Time for our 12th weekly tournament. The Rugby tournament showed us perfectly what parts are working and what needs improvements in Rugby. Time to return to our main competitive game mode with this week's tournament, it will be 2v2 Mad Ball. We heard your complaints and will try once again to make the free agents work without ruining other's experiences. Don't forget to write in #tournament-support if you have any problems. We had 24 players signed up for last week's tournament, so sadly it wasn't a 500$ prize pool, hopefully we can hit it this week.
In order to take part of the tournament as a free agent you have to register to the tournament with the same nickname that you have in our Discord server so that I can get hold of you. Free Agents who I can't find in our Discord server will not be able to take part in the tournament.
Format: 2v2 Mad Ball Double Elimination(If you lose you go to loser's bracket and still have a chance to win the tournament) Tournament Starts: July 6th at 2 PM EDT/ 8 PM CEST Server: US-E (unless players mutually agree otherwise); Grand Final will be played with switching the server after every game: US-E>EU>US-E>EU>US-E Prize: Variable prizing based on entry. Caster: twitch.tv/smirkinlive
It’s been a while since we last talked, but we’ve been hard at work adding as much content to Mad Machines as we can. We spent a long time perfecting our original game mode, Mad Ball, and have finally moved into adding new and different modes! Jump into the arena today and check out Mad Pong, Mad Rugby, and the new Pong Solo mini game.
In case you haven’t played Mad Ball lately, let’s talk about some of the changes we’ve made over the last few months. We’ve moved this mode to a more precise, shooting based mode by removing both the magnet and the killing. Combat damage now removes stamina from an opponent, slowing them down and removing them from the play. While this punishes them, it does not remove them from the game completely as it did in the past. The removal of the magnet also pushes the game in a direction of more calculated, precise hits, rather than grabbing the ball and just walking it up the field as players relied on in the past. Helping with this, we’ve also removed the double jump limit! Now you can get to the perfect position in the air to hit that beautiful aerial goal you’ve been dreaming of. To cap it all off Mad Ball got a slightly reworked arena featuring bigger goals to make scoring easier and accommodate the lack of magnet.
Don’t like Mad Ball? Well good news, everyone! We’ve introduced two new mainline game modes, Mad Pong and Mad Rugby! Mad Pong features a back wall filled with cubes, and each cube must be hit with a spikeball to be destroyed. First team to completely wipe out an enemies back wall or destroy more cubes than opponents when the timer runs out wins! This mode features a unique arena created just for this mode and it’s own ruleset to match. Mad Pong allows the use of magnet and comes with the new cannonball ability! While this mode can get intense at times, we’ve made it even more hectic by adding special cubes. If you wanted to practice this new mode, you can jump into the new minigame, Pong Solo. In our other new mode, Mad Rugby, we’ve tried to give a more slow paced feel to the game. This mode emphasizes passing and team play. Run the ball up the arena and pass to your teammates to score, but watch out, the heavy can tackle you right off the ball! With the introduction of these modes Mad Machines has gone from a one trick pony to a full robo-olympics! These modes are fairly new, and are still being balanced, so join our discord today to help give us some feedback on these modes!
While game modes are nice, if your PC can’t run Mad Machines then there’s no sense in adding them, so we’ve also patched a plethora of performance and visual improvements. Would you believe we’ve seen a 300% increase in performance over the last few performance updates? Well it’s true, and not only that but we made the game a lot more responsive, reduced boot/load times, and reduced memory usage to free up resources on your computer while in game. Matchmaking has also been streamlined, giving you shorter queue times and getting players into matches better. To accommodate all these backend changes there have been a number of UI updates to make everything a little better to look at. We’ve also improved bots across all modes, pushed training even closer to the sandbox mode our community asked for, and improved the functionality of our squad system.
