Scroll down for a full list of changes since this post
Hey guys, we just want to give you all an update on the most recent patch. 3.0 required a lot of code to be rewritten and we have essentially back tracked on our progress bug wise. After a year in early access you'd expect us to be near complete by now, but this is not the case. To see why visit the news post below. For a TL;DR: We were not happy with the direction we were headed design wise and decided to overhaul some fundamentals of the game, ignoring any existing bugs because we saw no sense in patching things that would be changed.
This genre is still young and unprecedented, with little reference to go off of we were not surprised when halfway through Early Access we would completely change course. By that time we had seen enough public play to know where we wanted to go.
One could argue we were putting content before bugs, which is half true. We were in a constant tug of war with retaining players long enough to have incentive to fix bugs. According to negative reviews from 2.0 and previous, players stopped playing due to lack of content, not because of a buggy experience. Because of this we shifted our focus onto content and only prioritized gamebreaking bugs that could be recreated almost all of the time. We would much prefer a content rich game that has some bugs to fix than a polished game that doesn't hold you.
Before going live 3.0 was tested as extensively as it could have been for those who volunteered to join the testing branch. As far as bugs go we have many on our list and are working as quickly as we can. We have been asked by server owners to actually slow the rate of our patches because it's causing them to restart too often.
It is worthing noting that many bugs can be fixed by simply reconnecting. In some cases a single error during connect will botch the state of the game and cause a multitude of seemingly random bugs.
Obvious signs that this has happened are invisible ships, being unable to jump, or seeing players on deck with the swimming animation. We are working to at least warn a user that this error has occurred while we investigate more into the issue. It doesn't appear to be consistent at all (making it difficult for us to get logs of what really went wrong).
As for the design and forts, this is being tweaked constantly. We also have analytics in place. A lot of things are currently happening that aren't exactly bugs, but oversights in design that we would never have known until the patch was public. As expected we are now patching reactively to these "tactics".
Please keep in mind 3.0 has only been out for 5 days and there are only two of us (minus any outsourcing to speed things up). Only one being a programmer. We're knocking bugs out as quickly as we can and we definitely won't stop until things are cleared up.
Overall the amount of positive feedback we've gotten has been overwhelming. We're much happier to see the game head in this direction even if it means going through a rough patch from such a large overhaul. Bugs have never been more crucial to us than they are now.
Dakota & Tyler
Side note
There seems to be a misunderstanding about our plans to leave early access being mistaken for planning to stop updating the game, this is not true. Also this initial bare bones 3.0 patch is not all of 3.0, we just released it in its rawest form to make bug fixing easier. Other features are done and not turned on yet. (See our 3.0 preview post in news history)
Changes since this post:
Attempted to fix various bugs linked with connection issues
Can no longer pass captain to yourself to reset mutiny votes
Fixed issue where staying on deck while a ship sank would make you/other players invisible
Fixed issue where joining late would not spawn existing ships for the faction with a fort under attack
Fixed issue where long respawn times from fort battles would carry over after returning to ships
Attempted fix on issue causing some rounds to start under attack and unable to construct ships
Fixed issue where admins in spectate mode would trigger forts to be under attack or flags to capture and make building ships not possible
Fixed issue where dead players would keep a fort in attack mode
Fixed error in ship sinking that would cause desyncs if you joined during the process
Made changes to help alleviate clicking the spawn button too quickly spawning you in the ocean if you just connected
Attempted fix on issue that may have been causing some grapples to result in thousands of tickets and supplies being given to the victor
Mutiny votes should no longer carry over between rounds
Gate health regeneration has been buffed significantly to require most of the faction to break the gate and assault so there are less small skirmishes on the fort
Because of the above flag capture speed has been tripled
Fall damage has been made a little more forgiving on forts while still not allowing defenders to survive the fall from a wall and flank
5 players are now required to make your fort go into attack mode so single players hiding won't stop your ability to construct ships
Adjustments made to ship labels in the Q menu to prevent issue where they sometimes wouldn't show
Attempted fix on issue that may have been causing the respawn timer to count and never spawn you
You should now be able to carry supply crates through water
Tip boxes have been blocked if weapon select menu is up
Cannons should no longer reset their turn angle just before firing if you leave them too soon after igniting
Server owners can now see who manually restarted the server
Server owners can now see the version mismatch that caused a restart
(Already in place but not officially documented) a patch was released after hotfix C to make gates 2x slower at regenerating. We have a new system for gates on the way.
Made adjustments to some previous connection changes that ended up causing some players to not be able to join a crew or spawn after fix C
Gate system has been overhauled. You will now escort an explosive payload from the dock to the gate to destroy it. The explosives can only be stalled by 3+ defenders. This will of course be balanced as analytics and feedback come in. Once stable, a hotfix will come to scale this based on population.
