The team is heads down, crunching development for the next major update, Enceladus. So we came up with a fun challenge to test your pilot skills without requiring teammates nor opponents.
This is the Drift King Challenge! You'll need: - A Scout Ship - The Enceladus Map
What's at stake? The unofficial, honorary title of Drift King!
First, you'll want to work your way up to the challenge by sharpening your piloting skills using these videos as a guide.
Start with the Basics
[previewyoutube="X9tWF5gj_n0;leftthumb"] Map: Enceladus Ship Type: Scouts or Fighters Boost: Always On
Begin by asserting control over your ship. And test your scout or fighter's ability to simply fly through the narrowest of obstacles. And make sure you can do this without even scratching the paint off your ship!
Then Try Drifting Through Obstacles
[previewyoutube="5mJLyBusjHg;leftthumb"] Map: Enceladus Ship Type: Scouts or Fighters or Heavies Boost: Just enough to drift
At this point you can perform the drift mechanic and now you'll test your ability to manipulate the maneuver around large obstacles. Drifting between the gap made by terraformers and their arms can be executed with any ship.
Finally, Up Your Drift Game
[previewyoutube="KJjNskOSoQk;leftthumb"] Map: Dominion Ship Type: Scouts or Fighters Boost: Always On
When the map rotation arrives to Dominion, look for either outpost and fly to the top plate. Once there, time your entry because that space windmill is unforgiving! Fly through the middle and drift your way out the other side.
So far this is the mother of all drift king challenges! Once on Enceladus, take your Scout ship to the top of any Terraformer. Your goal is much like the 'Basic' challenge from earlier. However, this time your challenge is to drift through the other side! Give yourself enough space so that your boost will last through your journey. We're looking for flawless execution, meaning not even a single scratch against your ship.
We've only seen this performed with the S-301 Scout. Feel free to try another ship and show us that it can be done! And if it proves to be too easy, raise the bar for us by submitting a more challenging drift for the community.
If you successfully perform any of the stunts above, let us know via any of our social media platforms, including: - Steam Forums - Discord - Twitter - Facebook - Reddit
If you can show us video of yourself successfully performing the Drift King challenge, we'll give you a much deserved a shout-out on our social media platforms recognizing your "Drift King" status! As well as the highly coveted Drift King role on Discord to call out your Drift King status!
Severs are open and available 24/7 so you can try the Drift King challenge at any time.
This contest is open until the Enceladus major update goes live.
Calling all Competitive Pilots
We've been sitting on this badge for some time. Now we're excited to roll it out!
We want Project Genesis to be the kind of title that encourages healthy competition. And although we’re still a small, growing community, we’ve already identified players who separate themselves from the rest. Now we’re going to enjoy learning from, watching and even broadcasting what happens when our top players compete against one another.
If you're competitive enough to hang with the most elite players in our growing community, then you're the player we hope to see enrolled in our Ace Pilot program.
What's the Ace Pilot Program?
The Ace Pilot program will help drive Project Genesis' evolution toward its aspirations of a fun and competitive title. The program invites the most competitive pre-alpha pilots, matching them against each other in weekly organized events. Ace Pilots will play a critical role in helping us balance gameplay as well as identify opportunities to address around team dynamics.
How do I Join?
Although the Ace Pilot badge is awarded by invitation only, anyone can get noticed by their ranking on public leaderboards and by playing regularly in Dev Daily playtests held twice every weekday: - 11am PDT or 6pm UTC - 5pm PDT or 12am UTC
When are Ace Pilot Matches Held?
Ace Pilot only sessions will begin by being held once a week. With scheduling to be negotiated between all available Ace Pilots worldwide.
How do I Find Ace Pilots?
Once a player accepts their Ace Pilot invitation, their account is accredited with an Ace Pilot badge that progressively ranks and appears in several locations: - In game on combat ships, inside assault pods and on score cards - Official Leaderboard - Role designed within official Discord community
Pilot Badges are Getting a New Look
We're giving each Pilot Badge a cosmetic overhaul which you'll soon recognize on combat ships, inside assault pods on performance stats and leaderboards! [previewyoutube="CoOoam-rdGQ;full"] And we have an official badge to recognize contribution to the Project Genesis pre-alpha community within one of four categories:
Ambassadors fulfill the role of moderators and hosts for new community members as well as extend that role across platforms. They excel at helping others have a great experience with Project Genesis and play emcee within our growing pre-alpha community.
