Genre: Fighting, Shooter, Simulator, Hack and slash/Beat 'em up, Indie
Clone Drone in the Danger Zone
November 3 bugfixes!
Hello humans!
We just deployed a small update (1.1.0.56) fixing a few bugs:
The Emperor and zombies no longer die instantly when you separate the torso from hips!
Fixed issue where legs would stay attached when you damaged the connection between torso and hips from above.
Fixed the workshop browser crashing when updated quickly on a slower connection
Imperial Armor Bots can now appear in Workshop Levels!
Fire traps shooting fire no longer alert enemies in stealth game mode.
Emperor Shockwave and grenades no longer crash the game if they happen next to enemies hidden by sections
Added a few missing translations in Korean and Traditional Chinese
No major changes other than that.
As always, if you find bugs or experience crashes, feel free to email us at bugs@doborog.com, make a forum thread, or post about it in our discord
Cheers, Erik
Zombie Adventure Level Competition!
There is a lot to celebrate this November! We have added the Adventure Mode level type to our Level Editor! You can also download and play new levels right from our new Level Browser to see what they look like.
The theme is...
Zombie Adventure!
Rules:
Make an Adventure mode level. Endless mode and Challenges won't be entered for the competition.
Make your level fit the theme of Zombie Adventure.
Only Enter one (1) level per person.
You are allowed to work with other people to make a level.
You can submit levels you've made before the start of the competition. They must meet the rest of the rules.
You can edit the game as much as you want until the deadline. We will judge the level on the deadline.
We reserve the right to disqualify any entries that we think are inappropriate.
Feel free to share your levels with friends and other community members to play! As long as posting doesn't spam or break the Discord guidelines!
How do I make an Adventure Level?
Community Manager Josh has made a guide on how to make a level in Adventure Mode! https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2643213579 If you have any other questions there are lots of experienced Level builders in our discord https://discord.gg/doborog
Awards
Community Vote Award
- The map with the most thumbs up (from the start of the competition) on the Steam Workshop will win! - Please post your levels to the Doborog Discord and other Clone Drone Discords to get people to play and vote for your level! If you're not sure about self promotion, ask Josh or Carissa!
Best Animation
- Use the animation system to make the robots do or say something cool!
Best Decorated
- To win this award, build something that looks awesome! A level that's more than cubes and enemies.
Most Epic Fight
- Win this by creating the most fun combat experience!
Scariest
- Spook us! Zombies can be scary so if you want to make a scary level!
Best use of Stealth
- We have a new Stealth mechanics where the robots will listen and look for the player. Make a level with stealth and the new patrol routes to have a chance to win this level!
What do I get if I win?
Your level gets featured on the front of our new Level Browser!
Emote!
Voxel Art Course!
Our artist Zach Soares is the genius behind our new Zombies and he can teach you how to make 3D models in the same style as Clone Drone!
Where do I enter my level?
Once you are done, put the link to your level in this form! https://inj5jehpdl0.typeform.com/to/w06fEpwd
The end of this competition is the 25th November 2021. We will announce the winners after that date, as soon as we have played all the levels!
If you want to share what you're making or ask for help, our Community Discord is full of amazing Level Editors who can assist you! Join at this link https://discord.gg/doborog
Happy Level Editing! Josh
The Halloween update is here with a 30% Discount!
Happy Halloween Humans!
To Celebrate this new update, Clone Drone in the Danger Zone is in the Halloween Sale!
30% OFF in the Steam Halloween Sale!
This new update is big and comes with a new enemy type, a new Level Editor mode and a new Official Adventure to play!
We have added Zombie Enemies!
These robots are rusting and dangerous! Their big claws can tear a robot into scrap metal very quick.
There are four Zombies, from the small Level 1 Zombie to the Level 4 Fire Zombie!
You can use these enemies in the Level editor or try the Trouble at Zombie Tower Adventure to see how scary they can be!