As always, most of these changes have been either initially suggested by the members of our community, or refined by them. Everyone here at Hero Blocks takes great pride in how much of Mad Machines has been shaped by you guys, and we want that to continue! You can speak directly with our dev team and staff in our Discord server, and our regular, dedicated members get access to channels where their messages will always be read by a staff member, ensuring all suggestions are thought about. Almost everything a player has said in our server has been talked about among the team, and some things even play tested, so you never know who's idea will turn into the next mad mode! It’s been a long road to get to this point, but we’re nowhere near done yet. We hope for 50 years of refining Mad Machines, then another 100 years of you guys just loving it. We’ll see you in the arena soon!
Time for our 11th weekly tournament. Rugby was added to Casual Play with last patch so it's a perfect time to see how it works out competitively. This week we are going to have a 3v3 Mad Rugby Tournament. We will not have free agents for this tournament either, so if you don't have a teammate, join our discord server and post in the #looking-for-team channel and hopefully you can team up with someone who also needs a teammate. Don't forget to write in #tournament-support channel if you have any problems. We had 28 players signed up for last week's tournament, so sadly it wasn't a 500$ prize pool, hopefully we can hit it this week.
It's fine if you don't have a teammate, just post in #looking-for-team that you are in need of a teammate, hopefully you will be able to find a teammate from there.
Format: 3v3 Mad Rugby Double Elimination(If you lose you go to loser's bracket and still have a chance to win the tournament) Tournament Starts: June 29th at 2 PM EDT/ 8 PM CEST Server: EU (unless players mutually agree otherwise); Grand Final will be played with switching the server after every game: EU>US-E>EU>US>EU Prize: Variable prizing based on entry. Caster: twitch.tv/smirkinlive
Time for our 10th weekly tournament, which will be 2v2 Mad Pong. There are some changes we are trying out this week. First of all, the prize pool also includes the 3rd place, so that 3rd place is also important. Secondly, because so many free agents don't show up ruining others experience, there will be no free agents this time. If you don't have a teammate, join our Discord and post in the #looking-for-team channel and hopefully someone else also needs a teammate and you can team up with him. Lastly, we have made a channel named #tournament-support, where you can get help from tournament admins. Also, I want to remind you that if you have any troubles, just disconnect instantly because if you disconnect after 60 seconds have passed or someone has scored, the match will not be restarted. We had 44 players signed up for last week's tournament, so sadly it wasn't a 500$ prize pool, hopefully we can hit it this week.
It's fine if you don't have a teammate, just post in #looking-for-team that you are in need of a teammate, hopefully you will be able to find a teammate from there.
Format: 2v2 Mad Pong Double Elimination(If you lose you go to loser's bracket and still have a chance to win the tournament) Tournament Starts: June 22th at 2 PM EDT/ 8 PM CEST Server: US-E (unless players mutually agree otherwise); Grand Final will be played with switching the server after every game: US-E>EU>US-E>EU>US-E Prize: Variable prizing based on entry. Caster: twitch.tv/smirkinlive
With this week's patch, the biggest changes are updates to Mad Pong and the adding of Pong Solo and Rugby to the game.
Mad Pong
We have done a complete rework on the map of Pong, removing the ramps, changing the shape of the arena and making it longer. In order to give players more space and time, going to the opponent’s half of the arena will drain your stamina to zero. This will hopefully balance out how dominant a team can be with the ball because the other team will always have an advantage at their own half. There are new special cubes that have a chance of appearing in every game, in same places for both team’s cube walls. For now, there are only 2 types of them. Purple cube is the explosive one, if you manage to hit one, it explodes and destroys all the cubes around itself. Green cube can’t be destroyed, instead, when you hit it, it bounces the ball back at really fast speeds. Be careful not to destroy your own wall because a bounce from green cube can destroy both team’s cubes.
Rugby
The first iteration of our new game mode called Rugby is added to Custom Match for everyone to try. The objective is to score by having the ball magneted at enemy goal zone. Grab the ball with the magnet and get it to the opponent’s goal zone by passing it between teammates. Hold shift to run faster, left click to magnet pass. Heavy can also tackle using ctrl.
