Mindnight
Hotfix 2.2.1
We just updated the game with a small hotfix where we solved several issues and made a few improvements.
Fixed:
- The emoji selector in all chats is not replacing anymore the written text in the chat input field
- Fixed game mode window layout issues in certain screen resolutions
- Fixed connection problems on starting the game
- The ingame maintenance notification is showing the time now correctly
Improvements:
- The game mode window is now closeable using ESC
- Improved server performance
- Show purchased emoji in emoji selector right after purchase
Make sure you join us on Discord if you haven't already to stay in contact with us and the community.
Cheers!
The MINDNIGHT Team
2.2.0 Update Now Live - Automated Banning System, Join in Progress, New skin and emojis!
A much-expected update that we have delayed several times it's now love. We apologize for this late update, but we have worked very hard in refactoring the game's code, implement, fix and add new features to accommodate the current state of the game.
Thanks a lot for your patience and your help in improving the game together with us.
We have added a lot of things, and changed some elements in the game, but the most notable are the Automated Banning System, Penalty System and Join in Progress.
Automated Banning System
We are receiving more than 800 reports daily right now, and for us, as a small team it is clear that we cannot curate the game fast enough and well enough without an automated system.
We will still ban players permanently manually for extreme cases, but depending on how many reports a player receives he will be banned incrementally from now on.
First time 15 minutes, the second time 30 minutes and so on.
If you are not reported for a while after a first ban, the incrementation will reset. You can reach a ban of 10 days if you are banned constantly. Everyone can still be permanently banned if someone is getting reported too often by a lot of different players. We will get notified and we can apply a perma-ban manually.
A player is banned taking into account different factors such as: how often he is reported and by who. If another player reports players very often, his reports will not have the same value over time. This way we make sure that a player it's not banned because a player that reports others players with no reason. If a player received a report from another player, a second report from the same player will not be taken into account anymore for a while.
Join in Progress
We all get disconnected from time to time or for some unexpected reason our power will turn off our computer. Now, players can rejoin the match in the maximum period of 5 minutes.
In order to win a game, you need to be online at the end of the game. If you are not at the end of a game for any reason you will lose the game by default, together with any winning streak.
In the Main Menu, we also have now the option of Abandoning a game. By Abandoning a game, a Penalty will be activated.
AFK/Leaving Game Penalty System
When a player abandons a game now consciously he will receive a penalty.
The penalty will not allow a player to search for a new game anymore for 30 minutes. This time can change as we are experimenting and we are open to feedback.
The penalty will be applied in the following cases: abandoning a game from inside the game and canceling the re-join option in the main menu and for when a player will not rejoin a game in the first 5 minutes.
The penalty also resets after a while and it is not permanent.
Now - the complete change list for 2.2.0:
NEW FEATURES
- In order to accommodate the difference in skill between new players and more experienced players we are introducing level based matchmaking with 3 level groups - 1-10, 11-20, 21-30
- When pressing the play button, players can now choose between Casual Mode and Custom Games. We are working on the Ranked Mode and this will be added at a later date
- Added a new skin called Mr. Hacker
- Added 4 new emojis - Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down, Thinking and a Heart
- Players can now re-join in progress games in case of disconnection
- AFK players will now be kicked out of the game
- A penalty system now it's implemented to punish AFK players and players that abandon a game on purpose
- Players are now automated banned when reported by a lot of players
- Added two new names to the general name list used in Casual Mode that were submitted by two of our fellow patreons - Patrick and Nunya
- Winter Custom Maps were added to Custom Games
- Added an option to select the gender name before searching for a game.
- Added a notification when planned maintenance will be announced before hand
- Added a new splash screen with warning text about conversational gameplay, warning players about the nature of the game
- Added spam protection for both global and in-game chat windows
- The global chat now it's also accessible from a custom game lobby
- Added the emoji selector in the global chat as well
- Added Screensaver mode
CHANGES
- AFK players are now kicked out of a match. A player becomes AFK when not making an action two times in a row (e.g. a player did not propose a team and after that he did not accept the next team proposal)
- We have improved several AI-Player behavior to prevent finding out their role
- Disconnection messages in-game chat shows if a player left manually or by disconnect
- The Find Game button was removed from Custom Games because this encourages meta-gaming and cheating. We are working on a Party System that will only work in Casual Mode in the future, with certain limitations
BUG FIXES
- Fixed an issue where high ping caused FPS drops or freezing of the game
- Fixed an issue when a steam invite was not working after a match was completed
- Fixed an issue when a game lobby that was in progress did not close properly, and it was displayed in the custom game list
- Fixed an issue when sometimes disconnected players were not detected by the game client
- Fixed an issue where ASCII codes were breaking the chat
- Fixed several game glitches when a match would end before a team won 3 missions
- Fixed an issue where players would get disconnected on loading screen and the players would not get marked as being disconnected in-game
- Fixed an issue where clicking on how to play and then pressing ESC would stop all the main menu music
- Fixed an issue where ESC would make a player leave the lobby when a friend invite is open
- Fixed an issue where disconnected players were getting experience and credits
- Fixed an issue where the achievement "Finally, we caught them" was not working anymore
- Fixed an issue where the experience sound was playing after the maximum level was reached
- Fixed an issue where the report button at the end of a game would not be clickable when obscured by other UI elements
- Fixed some typos in all menus
Thank you for your support and help.
