Hey guys, we have good news for you! Our other game Imperialism: The Dark Continent is out! It's a challenging strategy that will send you to the Victorian age imbued with the spirit of rivalry for tasty colonial lands. The Scramble for Africa is just about to start - select a country and help it to take its rightful place in the sun! Check it out and let us know what you think!

Gamenesis Team
https://store.steampowered.com/app/845530/Imperialism_The_Dark_Continent/

Hey guys, we have good news for you! Our other game Imperialism: The Dark Continent is out! It's a challenging strategy that will send you to the Victorian age imbued with the spirit of rivalry for tasty colonial lands. The Scramble for Africa is just about to start - select a country and help it to take its rightful place in the sun! Check it out and let us know what you think!

Gamenesis Team
https://store.steampowered.com/app/845530/Imperialism_The_Dark_Continent/

Hey guys, we have good news for you! Our other game Imperialism: The Dark Continent is out! It's a challenging strategy that will send you to the Victorian age imbued with the spirit of rivalry for tasty colonial lands. The Scramble for Africa is just about to start - select a country and help it to take its rightful place in the sun! Check it out and let us know what you think!

Gamenesis Team
https://store.steampowered.com/app/845530/Imperialism_The_Dark_Continent/

Hey guys, we have good news for you! Our other game Imperialism: The Dark Continent is out! It's a challenging strategy that will send you to the Victorian age imbued with the spirit of rivalry for tasty colonial lands. The Scramble for Africa is just about to start - select a country and help it to take its rightful place in the sun! Check it out and let us know what you think!

Gamenesis Team
https://store.steampowered.com/app/845530/Imperialism_The_Dark_Continent/

It’s time for the Community Weekly!


Welcome to Talon Island!

The Battlerite Royale map has been revealed, along with a bunch of concept art for the finer details. You can check it all out in our latest Dev Update.


Season 2 is live now - new sponsors await, the leaderboards have been reset, and Champions have been updated!

Catch up on everything that’s come with the new patch here.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



The last week of the BPL Group Stage begins this weekend, as the teams battle it out for placements in the Playoffs. The top-seeded teams get a ticket straight to the Semifinals. Make sure you make your predictions at https://predict.bpl.gg/ and tune in to see if your teams win!

Tune in to http://twitch.tv/battlerite to watch coverage of both North America and Europe, and http://twitch.tv/battleritesa for coverage of South America.

BPL North America air on Saturday, May 19th, starting at 12:00 PT / 21:00 CEST

BPL Europe will air on Sunday, May 20th, starting at 10:00 PT / 19:00 CEST

BPL South America will art on Sunday, May 20th, starting at 20 BRT / 16:00 PT / 1:00 CEST


The last Rising Stars tournament of BPL Season 1 takes place this weekend, make sure you sign up for your chance to win Pro League Chests and a chance to compete in Battlerite Pro League next Season!

For Rising Stars NA, sign up here.

For Rising Stars EU, sign up here.

For Rising Stars SA, sign up here.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We have some amazing artists in the Battlerite community!

If you ever want to featured on the official Battlerite Twitter, tweet @Battlerite and use #BattleriteArt!

Artists Alex Heath returns with another amazing image, this time of the Magnificent Magician himself, Zander.



Original found here.

Meanwhile Michael Lindell on Twitter was showing off their image of Taya on her Wullbear:



Original found here.

Lui on Instagram was inspired by the new Season 2 Mount, the Royal Lokum Nautilus, that she made a quick doodle of it and Pearl:



Original found here.

And last but not least, FUZZY created this Alice in Wonderland themed piece, featuring Lucie, Zander, Pestilus, and Ezmo:



https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1373140620

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Our content creators have been busy at work making new videos!

