Early Access - Patch v.1.3.2438

Patch v.1.3.2438

17 MARCH

Changes:

Server will now rotate through the 3 available maps
Entering a queue now will open a lobby and the countdown will start the game with as many bots needed to have a 3v3 match(based on actual players in lobby).
If you enter the queue and there is a game that is in progress without the minimum number of players(12), you will be added in the match.

Bug Fixes:

General Optimization. Better FPS, Better performance overall.
Fixed an issue, where the Garbage Collector would cause the game to lag.

Minor UI enhancements:

Increased the size of the combat chat.
Adjusted the position of the status feed.
Improved the Scoreboard design.
Redesigned Ammo Packs.
Added SFX (in progress).

March 18, 2017
0
Published in Patch Notes
Written by Ascanio

Creating Crash Force - Character Part 2

Creating Crash Force - Character Part 2

Hello, everyone! Last time we saw how we created our hovercraft system and incorporated it in the Shooter game example provided by Unreal Engine 4. Today, we will see how the shooting system was implemented and why. First things first, the very first shot ever fired by a hovercraft in Crash Force was a "cheat". What I mean by that is we made the hovercraft "hold" a weapon on its turret and shoot it. Then, we went and created bone sockets for our weapons to fire from and assigned to each hovercraft a weapon that would be the one it would fire. We created projectiles for those weapons and handled the properties of those projectiles (i.e. damage, range, ammo, fire rate). Now, each hovercraft had a weapon it could fire.

Playing with weapons a new suggestion came to the table. What if each hovercraft had two weapons? We fancied the idea of being able to wield two weapons instead of one, so we started walking down that avenue. We created two different weapons per hovercraft and assigned them these weapons. Then we created a slot where the equipped weapon would be held in memory, where the other one would be considered holstered or not equipped. We created the logic behind toggling weapons and firing the equipped weapon only and voilà.

Now all that we thought was left weapon wise, was to create different weapons for each hovercraft and assign them those weapons. This is how we created the base of our weapon system.

March 16, 2017
0

Creating Crash Force - Character Part 1

Creating Crash Force – Characters Part 1

Hello, everyone! Characters are one of the most important parts of the game. Although Unreal Engine has a variety of different configurations you can choose from (Humanoids, Vehicles etc.) nothing really fitted exactly as we wanted it to. What we decided to do is create our own using different templates as a base.

Playing with different configurations it suddenly struck us. Why use cars? Why not something more spectacular? Why not hovercraft? We all liked the idea of hovercraft as vehicles for our game, so we shifted our effort to that direction. We took the basic vehicle template that Unreal provides and we started playing around to make it hover instead of rolling.

At first, we created some basic line tracers from the center of the hovercraft that ray cast into the terrain applying an upward force to the vehicle to keep it floating. Then we reconfigured the input controls to apply directional forces instead of rotation torque. The vehicle was floating! Our small victory was short-lived since, with the slightest directional force input, the vehicle would lose balance and tip over.

The problem was that the line tracers began from the center of mass of the vehicle (it’s not a hovercraft yet :p) making it extremely difficult to balance, like a monocycle with a really long seat position. We repositioned the initial line tracer and added three more to cover all the edges of the vehicle and we tried again.

Here is the result:

That was way better. It still needed a lot more tweaking in order to gain the desired effect but we were on the right track. At the same time, we concluded that our hovercraft should have a weapon turret on it with its base rotating left and right. The turret should hold a number of barrels that could rotate up and down. With this structure in mind we created the skeleton of our hovercraft in a way that we could use the same bone structure for any other hovercraft there was to follow. The next step was to bind the rotation of these bones to the player input (mouse and controller) in order to make the turret/barrels rotate with mouse input. We were also creating a prototype hovercraft mesh to test these controls. Well, it didn't go as expected.

Here is how it looked:

The camera was completely disoriented because it was handled by two different occasions. We easily fixed this issue by attaching the camera to the back of the turret barrels. Wherever the turrets were pointing at, the camera would be pointing at. We had a good base for a hovercraft. What we needed now was to make it shoot its weapon as well. We took the Shooter game that Unreal gives as a base and we put our character in it. After tweaking for a while with different configurations we ended up with this:

We now had a hovercraft that could move, point its weapon, shoot and take damage. This was a solid base for us to move on. On the next part, we will see how this solid base evolved even further.

March 14, 2017
0

Creating Crash Force - Part 1

Creating Crash Force - Introduction

I want to tell you a story, our story, more specifically the story of our game Crash Force and how it became to be. Crash Force today is an online multiplayer arena shooting game with a lot of RPG elements where players are different hovercraft types. The thing is though that, like most things, it did not start like that. It took a lot of implementation cycles and changes along the way to becoming what it is. What I hope to do is create a roadmap of the way getting there.

First things first. Crash Force began its journey with a different name. Back in 2013, when our project idea first started, Crash Force was named Car Wars and it was an internship project created in European University of Cyprus. At the time, Car Wars (as the name suggests) was an idea of a game where cars will shoot each other. The first draft of the idea started forming in Unreal Development Kit (Unreal Engine 4 was not available at the time). By the end of the internship, we had created a prototype LAN-based game where cars (and a motorcycle) could move and shoot each other down with different weapons. It was a very simple concept for a month-long internship.

