Teams & FFA

Hi fellow gamers,

We got some happy news for you today!

As many of you may already know, we've been working hard this autumn to bring you Line War's next important update: Teams & FFA. We know that many of you have waited long enough already for these features to arrive, and we sincerely apologize for the delay and missed ETAs (see REASONS FOR DELAY further down).

Now, at last, the beta is open as a Steam opt-in to anyone that has a copy of Line War! In fact, this has been the case since December 12 when we made an announcement on the Line War Discord. If you haven't yet joined our terrific and wholesome gang of intellectuals and gentlemen at Discord, be sure to do so now by following this link: https://discord.com/invite/ZReTqqk4FV.

If everything goes well, the proper release of Teams & FFA could be shipped before New Year.

[h3]INSTALLING LINE WAR BETA[/h3]

Go to the "Manage / Properties..." dialog of your game in Steam
Enter "LineWarPioneer" in the beta access code field
Make sure the dropdown is set on "beta - Line War Beta"
Wait for download to complete

The beta is very stable and all critical bugs have been fixed. Many gamers are playing it on a daily basis, which also explains some of the increased matchmaking duration of the released version (which the beta is competing with).

[h3]FEATURES INCLUDE[/h3]

Gameplay with up to 8 participants
Teams (including assymetric teams like 3v2)
FFA
New lobby and matchmaking system
New menu and lobby UI
Revised Picking Phase
Detailed match summaries with diagrams
Balance changes

Please note that any kind of single-player mode (except from the already existing Sandbox) is NOT included in this release.

[h3]FRESH VIDEOS FROM TEAMPLAY[/h3]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRGEAsjcieU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7h9gwcc1Pg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eufW-aiSKlk&t=7s
[h3]REASONS FOR DELAY[/h3]
Some have expressed their dissapointment or frustration over the pace of development for the various features. Once again, we would like to take this opportunity to apologize for failing to deliver according to our planned schedule as shown on the home page. We can assure you that laziness or general disregard for the game's development are NOT one of the reasons for the delay!

First of all, Imhenzia undertook a permanent move to Australia with his family in October. We failed to fully anticipate how much this would affect the game development in general, the time difference between Sweden and Australia being what it is. But we're getting better and better at organizing our work and daily schedules over time.

Then we have a number of other factors that contributed to this situation. The codebase, for one, was completely unprepared for teamplay but hardwired to 1vs1. The Picking Phase had to be reworked from the ground up to facilitate picking between teams or FFA. Not to mention the lobby and netcode that was plagued by a few really nasty bugs that took the better of us during a 3-week long grind. Special thanks goes to SomeoneSaidThatMyNicknameSucks, akamisc, Dåseåbneren, ElMeheecan, valithor, RoMad, notoriousnubs, CrimsonGiant and all the other beta testers for helping us along the way! We couldn't have done this without your support.

[h3]COMING NEXT[/h3]
Once the Teams & FFA modes have been fully released, we will focus our efforts on implementing a Basic AI to practice against, but also pick some of the low hanging fruits such as the Aircraft Carrier and Technologies. We are also sketching on plans for the future of Line War single-player gaming, involving the development of a Campaign Editor with AI Scripting. This would enable users to create their own content.

We hope that you will enjoy Teams & FFA as much as we do.

Anyone up for some games? We're waiting in the lobby!

;-)

Sincerely
Basantos & Imphenzia