Let us know if you have any feedback related to this update on our discord, and do not hesitate to join our discord if you want to know more about the plans for the next updates.
Cheers,
MINDNIGHT TEAM
Merry Christmas Update - 2.1.0 - New Content and Reporting System
Merry X-mas, hackers, agents, elfs and mandeers!
How could we celebrate X-mas better without having a new feature to make us all love each other and at the same time trying to be a little less salty when playing a MINDNIGHT game session.
Therefore, we give you the opportunity to be better, to be kind, to care about others through the new Reporting System.
Have you ever been annoyed at someone and you want to send him an x-mas present wrapped in a game report? Now you have the chance. Let's cleanse and resist the naughtiness.
https://youtu.be/D_pCh7nwhU4
These are the patch notes for the X-mas Update 2.1.0:
New Features:
- Improved emoji graphics
- Integrated special event. The one activated now it's for Christmas Holiday
- We have implemented a Reporting System. Players can now report other players at the end of a game. Through the reporting system the game can now handle suspension and banning of players that are not respecting the rules of conduct.
- 6 new skins are now available. 4 of them are exclusive for the Christmas Event
- We have added a new emoji: owo
- We now highlight the players that were on a certain node mission inside the Vote History tab in-game
- We have now added an Emoji and Gesture selection ability in the in-game UI. This can be used at all times during the game.
- Player avatars are now playing the Cry/Celebrate animations depending on their outcome at the end of a game session
Bug and issue fixes:
- The overall performance of the server has been improved
- We have fixed an issue where custom games were shown, even after they were not available
- Fixed an issue where a node would be hacked even if a hacker was not on that respective node.
- Fixed "Everyone Loves You" and "Divide and Conquer" achivements
- Fixed some achievement icons not showing properly
- Fixed an issue where the Lobby Chat did not support emojis
- Fixed an issue where new players did not had visibility over the last messages in the Global Chat in the Main Menu
Thanks and enjoy!
Join our discord channel so you can be pesky on what we should do next!
discord.gg/discord
Update 2.0.4 - Performance improvements, bug fixes and phase length adjustments
We just updated the game with a few small changes and a lot of improvements both on the server and client side.
Thanks a lot to everyone that helped us find issues and bugs and for all of the reports.
For those of you that want to contribute and help us improve the game going on, do not forget we have a very active Discord community here.
Join us and let's make MINDNIGHT better together.
For the next period of time we will focus on the X-mas update that brings a few new features and themed content. ːsteamhappyː
Without further ado, these are the changes that we just pushed:
Gameplay changes:
- We have changed the lenght of the talking phases, and incremented them depending on which node the game is at a specific moment. The old value for all node talking phases was 70 seconds.
New values:
Node 1 Talking Phase - 30 seconds
Node 2 Talking Phase - 45 seconds
Node 3 Talking Phase - 60 seconds
Node 4 Talking Phase - 75 seconds
Node 5 Talking Phase - 90 seconds
Old Talking Phases Total Lenght - 350 Seconds (6 minutes)
New Talking Phases Total Lenght - 300 seconds (5 minutes)
We have made this change because it is in line with the amount of dialogue that is going on in each phase. The further the node, the more everyone has to talk about.
- Added text colors for the following words to highlight words that are related to gameplay for both Agents and Hackers:
GREEN - secure, secures, secured, securing, agent, agents
RED - hack, hacks, hacked, hacking, hacker, hackers
Fixes and improvements:
- Fixed a general issue that glitched the server in several situations. There are situations where the problem might persist. If so, please help us identify them.
- Fixed a high CPU usage issue when a lot of messages were sent in games
- Fixed an issue when the Hide UI button was not instancing all menus and screens
- Fixed an issue where when a player is too late for an lobby invite via Steam and clicks the invite later, the game was stuck in a functional loop.