Test Pilots
Test Pilots enjoy breaking things, are obsessed with quality, and will help reproduce and sleuth bugs. They will often get the earliest access to builds to verify the game or run new features through testing to ensure a stable enough build state for wider release.
Creators
Creators are the content creators in the Pilot Program: artists, partners, streamers and content producers. They are the kind of early adopters who blaze trails in new territory for others. They examine and demonstrate what is worth experiencing in Project Genesis to their audience in fun and creative ways.
Ace Pilots
Ace Pilots are competitive community members who help refine play balance, find and quash exploits and help create the most visceral experience that is ‘easy to play, hard to master’. They often have experience as competitive players in shooters or space combat games, and may even find themselves on ranked lists in their favorite game genres.
Interested in participating?
Let us know with a comment below or on Discord!
Quick hotfixes added to 1.1 Update
You'll notice a quick update!
That's because we fixed the 'fake bomb issue' as you've been calling it. But we also snuck in some menu items to support the last update which include video, notes and graphics.
Jump Pads, more Breach Points and anti-Spawn Camping
We've been closely following your feedback since releasing Early Access last week. And here's our first attempt at critical fixes. Plus new content!
[previewyoutube="BRQFl88yjp0;full"]
Highlights
Reduced player name tag distance to support smaller maps
Reduced projectile distance to support smaller maps
Fixed payout screen (level to next) sometimes not populating data
Implemented low risk solutions to test against spawn camping
Addressed objective markers missing in flight
Hotfix for crashes related to voice comms, changing teams and menu bugs
Hotfix for breach targets appearing available to breach when unavailable from a destroyed pod to that breach target
Added disclaimer where progression and unlocks are shown
Hotfix for lockon staying on screen when ships move behind cover
Implemented jump pads in FPS
Full Patch Notes
Fix for Discord presence not updating
Fix for bad collision on dominion capital ship bridge
Fixed level up delay issue for first item to reveal instantly
Modified progression animations
Updates to loading screens and its animations
Polish to various weapon animations
ZOrder changes to level up screen
Visual work to Jump Pads
Increased revolver ammo to 8 from 6
Decreased revolver vertical recoil
Moved revolver ADS closer to camera
Reduced shotgun damage per pellet from 13.5 to 12.5
Reduced shotgun pellets from 12 to 10
Made ion disruptor projectiles smaller
Updated ship boosting to last around 50% longer for all ships
Increased the regen time for ship boosting to a bit longer at 0.4-0.5
Removed removed one interior dominion point to The Ring map
Added jump pads for testing on The Ring map
Scaled up jump pad trigger box
Updated turret display offline material
Updated lightmaps and adjusted fog settings for better parity between high/low quality settings on The Ring map
Rifle and Pistol 45 degree sprint animations
Fixed an issue where Players that changed Team would remain in the Voice Chat channel of their previous Team
Refactored the Bridge Door Terminal Objective
Made the auto shotgun pellet spread smaller
Increased auto shotgun ammo from 8 to 10
Increased montage blend-in to reduce huge animation kickback
Increased pump shotgun pellet spread size
Lowered KG AR damage to 25 from 30
Lowered KG AR headshot multiplier to 1.5 from 1.65
Lowered tank health to 250 from 300
Lowered techno/toxic health from 250 to 225
Made rogue a light avatar like the hacker
Reduced frag grenade radius to 500 from 850
Lowered frag grenade inner radius to 150 from 250
Incendiary grenades now apply burn effect upon initial explosion
Increased incendiary grenades burn radius to 150 from 135
Turrets now deal damage to Assault Pods
Refactored the Scoring variables on the Player State
Refactored the Team Balancing
Implemented temporary solutions for Team Balancing until we get more sophisticated Match Making Rules with Flexmatch
Implemented a preliminary Spawn Protection system
Ships have a Spawn Protection time of 3 seconds
Avatars have a Spawn Protection time of 1.5 seconds
Lowered kg revolver headshot multiplier from 2.0 to 1.85
Reduced auto shotty magazine from 10 to 8
Decreased auto shotty pellets to 9
Reduced railgun range laser from 300,000 to 210,000
Reduced clusterbomb cooldown from 7.5 to 5.5
Increased laser gatling damage from 8.5 to 9.5
Reduced missile range from 262.500 to 185,000
Reduced ion repeater range from 200,000 to 180,000
Reduced clusterbomb range from 188,000 to 175,000
Reduced missile repeater burst interval from 0.15 to 0.11
Changed FPS screen effect to use the incendiary one
Integrated jump pads to Outposts
Updated lightmaps to Outposts after jump pad integration
Added UI disclaimer tool tip
Added breach locations to detonation capital ships
Fixed an issue where hitting anything and causing damage will have a HitMarker
Updated detonation lightmaps after adding new breach points
Fixed an issue where ObjectiveMarkers would not become visible if they were outside of the distance threshold
Extended the match end period to 30 seconds from 20 seconds for a total end match time of 1 minute
Fixed an issue where weapons would not transition into the reloading state if a reload was initiated while they were in the firing state.
