M.A.S.S. Builder News

There are two things we'll talk about today! The first is what was listed in the headlines, M.A.S.S. Builder will be heading to Tokyo Game Show on September 26 - 29 at the indie games area! Our booth will be represented by Sekai Project, our publisher, and we'll have both English and Japanese speaking personnel to welcome you!

There'll be a demo station for those who have not tried our game yet as well as developers who will be ready to answer any of your questions and concerns so feel free to visit our booth to do so!

Now, aside from the news, we'd like to update you on the current WIP of the game as there haven't been one in a good while. This is due to the things we're working on, notably the builds sharing system (named the M.A.S.S.). Systems are extremely difficult to show in WIP as it's mostly a back-end coding work but we'd like to say it's still an ongoing system we're working on. We've also taken into consideration of requests and concerns and there's a lot to discuss through.

While our programmers are working through that, we've also been preparing for TGS 2024 as announced that we'll be attending. As soon as we're done with the event, we'll start updating you in frequent updates regarding the system again, and we hope you can forgive us for not posting any news in the past few weeks.

Thank you for understanding, see you soon!

Welcome back to a new WIP update for M.A.S.S. Builder, this week featuring our still-in-design M.A.S.S. feature! As the phrasing suggested, we are still designing the feature but have explored a lot of options on how it will work which we shall share with you today.

First and foremost when thinking of this new feature, we looked back to how we can implement it into the game without breaking the game itself. To that, out of all the multiple choices that we have, upgrading an existing feature to implement a new one is what we've decided as the best and easiest.

So, which feature is the easiest to work with? To us, it's importing M.A.S.S. units from one slot onto another. Upgrading the feature to be able to export the unit in some method, then importing it into a slot just like you do with other-slots-importing should be the best method out there. It will also help with the problem of misclicking imports and deleting days or months of works.

How will the new importing, exporting, and sharing works? For now, we're thinking of creating either a really long code to copy or a file that players can export from the game. This code or file can be shared to anyone else so they can be imported into other save files. We are still unsure on whether one is the better choice and there are merits and demerits for both. But one thing we will keep in mind is the ease of use which is why we wanted to have it as a code as well as some thoughts in the back about having previews somehow before importing.



We're also designing a method to allow players to import and export certain group of parts or just parts themselves and not the whole M.A.S.S. unit. This means players can export only the body group, the arms group, or individual weapons along with all the attached accessories and paintjob to share only those certain parts. We think this would help a lot when someone really liked certain parts or weapons, like a mecha-girl face, a Kaiju body, or certain weapons and want to further customize their own body and whatnot.

Well, all of it is still in design phase and we'd like to hear from you all, either through the steam forums or through our discord.

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

Hello everyone and welcome back to yet another "What's Next" post of M.A.S.S. Builder update, this time looking towards 0.12.0. While 0.11.x is still being worked on with bug fixing, we'd like to announce what we'll bring to the game in 0.12.0 this week. In 0.12.0, there will be two main focus points we will be looking at.

First, it's completing the story. With the latest mission, our story comes close to an end and we'd like to finish it by 0.12.0. We won't spoil the final missions here but it's going to be two more missions until that point. This means the final battle against extremely dangerous Quarks await and we hope you'll have fun tuning your M.A.S.S. units in wait for that mission.

The reason we'd like to do this is to finish up work on one aspect of the game so we can work on other important aspects that we haven't had time to dedicate onto yet. One such thing is multiplayer. We hope we can continue working on it by 0.13.0 but that's another story in the future that we'll talk about when time comes.

Now, onto the other focus point of 0.12.0 which we think would excite you more than the above focus point. Something we call... M-A-S-S. That's the game name isn't it? Well, this time we're abbreviating from the words "Mecha Asset Sharing System" and not the usual one! What does it do? What's the system? It's something requested and something we've planned to do since the ideation of M.A.S.S. Builder and with the game's customization system at this point of completion, we think it's the best time to do it.



However, we're still unsure of how the system will come out. It's still in the design phase as we don't want to half-bake a system like this. It must be easy to use. It must be intuitive to export/import builds. It must be something that can satisfy most of you players, the community of builders of the game, and it must be able to make you feel happy to have. With that said, we will be updating you all about the system as it's being created, and we'll be extremely grateful if you can provide suggestions and concerns about the system through out discord.

That's all for today. See you next WIP!

ps. Special thanks to our community that has provided us the images used in today's WIP!

Known Bugs

Textures of ground in some area are wonky and appears to be moving
Flickering cameras
Some tier 7 tech sub-units are not correctly working as intended
Weird collision in terrain in some areas of certain missions
Typos, lots of typos, we will speak with the person in charge of typing so they won't make more typos
Glows looked more dull than ever before, it's not glowing enough!
Zenith thruster isn't working in one place, take caution in flight controls

0.11.x Hotfix

• All of the known bugs should be fixed in 0.11.1. We'll add more when more are reported and we make another hotfix.
  
