Jul 6, 2018

Balancing Update V01.07.26 - 06/Jul/2018

Defense Task Force - Sci Fi Tower Defense - tcwicks

As a small team at Defense Task Force our development goal has always been to build the game where gamers who invest in the game would play the game not just for a few hours, days or weeks but for months and years. Achieving this goal is a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG). During our last update on 29 June we deployed a balancing update reducing the strength of the missile and tessla towers as both these towers were significantly over powered, unfortunately as a side effect this increased the difficulty levels in the game significantly we thought we had done something usefull, we had kept up the night but its a learning lessons for us as we realise there’s more to not getting enough sleep. It can have an impact on the people who have invested in you. Thanks to the community who provided feedback in the forum we were able to pick this up.

This update addresses this issue by rebalancing the game and having difficulty levels such that:

Easy: This would enable a player who is new to tower defense
to give the game a shot
Medium: For a player who are familiar with tower defense
but just want to play the game for a short period prior to getting totally immersed.
Hard: Reasonable challenge
for those commanders who are pro with Tower Defense and need something to challenge them for the day
Insane: Extremely hard, we think this explains what happens when a player chooses this option

We want you to have the best experience and to address this we took the day off today from our regular jobs cause this game is our dream and it matters that we provide value. Hopefully, by us sharing the truth which can be taken as a weakness we really do hope we could bring about a dialogue between you and us to build a relationship over time. For us it matters that the gamers who invest in us get value from the work we have provided. We are not competing for being the top game. We are competing to build a game that you will remeber in a good way.

Jul 6, 2018

BlackShot Revolution

BlackShot: Mercenary Warfare FPS - DSH-Snowboarder

To the BlackShot Global Community,

Oftentimes, games must undergo significant changes to remain competitive in the marketplace. For long-lived games this fact is even more evident, and BlackShot is no different.
For this reason, BlackShot is changing .

Before detailing the coming changes, however, our team would like to first express our tremendous appreciation for all the dedicated members of our game community. Last year BlackShot surpassed its 10th year of service, an achievement seldom reached in the gaming industry, and we are truly humbled by your continued support that made such a feat possible.

In the four years that BlackShot Global has been operating directly under Vertigo Games/Papaya Play, our team has strived to continually improve the game experience in every possible. Some of these initiatives include: implementing the BattlEye Anti-Cheat system, introducing dedicated servers for the Brazilian community, adding Portuguese, German, and French as supported languages, and unifying all payment gateways for ease of access. Our goal is to make the game the best it can possibly be for everyone, and the changes coming later this month are the next step towards reaching that goal.

While we know that you love BlackShot, and have for many years, it cannot be denied that the game’s legacy foundations are beginning to show. In the years since BlackShot’s release, FPS conventions have moved in many exciting new directions, especially in the Free-to-Play space, and our team believes introducing some of these can help iron out some of the game’s more contentious issues and make the overall experience more enjoyable for everyone.

Here’s what this means for you :

Substantial system changes, more impactful than any our team have released in the past ten years, are coming July 25th. These changes are tantamount to a product relaunch, and we have collectively titled them BlackShot Revolution.
In brief, BlackShot Revolution’s major changes/additions include:

Total Weapon Rebalance

All weapons in BlackShot Revolution are completely permanent, and instead of timing out, will now degrade with use until they need to be repaired (this will not impact the weapon’s stats, however). This means no more lost gear or play time. Furthermore, every single weapon in the weapon in the game is being rebalanced to promote overall fairness and further strengthen competitive play.

Streamlined Leveling

The Level-Up System is being streamlined and revamped with new rewards. Ranks are also now reflected by a single numerical value (ex. Level 58), making it easier for new recruits and seasoned Mercenaries alike to see how they measure up against the competition.