Adventure Levels - A new Level Editor mode!
Do you want to make and play levels outside of the arena? The Adventure Mode is a free space to create any shaped level you want!
Here is a quick list of all the additions to the Level Editor:
Adventure Levels let you build outside of the arena.
New Stealth Mechanics so robots can only attack if they see the player.
Make your robots walk around a patrol route so the player can hide from them.
Customise the Win and Lose conditions of your levels.
Checkpoints so you can spawn the player wherever you want.
Upgrade Bot is here! You can put him anywhere and give the player more upgrade points.
We are working on a tutorial to cover all of these new features and help more people make Adventure Levels!
You can create Adventure levels in the Level Editor and post them to the Steam Workshop for everyone on PC to play.
Play the new Zombie Adventure!
We have made a new level so you can see all the new features. In Trouble in Zombie Tower, you will have to sneak past all the Zombies guarding the tower so you don't have to fight them all at once!
Please send us anything you make with Adventure Mode or Zombies in our discord! https://discord.gg/doborog
Have a happy Halloween!
Josh - Community Manager
Multiplayer Hotfix - 1.0.0.29
We just pushed a fix for multiplayer not connecting which began occurring about 18 hours ago. Let us know if you are still unable to connect to multiplayer for any reason, making sure to confirm your game version is updated to 1.0.0.29.
What needed fixing?
Around 10pm EST Tuesday we noticed a majority of player connections began failing. After investigating we learned from our multiplayer networking service provider that a service they relied on went down and would require a client-side patch to hotfix their library. So we had to update the game client to fix it!
What about consoles?
We are submitting the same fix to Switch and PS4 shortly and asking for emergency patch review, but it may depend on how long their reviews take, fingers crossed!
Xbox should be uninterrupted, let us know if you do see any issues connecting to games. Cross-play should also still be intact!
Why did resolving it take the whole day?
We were waiting for our partner to completely fix the problem with a patch fix, which just came in 45 mins ago - so we got it implemented, re-tested and pushed it live just now!
Thanks to everyone who let us know about this issue early, and for everyone’s patience while we got this sorted out!
Hotfix: Minor Performance Optimization!
Hello humans!
Our previous update tweaked some subtle stuff around physics that led to a decrease in character movement speed for some players.
We just updated the "maximum allowed timestep" to strike a better balance between maintaining a consistent framerate while making sure the physics simulation is not too dependent on the visual framerate.
Let us know if you notice anything different!
Cheers, Erik
Future Plans + Patch released!
Hello Humans!
We just released a little Patch that fixes a wide variety of bugs and add a few improvements to the game. Read more about the details in the second half of this blog post!
What's next for Clone Drone??
Since many of you are curious, let's talk about what are plans are for the future!
Adventure Levels
In the immediate future, we're going to be focusing on expanding the capabilities of the Level Editor, creating a new type of level that takes place completely outside of the Arena!
Levels that quickly leave the arena to have a fantastic adventure elsewhere is a pretty common scenario among the more elaborate levels created by the community!
We're really excited to see what everyone makes when this constraint is removed. We'll also be looking into things like checkpoints, saving progress etc. to let you make things that are similar in structure to our own Story Mode levels.
If this makes you at all excited, join us on Twitch where we'll be streaming the building of this feature! :)
Workshop Curation / Competitions!
The other side of our Level Editor focus is that we'll be looking into ways of supporting more official Level Editing Competitions, and find cool ways to highlight high quality workshop content that stands out from the crowd.
We really enjoy the energy of people coming together to make cool stuff, and want to set up systems that facilitate that happening on a regular basis.
Next competition coming up will be for Halloween, but don't start making your levels yet. We'll likely make this one lean on our new format taking place outside of the Arena. :)
Server Stability / Performance
In parallel to new feature development we are investigating ways to make our servers more performant and more reliable. This is a huge undertaking that involves overhauling how pretty much everything works in terms of hosting and matchmaking, so it might take a while, and comes with a healthy does of uncertainty in terms of specific outcomes.