Jump pad audio pass + attenuation shape
Moved the C dominion point to create separation from jump pad landing spot
Increased jump pad attenuation to cover a larger area
Fixed an issue where the profile button on the hangar flight deck was displaying the incorrect experience values for their given level
Fixed an issue where match payouts was displaying the wrong value for the amount of experience that was gained from that Match as a total
Set map world extents
Fixed visual holes in the Terran capital ship
Re-oriented select interior and exterior breach points to relate better
Experiencing High Ping?
Online Multiplayer
High Ping
Since we're a brand new title releasing in Early Access just recently, we want to make sure we're keeping player count high in matches. We're running servers only out of Seattle/Oregon (west coast USA) for now to help ensure this objective. Once we start seeing a rise in player count, we'll start running servers in the highest player count locations thanks to some heavy lifting by our engineers. We're fortunate in that we can spin servers up at almost any place on the globe
For now, running out of USA West Coast might result in you experiencing high ping times. We want to let you know we are working on it as it is a high priority. Dynamic server locations are one of the feature upgrades next on our list to tackle.
Player Matching
Currently we are matching folks randomly and mixing teams up between games. Once we finish with the "triaging" necessary to release on Steam Early Access, we will be spending time enhancing player match making and getting you into teams with your friends.
Full Games
Even though we're keeping servers on the USA west coast, we are seeing an increase in player counts. That means sometimes you might start a game with only a few people in matchest on what looks to be a busy day for playing. This usually means a new multiplayer server has spun up. If you wait a bit, you'll often find new people joining in short order to play. If you are finding that you are waiting longer than you like, try leaving your current match and then pressing the "Play" button again. A new slot in a game that is fuller may have opened up.
Thanks for your patience as we scale up. We are looking forward to seeing you in Project Genesis!
Best regards, Project Genesis Dev Team
Upgraded Ship Combat, FPS Combat and More...
[previewyoutube="vHXlSiH4TuY;full"]
Project Genesis is our answer to the question: What happens when you take the visceral close quarters FPS battles of a game like Halo and mash it up with the free-look flight model of a game like Dreadnought?
Dorado Update
This update takes pre-alpha Project Genesis into Early Access. Your playtesting and feedback during this time is a critical contribution to development as we fine tune gameplay until our Early Access debuts on May 22nd. Thank you for participating!
Major Changes
Upgraded Ship & FPS Combat Systems
Gameplay in both space combat (3rd person) and aboard capital ships or space stations (1st person) has a noticeably different feel. Ship speeds as well as field of view have changed, allowing for more tactical combat in space. Combat areas have also been refocused by introducing more structures, obstacles and cover.
Another pass on FPS combat includes noticeablely increased movement speed. This introduces a host of gameplay consequences including the need for rapid iteration against speed of play.
Please tell us your thoughts on both!
Player progression
We introduced player progression in our past update, Corvus. In Dorado, we now begin taking action with the back-end algorithms recording player progress. As we continue experimenting with unlocking items, Dorado introduces ships, avatars and weapons that are standard for all players beginning at Level 0. Thereafter, as you progress through levels in accordance to your wins and team contribution (measured by scores in games), more ships, weapons and an additional avatar will begin to unlock.
We can't emphasize enough that this is a work heavily in progress. Thanks for your feedback and patience as we fine tune this ahead of Early Access!