Currency Overhaul

The BS and BSC currencies are both being replaced with the more thematically-appropriate Gold and Gems and having their functionalities significantly adjusted. Gold can be used to purchase most Shop items and perform other critical game functions, while Gems are exclusively reserved for purchasing Goldboxes and cosmetic/customization items.
The full details of these major changes, plus the rest of what BlackShot Revolution has to offer, will be revealed closer to the full launch date of July 25th.

Now, for the bad news :

The coming system changes are so substantial that the game data format must be completely reformatted, a process that will result in the loss of all existing player progression and set all accounts back to Level 1 under the new progression system. While the loss of data was never our goal from the outset of this project, it quickly became apparent in development that it was necessary for our vision for BlackShot to be fully realized.

Despite the data being removed, though, there will be carry-over into BlackShot Revolution for inventory items, ranks, and unused currency, including:

All inventory items, BS currency, and progression ranks, will be converted into the new Gold currency and credited to accounts when Revolution launches.
All BSC currency in player accounts is being converted into Gems.
Weapon Masteries and ranks will be immortalized in the new Hall of Fame, coming to the BlackShot Revolution website.

As can be expected, given the nature of the wipe, the Goldbox system will also be deactivated in-game until Revolution launches.

We do not expect this news to be met with enthusiasm by everyone in the community; indeed, it is one of the most difficult development choices we have had to make, and we know many will have strong feelings about it. All we ask for now is for you have trust in our team, and trust that these changes are what is best for the game we all love. We believe that Revolution will make the beginning of BlackShot’s next great chapter, and we invite all of you to join us for the journey.
We will keep you updated with more news through all of BlackShot’s official channels as the July 25th launch day approaches.

- Team BlackShot

Jul 6, 2018

Update 41 (AI, graphics and much more!)

Zero G Arena - JonWoodDev

It's been quite a wait since the last update, but I think you'll find it was worth it, as this is easily ZGA's biggest update so far!
There will probably be one or two more updates before the main launch on 08/08/2018, mainly for fixes and perhaps minor improvements. I'll also be setting up a bunch more dedicated servers just before the launch, to accommodate the (I hope) large influx of new players.

See below for my best approximation of a full list of changes (this time in particular, I may not have been very diligent in recording every change).

-Jon

CHANGES:

FUNCTIONAL:

AI added! I can't tell you how happy I am that I was able to add AI, as I really wasn't sure if it was going to be practical, or even possible, due to the unique challenges presented by ZGA. Indeed, this was an enormous feature to add, taking the majority of my time since the last update and now amounting to about a third of the overall size of the codebase. It might not be of near-human intelligence, but it's now at the point where I think it can provide a good challenge at multiple skill levels.
- The bots can have a variety of traits, to change their skill level and behaviour. A type of bot also has a “Level” to describe it's difficulty. Right now, I've just set 9 basic bots of increasing skill level, but more interesting variants could be added in future.
- It was important to me that the bots were sufficiently similar to humans in behaviour that the same tactics were effective against them. For example, no matter how high the bot's aiming traits are dodging will always be effective, and, like against humans, the more unpredictable the better.
- Bots will automatically spawn on a dedicated server if there are only one of 2 players.
- Listen server hosts can add bots at will.
- You may notice not every map and game mode is supported for AI yet. I'm hoping to add support for some if not all of these before launch, but can't make any promises due to time constraints. In general, there are various improvements that I'd like to make to the AI, time allowing, but I think it's in a good enough state to be a very important addition to the game still.
Brand new gamemode, “Spaceball”! “Spaceball” was supposed to be a temporary name, but having built the update, I've just realised I forgot to rename it. Anyway, the game mode is a sort of sports-ball type, more like soccer than the existing “Capture the sphere” mode. It has it's own new map, made by Ex3m.
Spawn points now prioritized first on team then on distance from other players
For auto-managed (including dedicated) servers, instead of a 10 minute timed game, the automatic game type for kind of the hill modes will be first to 120 points (still sort of timed for king of the hill...).
The dedicated server will eventually change back to Pipe and Free For All if left unoccupied for a certain period of time. This is to prevent it from being left on a map that's unsuitable for one or two players (so could discourage people from joining again).
If there is only one player on a server, the map vote will end as soon as they cast their vote. Also, if there is only one player and bots are unsupported for the current map or game mode, the map vote will begin instantly.
Servers now have an optional skill level setting. This can be set by listen server hosts as an option when hosting. It is not enforced in any way, but rather just a label to help people find a game against players of a similar skill level to them. I plan to set up dedicated servers with different skill levels for the main launch so that newbies aren't destroyed by you veterans.