- We have fixed a potential exploit where a tooltip was different in the UI, making players know who were the hackers and who were the agents by asking what the tooltop sais. The tooltip caption was now replaced with a neutral tooltip for both Agents and Hackers.
- Fixed the tooltip for the Reject mission button
- Fixed an issue where names such as Hanna and Anna were not colored correctly.
- Fixed an issue where a player was 2x hacker, leading to some matches in having 2 hackers instead of 3, for example.
That's it for now!
We are working on a lot of new features and content and we are constantly looking to fix the remaining issues.
Either way, thanks a lot for your support and for your generous reviews, although we had a lot of bugs and issues in the game.
Cheers!
MINDNIGHT TEAM
Patch 2.0.3 - Leaderboars Temporary Change and Fixes
After another week of crazy stuff, lots of suggestions and a bunch of new players in our community we are doing another small update, bigger than the last one in which we are making small changes and we are adressing some bugs and issues that were both known and/or reported by our players.
First of all we want to thank all of you for the support, perseverance and patience around the game as we are adressing some issues and preparing for big improvements in our upcoming X-mas 2.1.0 Update.
Here is a full list of the changes and for any other suggestions and issues that you have, join our [discord.gg/mindnight]Discord so we can chat, talk strategies and find games if you are in a different timezone than the current playerbase.
New Features
- Temporary leaderboard sorting change - where now we are sorting the leaderboard not based on W/L ratios, but instead around how many wins.
NOTE: This is a temporary improvement until we will polish the ELO system. Together with the ELO system we will most probably introduce soon after ranked games and unranked games but the is still TBD.
- Added a small feature where gestures are now auto-completed when typing them
- Added more name in the Funny Names list in Custom Games
- Added a small feature where players can repeat a command by pressing the Up Arrow Key
- Added Maintenance Mode to control when and how the server behaves while under maintenance.
- Improved the disconnected player AI:
Now the AI will always vote Yes on the node team
Now the AI will always vote yes when on hammer
Now the Ai will vote randomly when not on a node team, minor role bias added
- Improved server logging, where each phase will log in its room ID, thus showing errors better when multiple room are running
- Improved statistics tools where we monitor additional in-game stats
- Players now can send a message by also using the Numpad Enter Key
- Players nicknames are now saved in Match History Server Data
Fixed bugs and issues
- Partially fixed - An issue where game with disconnected players, started behaving uncontrollably.
- Partially fixed - An issue where players found themselves in an endless loop in the selection phase
- Fixed an issue where players would receive First Win of the Day, two times
- Fixed issues with infinite looping sounds
- Fixed a consistency issue where the scrollbars in the UI were not behaving in the same way in all menus
- Fixed an issue where the chat would scroll at the last message where a new one would be received
- Fixed a typo of "Strak" to "Streak" in the menus
- Players that leave a match will also get a win or a lose in their match history and that match will affect their ranking.
- Fixed an issue where emoji image tage would get colored and bugged
Thanks and see you in-game, HACKER!
MINDNIGHT TEAM
Phew! - Free to Play - Objective Complete - Update Hotfix 2.0.2 Live Now
Thanks for helping us go through the transition. The more people play the game, the busier we are.
Therefore, we are working on the game almost 24/24 to improve, fix and add new features.
Before going into patch notes I want to let you know that we now have a Thunderclap campaign going on so that we can spread the word about the MINDNIGHT, together. With you help and dedication we can grow the game and improve it. Only with your suggestions and demands we can create a... cough... master-piece.
Also, we now have a Patreon page as well, where you can give us all your money. For what? Well, you can received special flairs on Reddit and on our Discord Server. And also, T-shirts and other goodies if you are really generous.
Now for our hotfix we have:
- Fixed an issue where Steam was thinking that the game was still running
- We know show players their local curreny/prices in the marketplace for Credits
- We have fixed an issue where micro-transactions were not working for certain player from certain countries and regions
- Fixed an issue where the Match History was showing defeats for games where, as an agent, was a win
- We deleted "Will", we will miss him
As we are working on the upcoming X-mas update, we are also putting a lot of effort in managing the community, giving out warnings and bans so we can keep the game a safe environment for both experienced respectful players and new players.
We advise you as much as possible to respect the Rules of Conduct in order to avoid being banned.
Last but not least, check out this guide that we did for players that are interested in more in-depth gameplay mechanisms.
Thank you, very much and happy hacking.
MINDNIGHT TEAM
Free to Play MINDNIGHT 2.0 Live!
The wait is over. We are now Free to Play and we would like to thank everyone that helped in this transition.
