Hello Humans!

We hope everyone has a fun holiday so we made a new Co-Op Challenge for you and your friends to play!

Grab a friend and play through 10 new levels full of our 4 new Zombie enemies!
Be careful of their claws because unlike other enemies, if you chop their legs off, they still keep coming!
The Update is coming to Steam, Switch, Playstation and Xbox all at the same time so you can all play together with Crossplay!



When you complete it, you unlock the Zombie 1 skin to use in multiplayer.

You can play it now! It's also available for Switch, Playstation and Xbox consoles, and you can play together over crossplay! It's a Co-Op multiplayer only challenge so if you want to find someone to play it with, visit the #cddz-find-a-match channel in our Discord. https://discord.gg/doborog

On top of that, the whole of the arena is nicely decorated for christmas and the audience and commentators are wrapped up warm!



If you want to play festive levels, make sure to check out the 2020 Winter Level Competition entries here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2369933278
Have a happy holiday and a very merry Christmas!

- The Doborog Team

Hello Humans,

After playing all the Adventure levels we have prizes to give for all the Winners!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2660432510
You have no weapons in this level so if you want to save David then you've got to get good at sneaking. There's even a Stealth based boss fight at the end!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2662671164
The cutscenes in this are great, quickly introducing us to four funny characters trying to survive a Zombie apocalypse!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2641863170
This Zombie Apocalypse looks great with all the nicely decorated buildings and areas. We really liked the way each the beginning of each level used the glowing text to describe it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2639517912
This is a huge level (so be careful if your computer isn't that good) but it has a lot of very cool fights. My favourites are the ones with the anti-zombie lasers that you can trick them to run into!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2665299650
Creepy smiles, a floating ghost head, and plenty of jump scares if you take the wrong route!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2645880475
Seems like you're all Halo fans! This is a really fun and short level where you have to reach your space ship, killing or avoiding Zombies to free your friends!

Congratulations to everyone who sent in their levels. If you are a winner, please contact Josh#9271 on Discord for your rewards or via email josh@doborog.com

As well as getting an emote and a free voxel art course we will feature the winning levels on the front of the Browse Workshop menu in-game!


Make sure you play all the levels that were entered into the competition too because the creativity in these was mindblowing and you should all be really proud of your levels! Play them here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2663001530

As well as the new Workshop level featuring, we are also releasing a new update today with bug fixes and a restart button for Adventure mode!

- The Doborog Team

Hello Humans!

We are excited to play your adventure levels! This post is a reminder that the competition is ending soon and what will happen next.



If you have not submitted your level yet, please do it using this link:
https://inj5jehpdl0.typeform.com/to/w06fEpwd

Check how long you have at this link: https://notime.zone/MpHwtava9Hq1p

Once the Submissions have closed, you can see all accepted levels in this Steam List here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2663001530

Vote for your favourite by clicking Like on the Adventure Levels that you enjoy and the level with the most Thumbs Up will win the Community Vote award!

If you want to see the Levels being played. I'm going to be streaming them on http://Twitch.tv/gamingftl on Friday 26th at 2pm UK time. Check the time in your timezone here https://notime.zone/MpHx3ku8vHGDJ

Any questions you have, feel free to post them in the Steam Forums or the Doborog Discord https://discord.gg/doborog

Happy Level Editing!
Josh

Hello humans!

We just deployed a small update (1.1.0.56) fixing a few bugs:

• The Emperor and zombies no longer die instantly when you separate the torso from hips!
  
• Fixed issue where legs would stay attached when you damaged the connection between torso and hips from above.
  
• Fixed the workshop browser crashing when updated quickly on a slower connection
  
• Imperial Armor Bots can now appear in Workshop Levels!
  
• Fire traps shooting fire no longer alert enemies in stealth game mode.
  
• Emperor Shockwave and grenades no longer crash the game if they happen next to enemies hidden by sections
  
• Added a few missing translations in Korean and Traditional Chinese

No major changes other than that.

As always, if you find bugs or experience crashes, feel free to email us at bugs@doborog.com, make a forum thread, or post about it in our discord

Cheers,
Erik

There is a lot to celebrate this November! We have added the Adventure Mode level type to our Level Editor! You can also download and play new levels right from our new Level Browser to see what they look like.

• Make an Adventure mode level. Endless mode and Challenges won't be entered for the competition.
  
• Make your level fit the theme of Zombie Adventure.
  
• Only Enter one (1) level per person.
  
• You are allowed to work with other people to make a level.
  
• You can submit levels you've made before the start of the competition. They must meet the rest of the rules.
  
• You can edit the game as much as you want until the deadline. We will judge the level on the deadline.
  
• We reserve the right to disqualify any entries that we think are inappropriate.
  
• Feel free to share your levels with friends and other community members to play! As long as posting doesn't spam or break the Discord guidelines!

