Today, we will discuss the upcoming changes in more detail. The main news is that we will be introducing seasons. Think of these as similar to how the current league system works, but within a limited timespan. This means you will be competing against other speedrunners to see who is the fastest runner during a certain period of time. At the end of a season, you will be awarded a badge that represents the league you finished in. We're not entirely sure yet on the specifics, but we're planning on running a couple of these seasons each year, for instance by having a Halloween Season or a Christmas Season. You'll be able to get a badge for each of the seasons you participate in.
Soooo what's so special about badges? Well, aside from being a nice collectible overview of your past achievements, you can pick one that will pop up over your character when you perform a taunt. This way you can show off your past achievements, like that you've participated during a special event, or that you finished in the Diamond League during one of the seasons, in-game!
While we're excited about this new idea, there could very well be some issues with how we've set everything up. So, the first season in this new ranking system will be a Beta Season - meaning some rules and variables might change mid-season. This season will run for a month; from April 13th until May 14th. The badges that you see up here are exclusive for the Beta Season; you can only get one of these badges by playing ranked matches in the specified timeframe. Other seasons will have different badges, with specific badges for each season. To be eligible to get one of these you have to play at least 15 placement matches. After those matches, you are placed in a league that suits your skill level. You can then advance in leagues just like before, by beating opponents and winning matches. Finally, when the season ends we'll be handing out badges based on what league you ended up in!
'What happens to my current ranking score?' you might ask. Obviously, we don't want to simply throw away all the hard work you've put into getting into one of the top leagues. When the ELO update goes live you will automatically receive one of the badges that you may have already noticed on top of the previous announcement; they represent your current ranking in the 'old' ranking system. Also, after the Beta Season ends, we will revert back to the 'old' ranking system (your score is frozen in the meantime) while we evaluate the results of the beta test.
But wait, there is more! If you reach the top-level Diamond tier by the end of this beta season will also get this hyper-cool exclusive trail!
For almost 3 years now we've been running the same old ranking system. The system has been great for us. It has given some memorable moments from when the first player hit Platinum League. Or when Metanet01 got into the unobtainable Diamond League. This remained a feat replicated by only 8 other players to this day. Other than that the system also served as a skill indication, providing much better skill-based Match Making.
While the system has been good to us, it also has multiple issues. It feels a bit grindy and it could be better at representing current player skill.
The new ranking system
In order to solve the issues with the current system we've been testing a new ranking system for a while now in secret on the ranking server. This is an ELO based system. We are now almost ready to start a public test with the ELO system.
As it stands we're aiming to introduce the new system on Thursday April 13th 2017. It's not quite ready yet, so there is a slight chance we may not make that, but things are looking good right now. We're planning to run the new system for a month until May 14th. For the duration we are running the new system we will freeze your current score. After May 14th we will revert back to the current ranking system. At that point you can start playing in the current ranking system where you left off on April 13th.
The past 4 months we've been working hard on bringing SpeedRunners to consoles. Developing for consoles was pretty difficult and turned out to soak up all our attention. I am happy to inform you that we are through that now, at least for the technical part that is. So we are back to updating the game here on Steam.
Before we released the game fully out of early access we received feedback on the golden hook. The main issue was it being hard to dodge in high ping situations. Before release we spend some time trying to make the golden hook work better in those cases. We made promising progress but we didn't have time to test it fully.
Recently we have been able to test it extensively and it's ready for release now. We look forward to your feedback on the golden hook changes.
During the last months we got messages from players being verbally abusive to other players. We've been gathering reports on this for a while now, but we did not have the means to act on those reports yet. This update brings a first version of a ban system, more info on that here.
I also looked at the reports of the last couple of months and added bans for the worst offenders. We'll keep an eye on the more recent reports hereon after, so keep them coming.
Other changes involve the merging of fixes and changes we did during our work for consoles. Most of those changes is UI polish and small quality of life changes. As an example, you might notice we no longer have a timer in a lobby with only local players.
We have tested the build extensively but can never cover as much as all of you can. So keep us posted if you find any issues in the current build.
Thanks for sticking with us and enjoy the update!
