Release Notes June 28, 2014

Join us at www.ageofascent.com for a 30 min playtest Saturday, June 28, 2014 at 8pm UTC, 3pm Central US, 4pm East US, 9pm UK

Thank you for all your feedback from the last test! There were a considerable number of changes; some worked, some didn’t. We’ve been hard at work on a new and improved game engine; meanwhile we are looking to consolidate on last test’s changes based on your feedback:

These are the preliminary release notes for this week’s test:

• Weapon is no longer an instant weapon, and targets need to be led – although it remains a combination weapon, with a faster fire rate.
• Changed weapon sound – more suitable to its rate of fire.
• Slower weapon projectile – more suitable to its visual effect, and important for leading.
• Target leading – you will need to shoot where your target will be when your projectiles hit it rather than where it is now
• Turbo no longer locks turn controls; we will revisit this when we have “turbo-type” choices.
• Mouse dead zone removed – the area inside your reticule was a dead zone, making left/right adjustments hard
• Non-linear mouse turn, turn adjustments as small near center of screen and accelerated as your mouse moves further out, though max turn speed remains the same, this will allow for greater precision.
• Bots causing name craziness should be resolved

Some information on our upcoming new engine

• Recent browser changes have allowed us to decouple networking and graphics into different threads, this means high network traffic won’t effect the framerate, and extreme visual effects won’t effect the network.
• Efficient GPU pipelining, you’ve already seen a lot of ships and bullet hell – but we can do much much more, while still improving your framerate
• New physics – expect collisions with other ships and space debris/asteroids for hide and seek!
• Input controls – user assignable keys, improved touch and gampad support
• Improved server messaging – where you are being shot from, who’s shooting you, targeting and tracking.
• New weapons, new ships…
• …and much much more

Obviously these improvements will all get their own spotlight in the release notes as they happen and will be explained in greater detail at that time.

If you want to know the bigger picture and where we are heading don’t forget to check out: About Age of Ascent

Thank you all for joining us on this journey!

Discuss this release in our forums: Age of Ascent – Prealpha test June 28, 2014