Nevertheless this is something we feel could be better in the game right now, and we have some promising investigations in the works. More info about that when we have it!
Next game!??!?
At some point in the next few months we'll start exploring what games we're making next! We'll still be working on some Clone Drone things at the same time, but if you see us start to work on weird things that have no robots or laser swords, this might be what's happening. ;)
New Multiplayer Game Modes
It's maybe a bit early to talk about the specifics of this, but let's just say we are addicted to game modes and have plans to explore more of them!
What kind of game modes??? We'll likely experiment with more than one type to see what ends up being fun. Let us know what you'd be excited about in the comments!
Patch Notes!
ok, so that was a lot of info about the future. What did we do in the last few weeks? We made this patch that just went out! (1.0.0.24)
Emperor Combat Tweaks!
So right after launch you had a lot of feedback on the Emperor, especially on Insane difficulty!
For our immediate hotfix we didn't change the Emperor at all, but with this one we took the time to improve the fight in the following ways:
Jump damage: No longer active at the start of the jump! No longer active directly after he lands.
Shockwave attack: Decreased the radius slightly, and increased the cooldown before next use.
Imperial Armor Bots: No longer give armor or shoot down arrows while they're being constructed!
In addition to these changes, we also changed the amount of energy you have when mind transferred into robots! Both spear1 and sword1 now have 2 energy bars instead of 1, which makes confronting difficult enemies slightly less impossible with them. It also increases the tempo for both Chapter 4 and 5, so overall we think it's a pretty fun change!
Performance improvements!
A focus for this release was to increase performance across the board. While many of these changes might be primarily felt in our console patches that also went out today, you might feel the improvements in the Steam version as well.
PlayStation / Switch: Full gyro support!
Do you enjoy having Gyro on all the time? We've added a setting to allow you to always turn your controller to turn the camera, as opposed to it only being active when using the bow.
Bug fixes!
Music cutting out! We fixed the music sometimes cutting out when a lot of sounds were playing at once.
Fixed a crash from your laser raptor friend lasering things in the central corridor of Chapter 5.
The Emperor can now jump on jump pads without getting stuck
Removed energy bar from end of chapter 3 cutscene.
First Emperor confrontation in Chapter 5 now correctly resets your mind transfers.
Chapter 5 Insane achievement: We had some reports of it not unlocking for people, and made the way we do that a bit more reliable.
Fixed spectator mode not allowing you to switch character when using controller!
Emperor skin had a bug where the legs would not fall off when cut in multiplayer. Fixed that!
And there you have it! The next few months are going to be a lot of fun. As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments!
Cheers, Erik + team
We've achieved so much in one month since release! What's next?
Hello Humans!
It has been one month since the release of Clone Drone in the Danger Zone and the Doborog team are really happy that so many of you are playing! It's been a very busy month for us.
Early next week we’re releasing another small update on all platforms that:
fixes a bunch of bugs
improves performance on consoles
adds some useful controller gyro functionality for all weapons on PS4 and Switch
tweaks the Emperor fight to feel better based on your feedback
More details next week when the patch goes live!
Fun fact - together you all played so much multiplayer that we used over 75,000 hours of our game servers! This unprecedented number of hours caused a glitch with our server provider causing all servers to turn off, but we since fixed it and they upped the global server limit in response, and everyone should be able to connect now!
But what are we working on next?
You can watch a quick description of our plans on our TikTok! Up next, we’re excited to expand what you can do with the Level Editor and the first stage of that is allowing you to create maps that work outside of the arena!
Another focus of the team is improving multiplayer server reliability and performance and have some exciting things in the works there.
We even have plans to add more fun fights and maps to the game for free after all that. Follow us on Twitter, TikTok, Reddit or Discord to hear about the latest updates, and watch Erik stream development live on Twitch!