Kingsguard Auto Shotgun
A new weapon is in the game! An upgrade to the shotgun that was first implemented in our Cassiopeia update, the Kingsguard Auto Shotgun has a revamped look to the original shotgun and can quickly fire rounds in a short period of time.
Please try the existing, overall gunplay composition and let us know your thoughts on feel, balance and opportunities.
Turrets: ADS, Targeting, SFX, VFX
Turrets aboard capital ships have been significantly improved for aesthetics as well as gameplay. Now you'll experience stronger notification reinforcement to let you know if your turret fire is hitting opponents as well as easier targeting and aiming.
Full Release Notes
- Preset Color Palettes - Stats Tracking Upgrade - Implemented Discord rich presence - Fixed issue where TurretEmplacements would increase their rotation when being used by the amount defined on the World Rotation of their placement in the level - Fixed the levels of the EMP audio - Fixed issue with ship projectiles not replicating - Updated frag explosion sound - Increased missile repeater fire rate from 0.75 to 0.5 - Increased lockon sound volume from 1.5 to 2.5 - Changed the frag fuse to activate on collision and it explodes 1 sec after, should make it more consistent as long as you bounce the grenade near your target - Fixed lockon widget sould clean up if the target leaves the match - Implemented max distance traveled on turret projectiles, they'll explode after traveling a certain distance, dictated by the turret - Fixed issue with the ship's targeting systems not targeting other ships properly - Fixed ship weapon charged fx now cleans up on EndPlay - Fixed issue where player can equip locked utility for character - Player & Unit progression adjustment; target unlock 4 hours - Fixed issue where player can equip locked items (ships, ship weapons, avatar, avatar weapons) - Material/mesh updates - give higher fidelity to low quality game settings, lightmaps - Made major improvements to the KillCam. The KillCam will now play a floating away sequence which serves 2 purposes. One is to make the KillCam appear more dynamic, the second is an edge case where the KillCam has no Actor to target, in this case instead of remaining in a static position, it will now float away to a set distance and aim the Viewport towards the Players death location. The KillCam will also not fly through existing geometry and performs collision checks to find its maximum distance it can float away before potentially clipping geometry. - Fixed a crash with the TargetingSystemsComponent and a missing nullptr check - Fixed an issue where the ReadyUp Timer was not properly replicating state to Clients that joined later in the PreMatch period and would have to wait the full ReadyUp Time instead of the partial current value reported by the Server. - Fixed an issue where the Player could manipulate the Spectator pawn that is created when they first join the Server in such a way to move it under the Map. This had no gameplay consequences but was a visual inconsistency. - Fixed a Client Side crash when exiting to the MainMenu where bindings to delegates for getting the Login status were not being correctly removed when the MainMenu Widget was destroyed. - Added sound attenuation to ship charge sound - Fixed an issue that displayed the missile incoming even if it wasn't a lockon weapon - Turrets now use the targetting systems, which display the ship diamond widget and also allow for lockon functionality - Lowered kg shotgun sound a bit more, added sfx soundclass so it can be adjusted in options - Can now zoom in with the turrets - Production lightmaps - Set eye adaptation to 2 for all quality levels - Updated main menu map to look better using low quality settings - Adjusted hangar materials to look better at low quality settings - Changes to further address issues with Ping not displaying for other Players. - Updated the HangarManager Blueprint to use the CLIENT_UpdateHangar Cloud Code function when pushing changes to the Hangar Slots by the Player. - Fixed an issue where Projectiles that have huge velocity would spawn their impact effects behind geometry due to their speed. They now correctly apply their impact effects at the point of impact. - Fixed an issue on the AssaultPodInterior Actor that would cause remote Clients to see the Breached Wall static mesh when the Pod is Idle or Traveling instead of the Intact Wall static mesh that it should be using during those states. - Further adjustments to the Bombsite in order to address the issue where the Bombsite continues to "tick" after the match ends. - Adjusted (centered) ships in hangar - Tweaked material roughness params in hangar - Fixed lighmap UVs on hangar meshes - Cooling tower vert painting, collision bug fix - Fixed level extent collision boundary (Carbonaceous) - Play/Join button typo fix - Dom cap ship/outpost interior polish - Created new function for showing the widget - Level ups show on the left side of the screen in a scrollbox now (if any) - unlocks on the right (if any) - Showing avatar and ship level on hover event in the details panel (only if the item is unlocked) - Added ship support cradles back in to hangar - E Key is now the default key for breaching - Fixed issue with seeing the breach Indicator though the capital ship shield if close enough - Fixed green breach indicator height - Fixed breach use text to update with bindings - Set thruster