Hello Tubers! Hope you're having fun with Tubetastic 0.1.9.
You might have noticed that it has been a month since our last post. Where have we been? What have we been up to?
Let's talk about it in this post.
Early Access Release
After releasing our first ever game as an indie group on Early Access, we were thrilled to see people enjoy something that we had worked on for more than a year.
The release also brought a lot of suggestions and feedback from our players, to make the game better, which we wrote down and started working on.
A big part of that feedback was requests for two features, both of which we had in mind for the full release (after Early Access):
- Bots should be allowed in online matches
- Players should be able to join mid-match
We felt that these two features would be a big addition to the game, and would greatly improve the players' experiences.
They'll be coming to you in 0.2.0, but we don't have an ETA, since we will need to do a lot of QA testing to ensure the best possible experience for you.
For now, let's talk about the features listed above, and more that's coming in 0.2.0.
Bots in Online
Right now, if you want to play a game with bots, you have to start the game in offline mode. If you want to play with your friends online, you have to start it in online mode.
With 0.2.0, we'll be bringing these two worlds together: you'll be able to start the game in online mode and begin playing with bots right away.
So, the empty slots in your game will be filled with bots. This means that you can even start playing alone, without having anyone else join your lobby!
Mid-Match Joining
Once your game has begun, anyone will be able to join your match, no matter where you are in the game.
So you can just start playing with Botty McBotterSons, and when another player loads up their game, no matter where they are on the planet, they'll be able to find your game, join and shoot you to oblivion.
What if I don't want bots online?
Don't worry, you'll be able to disable bots if you just want to play with your friends and beat their asses without the bots interrupting you.
There will be an option in the settings to turn off bots. Of course, you'll still get bots if there's no one else in your lobby, but once you have more than one players and bots are disabled, they'll disappear.
If you have them enabled though, you'll be able to play alongside bots and your friends. Not to say that the bots aren't your friends... they'll always be there for you.
Player Info Pop-Up
You know how you can press Tab in other games to view information about the connected players?
Well, we're adding that to the game. You'll be able to open it using the Select button on your gamepad, as well as the Tab key.
You can see info about the players, like the health, kills, etc. and their powers/weapons. And you can also see their pings (yes, my ping is bad, I live half an Earth away from the server).
We can't wait!
We're very excited for this update, and we hope that you are too! We cannot wait to finish working on it and bring the awesomeness to your computers.
Till then, happy summer!