--Gert-Jan
SpeedRunners Tournaments at PAXWest
Ok, scrubs. I know there are good SpeedRunners players coming to PAXWest. I'm still a little bit upset about last year's "incident", when a 13 year old girl beat the whole team like it was nothing.
We're going to give away hundreds of hats, lanyards, and exclusive SpeedRunners T-Shirts at the event in a couple of weeks.
We'll be doing hourly tournaments at our booth. Stop, show your skills, prove you're not a scrub.
The booth is BRIGHT AS F*CK orange as usual. You'll find it. We'll be on the 4th floor next to the Indie Megabooth.
Details on our PAXWest booth activities: http://tinybuild.com/tinybuild-pax-west-2016-line-up
#SpeedyProTips GIF sharing thread
I see you guys are enjoying the GIF editor/exporter feature in SpeedRunners.
There are a ton of great GIFs in the Artwork Community Tab and I decided to give them some exposure on Twitter with the #SpeedyProTips hashtag.
Feel free to share your SpeedyProTips with gifs!
Feel free to share your GIFs on Twitter using the #SpeedyProTips tag. I will retweet them to get you some exposure!
If your GIF is over 5mb, I typically use http://ezgif.com/optimize to shrink down size. They also have a cropping tool, and it's all web-based.
Submit your GIFs here and I can tweet them out
If you'd like me to tweet out from http://twitter.com/tinyBuild (107k followers), feel free to submit GIFs in this thread. The combination of trails and awesome moments can help bring more exposure to SpeedRunners :)
PAX East Twitch Stage Showcase tomorrow
Hi everyone! We're celebrating the launch of SpeedRunners at PAX East in Boston, and tomorrow there's an upcoming Twitch Stage segment for SpeedRunners.
Saturday at 4:15PM ET (Boston Time) / 9:15pm CET
On http://twitch.tv/twitch
SpeedRunners pro gaming showcase
PurpleTurkey will be beating us on stage for a few minutes, and then will go online to play against other high rank opponents, talking us through his game.
If you're a high rank player in North America, please be online at 4pm ET tomorrow! It's your chance to showoff your trails in front of thousands of people watching the main PAX East Twitch Feed.
See you there!
SpeedRunners is Out Now!
Check out this slick SpeedRunners Launch Trailer that Tom made
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWwUDenjkzs
SpeedRunners is now officially out of Early Access. After hundreds of updates, several community uprisings (remember the whole Lethal Spikes and SpeedBoosting threads?), we are officially out. That's it. Version 1.0.
Here's what the final version of SpeedRunners has to offer:
Gif Editor & Exporter
A new feature in the Replays system is the ability to crop & export GIFs directly from within SpeedRunners, check it out!
Trails Shop & Editor
Yes, you can now create your own trails for SpeedRunners and have them be available in the Trails Shop. This is a curated shop (think just like Team Fortress 2) where users can submit their content to.
Mac & Linux
I am playing SpeedRunners on a Mac, you guys! This actually works.
Single Player Campaign
The brand new single player campaign takes you on a "Mario Kart Style" adventure, going through the multiplayer maps with specific story bits and challenges. The goal of the single player campaign is to ease players into the competitive online part of the game.
Twitch Betting
You can now setup twitch betting when livestreaming SpeedRunners and it's tied to the tinyBuild rewards program.
But wait, what does going out of Early Access mean?
It means that the core features of the game are finished. We will still update the game, and are fully committed to working with the community. The only difference is that the core development team will switch their focus to consoles.
A huge THANK YOU to the community!
A special, enormous, hug-worthy THANK YOU to everyone who have been with us during Early Access. It's been an insane journey and without you guys we wouldn't be here. The hundred-reply threads on the forums, the in-depth discussions, the King of Speeds, everything about SpeedRunners Early Access revolved around obsessively reading the forum and figuring out the best solutions.
Yes, everyone in Early Access is getting a special BETA trail which is available right now.
This week we are having a launch event at PAX East in Boston with PurpleTurkey showing off his skills. Within the coming weeks we will reveal post-launch plans which include more tournaments and prizes.
Huge hugs
- tinyBuild and DoubleDutch Teams
Twitch Bets SpeedRunners is Live
Join is on Twitch Bets SpeedRunners -- the official prelaunch event where 4 bots play against each other, and you can make bets on who wins each round!
