Blazing Sails News

Ahoy!

A wise pirate sage once said: “Better to have slightly buggy VOIP than no VOIP at all”, and we here at Get Up Games firmly believe that. Because of this, VOIP is finally here! Although it can still cause some issues, which we’re going to be on top of like a captain on booty.

We’ve also added some planks to the Forsaken Fort, because who doesn’t love a good plank-walking? Anyway, here’s the full changelog:

[h3]Experimental features:[/h3]

• Voice chat has been re-enabled (It can still cause issues, but we are gathering data to improve and fix it)
  
• Voice chat keybind added
  
• Voice chat volume slider added
  
• Voice chat icon added to crew player info (top left corner)
  

If you can't see the voice chat keybind in options, reset your keybinds



[h3]Gameplay improvements:[/h3]

• Added walking planks to connect the rocks between Forsaken Fort and Starlight Shallows
  

[h3]Visual improvements:[/h3]

• Added some extra ropes to the masts for a more logical visual representation when adjusting the sails
  
• Added a bit of extra detailing to the ship’s hull and improved the wood texture unwrap
  
• Brigantine ladder model made a bit a more obvious so it’s easier to spot the ladders
  
• Crossbow bolt LODs improved
  
• Ship lantern and other glass material reflections tweaked
  

[h3]Audio improvements:[/h3]

• Fish gun reload sound tweaked a bit
  

[h3]Optimisations:[/h3]

• We’ve identified and fixed a problem that caused a severe loss in performance (overall FPS should be 10-20% higher)
  
• Wood planks and battle drink bottles have been changed to instanced meshes for optimisation
  
• Improved performance on same water and deadzone calculation related code
  
• Max render distance added to treasure chest particle effects
  

[h3]Bug fixes:[/h3]

• Fixed some LOD issues with the brigantine’s ship mesh
  
• Fixed a bug that would cause the items in your inventory to flicker when dropping single pieces
  
• Brown hair color not matching Steam ID fixed
  

Let us know what you think about this update on our official Discord!

Ahoy mateys!

We've been listening to your feedback and have made changes and fixes accordingly. Especially about the explosive barrels and melee being too OP. Many of you also mentioned you'd like to see a vote kick system for that occasional (troll) pirate taking the "Ghweel" hostage. We've got you covered! Here are the patch notes:

[h3]New cosmetic items:[/h3]

• 58 new sail colors added
  
• 61 new flag colors added
  

[h3]Gameplay:[/h3]

• When dropping an explosive barrel from your inventory you now have to wait 5 seconds before you can drop another one
  
• Projectile hit detection improved which makes it so you don't accidently hit nearby railings anymore
  
• You can now also drop single pieces from your inventory by holding ALT
  
• Single pieces dropped from your inventory now check if the item is already on the ground, if it is, the item’s amount will be increased instead of a new item being spawned
  

[h3]Balancing:[/h3]

• Teams are now filled differently; New players will be put in the smallest team first now, which should result in fewer unbalanced matches
  
• The time it takes to pull a cork has been increased from 3 seconds to 5.5 seconds
  
• Melee range has been decreased from 2.2 meters to 1.9 meters
  
• Melee damage has been decreased again by 5%
  
• Heavy cannonball AOE damage reduced from 40 to 20 damage
  

[h3]Visual Improvements:[/h3]

• Added texture to the map of the spawn selection screen
  
• Vehicle animations improved so they look much cleaner
  
• Third person steering wheel animation tweaked so the hands and steering wheel are much better synced
  
• Weapon idle and fire animations improved so they look much cleaner
  

[h3]Quality of life:[/h3]

• A vote kick menu has been added to the ingame menu
  - You can silently vote to kick players from your crew using this menu
  - A vote will pass if enough players of your crew vote to kick a player
  - For 3 player crews 2 votes are needed
  - For 4 player crews 3 votes are needed
  - 1 or 2 player crews can not use the vote kick system
  
• You can now pre-press interact so that when you get close to an interactable object (pickup, vehicle, pump, …) you won’t have to release and press the interact button again
  
• You can now also pre-press primary fire so when you equip your hammer for example you will start repairing immediately without having to release and press your primary fire button again
  
• Added a cooldown of 5 seconds when spamming voiceline command too fast (+UI notification)
  

[h3]Bug fixes:[/h3]

• Fixed a bug that made it so weapons would keep reloading while using a vehicle or when using the spyglass (Reloads are now cancelled as intended)
  
• Invisible players on ships should be fixed now (If not, please let us know)
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed 2 or more players to duplicate items when taking them from a container simultaneously
  
• Fixed a bug that would allow ships to sail through sinking ships which had their geometry clip through the hull pushing players outside and making some vital parts of the ship inaccessible
  
• Fixed a bug that would sometimes make the teleporting time shorter than it should be
  

Let us know what you think about this update on our official Discord!

Avast, me hearteys!

We've been hearing your feedback that enemy boarding parties are too difficult to spot in the heat of battle! That's why we've added a red shine to enemy players to make them more distinguishable from your own crew mates.








If you dislike this change (probably because you like boarding, in which case we salute you), don't worry! Early Access is all about experimentation for us. This change isn't final, and if both the community and ourselves feel that this wasn't the right move, we can revert it, or find another solution.

That's just one change, here's more!