All players that already own the game will be properly compensated with In-Game Credits, that can be used to purchase Skins, Emoji or Gestures.
If you have any issues do not hesitate to contact us.
Together with this we are also releasing a big update with the following changes:
Join our discord here - https://discord.gg/mindnight
TL;DR: Progression System, Over 18 Skins, lots of Emoji, Gestures, In-Game Credits, matchmaking improvements...and more.
<*>Reworked the Main menu and now features a more straightforward way to search for a game, and access all of the other menus present in the game
<*>Added Profile and Stats section, where we show your stats, match history, achievements list and your collectibles progression
<*>Added Global Chat in the Main menu, together with Find-A-Game separate chat room
<*>Added Skins, the ability to change the character that appears while playing
<*>Added Emoji, can be used during chat, full list in-game. For example: :) (Smile Emoji)
<*>Added Gestures, can be used during game-play to trigger an animation on your character. It work with any skin. For example: /laugh (Laughing animation trigger)
<*>Added Marketplace, where player can purchase with in-game credits Skins, Emoji and Gestures.
<*>Added Credits, that can be acquired through game-play but also through micro-transactions
<*>Improved the overall functionality of Custom Games
<*>Changed the maximum number of player from 10 to 8 to balance the game more
<*>Added Community external links section and announcement sections to the Main Menu
<*>Added Leaderboards, where players can see their position world wide and see the Top Players
<*>Added a How To Play Video that can be accessed through the Main Menu button
<*>Added Progression system, where the player can now level up by playing games, and from time to time, rewards will be unlocked. The maximum level is 30 right now.
<*>Added a Rules of Conduct button, that redirects the player to an external page, covering the rules of the game that need to be followed in order to avoid being suspended or banned from the game
<*>Added a tracking system where we can see abusive players and ban them
<*>Added a new gameplay map called Backalley. Players will be matchmaked randomly on a map or they can choose in Custom Games what map they would like to play
<*>Added a Connecting Screen, when players have difficulties connecting to the server
<*>We have reworked the Matchmaking system to facilitate more players finding games
<*>Players can now join a Custom Game Lobby even if they are invited through Steam and they have not yet run the game
<*>Added a Friend List button and functionality, where players can invite other players to a Custom Game Lobby
<*>The Mission Phase now has a duration of 15 seconds, down from 30.
<*>Added additional sounds for all events in-game. Approximately 30 sounds have been added.
<*>Integrate RedShell SDK for better installation tracking
<*>Fixed a bug where text got entered upon vote click
<*>Fixed a bug where entering a text and then performing other actions caused the text to be entered
<*>Fixed a bug where found players/player did not refresh sometimes while finding a game
<*>Fixed a crash where the game became unresponsive if Cyrillic characters were typed in-game
Update 2.0 - Going Free-to-play - Nov 30th, New website and Expanding Community
We apologize for not doing more frequent updates, but we are looking at changing that from now on. As we are moving forward with the development of MINDNIGHT we would like to go through some subjects that are very important for us regarding going free-to-play, launching a new website for the game, expanding the community in a number of ways and adding new features to the game.
Going Free-to-play
TL; DR - We will go Free-to-Play starting 30th of November
Being our first published game, we believe we have learned a lot from this experience and we will constantly improve our pipeline for our other more ambitious games.
The recent narrative about pay-to-win games have also let us realize that sometimes it is not important on how much a game is worth, but what is important is that we want to share our work with as many players as possible that want to play our game, and they cannot right now because various reasons.
Pay-to-win is a flawed concept, overused by game designers of free-to-play games. We believe that this kind of systems create bad habits and toxic behaviors. Spending to be good at a game should not be an option and we believe if someone will want to spend money on a game, they should not be forced in doing so.
Manipulating human behavior is not what games are about, it's about triggering emotions, having fun and getting people together.
Therefore, we decided to make MINDNIGHT, free-to-play with no microtransactions that will affect the gameplay in anyway. The only possible spending can be done only to customize your experience through unique additional visuals such as skins, emoji and gestures.
We are working to define compensation for the current players that have bought the games, and this will most probably translate into Coins in-game that can be used to buy skins, emoji and gestures to use in the game once the update is live
Update 2.0 - New Features
For the last 2 months we worked hard into creating a more interesting gameplay loop by adding improvements to the current gameplay, add new features and fix many bugs that we encountered since launch. With your help we have found a lot of bugs and we are proud to announce that we fixed most of them!
Firstly, we have added a number of Visual Customization options to the game that we believe it will make your experience more fun and interesting by choosing to use one of the 18 skins, type in chat with newly implemented emoji and spice up things in-game with new gesture animations that can be accessed by typing in chat /cry, /facepalm etc.