Mad Pong Solo
The first version of Pong Solo minigame is available for players to try. After every 5 levels, there is a boss level, where you have to destroy all the yellow cubes to win and if you hit any red cubes, you lose. After every boss level, a new type of special cube appears. I’ll leave it for the players to figure out what they do. The deeper you go the harder it gets. Can you get to level 30?
Patch List
South America server is back
Rugby added to Custom Match
Mad Pong new map and features
Pong Solo minigame
Custom Match UI update
Fixes to queuing issues
Bots updates
Come talk with us!
Have some suggestions on additional improvements or looking to learn more about Mad Machines? Please join our Discord server as we will continue to leverage community feedback to improve the game. Play Mad Machines for free on Steam: Store Page Play Mad Machines for free on Discord: Store Page
Time for our 9th weekly tournament. We had 1v1, we had 2v2, it's obvious what is coming next. Time for a 3v3 Mad Ball Tournament. Will be interesting to see the different tactics compared to 2v2 and 1v1. We had 60 players signed up for last week's tournament, so we finally reached 500$ prize pool, hopefully, we can hit it this week also.
Format: 3v3 Mad Ball Double Elimination(If you lose you go to loser's bracket and still have a chance to win the tournament) Tournament Starts: June 15th at 2 PM EDT/ 8 PM CEST Server: EU (unless players mutually agree otherwise) Prize: Variable prizing based on entry. Caster: twitch.tv/smirkinlive
Time for our 8th weekly tournament. While 1v1 was fun, there's nothing better than the teamplays in 2v2. The idea for this week was to have round robin type of brackets, but it didn't work out at the moment, so maybe in the future. We had 32 players signed up for last week's tournament, so sadly it wasn't a 500$ prize pool, hopefully we can hit it this week.
Format: 2v2 Mad Ball Double Elimination(If you lose you go to loser's bracket and still have a chance to win the tournament) Tournament Starts: June 8th at 2 PM EDT/ 8 PM CEST Server: US-E (unless players mutually agree otherwise) Prize: Variable prizing based on entry. Caster: twitch.tv/smirkinlive
Time for our 7th weekly tournament. It has been more than a month since we had a 1v1 tournament so why wait longer if we can have it this weekend. Previous 1v1 tournament the veterans were not allowed to play, so it will be interesting to see how they will play in 1v1.
Format: 1v1 Mad Ball Double Elimination(If you lose you go to loser's bracket and still have a chance to win the tournament) Tournament Starts: June 1st at 2 PM EDT/ 8 PM CEST Server: EU (unless players mutually agree otherwise) Prize: Variable prizing based on entry. Caster: twitch.tv/smirkinlive
This Saturday is our 6th weekly tournament with again up to 500$ in prize money! With the release of Mad Pong game mode in Custom Match this week, we have decided to hold a Mad Pong tournament. Since nobody has had the chance to prepare for it in the new game mode before, even newer players should have a good chance at winning it.
Don't worry if you don't have a teammate, just sign as a free agent to the tournament, and we will randomly put together teams with the free agents!
Game mode: Mad Pong Format: 2v2 Double Elimination(If you lose you go to loser's bracket and still have a chance to win the tournament) Tournament Starts: May 25th at 2 PM EDT/ 8 PM CEST Server: US-E (unless players mutually agree otherwise) Prize: Variable prizing based on entry. Caster: twitch.tv/smirkinlive
This Saturday is our 5th weekly tournament with again up to 500$ in prize money! We haven't had a tournament for beginners in a while, so that is what we decided to have this week! 2v2, beginners mixed with veterans in teams, no veteran only teams.
In order to make sure the veterans don't team up, everyone has to sign up as a free agent, and we will make the teams, so that atleast 1 beginner per team!
Format: 2v2 Double Elimination(If you lose you go to loser's bracket and still have a chance to win the tournament) Tournament Starts: May 18th at 2 PM EDT/ 8 PM CEST Server: EU (unless players mutually agree otherwise) Prize: Variable prizing based on entry. Caster: twitch.tv/smirkinlive