We did a Game Jam!
Last week we had some fun feeding the entire script of Commentatron and Analysis-Bot to a powerful AI system, so it can now automatically answer ANY QUESTION in the voices of the commentators (it does a surprisingly realistic job!). What would you ask them? https://www.tiktok.com/@doborog/video/6998905758117072134
If you're looking for a quick free game to try, check out Berlock Bromes! We made this game in a week and now you can download it for free: https://doborog.itch.io/berlock-bromes
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Have fun in the Arena!
Josh, Doborog Community Manager
300,000 Humans Have Joined the Arena!
Hello Humans!
The launch of Clone Drone in the Danger Zone has blown our minds... there are now 300,000 people who have bought the game!
Thank you to everyone who has played the game, whether you are in single player facing the challenges or trying to be the Last Bot Standing in Multiplayer! There have been some really fun videos too — watch CaptainSauce play some of the amazing custom levels from the Steam Workshop!
[previewyoutube="TJuvOf8oOTs;full"]
All your feedback has been really helpful too! We've already improved the final Emperor boss fight on Insane difficulty thanks to you — keep the notes coming!
Our next long-term goal is investigating multiplayer server scaling issues (we found a fix last night that might have resolved that, let us know if you can't find a server!), general multiplayer lag and ping, and more game optimizations for lower-end devices (especially consoles). Some of these may take a while so please be patient with us while we work on it. In the meantime we will still be fixing bugs and sharing all the amazing things you create.
For instance, take a look at this awesome Clone Drone Lego made by u/knux400 on r/CloneDrone
See the full Lego arena here: https://www.reddit.com/r/CloneDrone/comments/owoojn/clone_drone_in_the_lego_zone/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Good luck in the Arena, Josh - Community Manager
Patch Note: Final battle on Insane Difficulty!
Hello human!
We just launched a little patch (1.0.0.6) that makes the final Story Mode battle a little bit less unreasonable on Insane Difficulty! :)
Here is what it used to be like:
Every time you died you would re-spawn as a spear1 unit. With the patch, you will now re-spawn as whatever enemy type you entered the bridge with.
The Emperor is just as difficult. You still have no mind transfers available. But now you have a chance of entering the final battle as something other than what could arguably be called the weakest unit in the game! :D
To the 0.8% of players who managed the heroic feat of defeating the emperor as a spear1, well done! It is still possible to defeat the Emperor as a mark 1 robot. All you have to do is not die at all before reaching him! :)
A lot of you reached out to us expressing frustration with the previous difficulty, and we really appreciate all the feedback we've received from the launch so far, both good and bad!
Keep letting us know what you think of the game, as more bug fixes and adjustments will be coming!
Thanks for helping us make this a great launch! / Erik
Clone Drone 1.0 is OUT NOW with Chapter 5!
Hello Humans!
Clone Drone in the Danger Zone has left Early Access with Chapter 5 completing the story mode! You can now buy the full version of the game on the Steam Store Page.
We have achieved so many amazing things as a game and community these past 4 years thanks to your support!
Overwhelmingly Positive Steam Reviews
Over 33,000 Steam Workshop creations
Incredible Steam Workshop Level Competitions
One Massive community Last Bot Standing tournament
Millions of views on Youtube, Twitch and Tiktok
Over 260,000 of your human minds transferred into far more comfortable robot bodies!
Thank you to everyone who has played the game and helped us spread the word in Reddit posts, YouTube videos, TikToks and Tweets!
Now that the game is released you will be able to play multiplayer crossplay with your friends on Xbox, Switch and Playstation.
If you are a more experienced Clone Drone community member, please be kind and patient to new players and use your pro-gamer skills to help them while they are learning!
If you would like to join the community and talk about the new Chapter 5 join us here! https://discord.gg/doborog
Happy Robot Smashing! Josh - Community Manager on behalf of the whole Doborog Team
