M.A.S.S. Builder News

Welcome to another WIP Weekly update. Today's quite a special one, since we'll also be adding an overall progress update of the 0.9.0 patch for you all as well, since it's been a long time and you people have been quite curious on how we're doing and when is the patch coming out.

Let's take a look at today's update first, another up and coming Quark for the 0.9.0 patch. This is another from the set of new Quarks with the improved design we've been talking about. They'll be here with mechanics not found in any Quarks before now so expect something different when you're fighting against them.



Now, to the part of where we talk about the progress of 0.9.0. To tell you frankly, we don't know when the update is coming out ourselves, but we do have a certain date we'll not cross. Why is it like this? Are things not going according to plan? Honestly, no, things are still going on as planned and there's been no hurdles we did not expected, but it's a workload that's more than we first estimated.

See, developing multiplayer modes mean we need to revisit every part of the game and see how are we going to apply it into multiplayer. That means we look at each calculation, each area of development that we've done up until 0.8.0, and see how well it will translate into multiplayer. Calculations that were done in client must now be moved to server, things like that. And without knowing, the game has grown to an extreme proportions we did not expect it to be, so it took a lot of time to go over everything. Then we apply everything into the new mode, basically a new game in itself while borrowing assets from the old game. That's how we ended up with almost 5 months of development without an expected release date yet.

But looking at everything, the time taken there is not wasted, as it provides more time for other parts of our team to work on some other things, like the Quarks being shown here in this week's WIP. We kindly ask that you give us more time, and if there are still any concerns or question regarding M.A.S.S. Builder's development, come and talk to our developer representative inside our Discord linked below!

Discord: discord.gg/quS7E46
Feedback Hub: bit.ly/3wpWofe

As we've shown some tuning interface last week, a lot of questions regarding how they will work has been asked. We'd like to take this opportunity to explain and answer them here so enjoy the read!

As a reminder, PvP tuning is entirely separated from PvE tuning.

Let us first start with unlocking PvP units and sub-units. PvP units and sub-units will all be unlocked for everyone at the start. Players will not be required to use their resources or unlock any of them through any trees at all. This decision came from a desire to have every player able to just enter into multiplayer PvP and have a fair chance against other players immediately through similar tuning. These units and sub-units might be familiar, some even sharing the same name as their PvE counterpart, but most of them have different values.



We also decided to put PvP tuning in the same place as PvE tuning, just on a different tab, as we wanted players to feel familiar and see the same screen they are used to. It was also made to allow players to attach certain tunings with their selected M.A.S.S. unit and easily compare them between the two modes, allowing them to keep things in theme for the unit. On that note, with the tuning values attached onto a M.A.S.S. unit like this, players must select the unit they wanted to use in multiplayer before joining a multiplayer lobby.

Let's move on to tech sub-units and how are we designing them. Tech sub-units are one of the most build defining thing in M.A.S.S. Builder in PvE and we'd like to keep it that way. However, a lot of tech sub-units in PvE are designed to fulfill a player's fantasy in being the most powerful in a way one desired with much of them attributing to increment in power. In PvP, we'll be shifting much of their power to other units (engines, gears, os, modules, architect). PvP tech sub-units are mostly utility support for the builds instead, so players won't need to rely on them to do damage, just to further their build instead. Of course, we'll still be putting some extreme sub-units out there, just not the average conditional +10% damage like in PvE mode.

And to those who are wondering how many sub units will be allowed per main unit, PvP mode will follow a tier 5 schema, 4 sub-units for engines and os, 5 sub-units for architects. The decision here was made to have players feel that they are required to sacrifice some power for some other and not be an ace-of-all-trades, either be an ace-of-one or a jack-of-all.

Discord: discord.gg/quS7E46
Feedback Hub: bit.ly/3wpWofe

Another short update for another week, but before that, we'd like to mention that Multiplayer mode development is still going on and we're unsure of when it will be completed, but we're trying our best to make it happen as soon as possible.



Now, let's look at what we're ready to show this week, the upcoming tuning interface. We wanted to separate PvE tuning from PvP tuning as mentioned before, and discussing amongst ourselves, we came to a conclusion that each M.A.S.S. units of you players are created with a theme or clear concept of what it can do thus we've reworked the tuning menu and added a PvP mode interface there. This will allow players to tune their units even before joining the Multiplayer mode.



PvP nodes will be different from their PvE counterpart and every node is unlocked since the start of the game so you can rest assured no grinding to unlock them will be needed. We've not completed how many nodes there will be or what they'll do so the image previewed here isn't all of them. We hope to be able to release the 0.9.0 version soon, stay tuned!

Discord: discord.gg/quS7E46
Feedback Hub: bit.ly/3wpWofe

Welcome back to another WIP weekly update, this week featuring something else aside from the expected multiplayer stuffs. We're adding more poses to the photograph mode! There's nothing much to say except check the previews out below.



Discord: discord.gg/quS7E46
Feedback Hub: bit.ly/3wpWofe

With most of our backend systems being worked on at the moment, we thought to share some sneak peek, a preview of the multiplayer that will be available in 0.9.0.



We know there's a lot of concerns on making a good multiplayer system and syncing players' actions is one of them, which is something we're trying our best to not disappoint. Stay tuned for more next week!



Discord: discord.gg/quS7E46
Feedback Hub: bit.ly/3wpWofe