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Evolution RTS
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Changes, Improvements, New stuff…
It's been a long time since we've made an update announcement. Many things have changed since then, and a lot of improvements have been made. We are continually working to make the game better.
I'm Damgam, new News Contributor and veteran player of Evolution RTS. I'll try to make update announcements more often from now on.
For those who haven't played the game for awhile, I'm leaving a short changelog below. Scroll down for more details
Shard AI Update
ShardAI, that is our Skirmish AI that allows you to enjoy the game even if there is nobody to play with, received huge improvements... Well, to be fair, it wasn't really working properly previously. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
ShardAI tries to play as human-like as possible, but unfortunately it needs some cheats to work. It will be continually worked upon and improved.
Control Points
This Gamemode, mostly known from FPS games, had its time in Evolution RTS. It has been removed for several reasons. New players occasionally had trouble understanding the concept. While it did essentially put a timer on game length and result in some really close down to the finish-line games, that occurrence was only common at higher levels of play. In reality, generally casual players would either not recognize the significance of control points, or even outright ignore them, resulting in their score eventually hitting zero and everything exploding, leaving the player confused as to what was happening.
For these reasons, the gameplay has been revamped to suit a more traditional RTS style... Destroying everything in sight, without mercy or remorse.
Tech 3 Rebalance
Expensive and powerful beasts, that's how you could describe current Tech 3 units and structures. Nuclear missiles create a Big Boom, Long Range Artillery makes a lesser Big Boom, and Tech 3 units can take many shots to the face... but those changes have to be balanced, right?
Nuclear Silo and Anti-Nuke shields are limited to 1 per player, so you can't nuke spam your opponent.
Lobster (Long Range Artillery) eats 15 supply (yes, that's a lot).
Tech 3 Units eat even more supply now, so you have to choose if you want one powerful unit or an army of Snakes. Additionally all Tech 3 stuff now costs a lot of metal, so losing them is painful. You had better assist them with some O.R.B.s ;)
Upgrade System
The new upgrade system allows you to improve unit stats for the cost of additional metal. Units are upgraded directly, and may be used while they are being upgraded. Factories and turrets have 3 upgrades, up to MK4. Metal Extractors can be upgraded to give you additional metal. These upgrades are independent of tech level. It is entirely possible (While not recommended) to have a Mark IV factory that is only capable of pushing out kites. Not such a great idea, but we're not going to judge.
Music
In the v10.00 release, Evolution RTS got a new soundtrack. Because of various reasons we had to switch it back to the original soundtrack. Enjoy! (Remember you can add your own soundtrack to ingame playlist, ask for details on our Discord)
Graphic Improvements
Deferred lighting gives you beautiful explosion, projectiles and lasers lighting that can be visible on units and ground.
Interface Improvements
The Settings menu has received many new options to adjust graphic details to your potato computers.
Unit Names and descriptions in the build menu have been moved from bottom to a little tooltip that appears near your cursor, making it easier to find what are you pointing at the moment. Pretty useful.
Sound Improvements
Some sounds have random pitch now, which makes them not sound the same all the time.
Positional audio has been enhanced. You'll no more be confused while hearing distant shots that are as loud as shots near you.
Future?
(Remember that future plans can be changed at any moment)
Evolution RTS Get-Together Monthly Tournament (July 8th)
The Get-Together will be open for all players to join and have their gaming prowess put to the test!
We will be pitting player VS player until we find who the truly best Evolution RTS player is! All are welcome to join and have fun.
Make sure to join us on Discord! Make sure that your microphone is working properly! We will meet up in discord and play on Dedicated Host 6.
Hope to see you there!
Evolution RTS Get-Together Monthly Tournament (June 10th)
The Get-Together will be open for all players to join and have their gaming prowess put to the test!
We will be pitting player VS player until we find who the truly best Evolution RTS player is! All are welcome to join and have fun.
Make sure to join us on Discord! Make sure that your microphone is working properly! We will meet up in discord and play on Dedicated Host 6.
Hope to see you there!
New Unit, Texture Updates/Upgrades, Unit Icon Updates, Heat-mapping, Bug Fixes, Changelog!
Hello there, I'm back and here to give present to you the new Evolution RTS changelog for February and March!
Major Changelog Notes:
Alright, the first order of business is the new unit! This unit is named B.O.X. It will go around collecting energy cores and turn them into MidKnights! The builders will no longer turn energy cores into MidKnights but will instead turn them into metal.
