We've been hard at work on our next update for Close Order. We don't have an exact date yet, but we're targeting sometime in the next two weeks or so.
A few key things you can expect:
Controller support!
More bugfixing
Difficulty adjustments
These are our three main things we're focusing on, but it will also feature many small changes as well. Stay tuned for more.
- The Raconteur Team
Happy Fat Tuesday!
From everyone at Raconteur, we'd like to wish all of you a very happy Mardi Gras! The final level in Story Hub 1, Fat Tuesday, is a Mardi Gras-themed level that lets you build a fleet... of Mardi Gras-style minions!
The level actually encapsulates the history of Mardi Gras more than you might think. In France, the event was originally used as a way of mocking the monarchy -- and in Close Order, you're making a fool of the Emperor's armada (from the third level of Story Hub 1, "Deck of Cards") with wacky parade ships!
If you ever looked at a parade and said, "That would be PERFECT in my fleet!" then you owe it to yourself to boot up Fat Tuesday today - especially since we now have trading cards!
There's never been a better time to join our community and experience our wonderfully odd little game. :)
- The Raconteur Team
Trading Cards, Emoticons and More!
Happy Monday, everybody!
We hope you've been enjoying everything that Close Order has to offer.
Since launch on January 21st, we've been hard at work to improve your experience. We've launched several updates improving the game over the past two weeks, and just a few of the things we've fixed since launch are:
Fixed issues with the opening scene not properly loading
Fixed all reported issues related to crashing
Eliminated a memory leak that was deteriorating performance
Improved hitboxes
Added health bar coloration to better convey when the player is about to die
Fixed resolution and user interface scaling issues in full-screen mode
In addition to this, we have several features planned for this month's 1.1 update!
Difficulty adjustments; our exact plans are not final, but we plan to improve the current experience based on a lot of feedback saying certain missions were too difficult
Audio options; we'll be adding the ability to adjust sound effects and music volume, in addition to master volume (and also fixing a bug where the options may not save)
Controller support (regular controllers, not specifically the Steam controller)
Finally, as of this post, we have now added the full Steam Trading Card experience to Close Order!
Try and collect all of the trading cards, badges, emoticons, and profile backgrounds that you can! They're pretty darn cool, if you ask us.
We're constantly listening to the community, and look forward to hearing what y'all think. Thanks for being great! :)
- The Raconteur Team
Hotfix #2 is out!
Happy Saturday, folks!
We've uploaded a second small update for Close Order. It addresses the following:
Fixed crash in opening scene related to certain components being activated prematurely.
Fixed Shop and Formation Editor menus being accessible in cinematics.
Fixed kill counter tracking issues.
Fixed damage issue with enemy that fires lasers.
Made health bar visually reflect your status (orange and red coloration based on damage taken).
Solution for UI issues was to force native resolution in full screen mode. This is, unfortunately, a Unity issue we can't fix, and this is our best solution at the moment.
Made enemy bullets more visible.
Minor difficulty adjustments (major difficulty changes coming in 1.1)
Other various bug fixes and performance fixes.
Thank you to everyone who has been providing us feedback and helping us improve our game! Close Order now has more people playing than ever before, and we're finding more issues than we ever could have anticipated due to the volume of people playing -- and with your help, we'll keep making the game better.
Second Hotfix On The Way!
Hello again!
We're knee-deep in fixing things and wanted to give a quick update on our next hotfix, which should be out in a day or so.
What will be fixed:
Fixing crash in opening scene related to certain components being activated prematurely
Fixing Shop and Formation Editor menus being accessible in cinematics
Fixing kill counter tracking issues
Fixing damage issue with enemy that fires lasers
Improving UI scaling - temporary fix is to play in windowed mode if buttons or menus are getting cut off or not displaying
Making health bar visually reflect your status (orange and red coloration based on damage taken)
Thanks for your patience and feedback - we're making lots of progress thanks to YOU! :)
- Raconteur
Hotfix Deployed!
Hey guys and gals!
Great news! We think that our crashing issues were related to a memory leak. Memory leaks are really nasty situations where the program steadily keeps using increased resources when it shouldn't be, in our case RAM, until the hardware can't take it anymore and crashes.
We put Close Order's systems under the microscope and think we've fixed it, and you should no longer see a lot of the crashes that were being reported.
Here's a list of this small update's items:
Fixed memory leak resulting in crashing
Fixed crash relating to Repair button
Increased hitbox size to make hitting enemies easier
Next on our list is UI scaling, which will be our next update. Stay tuned, and please keep telling us what you think! :)
- Raconteur
Hotfix Incoming
Good morning!
We're in the process of identifying the cause of several bugs that have caused crashing for some. We'll be getting an update out ASAP to fix that.
Please continue leaving us great feedback as you all have been. Thanks!
- Raconteur
Known Tutorial Issue
Happy Friday everyone! Thanks for a strong launch day and the feedback we've gotten.
Quick announcement for everyone - there's a known issue in the formal tutorial (after the opening cinematic) where if you buy minions before it instructs you to, the game may eventually hang and crash if you proceed with the tutorial.
We're working on a fix - for now, try to contain your excitement about your minions until the tutorial tells you to buy them! ;)
- Raconteur
Close Order Has LAUNCHED!
Happy Thursday, folks! Let's cut to the chase -- Close Order has left Early Access, and version 1.0 is NOW AVAILABLE!
Three new missions. New UI. Hundreds of bugs squashed.
Here's a list of just a few of the change highlights:
Adjusted difficulty of various levels
Missions now go in a specific order, and are rearranged to better reflect a difficulty curve
Revamped tutorial mission to better explain the game's controls and systems
Added quick access guide in both the Pause and Main menus that detail controls, game mode descriptions, and more
Fixed every single waypoint in the entire game (story and survival) to either be re-positioned, reworked, or just overall made better
Fixed various Survival mode issues that prevent enemies from spawning
Adding brief introductory videos to each mission in Story Hub 1, as well as an introductory video for Story Hub 2
Professionally voice-acted opening cinematic (as well as the micro videos within hub world 1 and the opener to hub world 2)
Complete Story Hub 2 -- build an FTL (faster-than-light) drive and escape the galaxy!
Brand new UI for menus and the Crossroads, with shop window redo coming in our 1.1 update later on!
Improved options for dialogue text speed (dialogue now advances using the space bar instead of auto-playing)
And, of course, LOTS of bugfixing!
Two big things that we plan to add in an update next month are expanded options for sound volume (separating sound FX and music to provide more options and customize volume), as well as full controller support.
Close Order is now the best it's ever been, and we're proud of what we've created. Thank you to everyone who helped us get to this point. We read every single bit of feedback, good and bad, to help make the game better, and it's paid off.
All that’s missing is YOU. What are you waiting for? Go build your fleet and see all the pretty new things!
- The Raconteur Team
Launch is Close!
Hi!
Quick update - we're down to our last bit of polishing on the full version 1.0 of Close Order, and you'll get to play it this Thursday, January 21st!
See our previous announcement for more detailed info about what to expect.
The only thing we didn't get to slip into this update was greater sound control (music and sound effect options in addition to master volume), and this should make it into our first post-launch update. You can expect full controller support in that first post-launch update as well!
Thanks to everyone who stuck around since August, gave us some feedback, and helped us achieve our vision. We've finally made Close Order into the game it was meant to be, and we couldn't have done it without your help.
We can't wait to see your armadas on Thursday!
P.S.: We'll have all-new main menus and Crossroads UI as well. Say goodbye to our Early Access menus!