• Fix random game freeze in mission
  
• Fix terrain tile texture
  
• Fix missile in pod disappear in battle
  
• Fixed decals and missile pods showing wrongly in-game
  
• Fixed launch cinematics showing hidden parts
  

Surprise surprise! We were able to finish our bug hunt and final polishing sooner than expected and we're ready to release our update... so why wait? It's been a really long development cycle this time and we hope we're able to meet some expectations you people have for us.

As always, we'll monitor for any bugs and changes required for a week or two. If there aren't any critical bugs or required hot balance fixes, we'll continue on towards 0.12.0.

[h2]Additions[/h2]

Single-Fire Shooters' Charged Shot

In 0.11.0, we've added new firing methods to old Shooters through charging attacks. For Bullet Shooters, players can charge up their shooters for a few seconds, raising its damage multiplier significantly, even higher than they could do in those few seconds, and release an extremely accelerated and fire bullet. Again, we won't coin the term Railgun to this weapon, but it's up to our players to iterate whatever they wanted to call the weapon. M.A.S.S. Builder is a game of imagination and head canons after all.



With Bullet Shooter being the fast, penetrating bullet, energy shots are bigger, slower, and explode upon impact. This is a fiery ball of death, a charged-up buster shot, and an impending doom for its victims in our imagination. We wanted to make the effect much more extravagant at first, but the visual clutter was too much thus we have the toned-down version here.



New Shooters

We also added new shooters that's not just an added function to old ones as well. For Energy Shooters, the new firing method is called Prism. Prism has two firing methods through the charging mechanics as well. Holding down "left click," players will be able to charge up a prismatic explosion that deals no damage at all but attaches a prism onto every lockable point within an area.



The PRISM's uncharged fire will chain to each, and every point marked with a PRISM that's attached on an enemy. Every shot is counted towards a threshold and when the threshold reaches a certain point, the PRISM explodes for another instance of damage. Stacking explosions here can be extremely strong to clear out groups of enemies if you can setup the perfect chain. In comparison, it's also one of the best against large Quarks with multiple lock-on points. You know which one they are.



On the Bullet Shooter side, we added the Pile Bunker, an extremely different kind of shooter that we classified as a close ranged BULLET SHOOTER. Players get one chargeable bullet, you. The Pile Bunker can be charged for higher distance, piercing through enemies, and a really high extra damage multiplier. It will damage any enemies within its path and players can instantly dash to cancel out of the end part.



While this might sound like a really good melee weapon that allow players to move through the battlefield quickly and uses Piercing to calculate damage instead, Pile Bunker will need to reload after every usage. No amount of MAG.Load will be able to increase its ammo amount.



New Armor Set: Zenith

The set, named Zenith, is designed with a concept of futuristic, cyber-like designs. It's a sleek, thin armor set designed incorporate lines and gaps to emphasize running colors and lights of the future, complete with a headgear that looks like a headset.









New Feature: Parts Hiding

In update 0.11.0, you can now choose to "HIDE" certain parts such as the Skirts or Ankles in addition to unequipping them.



When choosing to hide every "skirt" part, the connection joints will also be hidden, leaving you a thin waist area. This should allow players to create a really sleek looking M.A.S.S. unit without the hurdles and pain of hiding those joint parts anymore.



In regards to accessories, if you hide the parts, the settings of that part is still saved, and will show up when it's unhidden. We hope these make you as excited as us. Until next time!



New Feature: Socket Alignment

In 0.11.0, ARMOR, WEAPONS, and ACCESSORIES will have sockets to help players connect selected accessories on top of each other. The image below shows an example of sockets on a backpack.



In the Assemble menu of accessories. There will be a new Alignment method added into the menu called the Socket Align. Each part will have different socket positions and numbers, but we've made it mostly a sensible connecting position on each of the part. Here is an example of sockets on an ARMOR backpack slot.



New Accessories

As always, we're adding new accessories to play around with in this update!



Missions

• 1 new Campaign mission. A decisive fight against the Ascendant is here. Why is he issuing you this challenge? Can you beat humanity's ace pilot? Would you finally punish them for stealing your kill that one time?
  

[h2]Improvements[/h2]

• Input Mapping - players will now be able to map their inputs to two-buttons-press for controllers.
  
  
  
  
• Updated Quarks - Special uncommon Quarks that does not conform to the normal behaviors and uses special moves to effect combat made a return! They provide a challenge more than the normal behavior of running into players or drop dead and their old frustrating behaviors are now removed from the game.
  
  
  
  
• Updated M.A.S.S. Enemy - Normally when you hit M.A.S.S. units, they don't react much and they seem to just walk around doing their thing. With bosses, they just seem like an iron wall that isn't responsive, and we aim to change that here. We've now provide them with different attacks unlike what your M.A.S.S. can do and turn them into true boss experience. Their status is also adjusted to compensate for the higher difficulty from this improvement.
  
  

[h2]Game Balance Changes[/h2]
Disclaimer: Most balance changes have been discussed with our players through discord, and we'll keep monitoring how things perform.