geo to use lighting channel 2 - Implemented lockon notification & missile location - Changed charged weapons sound FX - Setup a system in the HUD where we can define which was the last set focusable Widget, the ChatBox is currently the only Widget to use this feature to determine what Widget it needs to allow focus for when it loses input. - Fixed Turret firing hitch that affects all Players. - Hiding the Escape Menu if the Respawn Menu appears after a Death. - Put in provisions to disconnect Clients from VoiceChat early on before they roll to the next map. Made adjustments to the RespawnMenu as well as the PlayerController input code to allow VoiceChat to work while in all MatchStates. This should solve voice channels remaining open after exiting to menu. - Increasing footsteps volume to find a baseline - Updated respawn menu - New bay items to show off the pairing and bay number - UI 4k support - New design for flight deck menu - Flight deck using similar bay item as in respawn menu - Added 4k menu support - Fixed camera issue on initial loading the flight deck - Upres'd mounted turret barrel - Expanded E/D capture volume in Dominion - Fixed s301 badge/weapon conflict - Added thumbnail for auto shotgun to the BP - Gamemode helper text should be hidden on end match - Made modifications to the VitalSystemsComponent when taking damage in order to resolve the case where we might want the World to cause damage to the Player. Added a Radial Damage causer to the Bombsites when they explode. This uses a new BP_DT_World Damage type that is specifically for events that arent caused by Players but need to apply damage. - Changed the HangarBay Slot Widget on the Respawn Menu to always show its contents when it is Selected. - Fixed a hardpoint from floating on the S301 - Added badge mesh to base ship BP, updated ships to use correct badge mesh - Pulled the ChatBox and VoiceChat Talkers list out of the Killfeed Widget and moved them to their own dedicated Widget called W_Chat. This allows us to separate the ordering of these elements so that they always appear on top of all other Widgets, this should also allow users to discuss things during the End Match. - Exposed the ServerIdle check functions to Blueprint. The GameState will now check if the Server has exceeded its maximum lifetime at the end of a Match even if there are Players in it (where previously it wouldnt). It will now gracefully push Players back to the Hangar before shutting down the Server for recycling. This will happen after a minimum of 3 hours (this can be changed in the GameLift Settings page). The Players will get a clear message and be asked to rejoin a match until we get time to implement a more seamless transition mechanic to solve this. - Raise up the EndMatch win condition text to stop it from overlapping the GameMode description text. - Added in provisions to help mitigate the issue where you can "Return to Ship" while also simultaneously breach a ship. - Fixed a crash with ShipWeapons attempting to access a nullptr when initiating effects. - Turret aiming speed is the same as the fps aiming speed - Changed team colors, blue is always friendly team while red is enemy team - Prevented scoring on dominion if intermission/post match. May need another pass if some points slip in. - Reduced frag grenade bounciness - Added game mode helper text on the scoreboard - Fixed a bug with a Utility function that wasnt looking for the correct Prefix on AvatarWeapons. - Implemented a rudimentary Versioning system on the GameState that checks the BuildVersion.txt file on the Server versus what the Client thinks it has. If the Player doesnt have the same version contents, it will automatically kick them back to the MainMenu with a message. - Adjusted some Timer Handles that could potentially be left dangling and causing crashes. - Removed ability to access turret from below in outposts, filled gaps in floor at cap ship bridge/outposts - Fixed UVs on cap ship - Enabled cap ship interior cull volumes - Fixed UV stretching on cooling towers - Generating new physics asset bodies on KGLM, KGS, CP5 to solve for dropped weapons rolling around. - Changed kg shotgun firing fx (sound and particle) - Changed capital turret firing sound - Capital turret monitor changes when destroyed - Implemented TP mesh on FP mode, can now see your lower body - Refactored footsteps to use the TP ones instead of the FP anim notifies, this allows for more accurate and responsive footsteps, as well as not having to re-do the footstep notifications on all new weapons, other player footsteps are louder than yours, crouching reduces footstep volume - Reduced incendiary damage radius - Removed old breach help widget
Servers Live with Latest Update
Servers back online! This is the first deployment of our newest build: Dorado
To connect to the early Dorado build: 1. Right Click on Project Genesis in your Steam Library 2. Click on the BETAS tab 3. Select: NONE - Opt out of all beta programs
Full release notes to come. But here's a short preview: - Player Progression - Upgraded Ship Combat - Upgraded FPS Combat - Upgraded Ship & FPS Movement - Kingsguard Auto Shotgun - Preset Color Pallettes - Upgraded Stats Tracking - Discord Rich Presence - Official Soundtrack
This also means that the Daily Dev playtests resume! Join us every day at 5pm Pacific Time / 12am GMT. Feel free to jump into our Discord to chat with us live during these sessions.
