”.

Wobbly Wheels Syndrome (WWS) means that in some cases the wheels bend on their joints, often storing up force and then suddenly releasing it or causing enough pressure to break the block that they’re attached to. Most of the time WWS doesn’t impact gameplay what-so-ever but because of this issue, some steering methods can become extremely unstable, especially if used on a very heavy machine.

Symmetrical Vibration Glitch (SVG) normally occurs when you build a symmetrical pattern that is suspended from 1 central block. The engine appears to have trouble discharging vibration energy if a pattern is symmetrical, allowing it to become more and more violent until it rips itself apart. SVG can be prevented by bracing between the opposite ends of a pattern.

There are also several other minor issues that we need to fix (unfortunately we just ran out of time) and perhaps even some that we failed to find during our playtesting. We hope that you, the community, will help us find and identify any other problems through our forums or the Steam forums.

We know that many of you will be disappointed that we haven’t managed to pack more content into this update. Whilst we have been working on several features alongside the port to Unity 5, it has taken up a lot of our time and we weren’t able to get all of them into this release.

Below you can find couple of the things we’ve been working on that you can expect to see in the next update:

Camera Block
We’ve been working on an invisible camera block that can be attached to your machine. You can configure it to behave in a variety of ways, switching to the view of the camera block using a hotkey and it can be used for things like chase cams.

Block Search Function
The block search function allows you to quickly and easily search for blocks across all categories, including blocks that you add to the game using added by mods!

I’d also like to take this opportunity to remind you all of the wonderful and ever growing array of mods created by the Besiege community. Our Forum’s Mod Pages offer the best way to browse through all of Besiege’s mods and they also contain a simple and guide explaining how to install mods. http://forum.spiderlinggames.co.uk/modcategories

We hope that you enjoy the update and we apologize for the delays in bringing it to you.

Von

Hello Everyone,

Today we thought we’d take some time out to tell you a bit about what we’re working on at the moment and about the next update!

Most of you will be aware that we’ve been trying to port Besiege to Unity 5 for some time now with little success, that is until recently.
We are happy to announce that, owing to some significant breakthroughs in the past few weeks, Besiege will be moving to Unity 5 in the next update!

Unity 5 will offer some significant improvements to the game, the most notable of which is physics performance. Unity 5 uses a much newer version of PhysX which has support for multithreading, which will allow Besiege to use your CPU far more effectively than in the past.

We’ve put together an example for you below, showing the difference in FPS experienced while playing the game. I’d also like to point out that the Gif capturing software I used to create this comparison is the reason that the FPS is below 60 on the Unity 5 example.

Unity 4

Unity 5

The version of PhysX used by Unity 5 will also offer us changes to the stability of Besiege’s physics. Below is a comparison showing how Unity 5’s physics stabilizes in a more realistic fashion.



Although we expect most of the changes encountered will be positive, there is always the chance that existing machines could be adversely affected by the game’s physics performing differently.

Now on to the bad news, we’ve encountered some bugs during the port that we will need to get fixed before the new update can be released. This means that V0.12’s release will be delayed by about 3 weeks whilst we work to fix these issues.

We decided to include some of the issues in this announcement so that you can see for yourself the kinds of kinks that we’re trying to iron out.

Wheels in the new build are wobbly which causes a number of issues when it comes to the different steering methods that people have designed.


If particles collide with a moving object they appear out of thin air in the center of the world.


As well as some other issues that aren’t particularly interesting to look at.

So in conclusion, porting Besiege to Unity 5 is going well but there are still a few issues that need sorting out and because of this we are, unfortunately, pushing the update back by 3 weeks. As well as this, once the new update is out, we’ll be increasing Besiege’s price to represent the level of content now in the game. Hopefully you’ll see that it was worth the wait, and we thank you for your continued patience and support!

Hello Everyone,

Today we thought we’d take some time out to tell you a bit about what we’re working on at the moment and about the next update!

Most of you will be aware that we’ve been trying to port Besiege to Unity 5 for some time now with little success, that is until recently.
We are happy to announce that, owing to some significant breakthroughs in the past few weeks, Besiege will be moving to Unity 5 in the next update!

Unity 5 will offer some significant improvements to the game, the most notable of which is physics performance. Unity 5 uses a much newer version of PhysX which has support for multithreading, which will allow Besiege to use your CPU far more effectively than in the past.

We’ve put together an example for you below, showing the difference in FPS experienced while playing the game. I’d also like to point out that the Gif capturing software I used to create this comparison is the reason that the FPS is below 60 on the Unity 5 example.

Unity 4

Unity 5

The version of PhysX used by Unity 5 will also offer us changes to the stability of Besiege’s physics. Below is a comparison showing how Unity 5’s physics stabilizes in a more realistic fashion.



Although we expect most of the changes encountered will be positive, there is always the chance that existing machines could be adversely affected by the game’s physics performing differently.

Now on to the bad news, we’ve encountered some bugs during the port that we will need to get fixed before the new update can be released. This means that V0.12’s release will be delayed by about 3 weeks whilst we work to fix these issues.