BALANCE:

Changed ERC rate of fire from 5 rounds per second to 4.5. Not a big change, but I think if it was overpowered before then there wasn't much in it. This is really just to make it a bit harder to get close ranged spamming kills.

MAP LAYOUTS:

Huge changes to the layout of Temple.
Boxes in the railgun room in Pipe are now less densely arranged.
I finally put something in that big flat floor in Factory. I've been meaning to do this pretty much since I added Factory to the game nearly 2 years ago.

ART:
For those that haven't seen the dev-vlog videos, you may not know that our most prolific community map maker, Max Graw (Ex3m), has been helping a lot with ZGA's art over the last few months. Indeed almost all of ZGA's visual changes since the last update are his work.

New decals on all official maps. These include fictional logos (the closest thing you'll find in ZGA to lore), warning signs and the like.
Max has done a major overhaul of the graphics on “Temple”, turning it from one of the more outdated official maps into the fanciest visually.
New weapon models
New weapon visual effects
Main menu scene changes
New Boxes on Pipe
New model to represent spawn point of CTS sphere
New weapon spawn location model
New splash screen
New models in Inception.
Improved reflections in all maps.

SOUND:

I've put together and integrated the beginnings of a soundtrack. Right now there are just 4 pieces, which are selected from randomly when a match starts. I'll most likely do some more work on these pieces, and I plan to add some more pieces to the soundtrack. There are some quite different styles among those 4 tracks, so feel free to let me know which one you like best (the track name appears in the HUD when it starts playing) and I can take that into account making future tracks.
Here are a bunch of great new sound effects from Deika:
- New rocket fire sound
- New weapon switching sound
- New SMG impact sound
- New rocket explosion sound
- New sound on picking up weapons
- There is now a feedback sound when you get a kill
- CTS goal and sphere respawn sounds.
The weapon noises now have a low-pass filter (less treble) applied that increases in intensity with range.
The volume of the grapple sounds now drop off in volume faster with range.

UI:

There is an addition to the Server tab in the in-game menu (accessible to listen server hosts) which enables kicking players and removing bots (through the same menu).
The chat box now ignores capital letters. To my mind, the communicative facilities afforded by capital letters were far outweighed by having to constantly type “excuse caps” to avoid appearing ANGERY if capslock was on without your knowledge.
Added individual SFX, Music and UI volume settings to the audio settings menu.
After much deliberation about what to do with Cityscape, I've just decided to move it to the community made maps section.
Also removed the creator field from the official map list, as now that Max Graw has contributed to all of the official maps in some way (most notably Temple), it would now be an oversimplification to specify a single creator, or both of us as creators. Max's contributions to the game are, of course, credited in the credits screen.
Server browser rearranged slightly. Dedicated servers are now above listen servers. Also removed quite a lot of not-so-important text.
New HUD weapon icons to match the new weapon models
The HUD menu now adheres to the same layout as the other sub-menus.
Added “Disable HUD” option to HUD menu
Also added an option to disable just the magnet indicator in the HUD.
The map info that shows on loading a new map now has a grey background.
Moved the map vote screen so that it no longer obscures the chat box.

BUGFIXES:
I went on a bit of a bug-killing spree not long after the last update, but given the amount of development that's take place since then, I imagine a few more have sneaked in (some of which I'm aware of already [see below]). Do please continue to report any bugs you find as I'd like to release ZGA in as un-buggy a state as possible.

