Lambda Wars
This week in LW News.
This week has been a biiit hectic, what with Songbird resigning and appointing me to be the new overlord community manager. This week is going to be simple and sweet, as not much else has happened.
Our beloved JJ has created a guide for those of you new to LW, or new to RTS games in a whole! It teaches the in's and out's of how to properly RTS, but with a loving touch. :) You can check it out here! http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1150290706
Now, some of you are getting antsy with updates, and a select few have taken up pitchforks and torches, but worry not! They will come! We're a bit of a small team, so we don't have the man-power to continuously chug out updates, so know that with every update that comes, it was worked on and tested to be sure that it was acceptable for public release.
Now, onto something more "action packed".
There may or may not be a small event happening soon. If it does happen, expect either me or Mr. Darkness to be the first to inform.
Well, that's all for this week. Have a nice day :)
Farewell, Songbird.
He graced us with his prescence in the start, and has stayed with the team for a good while now. Today, he has resigned and assigned me to be the Community Manager. Let's all give a moment of silence to him, and wish him luck on his future journeys!
Now, onto me being assigned. I shall take up his roles, so instead of seeing news posts being made by Mr. Darkness and Songbird, - along with me occasionally peppering a post or two - it will be Darkness and I making the news posts.
Once again, let us wish Songbird luck.:Sacked:
Lambda Wars Tiny Patch
Just wanted to let you know that I don't have too much time lately to work on things, so I decided to give at least something.
- I fixed hlw_aurora with the thing that made buildings get randomly destroyed, so the map can be properly played again. For now this is the best I can do.
As for the other stuff, there was something planned and worked on, but I'm afraid I won't be able to start working efficiently until like 1-2 weeks past this point. Need to solve some problems IRL first, before I can get back into development.
That's that really.
P.S: [From DIscord]
[16:51] Sandern: The patch you pushed also included a fix for the matches folder not being created.
[17:52] Mr. Darkness: Oh
[17:53] Mr. Darkness: Had no idea
Devs vs Players in 15 minutes!
Me, JJ and Darkness are once more taking up arms against the players. Lobby will be created in fifteen minutes, everyone is welcome to join!
This will be streamed! You can watch here: https://www.twitch.tv/lambdawars
~Songbird
Status Update 17 - What's happening?
Hey everyone!
Phew, it's been a long time since I last wrote one of these, but I hope to be answering and quelling some fears and questions.
First off, about the Community..
I've noticed an increasing trend recently that the Discord and discussion forums on Steam are being used to either spam or advertise third parties, or using extreme vocabulary to put across their grievances.
I want to be extremely clear on this point;
Many people have risen to the point that, if I ban someone, they call it silencing and only allowing those who are positive to speak.
This is NOT true in the slightest.
I ban people for violating steam guidelines, and I warn people for violating rules on the Discord. I take the banning property of my task list in very severe consideration for every case, whether or not it is appropriate. That's all I'm going to say on this matter.
Furthermore, using excessive vocabulary (swear words) to get your grievances across is not necessary. You're violating the rules, and can expect matching consequences.
Ergo, it's unnecessary, and it only puts yourself at risk.
And as far as advertising third parties goes... No. Just no. That's a no-brainer. Stuff that is irrelevant to LW should not be posted here as an outlet with more potential reach.
I hope I've been clear on this for now.
So what are we working on?
A lot of the recent questions have once more been directed towards "are you dead", and the likes.
I can say, we're not dead. But we're not the shining beacon of activity that I'd like us to be either. It's not good, it's not bad. That's that.
But other than that, to our Facebook followers who may have already seen the image posted by Mikhail (Darkness), we're working on a singleplayer mission featuring some prominent Half Life 2 Characters. Yes, we listened. :)
It's a joint team effort and it's our prime focus right now. This has been a requested feature for some time. So far I can confirm Darkness, Pandango and JJ are informed of this and are working towards this shared goal.
We do not have a release date currently, but rest assured it's being worked on.
Additionally, the current flamethrower model (for the rebel flamer) is directly taken from the Alien Swarm game. One of our new asset creators is currently working on making a fully functional model originating from the team itself. It's small, but still something.
In closing
I want to thank everyone for still playing this game and continuing the support.
We've reached our 300 user milestone some time ago, with over 300 people in our Discord currently. So here's a big shoutout to each, and everyone in our Discord! Thanks for being awesome!
Closing off for now.
~Songbird & Team.
Tournament Page Released!
I have made an announcement last night of which some information wasn't really relayed all that well.
Hence, to make sure all information is centered around one place.
You can visit our tournament page here!
Please let me know of any feedback you might have. The page is rather barebone right now, and it will be expaded upon later on.
Wrench.
The Tournament - what's been decided so far?
So a while ago we spoke of the community event that was bound to take place, namely the Tournament. The name of such Tournament will now change into: Lambda Tournament 2017, or also known as #LT2017
Now what all has been decided?
- The tournament held will be 1 versus 1, as such there is no prerequisite to create teams or anything.