[h3]Gameplay:[/h3]

• Melee hit detection has been tweaked so it works much better while moving the camera quickly around, this makes it much easier to hit people in high speed moments
  
• Melee range slightly increased (from 1.7 meters to 2.2 meters)
  
• Melee damage increased again with 5%
  
• Red shine has been added to enemy players so they are better distinguishable from friends (you can disable this feature in gameplay options)
  
• You can now also detonate explosive barrels with melee weapons
  
• Explosive barrel weight increased from 200 to 201 (to cap the max barrels you can carry at 4)
  
• Fish launcher reload time increased from 1.8 seconds to 2 seconds
  
• Fish launcher AOE damage reduced from 70 to 60
  
• Shoulder cannon reload time increased from 2.5 seconds to 3 seconds
  
• Double barrel rifle projectile damage decreased from 45 to 42
  
• Container UI has been revamped so you can no longer click on items as they are transferring (a throbber has been added as well to show transfers are in progress)
  
• Holding ALT while using a container now transfers single pieces instead of opening a pop-up for a custom amount (the pop-up was too slow and was barely used)
  
• Holding ALT for single pieces removed from character inventory UI (to avoid people spamming hundreds of single items to cause lag)
  

[h3]Visual and audio improvements:[/h3]

• Fish launcher reload sounds added
  
• Shoulder cannon reload animation sounds and visuals tweaked a bit
  

[h3]Bug fixes:[/h3]

• Fixed a bug that caused item amounts to sometimes double when transferring items with high latency (see “Container UI improvement” in Gameplay updates)
  
• Players can no longer take damage as long as the spawn selection screen isn’t finished
  

[h3]Quality of life:[/h3]

• You can now disable head bobbing while sprinting in the gameplay options (enabled by default)
  

[h3]Optimisations:[/h3]

• Some coral LODS have been improved
  

Now we know what you're thinking -- where's VOIP? Well we ran some more tests today and we're confident that it'll be coming SOONTM.



Take these changes for a spin and let us know what you think!

Ahoy landlubbers!

For those who have been following our development for a while, you might know that we used to have a dusty old Trello board to show what we're working on. Well, no more! Now we have this pretty roadmap showing you what we're working towards in Early Access!

Full resolution here

Over the course of EA, we're going to release four major updates, each of which will include a brand new cluster for you to explore! Of course, that won't be all. New ship types, map settings, and cosmetics are also planned for these major updates.

Our very first one is dropping around Halloween (late October, for those unaware of the spooks), and will include:

• The monstrous Kraken Keep cluster
  
• Special spoooooky cosmetics
  
• A map setting that'll shroud the entire map in a thick fog, making it more difficult to spot enemies
  
• And more! Depending on your feedback, we may push priority on things around!
  

As you can see, our other updates are planned around new year, the lunar new year, and the full release of Blazing Sails! We're not spilling the beans on what those will contain just yet, but yes, some of them will contain new ship types!

And fear not, these won't be the only updates during Early Access. As you can tell, we've been actively working on balancing the game, adding QoL features, improving the UI, and more! And we'll continue doing that in between the major updates.



[h3]Extended sale![/h3]

Yo ho ho and a bottle of grog! In celebration of the special pirate event on Steam, Blazing Sails' sale (repeat that quickly 10 times) will be extended until September 21st!

Get yer crew together and pick it up:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1158940/Blazing_Sails_Pirate_Battle_Royale/

That's it for now, scallywags. Let us know what you think of our roadmap, and join us on Discord for good vibes and bad memes!

Ahoy Scallywags,

Glad to hear you've been enjoying Blazing Sails so far! To answer your very first question, no, no voice chat JUST YET. It's still disabled due to a rare bug, but it's being actively worked on and we'll implement it ASAP!

What we do have for you is some requested changes to the UI that should make looting clearer. No longer will you accidentally drop all your loot into your opponent's dead man's chest! We've also made some pretty noticeable changes to melee combat. More consistent, and slightly less damage!



Anyway, here's the full patch notes:

Gameplay:

• Melee hit detection greatly improved, landing hits should now be much more consistent
  
• All melee weapon damage has been reduced by 20% (due to the new more consistent hit system and because melee was a bit too strong)
  
• Treasure chests now spawn perpendicular on the surface beneath them
  

UI:

• New inventory and container UI
  

Balancing:

• Jawblade damage has been increased compared to other melee weapons
  
• Deadzone collapsing speeds and in-between times have been tweaked
  

Bug fixes:

• Fixed a bug that allowed players to create a 5 man crew when spamming interact on the crew banners
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the final collapsed deadzone to not do any damage to ship or players
  
• Fixed a bug that caused a player to sometimes not be attached to a ship and therefore appear as invisible to other players
  
• Stealing widget no longer appears when looting a destroyed ship
  
• When your inventory is full you can no longer loot quick access points (this caused items to disappear)
  
• Player level no longer shows when spectating players (this was a leftover UI element from the Beta) Actual levels will be added again in a future update!
  
• Deadzone is now more centered in the map which should make it so circles are generated more evenly across the map
  
• Changed minimum post processing quality option to medium as low and lowest disabled auto-exposure which caused the screen to appear extremely dark
  
• Windowed fullscreen no longer swaps back to fullscreen and vice versa
  
• Fixed a bug that would sometimes due to lag allow 2 players or more to pick up the same weapon
  
• Fixed a bug that still showed amulet glow in UI after being killed while standing on a teleport platform
  

Give these changes a whirl and let us know what you think on our Discord!