Community Manager Josh has made a guide on how to make a level in Adventure Mode!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2643213579
If you have any other questions there are lots of experienced Level builders in our discord https://discord.gg/doborog

- The map with the most thumbs up (from the start of the competition) on the Steam Workshop will win!
- Please post your levels to the Doborog Discord and other Clone Drone Discords to get people to play and vote for your level! If you're not sure about self promotion, ask Josh or Carissa!
- Use the animation system to make the robots do or say something cool!
- To win this award, build something that looks awesome! A level that's more than cubes and enemies.
- Win this by creating the most fun combat experience!
- Spook us! Zombies can be scary so if you want to make a scary level!
- We have a new Stealth mechanics where the robots will listen and look for the player. Make a level with stealth and the new patrol routes to have a chance to win this level!


Our artist Zach Soares is the genius behind our new Zombies and he can teach you how to make 3D models in the same style as Clone Drone!

Once you are done, put the link to your level in this form!
https://inj5jehpdl0.typeform.com/to/w06fEpwd

The end of this competition is the 25th November 2021. We will announce the winners after that date, as soon as we have played all the levels!

If you want to share what you're making or ask for help, our Community Discord is full of amazing Level Editors who can assist you! Join at this link https://discord.gg/doborog

Happy Level Editing!
Josh

Happy Halloween Humans!

To Celebrate this new update, Clone Drone in the Danger Zone is in the Halloween Sale!



This new update is big and comes with a new enemy type, a new Level Editor mode and a new Official Adventure to play!



These robots are rusting and dangerous! Their big claws can tear a robot into scrap metal very quick.

There are four Zombies, from the small Level 1 Zombie to the Level 4 Fire Zombie!

You can use these enemies in the Level editor or try the Trouble at Zombie Tower Adventure to see how scary they can be!



Do you want to make and play levels outside of the arena? The Adventure Mode is a free space to create any shaped level you want!

Here is a quick list of all the additions to the Level Editor:

• Adventure Levels let you build outside of the arena.
  
• New Stealth Mechanics so robots can only attack if they see the player.
  
• Make your robots walk around a patrol route so the player can hide from them.
  
• Customise the Win and Lose conditions of your levels.
  
• Checkpoints so you can spawn the player wherever you want.
  
• Upgrade Bot is here! You can put him anywhere and give the player more upgrade points.

We are working on a tutorial to cover all of these new features and help more people make Adventure Levels!

You can create Adventure levels in the Level Editor and post them to the Steam Workshop for everyone on PC to play.



We have made a new level so you can see all the new features. In Trouble in Zombie Tower, you will have to sneak past all the Zombies guarding the tower so you don't have to fight them all at once!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2638435264

Please send us anything you make with Adventure Mode or Zombies in our discord! https://discord.gg/doborog

Have a happy Halloween!

Josh - Community Manager

We just pushed a fix for multiplayer not connecting which began occurring about 18 hours ago. Let us know if you are still unable to connect to multiplayer for any reason, making sure to confirm your game version is updated to 1.0.0.29.


Around 10pm EST Tuesday we noticed a majority of player connections began failing. After investigating we learned from our multiplayer networking service provider that a service they relied on went down and would require a client-side patch to hotfix their library. So we had to update the game client to fix it!


We are submitting the same fix to Switch and PS4 shortly and asking for emergency patch review, but it may depend on how long their reviews take, fingers crossed!

Xbox should be uninterrupted, let us know if you do see any issues connecting to games. Cross-play should also still be intact!


We were waiting for our partner to completely fix the problem with a patch fix, which just came in 45 mins ago - so we got it implemented, re-tested and pushed it live just now!

Thanks to everyone who let us know about this issue early, and for everyone’s patience while we got this sorted out!

Hello humans!

Our previous update tweaked some subtle stuff around physics that led to a decrease in character movement speed for some players.

We just updated the "maximum allowed timestep" to strike a better balance between maintaining a consistent framerate while making sure the physics simulation is not too dependent on the visual framerate.

Let us know if you notice anything different!

Cheers,
Erik

Hello Humans!

We just released a little Patch that fixes a wide variety of bugs and add a few improvements to the game. Read more about the details in the second half of this blog post!


Since many of you are curious, let's talk about what are plans are for the future!

In the immediate future, we're going to be focusing on expanding the capabilities of the Level Editor, creating a new type of level that takes place completely outside of the Arena!

Levels that quickly leave the arena to have a fantastic adventure elsewhere is a pretty common scenario among the more elaborate levels created by the community!



We're really excited to see what everyone makes when this constraint is removed. We'll also be looking into things like checkpoints, saving progress etc. to let you make things that are similar in structure to our own Story Mode levels.

