The first playable version of Turretmaster's unique Player vs Player mode is almost ready for launch! We have been internally testing out the mechanics and fine tuning the weapon balancing for a couple of weeks and it is almost ready for the first public Alpha tests.
A quick preview of the battle
We think PvP is going to be very popular, so we added the PvP Menu right at the top
The main PvP home screen will have a Join Queue button, your current ELO (Ranking), Win and Losses Summary, and list of each match you had along with the result
When you click on Join Queue a map selection window will appear and you can select a map you [I]wish[/I] to play on. Do not forget that your opponent will also make a map selection and the game will randomly choose which map out of the 2 selected to play on so choose carefully. You will then get a confirmation box and when you click "OK", the Queue box will go to the top right of the sceen. At this point you can go play Campaign or Survival until a match is found
When an opponent is found, the Queue box will pop-up and you will have 30 seconds to choose to Enter the Battle or Flee like a coward.
Once the battle is accepted, both opponents will sync with the battle server; you will see who your opponent is and which map was choosen for the battle
Once you are in the game, the gameplay will be similar to Survival but with a couple of twists. All upgrades are still bought with gold.
You will be able to upgrade your opponents Enemies by making their speed faster, more of them come out at once and increasing their hitpoints.
There is a full weapon tech tree that you can upgrade to better deal with your own enemies that are getting powered up from your opponent
Battalions is a formation of mercenary enemies that you send at your opponent. Purchase 10 fliers, 5 planes, 20 tanks and 50 soldiers, then send them all at your opponent by clicking the "Attack" button
You can view your opponents Gold, Hit Streak and Lives in real time so you know if the pressure is on or if you are going to easy on them
Of course only 1 Commander will come out victorious and gain increased ELO and bragging rights, while the loser gets nothing but Defeat
We can not wait to see all the strategies that will come out of the community and will also be on the battlefield playing with everyone.
Release 0.10.12 is now Live
Just some minor fixes and enhancements while we continue to work on multiplayer
Release 0.10.12 brings along the following enhancements:
(Feature): Deleted Profile recovery
Just in case you ever delete your profile and want to get it back, you can by using the same name you just deleted. We do some magic to make sure only you can retrieve your user, so do not worry about anyone else taking your name.
(Enhancement): Survival Leaderboard is now based on Kills
Survival is all about, well, Surviving. To that end, we want to base good play on how many kills you made, not how much gold you gained. This change means the top of the leaderboard will be dominated by those Commanders that can defend the best, which is exactly what Survival mode is all about.
(Balance): Decreased difficulty for Survival Rounds 9, 10, 11 and 12
Survival is tough, and it should be but Rounds 9 through 12 were just too tough. There were a few reports of Commanders not being able to survive even 2 minutes and while challenge is great, you need to have some fun while playing so we have decreased the difficulty on these later Survival Rounds.
(Fix): Global Averages for Rounds now work again
We had made some changes to the Global Stats and Averages for each Round but in doing so we broke it. We are happy to announce that we fixed the issue and Global Averages are better than ever now.
(Fix): Enemy Warping issues
There was a strange edge case that popped up recently: When a unit is on a straight path, sometimes that unit would appear to warp into the map much further down then it should have been. Don't get us wrong, the idea of a teleporting army is amazing but it just doesn't seem to fit in TurretMaster. We instead fixed the issue and there should be no more warping in of enemy units.
Marching towards Multiplayer PvP
The Hikati Games Lead Developer is making great progress on Multiplayer mode and we are getting closer to having our alpha launch available in game. The game patches are all results of the work being done on PvP, as the platform needs to be as stable as possible. We look forward to the day when Commanders can challenge other Commanders.
Survival Has Arrived! Release 0.10.11 now Live
Survival is now fully implemented and Live with all 12 rounds
Release 0.10.11 brings along the following enhancements:
(Feature): Added Random Enemy Wave Spawns to Survival mode
We wanted Survival Rounds to feel different everytime you played through and the static waves of Campaign were not working towards that goal. Enemies will spawn completely randomly during Survival and thier stats will increase over time
(Feature): All 12 Survival Rounds are completed
The biggest issue we were facing with completing all 12 Survival Rounds is we did not want the Campaign Rounds to be copied into longer running Survival rounds. We wanted some kind of variety. Campaign is meant to be a Time Attack: Leaderboard - "Best of the Best" game mode so enemies are static in their quantity and "waves", even if their spawn order varies. With the Random Wave spawns for Survival though, we were able to get a feeling of impending doom, and it feels a little different every time you play. Lastly, Survival can be beaten but we think it will be impossible; there are 32K enemy units in total and the difficulty increases on a time based interval, it would be amazing to see players last over 15 minutes (during testing the highest I got on Round 1 was ~21 minutes); so give it a try and get yourself up on that leaderboard.