We have a two part video from Youtuber Electrocute. With their first video featuring how to claim small orbs with Rook:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS_6uIWVOTM
And their second video featuring how (not) to claim the center orb with Rook:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-cHot2xZ9Y
Topplerite has released a new video with their trademark amazing editing. This time they show that even Poloma can make clutch plays:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOTvw_SGYxU
Chyill is here to walk you through the many, many changes that came with Season 2, focussing on the Champion Updates:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16LT7dYdm-U
And finally, Joltz has uploaded a vod of scrims between his BPL team, Gatekeepers, and eUnited:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hINjMx1lxk

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can keep an eye on http://battleritewiki.com/ for a schedule of some of the upcoming tournaments.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Region: North America, Europe

Rival Esports has their weekly 3v3 tournaments up and running still. Fight for your share of $300; sign up and find more information here.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Battlerite has partnered with Battlefy to bring you the Battlerite Community Series. Here you can take part in or create your own tournaments, and you can apply to have in-game items as rewards! Check it out at battlefy.com. You can find your specific regions here:
Europe: https://battlefy.com/discovery/battlerite?region=Europe
United States: https://battlefy.com/discovery/battlerite?region=US
South America: https://battlefy.com/discovery/battlerite?region=South%20America
Asia: https://battlefy.com/discovery/battlerite?region=Asia
Oceania: https://battlefy.com/discovery/battlerite?region=Oceania
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Region(s): French-speaking
Introducing BattleFrance Brawl, a weekly 2v2 tournament held every Friday at 9PM CEST! Participate and you can win in-game prizes and a fancy black color for your name in the BattleFrance Discord channel.
Find out more information and register here: http://www.battlefrancebrawl.fr/
Tune in to the BattleFrance Twitch Channel to watch the action!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you have a useful community related tool or website, or are hosting a tournament and would like to be featured in this section, please write an email to community[at]battlerite[dot]com with information about it!

A new week brings a new episode of the Garage. Today in our show:

• The truth about Leviathans’ origins and their new role in clan wars;
  
• The best steel giants from the Exhibition;
  
• Changes in starting details prices, copper fever…

The first boss battle - Tarantula Mk V.

Before the era of deep stories, rich worlds, and morally based decisions, computer games had to catch the players’ attention by other means. The main character, level design and gameplay mechanics had to be iconic enough for the players to fall in love with. Even though the technology evolved and games have more means to keep us entertained there are some elements that never changed. One of them is boss fights.

Bosses in video games keep the players honest and the game flow in check. A good boss fight is difficult, but not frustrating. It simply requires making use of the previously introduced mechanics, sometimes in an unconventional manner. It is not an overpowered heap of meat with lots of health. It’s a gateway to the next level of gameplay awaiting the protagonist, often entirely different than before.


Vertical scrolling shooter gameplay prototype - circa 2011.

We wanted X-Morph: Defense to follow this philosophy. The initial concept for the game we had was a side-scrolling shooter, much like River Raid. We wanted to set each level in a unique environment and finish each one off with a final encounter with a boss, giving a sense of closure. We ended up designing 11 biomes and their bosses. However, it turned out that the visual representation and design of the enemy is not even half of the necessary work.

In the final version of the game, we included 4 boss encounters and an additional one in the European Assault DLC. In this series of articles, we would like to show you both the bosses who made it into the final cut, and those who didn’t. We will describe the production process, the initial design, and the end effect.



The Scorpion boss starred in one of the game’s main concept art pieces

Let’s kick our series off with one design you might have already seen on some of our concept arts. This creepy crawler was supposed to be the final foe of the Egyptian desert level. It’s not the biggest contraption we’ve ever designed, but it would be nightmare-inducing for sure. With multiple smaller weapon systems and a massive laser at the end of its tail, the X-Morph would definitely feel the sting of the scorpion.


Scorpion boss render without armor plating.

Imagine this scenario. You’ve just fended off a couple of waves of enemies and suddenly the ground starts shaking. You can hear the rumble of something massive underground. Then, all of a sudden, the boss emerges from beneath the sand. You start the defense of your core and as the fight progresses you learn that the scorpion can dig into the sand and unborrow elsewhere!


Sample animations with in-game objects to scale.

This kind of behavior is unprecedented in X-Morph: Defense. Moreover, contrary to what you see while fighting other bosses, it would not follow a specified path but freely move, forwards, backwards and sideways. As for the arsenal employed against the player, that consisted of a classic minigun, an AA flak cannon, a scattergun capable of launching grenades (effective against towers), the tail laser and the tail itself. Yes - the fighter could be blown out of the sky with a massive swing of the tail.

In order to defeat this behemoth, the player had to find the weak spots and there were a couple of ways to go about it. The first, and perhaps most obvious, were the legs. If all 6 were critically damaged, the whole construct would fall down. The second was to destroy the cabin. In order to do that, the player would have to disable the shield generators first, and then destroy the command bridge. Also, the tail could be damaged in a way that would destroy the whole machine.