Skins, Emoji and Gestures can be unlocked through leveling up, or buying them from the Marketplace. These do not affect gameplay at all and we are not planning in doing something in this regard. Do not worry thought, there are some skins, emoji and gestures that are already unlocked from the start of the game.
We will also constantly update the game with new skins, emoji and gestures.
Secondly, we have added a Progression System , through which you can now level up your account from 1 to 30. You can level up by playing games and acquiring experience. From time to time you will unlock rewards such as emoji, gestures and skins from level to level.
Together with the progression system we now have a Leaderboard, where the best players are shown. You are also able to see your rank in this screen in comparison to other players.
There are a lot of new features that we added, but the ones explained above are the most important.
Other features that we implemented are:
- New Main Menu
- Profile and Stats
- Global Chat in Main Menu
- Friend List in Main Menu
- Player Database and Tracking System
....and more
We will release a full Patch Notes announcement, once we release the Update 2.0.
As we heard complaints and we have seen users abusing and taking advantage of their anonymity we decided to work on a Reporting System, that will come a bit later. This will make sure that abusive players will face consequences and even be banned from the game if they do not respect other players. We are also working on integrating Voice Chat for custom games. Both these two features will not be available in Update 2.0.
New Website and Expanding Community
We have worked on a new website for the game that turned out really beautiful. Here is a sneak peak:
Together with this we are also expanding the ways the community can interact with us and discuss strategies.
We have created a subreddit, where we will post announcements and discuss further updates.
We are also opening up a Patreon page to let some players that wish to support us, get involved in development and help us cover server and marketing costs.
We are also working on a Wiki Page where we will explain everything that is in game, from features, gameplay to skins and lore.
Last but not least, we have a How to Play video ready to be integrated in the game and published on our pages for players that are new, to get accustomed with the concept.
We also have a new trailer, that it's 10x better than the first one. We hope this will help the game have more hackers and agents!
That being said, I hope you can support us next week into transitioning to Free-to-play, sharing our new trailers and start having fun in some deceiving games of MINDNIGHT.
Thanks for being with us, this helps us a lot to move forward and try to do our best in development.
Cheers!
MINDNIGHT TEAM
Patch 1.0.2
We are moving forward with our quick updates to improve the overall experience and prepare the game for some bigger changes that we are working on currently.
Therefore we just pushed the update 1.0.2 with the following changes and new elements:
- When a player that is a hacker is Away From Keyboard now, it will always hack when the timer expires in the Mission Phase
- The Mission Phase is now 15 seconds from 60 seconds, thus making the game more fast-paced
- An issue with sending typed message when the Mission Phase started is now fixed
- When the timer expires in the Proposal Phase, it will not count as a failed proposal anymore
- When creating custom games, players can now choose from new several random name lists to play custom games
- Random Name assignor will now pick random names with different starting letters (first 3 letters)
- After a game is completed, players can now find a new game or create a lobby with the same players, to play again
- The player that created a custom game, can now kick players from the game lobby
- The steam avatar is now displayed accordingly for individuals that are not in your friend list
- Fixed an issue where players that are disconnected are not shown as being disconnected
Thanks again for being with us and we also wanted to tell you that your patience, understanding, and help mean a lot to us as we are looking to update the game with a meta-game, add skins and ways to customize the experience.
Cheers!
MINDNIGHT Team
Discord and first Hotfix - Patch 1.0.1
More so, as we are going through the first days of our release, we would also like to apologize for the long occasional matchmaking queues. For these times when it is difficult to find a match we created a discord channel so that we can gather more people in our community. In this discord channel you will be able to discuss with developers, find and create matches and discuss strategies with other players.
You can access the discord channel - https://discord.gg/MdTTSKA
Thank you for your understanding and your support.
MINDNIGHT 1.0.1 Hotfix Patch Notes:
- Players can now track and observe in Steam “last played with” players/friends
- Players that are found during matchmaking, are now displayed during matchmaking. Their Steam nicknames are now visible in the main menu. The nicknames are also clickable to show their Steam Profile.
- After a game ends, the nicknames of players are revealed, showing their real identity
- The How to Play button that redirects players to the How to Play screen was moved in the Main Menu
- The matchmaking system has been slightly changed. While finding a game, the matchmaking will continue until a match is found or matchmaking canceled by the player
- The maximum number of players in a game session has been changed from 10 players to 8 players
- Players can now join the MINDNIGHT discord channel from in-game. The link is displayed in the main menu while searching for a game.