Upcoming Server / Game Downtime
SERVER/GAME DOWNTIME NEXT WEEK
Hey folks, we want to give everyone a quick update as we get ready for early access in a couple of weeks. We've run into a big limitation in trying to perform an upgrade on our back end system, while trying to get it to straddle our legacy system and the new and improved system.
The tldr; is that we're going to retire the Project Genesis: Corvus build early, and we'll have some "dead air" as we work hard to get an interim build (with lots of new features...and probably lots of bugs) up and running for you.
THE UPGRADE As most of you know, we've been working hard to get our progression system in and leveling up our stats system so that we can start rolling out playbalancing (and activate our Ace Pilot program).
We thought we could have the old system live happily along side our new system, but that was just not possible. So we're going to bite the bullet and perform the transition from Corvus to an interim build ASAP before we launch in early access.
THE IMPACT There are several areas that you'll likely be affected if you're attempting to get into Project Genesis: 1. Corvus will be retired which means there won't be a production build to play for a number of days next week 2. The interim build won't go through the same level of testing we and the Test Pilots like to perform before releasing a production build to everyone - so expect lots of bugs! The good news is, this latest build should also fix a ton of bugs reported on Corvus 3. This might affect our Early Access date if things go less than harmoniously (it's gamedev so we've come to expect the unexpected)
WHAT'S NEXT We're going to jam over the weekend to try to make the downtime as minimal as possible. We'll get as much testing in as we can before pushing the interim build live.
After we get everyone back on their feet, we'll have a new improved experience for everyone.:fingers_crossed:
Thanks for your patience!
Access Open, Servers Live!
Corvus and Cassiopeia - Getting in on the Action Before Early Access
Project Genesis is our answer to the question: What happens when you take the visceral close quarters FPS battles of a game like Halo and mash it up with the free-look flight model of a game like Dreadnought?
Project Genesis Pre-Alpha
On Friday, March 20th the 8 Circuit Studios team will provide a limited window for new players to get into the Project Genesis playtests for free on Steam (currently for Windows 7 and higher only). If you love being a part of the action before everyone else, or if you want to discover what it’s like to play a space game fusing both visceral ship to ship combat and close quarters FPS fire-fights, then Project Genesis might be the game for you. Sign-up instructions to get your free Steam key are outlined below.
(Disclaimer: We believe we’ve acquired enough Steam keys for everyone, but supplies are limited, so allocations will occur on a first-come first-served basis.)
What is Project Genesis?
Project Genesis is our answer to the question: What happens when the visceral close-quarters FPS battles of a game like Halo are mashed up with the free-look flight model of a space combat game like Dreadnought? Add some risky and courageous breach and boarding capabilities to infiltrate valued capital ships…and you’ve got a style of game that we think breathes new life into both FPS and space combat genres.
More Than a Game —We’re also a Community
For those who are new to the community, Project Genesis has been in development in its current form (a team based first person shooter in space) for almost two years now. We’re a team who is building a genre bending experience for fans of fast paced sci-fi games, and for those who like to watch “how the sausage is made” indie-dev style.
We’re interested in having our community do more than just watch development in progress. Up to this point, select members of the community have been given exclusive access to participate in our closed playtests. These closed playtests they have been instrumental in getting us to where we are today.
If you’d like to see where the bulk of the conversation is happening, and would like to start participating in guiding how we’re developing Project Genesis, head on over to our Discord to see how we’re using the “open development” model of production to act on community input.
This is a special time for the team, the community, and new community members. Closed playtest exclusivity is being lifted during the next several weeks, so now is your chance to play what the team and the community have been iterating on.