Our graphics designers have done a great job with this one. We had the art ready in no time and the model followed shortly after. Based on what can be seen in nature we’ve made the basic set of animations. After applying textures we had a pretty good idea what it could look like in the final product. Based on that we went on to design the hitboxes, which followed the initial concepts we had for the various systems comprising the boss.


Scorpion boss hitboxes and weapons.

The whole battle was supposed to be mixed with fending off even more enemy waves, requiring the player to switch between protecting the towers and the core form the scorpion, and crowd control. We wanted the terrain to be much like the real desert. Units were supposed to slow down while walking on sand or climbing dunes. We wanted the fight to be both exciting and full of opportunities for strategic outplay.


Initial level layout and gameplay concept. In the end, the boss battle, unfortunately, had to be removed and the entire level design was changed.

Although it seemed that most of the work was behind us, it was only the tip of the iceberg. After designing the battle sequence we realized that it would take ages to implement it in our game. Additionally, programming all those special actions, attacks and win conditions also proved too much work to get it done in a reasonable amount of time. Last, but not the least, the Scorpion's movement system would have to be implemented separately for this single enemy. We had the basic animation set, but making it look fun and realistic in all possible cases would be too much to handle during the time we had left to finish the project.


You can always estimate how much time you will need to make something work. However, over time you will learn that most estimates are way off, and there are more things that can go wrong than you can think of. The concept design for the scorpion was very quick and painless, but the technicalities made us drop it altogether. We will tell you how much effort is necessary to make a boss fight work in our next article, describing something you already know well, and what actually made it into the game - the Tarantula Mk V.

!STREAM!
Mapping Zerator Cup on Friday at 20:00 CEST:
https://www.twitch.tv/zerator

Globe-Trotter Tour 2018 on continual servers:
https://www.maniaplanet.com/flash/permalink/2434

MX Knockout on Saturday at 11:30 CEST:
https://maniacalendar.com/event/22

SmurfsCup on Trackmania² Canyon on Saturday 20:00 CEST:
http://www.smurfen.nu/canyon

MX Knockout on Saturday at 21:30 CEST:
https://maniacalendar.com/event/22

NRL Stadium Cup 2018 on Sunday at 18:35 CEST:
https://maniacalendar.com/event/117

NRL Sprint Cup 2018 on Sunday at 19:35 CEST:
https://maniacalendar.com/event/119

!STREAM!
Mapping Zerator Cup on Friday at 20:00 CEST:
https://www.twitch.tv/zerator

Globe-Trotter Tour 2018 on continual servers:
https://www.maniaplanet.com/flash/permalink/2434

MX Knockout on Saturday at 11:30 CEST:
https://maniacalendar.com/event/22

SmurfsCup on Trackmania² Canyon on Saturday 20:00 CEST:
http://www.smurfen.nu/canyon

MX Knockout on Saturday at 21:30 CEST:
https://maniacalendar.com/event/22

NRL Stadium Cup 2018 on Sunday at 18:35 CEST:
https://maniacalendar.com/event/117

NRL Sprint Cup 2018 on Sunday at 19:35 CEST:
https://maniacalendar.com/event/119

Hi everyone! I would like to provide a sneak peek on the upcoming Hero #6.
She is going to be a "Necromancer"!

Unlike other heroes, she will use "Soul Energy" as her resources for some of her skills.
Below is the current concept skills. Please take note that these might not be exactly the same to the final skill sets, depending on the actual skill performance in game.

Attack 1. Ghost Hunt (No Cost):
Summon a ghost to chase down a random monster. The ghost will deal damage continuously until the target is destroyed.

Attack 2. Summon Skeletal Mage (Cost 1 Soul Energy):
Summon a skeletal mage that lasts for 20 seconds. The skeletal mage will deal ranged damage to monsters (20% of player's ranged damage). Skeletal mage has no hp and will not draw aggro.

Super Attack: Soul Explosion (Cost 5 Soul Energy):
Fire 5 souls that travels in different directions, doing pulsing explosive damage to their surrounding area. Souls are not hindered by obstacles.

Hope you are excited to hear this upcoming hero as I do!

Cheers,

Paul