Metal Extractors have been added back into the game (as an option, disabled by default)! They have been given a new texture and in my opinion, I think they look better than before!
All units have been given a major texture upgrade and they all look much cleaner and better made.
The GUI has been cleaned up and looks nicer now. For example: Buildings will now turn red when trying to build in control points. Armour and damage types are now easier to identify while zoomed out.
Heat mapping for unit pathfinding has been added to the game for better and more efficient unit movement (but YMMV at times).
There is a new energy to fire formula for units and buildings. Range will determine how much energy the shot takes.
Commanders have received some minor changes regarding the factory, builder, and cloak commanders.
All-Terrain engineer has been removed from the All-terrain factory and added to the Overseer build list. The All-Terrain engineer has also been made amphibious. Overseer can be rebuilt if it is destroyed (it's not cheap). Factories can no longer build engineers.
New shield effect results in less performance usage (pictured below)!
Minor Changelog Notes:
Evolution RTS Get-Together Tournament (May 6th)
The Get-Together will be open for all players to join and have their gaming prowess put to the test!
We will be pitting player VS player until we find who the truly best Evolution RTS player is! All are welcome to join and have fun.
Make sure to join us on Discord! Make sure that your microphone is working properly! We will meet up in discord and play on Dedicated Host 6.
Hope to see you there!
Edit: Better time frame as we have lots of players who are not in the US.
Evolution RTS Get-Together (April 2nd)
We will be playing all sorts of game modes and game types depending on the turnout.
Make sure to join us on Discord! Make sure that your microphone is working properly! We will meet up in discord and play on Dedicated Host 1.
Hope to see you there!
Gameplay updates, Factory changes, h-bot Tweaks, Morphing Improvements, New UI Enhancements, Music Player, New News Contributor!
Hello there people! I am your new news contributor (hell of a tongue twister eh?) RSAStudioGames! I will be helping Forboding Angel out with posting updates. So lets get right into these new and amazing updates!
Teching and Unlocks / Generators
Generators will no longer unlock tech upgrades, there will now be a dedicated technology facility which can be upgraded to grant tech levels 1 through 3. Each tech level will unlock certain units from your factories. Tech level one will unlock the basic units while tech level three will unlock the more advanced units. For example, if you have an all-terrain factory, by unlocking tech level 3 you will have access to units such as the Anarchid! Also, in an upgraded factory, your units will receive a 20% increase in health and weapon damage making it of vital importance for winning late game battles!
The tech facility is the building that is glowing green.
Building HitPoints
Building HP is now directly linked to how much that specific building costs. For example, a Lightning rod will have more health than a Kmar shield tower (not including its shield) because of its cost difference.
h-bot tweaks
Next, h-bots have had their fire rate nerfed to fire slower yet steadier. However, turret deployment now results in a 4x HP increase. This is a fundamental change form the original idea of giving turret deployments more range, damage and health. In testing it was a little too easy to exploit. The h-bot engineer can now be deployed into an engineering turret that can build other h-bot turrets! It will also repair units and buildings within it's healing radius! It is similar to the ORB, however it's range is slightly smaller.
Morph Progress
The morphing visualization is now improved so you can easily track the progress of your unit morphs! This is a really nice addition seeing as how it was sometimes quite difficult to know morph progress, and it ended up being more of a "best guess" scenario.
Building Ground Plates
The next improvement is more of an aesthetics thing, but it is still quite nice for those of you who are quite OCD about what their bases should look like! There is a new building ground plate that seamlessly fit with each other (kind of like lego bricks) to make your base look much more organized!
New unit icons!
We now have new unit icons thanks to Dmdr! Units and their types are now much more accurately portrayed.
Automatically generated build menu hotkeys (And cost display)!
Finally, we now have a new UI improvements! Big thanks to Floris and Commonplayer for their sizable contribution in creating the new UI. The UI's buttons and bars now have a glow effect to them. Also, the options menu also allows you to quickly and easily set advanced graphics options while in-game! Another improvement is that the build menu now has hotkey shortcuts so you can quickly place down buildings saving seconds of time for you to get those units out there! The unit costs are now also directly displayed on the build icon!
New music player UI
Something that we have all been waiting for has been completed! Floris and Forboding Angel have created for us a music player! This will now allow us to have basic music controls such as volume, pausing, and playing! The player will also allow you to advance to another track. The track name will also be displayed for those of you who are curious!
