TUG
TUG Update is Coming Soon!
*High Five*
n0es1s
Upcoming update
This past month has been very busy for us over here at Nerd Kingdom and I just wanted to give you guys a short preview of some of the things we have been working on in this next update for TUG.
First, one of our biggest changes was overhauling the engine and transitioning to a component based architecture. We really felt it was necessary to change directions with our engine architecture given in order to really achieve the game we wanted to make. Primarily, this provides our designers (and modders) a more data-driven way of creating GameObjects, increasing performance, and allows us more flexibility to work on features in a more modular fashion. This restructuring was a few months in the making.
Second, we completely removed the Bullet Physics Library from our project and replaced it with Havok Physics. Bullet helped us early on in our prototype development, but we just kept hitting too many walls. Moving to Havok will allow us more guaranteed synchronicity for physics based objects across players in the game. It also allows us to have even more physics objects with a much faster and more optimized physics implementation. This change will really help us in the long run to develop the features we want in TUG.
Third, we have really put in a lot of work in building up our modding system. We've begun to expose a large amount of our engine code to our Lua API. This update won't have everything we want running through Lua, but we are piece by piece converting game logic over to Lua. The end goal is have the majority of TUG running through script and building a system that allows for powerful mods to be quickly and easily created so modders can change/expand the game how they want to.
Fourth, we have added a bunch of new environment objects to populate the biomes all through out the world. Among this there are new FX, sounds, animations, and tweaks/variations to existing assets. We've also adjusted a lot of the balance surrounding PvP and introduced some interesting new ways of using the resources available.
Finally, as always we have fixed some bugs in the world as well as introduced new ones! Game development is always a balancing act when actively developing and trying to create a stable product. So it's safe to assume that as bugs get fixed others with crop up. We do our best to squash these bugs as fast as we can.
We are planning on releasing this update next week (first week of May).
For more a up-to-date view of our progress head to our Trello board. https://trello.com/b/rW2Xc2bj/2014-development-board
@Auti0
A Message From Ino
My intention was to get ALL the Kickstarter backers access to the game when we went up on Steam Early Access (even the tiers that supposedly weren’t going to have access until official launch). But it didn't happen. Things got a bit crazy and we got really busy and I was responsible for making sure you were all taken care of, but my schedule got the best of me and I let you all down as well as my team at Nerd Kingdom.
We had a big press tour to prep for this release, some issues to cover for press, research to prepare, and all kinds of madness to go through to prep.
I am making sure we get all our backers access ASAP.
If any of you just want to vent, send me pics of angry and sad faces or want to give me pics of "I forgive you cuddles" throw em at my twitter @inoritewtf.
Again, I'm very embarrassed for this oversight, assuredly it was not from forgetting any of you, simply my being a bit of a bubble head and taking on more roles in the group than I can handle at once.
I am sorry.
- Ino; Science dude dev person
p.s. To clarify some confusion: This Steam launch is NOT the official launch of the final game. That is still set for January of 2015. This is just an Early Access version of the game. To show the community how grateful we are for their continuing support, we are going to be sending out Steam keys to ALL Kickstarter backers, regardless of tier.