- There will be a crowdfunding action beforehand, running for 2 months. Based on the income of this crowdfunding we will decide on whether or not we offer rewards (mugs, mousepads, stuff like that.). If the money gotten is insufficient it will be put to use towards a crowd announcement on Facebook and Twitter (potentially the Russian VK too.) - You can find the crowdfunding here. - Update considering link was removed - a page will be made ASAP on the website containing this link and tournament information.
- The way this is going to be set up. All applicants will be required to send in an e-mail with some basic information that will be posted somewhere this week or the next one. That, and upon acceptation they will get a document outlining this tournament and its rules and guidelines.
We are in the final stages of securing two streamers, one English and one Russian to represent the majority of players we currently have on this game. These streams will be regularly announced when a match is beginning.
In closing I want to relay the following;
This announcement comes with a sour note for some, namely with the fact that I will be resigning and subsequently distancing myself from Lambda Wars and its organisation come January 2018. My work from here on out will be primarily based on the Tournament and my intent on making it happen. The other tasks I've had will be slowly delegated to others within the team.
I've had a great year here, as January would mark my one-year anniversary with this game, and while I would have loved to continue my work for Lambda Wars, I am unable to do so for a variety of personal and professional reasons (I will not go deeper into this part of my resignation).
I want to thank the team behind Lambda Wars for supporting my efforts of making us a better community, and the various tough decisions I've had to make in collaboration with Darkness and others.
It's been great, but the ride has to end somewhere, and January will be the stop where I depart.
Over the next few months I will be discussing with Darkness who would be a good replacement for my position.
In hopes that I have informed all of you enough of this both sweet and sour message, I'll leave it here.
With best;
Wrench & Team.
Lambda Wars Patch 29 August 2017 (Version 3.07f, rev 6326)
Balance:
- Reduced Strider's view range from 811 to 780
- Increased Sniper's Tier from 2 to 3 (it was supposed to be 3 from the very start)
- Reduced Dog's vision from 900 to 750
- Increased Sniper Rifle minimum range from 150 to 350
- Increased Crossbow minimum range from 64 to 320
- Increased RPG minimum range from 0 to 192. This does apply for Squad Wars too, however. Will be changed in future.
- Shieldgen now only requires an armory. Removed the advanced defenses for now.
- Reduced Headcrab attack speed from 1.2 to 1.8.
- Reduced Headcrab attack range from 512 to 480.
Fixes:
- Rebel Assault's smg should now appear in the game.
- Fixed Rebel waves in overrun. The unit distribution was incorrect.
- Some localization files were broken. This has been fixed. (Это также касается русской локализации)
Misc:
- Updated DLL's, as well as fixes for recast navigation mesh.
P.S: Some of these changes such as the changes in Sniper's or Marksman's weapon attack ranges won't make a big difference, as they get overrided by the abilities that call them. The abilities have no minimum attack range. In other words, this should only affect the AI right now.
Lambda Wars Update 21 August 2017 (Version 3.07e, rev 6315)
I took many things into consideration, so I could release a good update after this while. As mentioned in balance, something took quite a while to make.
Balance:
- Added a balance sheet in Microsoft Excel format in development branch so it is easier to see what units need adjustments, and in what cases. (This took a l o t of time to make)
- Dog's health increased from 1100 to 1900
- Dog's attributes have been rescaled. Dog now receives more damage from bullet, pulse and combine ball attributes. Combine balls take the same amount of shots to kill a dog as before.
- Reduced Strider cannon cooldown from 2 to 1.
- Increased Strider Cannon damage from 350 to 400
- Increased Riot Metrocop health from 150 to 210
- Reduced Riot Metrocop movement speed from 260 to 235
Maps:
- sp_abandoned: Added an introduction tutorial to the map.
- Added a few starter combat units, so player doesn't instantly lose to a headcrab at spawn.
- Changed some triggers in the map: the middle flag used to be un-capturable because of the ally units.
Squad Wars:
- Combine Ball no longer kills tanks, only deals damage. It does insta-kill other chars however.
- Added a large clip SMG1 to char_rebel_assault (Assault). He will shoot it almost like a minigun :)
- Medic's passive healing ability now has an icon.
Music:
- New track: YIA - Synthesis Of Life
Bugfixes:
- Fixed Rebel HQ generating resources if there are more than one HQ's present.
AI:
As requested by some of the players, AI was reworked a bit. The construction order and units were also affected a bit. AI works a bit different now, tho still makes random choices and makes its own preferences.
- Adjusted AI. Medium AI was simplified a bit and should no longer rush like crazy. Might still give problems though.
- Made Easy AI a bit stronger.
- AI's frequency of ability usage now matches their difficulty (hopefully).
- Combine Elites will now shoot their combine balls at the first visible target by default.
- If either Rebels or Combine build a Vort Den or a Synth Factory, one of their priorities will be making a Dog or Strider. This applies to all difficulties.
Misc:
<*> Adjusted Rebel turret a bit, so the barricade the turret stands on matches the turret position (as requsted and done by Super Noob ;])
<*> Fixed Czech localization. It should work properly now.
<*> Updated Russian localization. Some words looked as if someone smashed their face at the keyboard in order to type that out...
P.S: Forgot to mention that AI will try to defend theor control points and base now.