Cassiopeia
On January 17th, 2020, the team released the Cassiopeia playtest build to our sanctioned playtesters. This build was intended to dramatically improve upon the core gameplay systems and the core game loop that would eventually become the “Detonation” game mode. We also intended Cassiopeia to be the milestone where we got the project out of “refactor purgatory” from the previous Babylon build. Cassiopeia was going to be the launchpad from which we started building production-ready capabilities to achieve our long term plans of becoming a free-to-play live game.
Unfortunately, we dramatically missed the mark.
In game development, there’s always curveballs. In our case, after some significant internal auditing to determine how production ready we were, we discovered we needed to invest heavily on our backend and data management system at all levels: data storage, data handling, and game servers…and how the game client leveraged those systems. In indie game development, one advantage is the ability to move quickly and dynamically — and as a start up, the real power lies in the ability to be decisive and make bold moves to ensure forward progress.
In this case, we first decided to break the Cassiopeia milestone into two distinct milestones: Cassiopeia and Corvus. Cassiopeia would focus on gameplay focused while also spending time on additional refactoring. The new Corvus milestone would be focused on leveling up our client-server infrastructure and implementing advanced gameplay. We would also restructure the team to play to our respective strengths, and add a very skilled and talented developer to help bridge the gap between game client and our backend system.
While the newly coalesced server team focused on infrastructure, the rest of the product team could then direct their attention to important gameplay features.
In-Game Communication
Up until Cassiopeia, the community has primarily relied on Discord to facilitate communications, but not everyone uses the Discord channels during playtest sessions. As the community became more competent and competitive, the game sessions became more intense…which means we needed a way for everyone to be able to chat with their own teams to coordinate tactics and strategy. This resulted in the introduction of text chat.
As a stretch goal, we wanted to implement voice chat. These kinds of features are often fraught with difficult implementation challenges, including unexpected bugs that must be addressed before production release. Surprisingly, Matt B. was able to get us up and running with voice chat extremely quickly with very few issues encountered.
New Weapons and Grenades
A lot of game development is setting up a content pipeline so that your team can add new versions of in-game items as the game evolves. As gameplay advances, so too must weaponry — and at this point in the product life-cycle, we needed to develop weapons classes for both firearms and grenades (also known as throwables).
With the inclusion of grenades, we improved the tactical nature of our FPS gameplay. Grenades have greatly aided in “flushing out” die hard defenders by softening them up before aggressively clearing rooms. They also add an element of defensive capability when performing fallback maneuvers during re-positioning tactics.
Player XP and Levels
Cassiopeia‘s core gameplay tightened up with a design pass on battle craft movement and new weapons. However, this wasn’t enough to ensure extended engagement. We also wanted to implement the core feature set on player progression — which was only really available at an abstract level on the Project Genesis website leaderboards. With the addition of XP allocation, and associated level progression, the feeling of forward momentum was beginning to take shape.
Bug Fixes and Other Features
As always, each playtest build contains hundreds of bug fixes (with much thanks to our veteran Test Pilots and playtesters for their consistent submissions) and a bevy of features often listed in more detail in our release notes (found on Steam or in the game’s UI menu).
Corvus
In Corvus, our milestone objectives are to materially improve core gameplay by introducing avatar classes, new weapons, provide production-ready stats tracking and server capabilities, and add a new game mode to the mix: Dominion.
Avatar Classes
Corvus is where we get our first opportunity to introduce character classes. Starting with the “ops” (or support) we have the Hacker: nimble, fast, and precise.
The second class is our assault or damage per second (DPS) unit the Technomancer avatar. The Technomancer is the workhorse of the three classes and is built for aggressive and tactical play.
Rounding out the initial three classes is the Tank avatar. The Tank is the quintessential bullet sponge. Built heavy and resilient, the Tank moves with plodding methodical purpose.
Light Machine Gun
Introducing the light machine gun, this weapon is designed to slam slugs out at a steady and consistent pace to maximize damage while minimizing spray and pray. This weapon is favored by mid size avatar chassis like the Technomancer or heavier models like the Tank.