Defenders should now respawn in the fort faster if the gate has not been breached so the option to defend the fort isn't delayed by a long respawn timer
Should no longer be able to damage parts of ships below water
NOTE!! Fixed an issue where all over aimed shots would hit no matter what, making ranging very easy. This has been fixed and aiming is now back to normal, NOT nerfed. It may be more difficult if you were not around just before 3.0
Players on the lower deck of the galleon should no longer become invisible
Tweaked the Q menu further to work on disappearing labels
Tooltip adjusted on bomb payload to display more often
"Target below surface" check has been removed, may or may not be re introduced. We decided we want to balance ships first
Attempted to fix an interesting error brought to our attention where if you used non ASCII characters in your name your name would default to "x", making any player with the same situation not able to connect and be stuck at "connecting". We don't know how our font will treat these characters, but we have removed the ASCII check
2 ships near the fort will now put it in attack mode to stop ship construction until the area is cleared
Attempted and tested another fix on grapples shot moments before a ship sinking would result in a massive amount of tickets and supplies
40% off and 3.0 live!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssqeD5Ryito
For any that may have missed it, our 3.0 patch is live! You can view more in depth details of our plans with the mode here:
NOTE: 3.0 is still very new and we are constantly making balance changes, expect lots of fine tuning over the next week or two, especially to ship stats and fort play.
Can't wait to see you in game!
Tyler & Dakota
Alpha 3.0 Preview
Ahoy Mateys!
Here is a preview of what is to come in the upcoming 3.0 patch! Currently we have done over 60 internal tests with 2 being major stress tests, and are still going through the paces of adjustment and refinement. We are getting close but still have several tasks to complete.
As you know, our main goal for 3.0 was to provide content that increased replayability for Blackwake. Initially Blackwake was only meant to be a simple game, it was only focused on 1v1 small ships. As development went on design changed and we were left with some hard coded limitations in what we could achieve. Therefore to make 3.0 happen a lot of things had to be reworked. Instead of doing a sequel, we decided to try and get these things into Blackwake because many of you enjoy the game as it is now, and just want to see it expand. This was the cause of the stall of patches over the recent months.
3.0 will set us back a little, we admit, but we're much happier to proceed in this direction than the one we were on. With the initial 3.0 launch please bear with us and expect issues, we will work as hard as we can to resolve them.
SHIP CHOICE
You are now able to choose your starting vessel, as well as different vessels after it has sunk. We have both faction specific ships unlocked for both factions for the time being. This should provide a greater dynamic with combat from different encounters.
Eventually the ships will have more enticing pros/cons, allowing captains to choose ships that fit their play style the best. This isn't fully balanced yet.
NEW SHIPS
4 New ships will be added for 3.0
GUNBOAT Currently this is classed as a starting ship, which is small and extremely nimble. Primarily for close combat and boarding.
CUTTER An agile anti-boarding ship with 2 stern guns.
BOMB KETCH This has a mortar on the ship that can only be fired while stationary.
BRIG A new large vessel ship that has a fully open deck and 9 guns a side.
NEW SHOT TYPES
A large part of future patches was to give players more choice in how they approach combat. We now have 3 new special shot types that can be utilized for different scenarios.
BARSHOT Destroys ship masts. Can only be effective within 300m and must be aimed at the masts for a hit. If done so will incapacitate a ship for a long period of time. Players will need to repair the masts including all sails.
CHAINSHOT This is primarily used for destroying sails. Has a medium range and does 100% sail damage. If you feel like outmanuevering a ship this may be an essential option.
HEATED SHOT No longer will fire be an RNG element in the game. Cannonballs can be placed in a furnace, in which they require a short amount of time to heat up. Target specific parts of enemy ships to cripple them!
CANNON CHANGES
You can slowly horizontally turn cannons using the AD keys. These will reset once fired.
Max range has been changed to 700m to encourage more boarding. The purpose of this mechanic is to provide crew with more control on firing, and instead put strategy, manuevering and tactical thinking on the captain. The cannons turn extremely slow so lineup from captain is still required.
FORTS
Along with increasing replayability and options, we've implemented a base for each team. We understand that constant ship combat can get tiring at times so have opted to have an optional way to WIN the game. This should take the coordination/agreement from the three crews ingame to make a successful assault.
If your ship is not built, everyone will spawn at a fort. You can teleport to your ship at the ship constructer.
The fort has a flag towards the top of it. If the enemy stands on the flag for long enough, it will capture the base and that team will win.
There are mortar towers on the forts that each have three cannons and a mortar on it. These towers may be destroyed by firing cannonballs at them.
Mortars will not destroy a mortar tower. Active enemy towers show up with their range on the ‘Q’ overlay.
There is a red glowing area that can be used by the captain to raise the gate, it closes after 30 seconds. Gate will eventually be redone.
When your base is under attack you will get a UI notification.
