Long time, huh! Ok let's get straight to it. There's no reason an older game can't have another moment to shine. So we had a fun idea.
WE'RE HAVING A CONTEST
Starting August 13th and ending August 27th, take some screenshots in game and share them either in the Steam community, on the Optimum Link Discord, or both. It can be funny, interesting, broken, meme-worthy, or terrifying -- share your best! The dev team will look at the aftermath after August 27th, where we'll decide on 1st place, 2nd place, and 3rd place winners. The winners will receive Steam gift cards of $25, $10, and $5, respectively. Anybody can vote for their favorite using Likes/Thumbs Up, but in addition to popularity there are a few other qualities we'll judge. Even if you don't care for prizes, it's a great time to jump back in and revisit a wacky sandbox game! Game's not that old!
Rules are subject to change because we've never done a contest before and we might encounter something unexpected and try to make something more fair. But basically:
RULES
Up to 3 submissions per player. If you submit via both Discord and Steam, no worries, we will just count them as one. Votes will be combined.
Screenshots must be taken on or between August 13th 2021 and August 27th 2021.
Screenshots must not be edited. You can use whatever you want to take the picture, just don't modify what appears to be game content. If you are doing a live stream, be sure your submission is taken from your screen, not from the stream output.
Screenshots must be your gameplay. Do not submit screenshots of other players' gameplay.
Winners will have 3 business days to collect their prize after announced. Failure to cooperate or reply to contact will result in that prize being given to someone else.
Submissions may be disqualified if the community or developers thinks it contains offensive content.
Participants agree submissions (only the image) may be used by Protoria Studios in game content, social media, or marketing material.
HOW TO TAKE A SCREENSHOT IN-GAME
Optimum Link has a photo mode. You can use this to frame the camera, or just do regular gameplay. Doesn't matter. The simplest way to then capture this is just hitting F12 on your keyboard, which should capture the game's screen via Steam. Steam then has these images ready to upload when you are done playing the game. This is the easiest way, but if you're savvy with screenshot tools and want to do things another way, go for it! Just remember the no modifying rule.
You can submit up to 3.
HOW ARE THE WINNERS DECIDED?
Throughout the contest, anyone can "vote" for favorite submissions via Thumbs Up. You can vote for as many as you want, even ALL of them. At the end, each submission will be scored from 2-10 points in each of the following qualities:
- Popularity (thumbs up received) - Character customization - Dream-like imagery - Aesthetics - Humor
So don't worry; popularity from likes is not critical. However, it can help, so we encourage all participants to give fellow submissions a look and share the support.
HOW DO I COLLECT MY PRIZE?
We'll have to contact you. So please follow us on Discord or at least pay attention on Steam for when we announce the winners!
CONTENT CREATORS
We encourage you to stream or share videos! The game is pretty wonky, we get it.. So go crazy with it! Encourage your audience to participate and win up to $25 on Steam. The more screenshots we receive, the more interesting this gets!
AND HEY.
This is the first time we've ever done an event like this. It may go terribly wrong. But we'll learn from it and improve for next time. This event also doubles as a chance for us to get more feedback on the game itself, so we can improve future versions of the game (wink).
Have fun of course!
A Silver Winter
Welcome to Silver Sparrow, Optimum Link’s official completion. This update seeks to clarify and enforce the game’s best elements.
What’s New?
Added 3 new worlds.
Added Mazes.
Swimming works now.
Everything is available in the Create menu now.
You can hold things now, press [E].
You can drop Ammo now, by pressing [J], or spawn it from the Create menu.
You can toggle the HUD on/off by pressing [\].
You can slow down time by holding [CTRL] + using the scroll wheel.
You can adjust the size of your primer spray by holding [ALT] + scroll wheel.
Added profanity filter on chat.
Adjusting post processing. Game image is now sharper and has less bloom/lens flare.
Refactored and rebuilt: switching tools, painting, lasers, selecting items, spawning items, telekinesis, damage events, death & respawn, player join, basically everything.
New sounds for lots of things.
Improved enemy AI.
Hitboxes adjusted so players don't clip through walls.
Interaction range is larger and starts slightly closer to player's feet.
Telekinetic wave made slightly smaller, but begins much closer to the player's viewpoint, which makes hitting closer targets much easier.
World lighting on all maps adjusted to handle shadows at a much faster rate. Render time should be significantly reduced.