Grenade Classes
Much like we did in Cassiopeia for weapons, in Corvus we created a class system for throwables. There are three classes of grenades present in the Corvus build: fragmentation, incendiary, and electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Fragmentation grenades are designed for timed detonation to inflict maximum concussive damage with an area effect. Incendiary grenades, are designed to create a lingering thermoreactive emission upon contact, and if an avatar interacts with the reaction they will continue to receive damage over time (until the effect dissipates). EMP pulse grenades confound the onboard cognitive and visual systems of the avatar, and make visual acuity impossible until an avatar’s synthetic sense systems can re-normalize.
Dominion Game Mode and Turrets!
Bioxide (Lead Gameplay Designer and Core Engineer) and Mark N. (Art Director and Environment Artist) have performed a rapid prototyping loop for a new game mode called Dominion. In Dominion, a domination style game, players attempt to occupy key objective locations to gain points for the time any given location is occupied. Based on community and team feedback, as well as intuitive design sensibilities, Bioxide wanted to develop an asymmetrical game mode to encourage a game experience that ensures intense back and forth play.
Dominion introduces an array of new game mechanics. Ranging from conquering and defending captured territory, to using powerful external avatar-controlled turrets to knock ships out of the sky (an example of FPS to space combat). In this mode, there are also new objectives for battle craft to engage with (based on the feedback from the elements in the community that prefer space combat engagements), so the players’ landscape of choices has increased greatly. While this game mode is brand new, it has become a fast hit with the team and the community. We’re very interested to get more people playing to see how everyone feels about it.
User Interface Overhaul
One of the most significant changes between Cassiopeia and Corvus is an extensive rework of our entire user interface system, and how we allow players to select and customize their battle craft and avatars. The beautiful and elegant design by Patrick B. is as intuitive as it is innovative. The battle craft and avatars are paired units and the player can now select various combinations of ships and avatars, with their respective loadouts, depending on their preferred style of play. This will add another layer of choices for the player to consider as they begin to master the nuances of the game.
Website, Search, and Player Profile Update
As a part of our Corvus launch, we’ve completely revamped and updated our websites for both Project Genesis, and 8 Circuit Studios. Since we’ve added new backend capabilities, we have improved the functionality in the Player Profile, and also added a new search function on www.projectgenesis.com so that you can see which of your friends has joined the fray.
Backend Upgrade and Stats Tracking
Saving one of the biggest development projects for last, our architectural engineers Jim J., Matt B., and Anatoliy G. have done a tremendous amount of heavy lifting to finalize our key capabilities for end to end data management and game client-server functionality. This is one of those systems that touches every aspect of Project Genesis, and allows the team to begin advanced progression, recording game session stats (crucial for playbalancing and reporting back to players their favorite stats), and our in-game economy.
Dorado: Steam Early Access
Everyone who has made it into the Corvus pre-alpha free playtest window, and received a Steam key, will be allowed to continue playing even after we release on Steam.
On April 24th, 2020 the team is going to release Project Genesis on Steam Early Access at a starting price of $29.99. This is 8 Circuit Studios’ first title to release on Steam and at this point in product development we haven’t yet made it to the halfway point! The Corvus build is going to be instrumental in ensuring that we have something exciting for those who wish to support us in taking Project Genesis to the next level.
Everyone who has made it into the Corvus pre-alpha free playtest window, and received a Steam key, will be allowed to continue playing even after we release on Steam. So if you would like to help us make the best possible gaming experience before we release on Steam Early Access, we hope you’ll sign up and start playing today.
Pilot Program
Additionally, if you’re interested in providing consistent and detailed feedback, creating content, play-balancing via competitive play, or helping us moderate and promote Project Genesis, you can apply to be a part of our elite Pilot Program. This program allows you to have access to frequent test builds. You will be recognized for being accepted to your respective program(s) of choice by special color designation in Discord, and by being allocated a permanent badge that you can display in-game, on leaderboards, and in your player profile.
If you’d like more details on the Pilot Program, check out our other Medium article here.
Project Management
And finally, if you’re ever looking for details on the roadmap for Project Genesis, Producer Terry H. regularly keeps our Trello Board up to date. Here you can review the details of what features are currently “triaged” for adoption in the latest build.
After making it this far, we hope that you are still interested in participating in the Project Genesis pre-alpha Corvus playtest. Head on over to our Discord to join the conversation, or sign up on www.projectgenesis.com to get your free Steam key while supplies last.
