Kaz Ball
Patch Notes 2019-08-13
1. Bots have been fixed! They will no longer wander aimlessly, and are back to being a threat.
2. Turrets have been updated, and there are a lot more of them. You should find even simple bot games a lot more challenging.
Things that are bad this time ːsteamfacepalmː:
I had to do a little work under the hood today, so a full database wipe was necessary. This means the leader board, and personal stats are all back to zero. I try to minimize these types of things, but this is Early Access so there are going to be issues like this sometimes. It was much better that I wiped and started clean, than having to make weird database patches.
I'll post a pre-wipe scoreboard to the the Discord server.
Patch Notes 2019-07-25
1. Lots of updates to make joining, and maintaining Steam lobbies less error prone.
2. Added Vsync option in the video options to prevent your graphics cards from smoking.
3. Added a feedback form in the hangar to report bugs, feature requests, and enhancements.
4. A few other random things that are not particularly interesting to players.
First Kaz Ball PvP Event Details
There have been a lot of requests to set up some sort of gaming event in order to coordinate times when players will be online, and available to play in the PvP matchmaking queues!
This has been a high-priority for me, and I appreciate the patience being shown by the community over the past month since the first Early Access release.
I've been cooking up a few different ways to implement something like this, but completely forgot that Steam has support for this via the Steam Groups feature, so let's see if this will fulfill our needs.
I've created three events:
Friday, 19 July @ 20:00 each region: Kaz Ball Open - 1
Saturday, 20th @ 15:00 each region: Kaz Ball Open - 2
Saturday, 20th @ 20:00 each region: Kaz Ball Open - 3
Steam's event system uses your local time to determine whether or not the event has started, so this may be a little bit confusing. I'm open to some discussion surrounding how to best deal with our regional timezone differences, but for this event I'd like to define some time zones that are relevant to Kaz Ball's regional matchmaking system.
EU = UTC
NA = EST (UTC-5)
Asia = JST (UTC+9)
SA = UTC-3
AU = UTC+10
You'll likely need to adjust for your local time if you wish to compete in a specific regional slot. Feel free to participate in one or more regional slots if you wish.
I've also set up some new channels in Discord for each region so players can try and interact with each other a little better, or to gauge who is online, etc.
I look forward to seeing everyone!
Patch Notes 2019-06-10
Patch notes:
1. Don't fire afterburner when not moving, and a few other weird afterburner issues
2. Fix the leaderboard sorting mechanism
3. No longer add statistics for unfinished games
4. Allow players to opt-out of initial flight training
5. Center the mouse crosshair upon loading the game, so you don't start by spinning out if your mouse was off center before joining
Kaz Ball has released into Early Access!
Some launch issues to note:
1. Obviously this isn't final state of the game, so please be kind :)
2. When matchmaking against bots, there has been an observed issue where the bots sometimes seem to wander around, or take too long to figure out what they are supposed to be doing. This is currently at the top of my list of stuff that needs to be fixed! The problem seems to stem from an update to to Unity, and I'm trying to track down a fix.
There are probably other items I should note, but I have too many butterflies in my stomach to conjure them.
Thanks for checking out Kaz Ball!
Join us on Discord!
Updates to Early Access Release
I've decided to release Kaz Ball for FREE during the Early Access period. There are several reasons for this, which I'll outline below.
1. This will (hopefully) allow me to grow the player community rapidly. Part of the release delay has been due to my terrible marketing skills, and my inability to find a great PR firm within the confines of my budget. Since this is a multiplayer game, it's a good idea to grow a community around it early on, before trying to capitalize on it.
2. I also feel that paid Early Access has become way too common in recent times. Asking players to pay for an unfinished project has the potential to bring on even more negative reviews by players who feel cheated out of their hard-earned money. I feel like players will be a lot more understanding, and forgiving of an unfinished title that was received for free.
