We made a huge amount of progress for this fortnight's playtest with improvements in every area, including enhanced firing solutions and added dynamic music and improved sounds:
Amazing feedback in the forums from this fortnight's playtest:
Holy hot hell that has got to have been one of the most exciting and trying video game experiences I've had in years. I definitely noticed that things felt a lot more fluid and polished. I find it fun and exhilarating.
I really enjoyed this weeks test, the graphics felt smoother and the dynamic music combined with hit sounds made for great non-visual feedback.
A gameplay video kindly recorded by one of our player's PsychoRomeo captures some great moments, like Ubuntu's crazy corkscrew at 14:35, who then seeks him out for revenge two minutes later. You can hear the dynamic music blends as he gets shot and enters combat:
Release notes this week
- Hit detection and 'firing solution available' have been fixed
- Target weapon impact sounds
- Complete Cloud Engine rework:
- Hardware accelerated SIMD calculations using RyuJIT
- Moved to .NET 4.5.2 to take advantage of WebSocket buffer fix
- Vastly improved inter-thread communication
- Playtest setup has been automated and complexity reduced
- Browser <-> Cloud messages fixed
- Scores and player counts update fast and correct
- Names, team colours correct
- Trails no longer go crazy on ship respawn
- Old events not played back on respawn
- Missing ship names fixed
- Tally board showing correct data
- Shields correctly respond at impact time rather than before
- Fixed "who destroyed" you not displaying
- Your hit shield lights up more clearly
- Trails now display for all ships
- Reduced weapon fire sound
- Shortened weapon visible range to reflect accurate range
- Reduced GPU pipeline stalls
- Dynamic music is back in game
- NPC disconnection bug resolved
- NPCs now respawn correctly
- NPCs aren't attacking but will respond to attackers
- NPCs speed now varies
- NPCs renamed to "Defense Force N"