(Enhancement): Added Shots to Kill on Units and Buildings
One of the biggest debates we have had since the beginning is whether or not we show "health bars" on units. On the one hand, it makes killing enemies very easy, you see he has 2hp so you shoot 2 times; on the other hand the lack of hp makes the game much more tactical feeling. After further debate, we have decided to add Shots to Kill right on the enemy unit and buildings: This value will update with weapon upgrades and will always be accurate for the exact weapon you are using. That means if you are using Laser and an enemy tank has "4" over it, that means 4 laser shots will kill that enemy tank. After each shot, the current Shots to Kill will update as well, meaning that "4" will become a "3" if you shoot it once. You can turn this feature OFF during the map by pressing the TAB key
(Enhancement): Remade the Instructions Screen
This is just a touch up of the instructions screen, as some features have changed since we first launched and we want to keep things accurate.
(Enhancement): Minor Performance Enhancements
The one thing we have not had any reported problems with is performance. However, with the upcoming Multiplayer Mode we do not want performance to become an issue. To that end, timeline objects have been pruned and memory usage has been reduced even further.
Steps towards Multiplayer PvP
Much of release 0.10.11 is ground work for the upcoming Multiplayer PvP mode, so any feedback will be critical to getting a smooth PvP launch. Please leave any and all feedback and we will review everything.
Survival Mode almost complete and a Special Announcement
Hello Supporters,
We hope everyone has been doing great so far and enjoying TurretMaster. Here at Hikati Games, we have been working hard on completing the Survival Mode and I can now present some highlights that are being added:
All 12 Rounds in Survival Mode will be available
Survival Mode will have completely randomized enemy waves with scaling difficulty over time to truly test the skills of each Commander. If you make it to the top of the leaderboard in Survival, you are truly the Elite.
Shots to Kill will now be on the units, no more wondering how many shots it will take to kill that tank. We are open to feedback about this change.
Special Announcement
The work spent creating randomized enemy waves were critical for our next featured game mode: Player vs Player. We have been planning and working towards creating a PvP mode for some time now but did not want to announce it until we completed some significant programming on it. I am happy to say that we have finalized the alpha version and think everyone will be happy with the results.
[I]Tentative Feature List for Alpha[/I]
Players can Queue up and wait for a match to be found from a new PvP screen and while Queued up, you can still play all the single player game modes until a game is found.
The game will not be splitscreen, instead you get the full view and will be able to toggle a "mini-map" view of your opponents lanes. This way you can choose when to focus on your opponent and when to focus on defending yourself
Every campaign map will be available to play on
Stats for each match are recorded along with your ELO ranking loss and gains
Enemy Waves during the match use the new Survival Mode randomization, but this randomization is chosen on the server before the match is started and both players will get the same exact enemies so the match will truly be based on skill, not luck
Players will be able to spend gold on not only upgrading their own tech trees and weapons but they can also upgrade their opponents enemies
Players can upgrade their opponents enemies stats like movement speed and hitpoints, making it incredibly hard to just turtle forever
We think everyone will enjoy player vs player and look forward to launching the Alpha soon.
TurretMaster Successfully Launched on Steam Early Access
Thank You to All Supporters!
Today TurretMaster has successfully launched into Early Access and we here at Hikati Games want to Thank Everyone who purchased a copy.
We monitored the logs throughout the day and saw no critical errors or server problems and watched as many new Battlefield Commanders took up the challenge of defending their homelands.
As mentioned in the sub-forums, we welcome any and all feedback as this is meant to be a creative platform for the community to express their own individual challenges and war campaigns to the world. Please post any ideas, concerns or just comments in any of the three forums:
I will be following up soon with a RoadMap Post on the General Discussion forum to give everyone some insight on what we have planned for TurretMaster during Early Access.
Again, Thank You All. We look forward to seeing everyone in game and watching what unique Campaigns get created.
