"What's Coming Up" and Minor Patch Notes (0.33.6 alpha)
Here are just some of the features we are currently hard at work on:
Work continues on taking our terrain visuals to the next level. We’ve just recently gotten it to a stage where the artists can start converting all assets over to the new system. This is a months-long task, as we’re taking the time to also expand/improve our levels in meaningful ways while they’re under the knife. For a sneak-peak at the current state of Serpent Plains using TT3, check out the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw7ylN6lQSU
We're just getting started on the journey to getting our much-anticipated grinder mods shipped out to you all. That is to say, we got a few of them working to the point where we can play around with their functionality and start tweaking/balancing their gameplay. After that we’ll start doing an art pass on presentation, along with any special case stuff to make sure players understand what the mod will do once equipped. While we’re still a ways off from shipping this feature, it is already showing a lot of promise, shaping up to be another great addition to the game.
As many of you may have noticed in discussions with us over on our Discord server, we’d like to tweak some of the way scoring works on both our Stockpile and Salvage game modes. Specifically, stockpile is currently undergoing some tweaks internally, with the goal of rewarding more strategic teamplay. We’d like to move towards rewarding prolonged control of factories as opposed to just getting a point every X seconds of control. Additionally, we’d also like to create some more interesting point distributions for taking over enemy-controlled factories to encourage comebacks. We’re hoping we can get it finalised for inclusion in our next update, fingers crossed.
What once was an objectives screen, will soon become a status screen. Why the change of heart(name)? Well since we shipped our game, we introduced game mode briefings at the start of matches, so it’s no longer a mystery about how the current mode you’re playing works. With that, the status screen can then be cleaned up a bit, leaving room for more important status information that’s key to your team’s strategy towards winning. This is a mockup of the direction we may take for future revisions of the Status screen’s presentation (in this case showing Stockpile mode).
UPNP is a feature of many home routers that can help prevent some connection problems when one player tries to join a server being hosted by another player. It allows the game to request that the router reserve a specific port for game traffic and not be so strict! If you've ever tried to join someone's game and gotten the Server not responding error message, there is a good chance this will help you out!
Vox currently uses the microphone support built into the Unity game engine. While this works for most people, a few had issues. We are working on hooking into the microphone input available in Steam and Oculus Platform which will hopefully provide a better experience. This will also help simplify things for us since we use the Wwise audio system for speaker output, and removing the dependence on Unity for mic input allows us to disable Unity's audio system completely. We're just testing the new mic input and sorting through some bugs, hope to have it in there soon.
In Summary...
So there you have it, TT3 work continues, grinder modules are taking shape, game mode scoring will improve soon-ish, and misc stuff is also happening! All this to say, we’re continuing to work our butts off in making Vox Machinae better and better, even if sometimes that means doing less exciting stuff along the way.
Terrain Tech 3 Work Marches On
Work continues on taking our terrain visuals to the next level. We’ve just recently gotten it to a stage where the artists can start converting all assets over to the new system. This is a months-long task, as we’re taking the time to also expand/improve our levels in meaningful ways while they’re under the knife. For a sneak-peak at the current state of Serpent Plains using TT3, check out the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw7ylN6lQSU
Grinder Modules
We're just getting started on the journey to getting our much-anticipated grinder mods shipped out to you all. That is to say, we got a few of them working to the point where we can play around with their functionality and start tweaking/balancing their gameplay. After that we’ll start doing an art pass on presentation, along with any special case stuff to make sure players understand what the mod will do once equipped. While we’re still a ways off from shipping this feature, it is already showing a lot of promise, shaping up to be another great addition to the game.
Game Mode Scoring Changes
As many of you may have noticed in discussions with us over on our Discord server, we’d like to tweak some of the way scoring works on both our Stockpile and Salvage game modes. Specifically, stockpile is currently undergoing some tweaks internally, with the goal of rewarding more strategic teamplay. We’d like to move towards rewarding prolonged control of factories as opposed to just getting a point every X seconds of control. Additionally, we’d also like to create some more interesting point distributions for taking over enemy-controlled factories to encourage comebacks. We’re hoping we can get it finalised for inclusion in our next update, fingers crossed.
Status (Objectives) Screen Update
What once was an objectives screen, will soon become a status screen. Why the change of heart(name)? Well since we shipped our game, we introduced game mode briefings at the start of matches, so it’s no longer a mystery about how the current mode you’re playing works. With that, the status screen can then be cleaned up a bit, leaving room for more important status information that’s key to your team’s strategy towards winning. This is a mockup of the direction we may take for future revisions of the Status screen’s presentation (in this case showing Stockpile mode).
UPNP Support
UPNP is a feature of many home routers that can help prevent some connection problems when one player tries to join a server being hosted by another player. It allows the game to request that the router reserve a specific port for game traffic and not be so strict! If you've ever tried to join someone's game and gotten the Server not responding error message, there is a good chance this will help you out!
Platform Mic Support
Vox currently uses the microphone support built into the Unity game engine. While this works for most people, a few had issues. We are working on hooking into the microphone input available in Steam and Oculus Platform which will hopefully provide a better experience. This will also help simplify things for us since we use the Wwise audio system for speaker output, and removing the dependence on Unity for mic input allows us to disable Unity's audio system completely. We're just testing the new mic input and sorting through some bugs, hope to have it in there soon.
In Summary...
So there you have it, TT3 work continues, grinder modules are taking shape, game mode scoring will improve soon-ish, and misc stuff is also happening! All this to say, we’re continuing to work our butts off in making Vox Machinae better and better, even if sometimes that means doing less exciting stuff along the way.
Patch Notes - 0.33.6 alpha
- Add support for Logitech-branded X52 Pro HOTAS joysticks.
- Add deadzone for joystick-type controllers to prevent drift.
- Add "-avatar" launch option to force showing the pilot customization screen.