TEAM SELECT
We've now changed the team select menu to show players on each crew before the round starts to help organize/balance things out.
We've done a pass on the galleon/cruizer to add some more details on the ships to make them look a bit more lived in.
SHIP DESTRUCTION
As mentioned we have redone our ship destruction system. Now ships will have more precise holes. The primary purpose for this was to improve performance as well as fix those hard to reach holes! We will be adding effects to make these more visible, such as water spraying while submerged.
THE FOLLOWING WILL COME IN LATER PATCHES TO 3.0
We wanted to get 3.0 out as soon as we could so we could return to our more frequent patch schedule. So we've decided to lay out the base foundation for 3.0 while adding things after balance and stability have been tested. 3.0 isn't an all in one patch, it marks a series of updates that will be more active.
RESOURCE NODES:
This will only be in trial to see if it pans out. Complimentary to ship construction, having 3 resource nodes in the edges/center of the map that can be captured may offer more strategy. Wood, Hemp, Metal nodes can be captured and used to purchase ships that have defined costs.
DEFENSE MINES:
Captains will eventually be able to purchase (with gold) their preffered sea mine during ship construction.
SEA MINES:
Throw overboard into water. If ship runs over it, it creates 1 hole (no damage to crew). players can throw onto ships during boarding and shoot it for explosion. (crew damage)
Barrel will sink after 30 seconds. limited count of 10.
SMOKE MINES:
Throw overboard into water. creates a large smoke volume. thrown over gradually allows ships to create smoke walls. ships cannot be spotted through smoke walls. this is to aid/help friendly damaged ships. can also be used to obscure chasing ship vision.
TAR MINES:
Throw overboard to dump tar into the ocean. ignites and creates a fire volume. throw multiple to create a fire wall. any ships sailing through this wall will catch on fire.
SHIP STATISTICS:
Eventually attributes such as turn rate, ship speed and sink speed will be adjusted per ship.
MORE SHIPS
Currently we have the Bomb Vessel (13p), Carrack (7p) and Xebec (13p) in close completion.
MORE COSMETICS
We currently have over 20+ outfits in the pipeline, including some with wooden legs :) Eventually we will have ship figureheads and custom ship wheels that can be unlocked. We will show more of this as we get closer to that time.
Once the 3.0 content and beyond has been recieved well we will move onto 4.0. Which will be the final release for Blackwake. We will be ironing out a majority of the bugs, fixing game balance, adding quality of life improvements and adding more cosmetic unlocks for crew and ship.
We hope you enjoyed the preview mateys!
Dakota & Tyler
2.333 hotfix
Requires both serverside and clientside update
Due to popular request we've backported a change from 3.0 into the current live branch given the amount of trolling going on after the recent sale.
- Vote kicks now publicly expose your name as wanting to kick a player
- Any cannon loaded with a shot that is special (non-cannonball) will be branded with your name
Tyler & Dakota
Update on 3.0 (Dec 26)
Hey guys just giving you a little recap of 3.0 and an update on where it is. Some of you are already familiar and some may be new, so we're going to go over everything.
As of this post 3.0 is on its 27th closed test, and mostly complete code wise. We're now leaning on art demands as multiple ships are being added along with some.. other art.
What is 3.0, why did you decide to do it, and why is it taking so long?
Many of you saw it, and we saw it too. Blackwake can be repetitive. If you have a captain that doesn't want to board, or if no one hosts any objective based gamemodes, or you never get a chance to be a captain, Blackwake can get stale quick. While we are grateful it's praised for what it is, we agree that what it is right now should not be the end product but it is a perfect foundation.
We did not like where we saw the end product going with Blackwake so we decided to take any plans we had for a sequel (things we deemed too difficult and nearly requiring a rewrite of the game) and just doing them now as an update. 3.0 is an overhaul and has pretty much paused any updates going out to the live game.
Why so little information?
Our community loves to pick apart our updates, which is great, we love feedback. But some are a bit over zealous and will deem a feature to be the bane of their existence before it is ever tested and balanced. This time around we decided to save ourselves the Discord mechanic debates (which we often do) and remain mostly silent, only talking with the closed testing players which is made up primarily of veterans who also are able to take on the view of a clueless new player. Having both of these perspectives helps make sure everyone is happy when we do roll out the update.
We'll also go a little more into detail in this post about what is in 3.0.
3.0 is designed to be controlled through the server configuration file. Meaning it can be turned into any gamemode you want (given the select features it releases with or are added in the future). It can be scaled how you'd like, and also balanced how you'd like. 3.0 gives server owners the ability to customize various settings and then name the gamemode what they feel fits the playstyle they've configured most.
Many new shot types are being introduced with devastating effects, RNG fire is being removed and will now be a crew controlled shot type that requires "cooking" a cannonball in a furnace for 60 seconds. Note that fires will be adjusted since their frequency will increase.