Control Point Visuals
And finally, as our last notable update to the game for now, Floris has been kind enough to help improve our control point visuals! This has been a work in progress for quite some time, but thanks to Floris, the UI and the visuals that get drawn on the map are now very professional grade, complete with animations. Additionally, Commonplayer has implemented control point self-stabilization. What that means is that when you own a control point and an enemy steps foot into that control point, the point itself starts to neutralize. The departure is that now when the enemy leaves before fully neutralizing the control point, the point will revert back to it's fully captured state instead of remaining half-neutralized.
Misc Updates
In other news, thanks to the contributions of many people, the wiki is now underway! We have been adding page after page and guide after guide to help everyone out! Come check it out!
Secondly, we are planning another get-together soon! Nothing is scheduled yet but, we are going to make it the best event for the beginning of 2017!
Anyways, I wish you guys a happy new year and lets get to playing some Evolution RTS!
(Enjoy these epic battle screenshots!)
The Enigma TNG has just released his new album: Midnight!
He has done some amazing work and he releases his work under non-restrictive licenses and without DRM, at extremely reasonable prices!
Seriously, check this guy out. He doesn't just stick to one style of EDM, his work comprises multiple genres (sometimes simultaneously).
You can find his latest album on bandcamp:
The Enigma TNG: Midnight
Show him some love!
P.S. There is a pretty large Evo newspost coming very soon. A TON of enhancements and features have been added!
New Lobby Skin, New Wiki Work, New Tutorial Videos, New Maps, New Overseer Morphs, Gaming Get-Together this weekend!
Well, the biggest news first I guess... New lobby skin! Thanks to Ikinz for helping me get this going. It's not perfect but it is pretty nice, so I'm a fan!
New Lobby Skin
The new lobby skin is a bit more functional. No longer are there options that don't do anything, and everything on the front page is geared to be helpful to new players. The "Help" menu item still needs a ton of work, but we'll get there. In the meantime, this should be much more useful to new players.
The Wiki has been Updated!
The wiki has been updated with a lot of very desperately needed information, and in addition, it has also been updated with tutorial videos as well, all geared towards helping new players learn how to play. These have replaced the old and outdated tutorial vids that I made forever ago. Here is the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/irQlZzQxfBQ?list=PLokb2HIhhrYVhkt4KuBt1ZSY5fUH9PIK8
New Maps added to the "Official" map pool!
So to explain this a little bit better... For newbies, I always want them to start out with a pool of maps that is tailored specifically to fit the game. As you have no doubt noticed, these fit a particular style. Well, there have been other maps made by members of the spring community that fit within the mold as well, so I am adding those maps gradually, as they can be playtested, which takes time. Of course, by simply switching the server maplist to popular or all, you can access any map, but specifically for newbies, we want them to have a very specific sort of first experience/impression, and a very well curated maplist accomplishes that nicely. Suffice it to say, over time you will see more and more maps being added to the rotation of the dedicated hosts.
New Overseer Morphs
In one of the most interesting developments lately... Overseer Morphs are now a thing. Currently there are 5 types.
Shield Overseer
Loses stun ability, gains a large area 5k hitpoint shield that doesn't cost energy to recharge.
Cloak Overseer
Loses stun ability, gains a large (free) area cloaking shield that also cloaks the overseer.
Factory Overseer
Loses stun ability, gains the ability to build Raider and Riot units from all tech trees anywhere on the map.
Builder Overseer
Loses stun ability, gains x2 buildpower and +50% buildrange.
Battle Overseer
Retains stun ability, gains a high damage machine gun that shreds light units.
Of course, these are all subject to change, but that's what we have so far, and so far they have been a lot of fun to play with.
Gaming Get-Together this weekend!
Years ago, we used to have a weekly event where we would all get together and play some games of Evolution RTS, 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 even 4v4 sometimes. FFAs on Black Star were always a pretty big hit, as well as playing on multi-level lava maps where the lava rises and kills your base and units if they happen to be in the way. In addition, I stream the event live over youtube. We used to use twitch, but youtube has proven to be a far better platform and has cut down the amount of post-processing work tremendously.
The event is at 8:00am PST (3:00pm GMT) on Saturday the 3rd of September. Here is a google calendar event for it so that you can see the event for your timezone:
View the Event on Google Calendar
Make sure to join us on Discord! Make sure that your microphone is working properly! During the stream we all join the General Voice channel and I stream our conversation during the game as well. We will meet up in discord and play on Dedicated Host 1.
Hope to see you there!