We decided to include some of the issues in this announcement so that you can see for yourself the kinds of kinks that we’re trying to iron out.

Wheels in the new build are wobbly which causes a number of issues when it comes to the different steering methods that people have designed.


If particles collide with a moving object they appear out of thin air in the center of the world.


As well as some other issues that aren’t particularly interesting to look at.

So in conclusion, porting Besiege to Unity 5 is going well but there are still a few issues that need sorting out and because of this we are, unfortunately, pushing the update back by 3 weeks. As well as this, once the new update is out, we’ll be increasing Besiege’s price to represent the level of content now in the game. Hopefully you’ll see that it was worth the wait, and we thank you for your continued patience and support!

Hello everyone,

Today we’re releasing our latest update for Besiege, bringing it to version 0.11. We’re sorry that it’s a bit later than we initially planned, we encountered some pretty serious issues in our initial playtesting that needed addressing.

In this update we’re bringing you 2 new blocks and 2 more, newly titled, ‘God Powers’ for you to play with.
We’ve added a Water Cannon Block as well as a Rope & Winch block, which can be wound up or unwound and the rope can be cut by a sharp object.
The God Powers that we have added allow you to turn Gravity on and off at will, as well as the ability to drag objects around during the simulation!

Last but not least we’ve got a fix to a bug that a lot of you builders out there have found frustrating. We’ve finally managed to fix the issue where various mechanical blocks intermittently stop working.
Although we’ve tried very hard to avoid breaking any existing machines with this fix, there may be some machines that are adversely affected by this change. Be assured that we will do our best to address any issues that arise!

We really hope you enjoy these new additions and as always, thank you!

Von

Changelog V0.11

ADDITIONAL CONTENT

Added Water Cannon Block
Added Rope & Winch Block
Added Drag God Ability
Added Zero Gravity God Ability

IMPROVEMENTS

Improved Spikeball visuals
Created new ‘God Powers’ section in the settings menu
Optimized Knights in Ipsilion
Improved visuals of block selection menu

FIXES

Fixed Major bug where motorised blocks would randomly lock their rotation & position.
(Affected blocks include Steering Block, Steering Hinge, Decoupler, Piston, Spinning Blocks, etc)
Fixed Flamethrower having infinite fuel in toggle mode
Reduced jittering on the spring block
Fixed bug with visuals of propeller when flipped


CHANGES

Explosive Decoupler now has stronger joints
Lowered particles emitted on wood collisions
Removed drag on Metal Spike Ball
Removed drag on Wooden Pole
Reduced Grabber SFX volume
Moved Plow to Armour Tab

Hello everyone,

Today we’re releasing our latest update for Besiege, bringing it to version 0.11. We’re sorry that it’s a bit later than we initially planned, we encountered some pretty serious issues in our initial playtesting that needed addressing.

In this update we’re bringing you 2 new blocks and 2 more, newly titled, ‘God Powers’ for you to play with.
We’ve added a Water Cannon Block as well as a Rope & Winch block, which can be wound up or unwound and the rope can be cut by a sharp object.
The God Powers that we have added allow you to turn Gravity on and off at will, as well as the ability to drag objects around during the simulation!

Last but not least we’ve got a fix to a bug that a lot of you builders out there have found frustrating. We’ve finally managed to fix the issue where various mechanical blocks intermittently stop working.
Although we’ve tried very hard to avoid breaking any existing machines with this fix, there may be some machines that are adversely affected by this change. Be assured that we will do our best to address any issues that arise!

We really hope you enjoy these new additions and as always, thank you!

Von

Changelog V0.11

ADDITIONAL CONTENT

Added Water Cannon Block
Added Rope & Winch Block
Added Drag God Ability
Added Zero Gravity God Ability

IMPROVEMENTS

Improved Spikeball visuals
Created new ‘God Powers’ section in the settings menu
Optimized Knights in Ipsilion
Improved visuals of block selection menu

FIXES

Fixed Major bug where motorised blocks would randomly lock their rotation & position.
(Affected blocks include Steering Block, Steering Hinge, Decoupler, Piston, Spinning Blocks, etc)
Fixed Flamethrower having infinite fuel in toggle mode
Reduced jittering on the spring block
Fixed bug with visuals of propeller when flipped


CHANGES

Explosive Decoupler now has stronger joints
Lowered particles emitted on wood collisions
Removed drag on Metal Spike Ball
Removed drag on Wooden Pole
Reduced Grabber SFX volume
Moved Plow to Armour Tab

Hello everyone!

We’ve just published our latest Major update, V0.10, and we also have some news about Besiege’s Development.

Basically, we have begun the process of expanding the game’s development team.

Introducing the new members of the team to the project will take time and may see the content of updates diminish slightly as we get them situated. For this we apologise. There’s a lot of organisational stuff we’ve got to sort out related to this and it's something we’ve never done before.

In the short term we will be moving to a monthly update schedule to allow us the flexibility we need for dealing with these new challenges.