Upon the internship ended, we went on with our lives since we had other obligations (whether it was finishing a Bachelor’s degree or looking for work or working). The seed of Car Wars though was planted. We all had it in the back of our heads. We all wanted to resume it at some point in our lives. In February 2015, we decided to proceed with the development of Cars Wars in our own time. We were working at the time, making development harder. We scratched the original prototype and decided to try creating our game with Unity. The idea of Car Wars evolved along the way, adding gas points for a refill, different speed limits for our cars and new weapons.

Nine months later we decided that creating games was what we loved doing, and we should proceed to do that on a more professional level. After creating our company Ascanio Entertainment, we decided to start everything from the start with the correct structure and utilizing the knowledge that we had gained through our two prototypes. This journey begins with the day we started developing Crash Force in Unreal Engine 4 as a company and will continue all the way until today. Enjoy!

March 14, 2017
0

Early Access - Patch v.1.3.2350

Patch v.1.3.2350

4 MARCH

Changes.

Server will now rotate through the 3 available maps
Entering a queue now will open a lobby and the countdown will start the game with as many bots needed to have a 3v3 match(based on actual players in lobby).
If you enter the queue and a game that is in progress without the minimum number of players(12) is found, you will be added in the match.

Bug Fixes.

Fixed an issue where the victory screen would stay on screen indefinitely.
Fixed an issue where statuses(stun, root etc) would apply multiple times.
Fixed an issue where bots were not shown on the scoreboard.

Added Features.

Increased number of hit directions to 8 and re positioned them closer to the cross-hair.
Tutorial level redesign and general bug fixing.
Further improvements on bots.

March 4, 2017
0
Published in Patch Notes
Written by Ascanio

Early Access - Patch v.1.3.2289

Patch v.1.3.2289

22 FEBRUARY

It has been one month since Crash Force was released on Steam Early Access. During that month, we have gathered feedback and suggestions from our users. A lot of the feedback was pointed to the in-game UI at first and we released a new work in progress UI for users to test and provide feedback. Fortunately, the response to the in-game UI was positive and users felt more immersed in Crash Force. A few adjustments were made in this patch to the in-game User Interface to accommodate clearer cooldowns, abilities and icons.

In Game User Interface Crash Force

Today we are releasing an overhaul of a lot of the features of Crash Force through suggestions that were made by testers. These updates include a brand new Main Menu User Interface, re-introduction of all three maps, new queuing up system, the highly anticipated Bots and preview of hovercrafts, to name a few. Let’s head into more detail

Changes.

Long Queues and the arrival of Bots.

Our beta tester pool was from around the globe, which introduced a certain problem we had not anticipated. People were queueing in different times of the day and rarely met in queue. It was suggested strongly, by testers and Defunct Games, that the addition of bots would help solve the long wait times and give the chance for testers to actually play test Crash Force.

We are introducing the first version of Bots for Crash Force. First version, since they are still a work in progress. Bugs and suggestions plus feedback will help us perfect them. At the moment, bots will spawn, seek the nearest enemy (bot or player) and start attacking them. If they are low on ammo, they will head to ammo pads and collect ammo.

Bots will automatically join a game, if there are less than 6 people in the lobby. Meaning, that if there are three players in the lobby, when the match starts, three bots will be added automatically. When the lobby has six or more players, no bots will be added to the match.

Queue Up System

While we thought that our old queue system was not perfect to say the least, we felt that it was easy to navigate. We revamped the whole queue up system as we wanted to introduce the return into a lobby, after a match had ended. By returning to the lobby, the players can continue playing Crash Force without queuing up again.

Since we had revamped the return to lobby system, we added a few features that would now be missing from the queuing up procedure, which are the hovercraft selection and the Skills Tree selection. After a player queues up and join a lobby, the player can select his/her hovercraft of choice, Skills Tree Slot and start chatting with the other players in the lobby. New players can also join the lobby if they queued up when the lobby was remade.

Queuing up in Crash Force Game Modes in Crash Force Queue Timer Crash Force Lobby Crash Force

Special Spectator Mode

We wanted to tackle another issue, where people where queuing up while another match was already in progress and would eventually drop out the queue before that match ended.

We are introducing a special spectator mode. When a player queues up and a game is already in progress, that player will join that match in spectator mode. After the match has ended, the player will automatically join that lobby and proceed to the next match with the players from the previous match.

Spectator Mode Crash Force

Hovercraft and Skills Tree Selection

When a player enters the lobby, he/she can choose a hovercraft and a Skills Tree slot.

Important Notice: If a player fails to choose a hovercraft in the lobby, Aquila Minuta will automatically be selected for that player, along with that player’s first Skills Tree slot.

While in the lobby, the players cannot choose decals and their favourite hovercraft skins. A player can choose before entering a queue, his/her favourite decal and hovercraft skins and they will be automatically applied when in the lobby/match. The match overview screen has also been revamped to fit the new main menu user interface.