3. Honestly, I'm just tired of sitting on this game. I enjoy working on it, but all of this work is for nothing if people can't play it, even if I don't make any money off of it while still in development.
This means, however, that I need to rethink a lot of the back-end services that allow Kaz Ball to function. In the current state of those services, I'm not sure that they would be able to support a massive influx of new players. I want to make the release as smooth as possible, and that means leveraging some different techniques that will take a little time to set up.
This does not represent any sort of shift in my promises to deliver a game without micro-transactions, or anything of the sort. During the E.A. period, and beyond, there will still be absolutely no extra paid ships/skins/content/etc.
I'll add another update once I have migrated some of these back-end services, and will update everyone with an E.A. release date very soon.
Thanks to those who have continued to express their interest in this project, along with all of the emails, Steam discussions, and Discord chat.
v0.1.1.8 Released
There are also more placeholder sound effects that give you some feedback for when players get hit, their shields drop, and for when you score a hit against another player.
The leading target indicator has also been improved by taking into account your network lag. It should help you be more accurate when chasing down, or intercepting other players.
Discord
@KazBallGame
v0.1.1.7 Released
Most of the changes for this milestone have previously been pushed to Steam, however the matchmaking system has had some rework due to the implementation of a party system.
Players can now create parties, and join matchmaking with a group of friends for both PvP and bot-play.
I need to do a little more work on the bot matchmaking systems so that players can jump into bot play even if the queue has not completely filled up. Perhaps some time limit, or something. This will also open the future ability to play private bot games with friends.
I would like to implement private PvP games so that we can have some sort of league system where two teams of five pre-arrange matches with each other.
Anyhow, since most of the updates for this milestone were pushed to Steam in with a previous announcement I'll keep this one brief.
I have a lot of back-end stuff that I need to start working on for the unique ship systems, so I'll get back to that!
Later!
For a detailed list of the current milestone, and other backlog items, please check out the public issue tracker
Discord
@KazBallGame
Road to 0.1.1.7
This milestone brings about several large mechanical changes to the game. Currently, I am about halfway completed with the milestone, and the features that have been completed have already been pushed to Steam.
A list of pushed changes are:
Holographic field of play
There is now a holographic astral-pitch that gives the game more of the sports-feel that I'm going for. Along with this addition, the boundary sphere has been modified to be less distracting now that we have an actual field of play.
Ships can take multiple hits before dropping the ball
Each ship now comes equipped with a shield that allows pilots to take more than a single hit before the ball's grappler fails. I'm still tinkering with the numbers, but now that the actual mechanic has been implemented, these are simply configuration values.
Onboarding, and tutorial updates
This was probably the first part of this milestone to go live, but there have been some changes to force players into going through the basic flight test training so that the very basics of the game are learned. There is a bit more to do here, but I'll knock those out in another milestone.
Battlecruiser durability, and new game objective
As we crept in battlecruisers last milestone, it was now time to give them a function. You must now disable the opponent's battlecruiser shields. You can do this by either shooting the ball into the goal for a large amount of shield damage, or by taking pot-shots at the carrier. There's plenty more work to do on the battlecarriers, but it was just really important to make sure the basics were covered so that I can iterate on them. I should probably update the flight test courses to include battlecruiser mechanics, too.
I have plenty of work left for this milestone, but I'm working as fast as I can to get it all knocked out!
For a detailed list of the current milestone, and other backlog items, please check out the public issue tracker
Discord
@KazBallGame
Battle ships!
There are some pretty big changes coming in the next couple of releases to include different ship statuses with unique weapons for each, damage to players ship causing the player to eject, and fly back to the carrier to get a new vessel.
Also a new mechanic will soon be introduced where the goal of the game isn't to simply score 10 points, but each goal scored will actually cause damage to the opponent's battle ship. Player ships will also be able to damage the battleship, and depending on which type of ship you're flying, you may have some tricks up your sleeve.
More information will be forthcoming in the next few days and things get fleshed out.
Join us on Discord!