Generic Adjustments
First things first, we have now unlocked development tier 7. Their unlocking materials will be dropped from later waves in challenges and latest missions. We expect them to provide tons of power to the player and we'll keep watch to modify them if any of them are game breaking.

For tech node changes, we aim to increase the power of tanky tech sub-units in the coming update. We'd improve them in 0.10.0 and while they are well received, their power is too low to be competing for a sub-unit slot. In 0.11.0, we're increasing their power by a significant amount.

Units that improve shield regeneration cooldown are mostly buffed by around 50%. Think nodes that currently lower time before shields start regenerating by 25%, all of them will be changed to a 40% reduction, allowing players to easily slot in one of two for constant shields regeneration. This should make them more dependable and more competitive for a slot in any build that rely on the regenerating shields.

On the same note, we're also improving sub-units that straight up improve shields regeneration and regenerate shields through other means. Things like Perpetual Generator will proc more frequently. Arms S. Battery will recover more shields.

And lastly for this goal, we're also improving durability tech sub-units that are overshadowed by their peers, such as Metals Replacement and recovery nodes such as both the Nanorobotics variant.

Defensive Tech nodes

• Metals Replacement maximum durability increase from +25% to +35%
  
• Living Metal Durability gain from 4% to 5%
  
• Shieldsformer System I and II regeneration start time reduction from 12% to 20% reduction
  
• Shieldsformer Controller shields regeneration start time reduction from 25% to 40%
  
• LC Reactive Armor from 1 second to 2 seconds duration
  
• Fortress Configurations I and II from 2% shields to 4% shields
  
• Dueling Armor shields regeneration start time reduction from 12% to 20%
  
• Fortress Shielding shields regeneration increase from 25% to 50%
  
• Shields Re-Router regeneration start time reduction from 12% to 35%
  
• Composite Nanorobotics durability gain from 1% to 2%
  
• Powered Nanorobotics durability gain from 5% to 8%
  
• Frame Boosting System defense increase effect from 0.75 seconds to 1.25 seconds
  
• Perpetual Generator shields recovery from 5% every 5 seconds to 4% every 2.5 seconds
  
• Portable Charger changed to portable factory, now also restock bullet launchers.
  
• Shieldplates Replacement shields regeneration start time reduction from 50% to 75%
  
• Type 2 Arms S.Battery shields recovery from 3% to 5%
  
• Tremor Impactor effect cooldown from 12 seconds to 10 seconds.
  
• Kinetic Canceller effect duration from 0.75 seconds to 1.5 seconds
  

Other Tech nodes

• Efficient Thrusters I and II fuel burn rate reduction from 10%/15% to 15%/22%
  
• Repulsor Attachment damage from 300/375% to 350/400% and effect cooldown from 6 seconds to 5 seconds.
  
• Immediate Enhancement Quantum Break duration from -25% to -10%
  
• Uninterrupted Support now also provides +15% to total ATK While using Quantum Break to compensate for not being able to use Launchers while in QB.
  

Enemy Changes

• M.A.S.S. enemies have their durability and shields reduced
  
• M.A.S.S. bosses have their durability and shields drastically reduced
  
• Sandstorm Glutton's boss' HP is reduced by around 19%
  

Bug Fixes

• Various typos
  
• Various decals and model bugs
  
• Areas in some missions that drops could fall off
  

So a few weeks ago we mentioned some upgrades to the accessories system right? We're now ready to reveal them this week! It's something we called the Socket Alignment system, allowing players to have a much easier time placing each accessory on each other. What does it do? How does it work? Well, let us explain while with some images.



With the next update, ARMOR, WEAPONS, and ACCESSORIES will have sockets to help players connect selected accessories on top of each other. The above image shows an example of sockets on a backpack. These socket positions might be changed later as we're still not finished placing sockets yet.



Here is another example that shows an accessory with sockets on each of its ends.



In the Assemble menu of accessories. There will be a new Alignment method added into the menu called the Socket Align. Each part will have different socket positions and numbers, but we've made it mostly a sensible connecting position on each of the part. Here is an example of sockets on an ARMOR backpack slot.



And here is another example of sockets on a SHOOTER Barrel, making attaching accessories to make barrel attachments easier.



And another example of sockets on an ACCESORY from the connector category.





And as mentioned, players can even select the axis of alignment when using the Socket alignment method. Below is a sample use-case.



And now the results...



This should provide a ton of help in creating a perfect look with perfect positioning instead of having to carefully click and offset each part. This new feature provides a guide to each position and a starting point for players, making accessory placements easier and faster to work with. And the best thing? It makes customization of parts connecting in distance much easier than before. Remember the last WIP where we introduce wires? Here's an example.



And here are some bonus screenshots in the photo mode.











We hope you like this newest feature added to the accessories system! But as we've mentioned above, not all accessories have its socket determined yet. If there are no good placement areas available, the accessories will have a default socket right in the middle of the part itself.

We'll continue working on the customization system and making the game as best as it could be. Thank you for your continued support. We hope we're able to make the update soon!

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