Things drastically changed. For the better? You decide!
Shoutouts to the handful of people and testers reading this. You know, who you are. So there is some news again. Let's see:
First: From now on until launch, there will be one game update per month on steam. I stopped updating the steam built for every minor change. So expect less, but bigger updates in the next few months. If an update contains braking changes, there will probably be a fix. But besides that, don't expect too many changes in the next weeks.
That being said, what is new in the march update?
Concentrated gameplay
A lot of tiny changes were made, to make the whole experience more exciting. Faster canon reloads, faster tanks and smaller maps make shying away from a fight less feasible and force you to return to the battlefield quickly.
Segmented health
In this context, the new segmented health bar is of high significance. Instead of one health bar, players now have three tiny bars. Once one of them is empty, you lose it altogether. Players can not heal those bars, but there is a new item to pick up, that restores one health bar. After you get eliminated, you of course respawn with all three bars again. This drastically changes the role of health packs in the game and disincentivizes avoiding opponents to wait for the next heal.
New pickups
There are a bunch of new pickups. 1) The power rocket pickup, which makes your next 3 rockets slower, but way more deadly. 2) The fast reload pickups cuts the reload time of your next 4 rockets in half. 3) The health-bar restore pickup, which restores one health bar if your tank is missing one. 4) The speed pickup, which enhances your tank's speed for a while, and lastly 5) the slowdown pickup, which slowers all other player's tanks.
Traits
Traits (the name is subject to change) are like mini advantages you can select for your tank, which will be automatically triggered in some situations or under some conditions. Right now, there are 16 of them, ranging from a speed boost, while in critical damage to one trait, that restores one health bar for every opponent you eliminate.
Drone instead of bomb shower
The bomb shower secret weapon fell flat during testing. Therefore Theodore now has a defensive drone, that automatically attacks enemies in its proximity.
Revamped color style
The style of the pickups has been changed completely. Also, the color palette has been changed, to give the game a warmer, more vintage-ish look.
New UI for the character- and update selection
Both screens have been redone to reflect the new mechanics and (on the update selection screen) show more statistics about the updates' impacts on your tank.
Mod-Support (kinda)
You can now change dozens the game variables (like tank speed, canon damage, cooldown times, and many, many more) by writing your own custom XML-Config. Don't like how the game is right now? Try your own variation! Did you find settings, which make the game way better? Don't forget to let me know!
Changes in medals and a new medal
Nothing fancy here, but some of the changes required modifications for some medals. Also, since pickups are now more than ever and drop way more frequently, it seemed appropriate, to give a medal to the player, who collects the most pickups in any round.
What's next?
Balancing
The main goal for the next month(s) is to balance all those new (and older) things to get more evened-out gameplay. Some special weapons (and traits) are yet a bit too strong (or weak) compared to others. Also, the game modes besides deathmatch will need some more work on the balancing side.
Achievements
Yes, there will be achievements. The primary reason for this is, that the amount of tanks, traits, pickup items, and game modes, has become a bit too much for starters to the game. Therefore the game will start with less of them and players will have to unlock more features by achieving different easy (or hard) goals. This will hopefully help new players learn the different aspects of the game without being confused by the different opportunities. But for now (and probably in a while to come) all features, tanks, etc. are available right from the start.
So that's it. More coming sometime in April. Till then, have fun! Chris
Still free keys available - for testers only
P.S.: The invitation for free keys for testing still stands. Do you want to provide feedback? Just let me know, and I'll send you a key. Please be aware, that this is for testing purposes. While I obviously can not force you to test the game, I'll revoke the keys of people who are just collecting games and do not provide any feedback at all. If you provide feedback, the key will be yours forever - even after the launch.