If this makes you at all excited, join us on Twitch where we'll be streaming the building of this feature! :)

The other side of our Level Editor focus is that we'll be looking into ways of supporting more official Level Editing Competitions, and find cool ways to highlight high quality workshop content that stands out from the crowd.

We really enjoy the energy of people coming together to make cool stuff, and want to set up systems that facilitate that happening on a regular basis.

Next competition coming up will be for Halloween, but don't start making your levels yet. We'll likely make this one lean on our new format taking place outside of the Arena. :)

In parallel to new feature development we are investigating ways to make our servers more performant and more reliable. This is a huge undertaking that involves overhauling how pretty much everything works in terms of hosting and matchmaking, so it might take a while, and comes with a healthy does of uncertainty in terms of specific outcomes.

Nevertheless this is something we feel could be better in the game right now, and we have some promising investigations in the works. More info about that when we have it!

At some point in the next few months we'll start exploring what games we're making next! We'll still be working on some Clone Drone things at the same time, but if you see us start to work on weird things that have no robots or laser swords, this might be what's happening. ;)

It's maybe a bit early to talk about the specifics of this, but let's just say we are addicted to game modes and have plans to explore more of them!

What kind of game modes??? We'll likely experiment with more than one type to see what ends up being fun. Let us know what you'd be excited about in the comments!



ok, so that was a lot of info about the future. What did we do in the last few weeks?
We made this patch that just went out! (1.0.0.24)

So right after launch you had a lot of feedback on the Emperor, especially on Insane difficulty!

For our immediate hotfix we didn't change the Emperor at all, but with this one we took the time to improve the fight in the following ways:

• Jump damage: No longer active at the start of the jump! No longer active directly after he lands.
  
• Shockwave attack: Decreased the radius slightly, and increased the cooldown before next use.
  
• Imperial Armor Bots: No longer give armor or shoot down arrows while they're being constructed!

In addition to these changes, we also changed the amount of energy you have when mind transferred into robots! Both spear1 and sword1 now have 2 energy bars instead of 1, which makes confronting difficult enemies slightly less impossible with them. It also increases the tempo for both Chapter 4 and 5, so overall we think it's a pretty fun change!



A focus for this release was to increase performance across the board. While many of these changes might be primarily felt in our console patches that also went out today, you might feel the improvements in the Steam version as well.

Do you enjoy having Gyro on all the time? We've added a setting to allow you to always turn your controller to turn the camera, as opposed to it only being active when using the bow.

• Music cutting out! We fixed the music sometimes cutting out when a lot of sounds were playing at once.
  
• Fixed a crash from your laser raptor friend lasering things in the central corridor of Chapter 5.
  
• The Emperor can now jump on jump pads without getting stuck
  
• Removed energy bar from end of chapter 3 cutscene.
  
• First Emperor confrontation in Chapter 5 now correctly resets your mind transfers.
  
• Chapter 5 Insane achievement: We had some reports of it not unlocking for people, and made the way we do that a bit more reliable.
  
• Fixed spectator mode not allowing you to switch character when using controller!
  
• Emperor skin had a bug where the legs would not fall off when cut in multiplayer. Fixed that!

And there you have it! The next few months are going to be a lot of fun.
As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Cheers,
Erik + team

Hello Humans!

It has been one month since the release of Clone Drone in the Danger Zone and the Doborog team are really happy that so many of you are playing! It's been a very busy month for us.

Early next week we’re releasing another small update on all platforms that:

• fixes a bunch of bugs
  
• improves performance on consoles
  
• adds some useful controller gyro functionality for all weapons on PS4 and Switch
  
• tweaks the Emperor fight to feel better based on your feedback

More details next week when the patch goes live!

Fun fact - together you all played so much multiplayer that we used over 75,000 hours of our game servers! This unprecedented number of hours caused a glitch with our server provider causing all servers to turn off, but we since fixed it and they upped the global server limit in response, and everyone should be able to connect now!

You can watch a quick description of our plans on our TikTok! Up next, we’re excited to expand what you can do with the Level Editor and the first stage of that is allowing you to create maps that work outside of the arena!

Another focus of the team is improving multiplayer server reliability and performance and have some exciting things in the works there.

We even have plans to add more fun fights and maps to the game for free after all that. Follow us on Twitter, TikTok, Reddit or Discord to hear about the latest updates, and watch Erik stream development live on Twitch!

Last week we had some fun feeding the entire script of Commentatron and Analysis-Bot to a powerful AI system, so it can now automatically answer ANY QUESTION in the voices of the commentators (it does a surprisingly realistic job!). What would you ask them? https://www.tiktok.com/@doborog/video/6998905758117072134



If you're looking for a quick free game to try, check out Berlock Bromes! We made this game in
a week and now you can download it for free: https://doborog.itch.io/berlock-bromes




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Have fun in the Arena!

Josh, Doborog Community Manager