Hopefully your feet/legs should no longer get stuck in the floors/walls. Unfortunately this is one of those things that's not really a “bug” that I can locate and remove so much as a limitation of various systems that requires some inelegant fix to be slapped on top of. With that in mind, I'm not sure yet if we've truly seen the last of this issue or if it's just less likely to occur now. Let me know if it happens to you again.
Previously, only your personal total kills showed for the global total kills stat. This should be fixed now.
Fixed audio control not working in main menu.
Fixed grapple beam failing to de-weaponize after warmup
Fixed blue team score indicator obscured for timed team gamemodes
Fixed player icons persisting in the TAB menu after the player leaves (I'm pretty sure, but needs testing online).
Made detection of when weapon is obstructed more accurate and less glitchy (it was the cause of various jittering bugs [jitterbugs, if you will...])
I think the weapon obstruction code also failed to detect when a weapon was obstructed by the floor below (when pointing downwards). This is fixed now.
Fixed bug where timed match would sometimes go into overtime even when there is not a draw.

NEW ISSUES:
These are issues that I've found just before releasing the update that probably aren't worth delaying it over. Hopefully there will be a hotfix in the next few days anyway though.

In a last minute attempt to fix a layout issue in the server list I somehow managed to produce another layout issue that's considerably more ridiculous. The original issue was actually fixed, but some text may be pretty much illegible in some cases.
The static bots from the tutorial have vanished. There will be a revamped tutorial soon anyway.
The global stats suddenly all list as 0.
I think the bots might be having some trouble in the round room in Inception. I'm pretty sure I just forgot to rebuild the navigation data after some changes to the map.

Jul 6, 2018

2018.7.7 0.9.7.0版本更新说明

Nature Calls - KXgame

我们暂时关闭欢乐版的大乱斗模式
取而代之的是“疯狂版的大乱斗”，我们会在后期继续开放“欢乐版的大乱斗”
“疯狂乱斗”：
这个模式中我们移除了随机获取道具的宝箱，并为整个战局加入了铜币系统
击杀玩家会获得100铜币，死亡获得铜币补偿，进入战斗铜币会随着时间增加1铜币/秒

战局商店加入，键盘“B”键打开商城
现在所有升级基础技能的道具将通过消耗铜币，在战局商店获取
我们希望玩家可以策略性的选择升级技能扩大自己的优势，或者扳回一城

近战武器加入，玩家在初始状态就会持有近战武器
这意味着，一出生就可以投入战斗
当然，商城里上架了大量不同类型的武器，每把武器都有不同的属性
我们希望得到疯狂乱斗的模式的玩家反馈，并积极的做出调整

商城：
由于我们增加了物品属性功能与物品解锁功能，所以该版本更新后，所有玩家金币将会被清为“0”
我们将玩家们获取到的金币（截止到版本更新前）2倍返回到商城里
希望玩家们谅解
物品属性：商店道具将只会为“疯狂乱斗模式”的玩家们提供初始属性
物品解锁：武器将会分类型阶段性解锁，要解锁更强力的武器，需要先解锁前置武器
人物：
新增“直播姬”头套
新增“嘟督”头套
新增“总监”头套
新增“秋秋”头套
新增“织田信姬”头套

武器：
棒类型：马桶刷，骨头棒，铁棍，狼牙棒，魔仙棒
斧类型：骨斧，石斧，铁斧，月牙斧，开天斧
匕首类型：骨刃，石刃，铁刃，黄金刃，猝火刃
锤类型：木锤，实锤，铁锤，荆棘锤，王大锤
刀剑类型：宽刃，阔刀，绅士剑，屠龙刀，火之高兴

颜色：新增一些身体与头发的颜色
接下来我们会做：
我们会将收集到的反馈，考虑融入到组队模式中
组队模式开发ING....
赌城系统