Join us for a 30 min multi-player playtest on Saturday, 29th of August, 2020
We’re running a public, open Alpha playtest of Age of Ascent (AoA) on the 29th of August at 1900 UTC. That’s 8pm in the UK, and 2pm Central US time.
The playtest will run for half an hour only.
To reserve your place ahead of time, sign your pilot up!
Please come back on the 29th to the Age of Ascent portal and you will be admitted to the playtest. You can add to Google Calendar or download .ics event if you want a calendar reminder.
We’re testing the PvP combat module again - but with the new technology base and our awesome new visual style! Everyone will be in the same ship loadout, and it’s everyone for themselves!
Other modules of the game such as trade and industry, mining and mission running will be in other playtests later this year.
After the playtest has finished, please do come back to this thread to give us your feedback and comments!
- We are only testing the PvP experience in this playtest, not the full game!
- You’ll get the best experience if you have equipment suitable for piloting (eg mouse and keyboard, or a gamepad controller)
- You’ll need to be in Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge web browsers on any OS of your choice
- Players from the last playtests will notice that the radar is currently turned off - this is because it is being substantially enhanced at present
- For this test we’ve got the music soundtrack turned off by default
- We’re not showing pilot names under the ships for this test - instead we’re showing distance-to-target as this helps us test the telemetry feeds. Ship/pilot ID will be back!
- Shield capacity has been bumped up, but shield recharge is disabled
After the playtest has finished, please do come back to the forum thread about this playtest or comment below which is shared with the forum, to give us your feedback and comments!
NOTES FOR THIS PLAYTEST FOLLOW
Flight Controls
- Mouse Wheel - you can now use your mouse wheel to change thrust (as well as the ‘R’ and ‘F’ keys)
- Gamepad - please note that you can use a gamepad to control flight, if you wish. AoA currently supports gamepads, and we’re looking into joystick support as well.
- Control label graphic - The ‘flight control’ graphic had an incorrect label on it - identifying WASD as Pitch/Yaw, whereas WASD are actually vertical and horizontal strafe controls. This labelling has been fixed, and in addition, the flight controls now also appear on the ‘pre-launch’ waiting screen to refresh your memory.
- Flight mode - when you press ‘Launch’ you are now automatically dropped into flight mode, and do not have to press tab to engage flight mode.
Creative & visuals
- Audio - some of the voice warnings (eg “Structural Failure Imminent”) were running over each other; these have been spread out a bit
- New visual backdrop - this playtest is set in a visually different part of the galaxy
- Motion ‘dust’ - We’ve added some small particle effect “space dust” in to help impart the sense and direction of motion
- Camera Shake - when you got hit by incoming fire, we (and others) felt the camera shake was a bit too much; this has been dialled back - but please do let us know how it feels now!
Network & Gameplay
- Pilots in game before launch - Players who were on the ‘Waiting to launch’ screen before launch were actually visible in the game, and could be shot at before they’d even joined the battle, which seems a bit unfair :wink: This has been rectified.
- Location jumping - when players rejoined the battle after death, they’d join with a huge fiery engine trail that streaked from their ‘death location’ to the their ‘respawn location’; we’ve now cleared out these location buffers
- Player stats - We now have some pilot stat collection, which will be made available after the match on this forum post
We look forward to seeing you there!
Get in touch!
For press: press@ageofascent.com.