Max cannonball range will be reduced from 1000 to 700 to keep ship play in more exciting ranges. Far too much do we see a captain sailing very far away from any action and boring their crew to death while they struggle to land those unforgiving long range shots.
Captains will enjoy full control over what ship they sail, regardless of the team they're on.
3.0 will be our last big update before leaving Early Access. 3.0 will release and we will do a lot of polishing and balancing as we lead up to 4.0, which is planned to be full release. We should add we are not done with Blackwake after full release, we will continue to patch in content!
Happy holidays!
Dakota & Tyler
Community Request - Ships!
Ahoy Mateys!
Going forward with updates we'd love to know what type of ships you'd want to have in the game. We already have a few planned but would like to see whatever interesting ideas people have.
There are some guidelines on your suggestions.
1. Must fit into either the 7 player or 13 player class of ships. Meaning the amount of activities to do on deck, cannon loading, repairing should suit the player count. There shouldn't be many people standing around doing nothing. 10 Guns a side is currently quite a handful for a 13 Player class with the current Cruizer in-game.
2. Ship suggestions must fit into a specific role. Take into account the amount of guns, how they are fitted on the ship, and what purpose it serves in the game.
They must have strong points and/or weak points. Although given a situation effective during certain encounters. Even strong at multiple but weaker at others.
Eg.
Long range gunning
Ramming
Boarding
Mobility
Agility
Chasing
Fleeing
etc.
Feel free to provide a reference of the ship, with either a name (if preexisting) or a mockup of perhaps the deck layout. MSPaint can work fine!
3. Ship designs do not have to be accurate to the era or historically accurate/location of piracy. So Galleys, Barbary Pirate ships like Xebecs are fine.
I will note that we have these ships already in progress:
Bomb Ketch 13P
Bomb Ketch 7P
13P Brig
7P Cutter
The Bomb Ketches:
We have a reddit discussion available here!
https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackwakeGame/comments/74our2/community_request_ships/
Dakota & Tyler
Hotfix to live build, 3.0 underway
Hey guys just wanted to give you a quick update and not leave you in the dark.
We recently pushed a couple patches that did the following:
- Fixed aid boxes covering the confirmation button of weapon select
- Added a new aid box that will tell new players how to use their hammer when the repair order is given
- Fixed issue where some servers weren't showing on the list for some players
In other news patch 3.0 is currently underway and though the next patch may be a little ways away we want to let you know we are definitely working. 3.0 will be the biggest patch Blackwake will see.
Here is just one of the small changes coming in the mega patch: Our destruction system optimization. Our old blocky system was never that way intentionally, it was just what we settled for and was quite resource intensive. With this change alone expect quicker load times and higher frame rates. Oh, and no more cheese-cut holes!
And with the performance saved from this system we will be introducing a new tactic for destruction...
This is just one small thing and by no means the main focus of 3.0. We'll keep you up to date as we approach public testing!
Dakota & Tyler
2.332 - Water Spouts!
Servers require restart!
Changelist
- Captain model is locked forward when on wheel (view is not restricted)
- Water spouts added (See below)
- New pirate and Navy outfit (See below)
- Yearly halloween mode enabled through to November (A bit early we know, but last year you guys wanted more playtime as zombies)
- Class of cruiser ship changed to "cruiser"
- Repairing holes now rewards 100 points from 50
- Ships now sink if capsized
Water spouts
Water spouts are a rare weather, as not only are they limited to the four storm maps but they also only have a chance of appearing. Though rare, they are arguably the most dangerous weather to fight in next to the unpredictable volcano map due to their low visibility (especially during the night hurricane map).
Water spouts will spawn constantly throughout the entire match in random intervals and travel in a straight path across the map. Sometimes none may be touching down, in extreme cases three or four may be active at once.
They are loud, you will hear them and begin hearing them a little ways outside of their influence. They have a range of pull that will disrupt sailing, raising all your sails will reduce this pull by 50% and may buy you enough time to survive a close pass. The closer to the core the stronger the pull. If you fail to escape and enter the core your ship's nose will be broken and likely have its crew thrown in the water in addition to possibly being capsized and destroyed.
Spouts are undergoing constant tweaks based on feedback
Full changelist
- Adjusted how server banner is sent to see if it'd help some users with connection issues linked directly to a banner being used
- Volcanos won't erupt during win sequence
- Two Navy outfits and one Pirate outfit
Tyler & Dakota
2.33p2 - Animations & Balance
This is the second part of patch 2.33
http://steamcommunity.com/games/Blackwake/announcements/detail/2736357019233225969
Changes:
- Pump animation/pose
- Swim animations
- Made players swimming on water surface more accurate
- Win poses
- Cannon aim poses
- Antisails added to rear of sophie for balance
These will be tweaked more as we go but they needed to be supported first.