However, in the long term expanding the team will allow us to pursue more crazy and exciting features for the project, as well as an increase in production speed!
Again, we greatly appreciate your patience as we find our feet.

Right, on to the more exciting stuff!

Steam Workshop
You can now quickly and easily share war machines with other members of the Steam community.

To download someone’s machine all you need to do is browse the workshop for a machine you like and then click subscribe. This will automatically download the machine and place it in your saved machines folder.

Uploading your own machines to the workshop can be done in the load menu. Simply click the small Steam logo in the bottom corner of your machine’s thumbnail, select the appropriate tags and press upload.
You can also update machines that you’ve already uploaded by clicking the update option. This will then sync to everyone who has downloaded your machine updating it in their game to show your latest improvements.



New Levels
We’ve got 5 new levels for you to sink your teeth into with this update. We don’t want to spoil them so we’ll just let you explore them yourselves. :)



Other Stuff
There are 2 new blocks with V0.10, a grenade and small propeller, as well as some other improvements & bugfixes.

Well, we look forward to seeing the chaos you create with this latest update!

Changelog V0.10

ADDITIONAL CONTENT

Added Steam Workshop Support
Added 5 new levels
Added Remote Grenade Block
Added Small Propeller Block

IMPROVEMENTS

Changed background colour for new machine thumbnails
Grabber can now grab static objects and the ground

FIXES

Fixed some save corruption issues
Fixed issue where invincibility wasn’t highlighted when turned on
Fixed issue where ‘Enter’ & ‘Backspace’ keys could not be used as hotkeys
Removed mass slider from small wheel
Fixed Yaks not dying when dropped
Fixed Grabber breaking if the object it grabs is deleted
Fixed tents breaking whilst in build mode on level 9

CHANGES

Unpowered cogs can now have their rotation frozen using the keymapper tool

Hello everyone!

We’ve just published our latest Major update, V0.10, and we also have some news about Besiege’s Development.

Basically, we have begun the process of expanding the game’s development team.

Introducing the new members of the team to the project will take time and may see the content of updates diminish slightly as we get them situated. For this we apologise. There’s a lot of organisational stuff we’ve got to sort out related to this and it's something we’ve never done before.

In the short term we will be moving to a monthly update schedule to allow us the flexibility we need for dealing with these new challenges.

However, in the long term expanding the team will allow us to pursue more crazy and exciting features for the project, as well as an increase in production speed!
Again, we greatly appreciate your patience as we find our feet.

Right, on to the more exciting stuff!

Steam Workshop
You can now quickly and easily share war machines with other members of the Steam community.

To download someone’s machine all you need to do is browse the workshop for a machine you like and then click subscribe. This will automatically download the machine and place it in your saved machines folder.

Uploading your own machines to the workshop can be done in the load menu. Simply click the small Steam logo in the bottom corner of your machine’s thumbnail, select the appropriate tags and press upload.
You can also update machines that you’ve already uploaded by clicking the update option. This will then sync to everyone who has downloaded your machine updating it in their game to show your latest improvements.


New Levels
We’ve got 5 new levels for you to sink your teeth into with this update. We don’t want to spoil them so we’ll just let you explore them yourselves. :)



Other Stuff
There are 2 new blocks with V0.10, a grenade and small propeller, as well as some other improvements & bugfixes.

Well, we look forward to seeing the chaos you create with this latest update!

Changelog V0.10

ADDITIONAL CONTENT

Added Steam Workshop Support
Added 5 new levels
Added Remote Grenade Block
Added Small Propeller Block

IMPROVEMENTS

Changed background colour for new machine thumbnails
Grabber can now grab static objects and the ground

FIXES

Fixed some save corruption issues
Fixed issue where invincibility wasn’t highlighted when turned on
Fixed issue where ‘Enter’ & ‘Backspace’ keys could not be used as hotkeys
Removed mass slider from small wheel
Fixed Yaks not dying when dropped
Fixed Grabber breaking if the object it grabs is deleted
Fixed tents breaking whilst in build mode on level 9

CHANGES

Unpowered cogs can now have their rotation frozen using the keymapper tool

Hello!

Today we’ve got some information for you about the next major update, which will be version 0.1!
Work on V0.1 is going very well and we estimate that it will be ready for you in 2-3 weeks time.

Before we talk about the update’s contents, we’d like to talk a bit about update scheduling. We’ve decided to scrap the old schedule in favor of a new clearer and simpler format. The new update schedule will make it easy for you to see the kind of content each update will bring and when it can be expected.

So lets talk V0.1

Steam Workshop
Yes, this one has been heavily requested ever since we launched the game on Steam but unfortunately it took us longer than we had initially expected. In version 0.1 you will be able to quickly and easily share your ingenious machines with the rest of the Steam community.



New Levels
The island of Tolbrynd will be expanded upon in version 0.1, with the addition of 5 new levels.



Thats all for now and we look forward to seeing how you get on with the new update in 2-3 weeks time!

All the best,

Von