Unhooked "Set Design" function (spawns handful of procedurals at the dawn of a server), which eliminates a horrid hitch at the start of entering worlds. There isn't really even a big trade off, procedurals will spawn like normal, but now just starting from nothing.
Game Machines NPC count reduced. Makes it much less ridiculous.
More "set" objects and particles, artworks, and audio.
Now only tools and batteries will prompt a pickup, any misc objects are left to physics.
About Multiplayer
We've found that 1.) a majority of players preferred playing single player, and 2). many players did not find good experiences with random players, and often times connecting to players outside of your region caused issues. In effort to give you the best experience, the game has been simplified to an invite system. Just hit 'Play' and you're good, you're in a game. If you want to play with others, open the Friend/Server menu and invite them. On a technical level, this game's multiplayer was very experimental, and we've used it as a learning experience for our next projects.
Designer Notes
This update comes with bittersweet news. Optimum Link was started in 2015, as a mere experiment. At the end of four years, and with lots of other projects being cooked, the Protoria team has decided it’s best to wrap this game up. We originally wanted this game to have a dynamic lifetime and live alongside future projects, but we care tremendously about the quality of our games - we’d rather focus on one game at a time. Rather than just leaving it, however, we did put a lot of effort into fixing existing problems and giving you some more content. We’re pretty happy to give this game a “finished” sticker, and a good rest as well.
We hope you all enjoy <3
We have a discord, if you’d like to: teleport! Our next game: Skyfear
Silver Sparrow, Coming Winter 2019
Hey there, Happy Halloween!
Here is a short teaser of what we've got in store this Winter. It showcases "Final World", one of three new maps. A more detailed announcement + gameplay trailer will accompany the official release. But essentially:
Silver Sparrow is the latest version of Optimum Link that seeks to officially define and further refine the game's core concepts. The update features better stability and optimization, an updated design, further polishing, new gameplay mechanics, and new content. This will also act as the game's official "completion" (1.0). We've been working on this since April. After the addition of Silver Sparrow, our studio is moving on to focus on our larger projects.
Music is a large part of any sensory experience. I believe Optimum Link's soundscape is no different. I've just released a 26-track collection of my work that's featured in this game.
This will be available on Spotify and many other platforms later this year, but you can download it now. If you like our game and want to support our studio, this is a good way to do it!
Also, to any Discord friends, if you missed our recent announcements we have moved to a dedicated space for Optimum Link apart from our other work. You can join our new Discord HERE!
We have more in store this Summer. Keep your eyes and ears asleep.
Welcome to the Dream.
Responses to this project have been interesting, to say the least. The team has been enjoying all the screenshots and reviews. I wanted to make a post to let interested players know what's up, that we hear you, and how we're moving forward.
First, bugs. Yup! Most of them are noted. I cannot guarantee all will be fixed, we will do our best.
Second, new content. We have a TON of ideas. I'm just going to try and emphasize that we don't want to anticipate anything in advance, since this is an experimental side project. Indie development can get very busy very quickly.
This is exciting for us, and hopefully you all, too. Give the game another go if you haven't opened it in a while... you never know what could happen.
TL;DR - We love your feedback, and we'll try to surprise you with more when we can.
- telekrex (creator)
Introduction and Notes
Welcome, and here’s the plan.
A brief history: Optimum Link was originally released in 2016 as a prototype sandbox sort of thing. In 2017, we released an update. A version 0.3 was in the works, though Protoria got busy starting up the studio as well as working on new projects. We decided Optimum Link’s next release would big a large refreshing of the project.
This was, and is, a prototype playground. It’s where we have broken in many of our experiments, features, and systems for future games, so there’d never be a reason to sell it at a price; it’s free! There isn’t a clear finishing point, so instead of numbers, this is “Version Hummingbird”.
There’s a number of things we’d like to add to Optimum Link in the future, but we do not promise a time when that will happen. This includes:
More Vehicles
MacOS and Linux support
LAN support
Voice chat
Additional interface languages
Dedicated server tools and larger community hosting
We know there’s some bugs, too. We also know there a things that look like bugs but are not. And we love it. Why not Early Access? Rather than boasting a goal for a final product and giving you half, it’s more like you’re getting the beginning of a project, and nobody knows where it’s going. Or even when. We’ll be there with you to see it, though. You can keep up with us on Discord if you like, we’re also working on a game called Skyfear.