Match Report Crash Force

Rotating Map Selection

Two weeks of Aquila Plains map playtesting. Check.

Two weeks of Cicuma Forest map playtesting. Check

Instead of introducing only our third map named Clava Tombs, we decided to create a rotating map mode. The next map is automatically selected by the system, and the players can play all the available maps of Crash Force.

Clava Tombs

Main Menu User Interface

The Main Menu was in a pretty good state, but since we started revamped the queue up system and we were working the preview system, we decided to revamp everything. The new User Interface has new tabs on the top named, Play, Craft Gallery, Career profile, Store and finally the Options.

Main Menu - Play

We are introducing a cleaner way to queue up for Crash Force. Server locations and patch notes are now clearer, and a new large tab has been added where the player can select whether he/she want to play the Tutorial, Shooting Range (not released yet), Competitive Play (not released yet) and finally the Quick Play.

Quick Play brings the player to a selection of three game modes. At the moment One Man Wolfpack will be available until more people join the Early Access period. When the player clicks OMW (One Man Wolfpack), a queue timer will pop up alerting the player of the approximate queue time that will take to find a match, and a timer of the actual time in queue.

Main Menu - Craft Gallery

Craft Gallery, is the newest tab in the Main Menu of Crash Force. In the gallery, the player can select a hovercraft, and then read about the hovercrafts abilities and weapons, preview the hovercraft, apply skins and decals to the hovercraft. The player can apply skins and decals to the hovercraft and preview these changes by heading in the preview hovercraft mode.

Craft Gallery Crash Force Hovercraft Menu Crash Force Hovercraft Abilities Crash Force Skins Decal Preview Hovercraft Crash Force

A player can only also purchase the Skins and Decals at the Craft Gallery section instead of the Shop. Consequently, the Shop now only sells EXP Boosts, Reset Tokens and Lumen purchases.

Skills Tree Preview Hovercraft Crash Force

The player can also select one of his/hers Skills Tree slot and apply it, to the hovercraft he/she had selected and preview the stats changes that will be applied in game.

Main Menu - Career Profile

Not a lot has changed in this tab of the Main Menu on the features side except the addition of purchases and the ability to view if you have activated EXP boosts or remaining reset tokens. The overall feel has changed to match the rest of the Main Menu UI. The Overview tab has been adjusted with larger lettering and a cleaner look. The Skills Tree section is now cleaner and easier to navigate. Lastly, the Ranks section has been reworked with larger rank icons and division of icon symbols depending on similarity in ranks.

Career Overview Crash Force Skills Tree Crash Force Ranks Crash Force

Main Menu - Shop

We mentioned above that the Shop now only sells EXP boosts, Reset tokens and Lumen purchases. In addition, we have added a verification of purchase pop up, to avoid any miss clicking.

Shop Crash Force

Bug Fixes.

Fixed an issue where the skills Tree would not apply correctly.
Fixed K/D Value in the Overview Section of the profile tab.
Fixed an issue where Aquila Claim (Aquila Audax’s 3rd ability) would leave targets rooted indefinitely.

February 22, 2017
0
Published in Patch Notes
Written by Ascanio

Early Access - Patch v.1.2.2188

Patch v.1.2.2188

10 FEBRUARY

Bug Fixes.

Fixed disappearing cursor.

Fixed an issue where the cursor would disappear from the main menu.

Fixed an issue where pressing escape in-game would cause the screen to flicker.

The screen flickering when pressing the Esc button has been fixed. No more flickering nonsense J

Fixed some aesthetics in market (now called Shop).

Shop has been renamed, to reflect the purchasing of items, rather than market which implies trading (Suggestion by JohnSmith).

Fixed an issue where resolution quality would not apply.

When setting your display settings, there was an issue with applying the resolution quality. This has been fixed now.

Added Features.

Locked Aquila Plains, Unlocked Cicuma Forest.

Aquila Plains is retiring for the time being, as we are enabling the Cicuma Forest map! Cicuma Forest is a forestry, ancient temple with a dark atmosphere and aesthetics.

Queue up and check this map out! New map, new achievements to earn, “secrets” and insane jumps.

Aquila Audax is now available.

The third and final hovercraft from the Aquila hovercraft family is now available! With the introduction of Audax, we are introducing a third class of hovercrafts, the tanks.

Audax, is a beefy hovercraft with slow movement speed and a lot of health. Audax’s playstyle is crowd controlling enemy hovercrafts and setting up kills for itself and its teammates.

Health	Energy	Speed
5000	3500	1400

Weapons:

PRW – The primary weapon of Audax is a standard rifle that shoots bullets. The maximum capacity of bullets is 400 and each bullet damages an enemy hovercraft by 25 damage.

	LMB: Primary Weapon: Rifle
	Fires Bullets that deal damage to enemies

SDW – The secondary weapon of Audax is a missile projectile, named Plasma Bolt. The missile explodes on impact and has a blast radius. The maximum capacity of this weapon is 120 and the damage is 10 per hit.

	LMB: Secondary Weapon: Plasma Bolt
	Projectile that deals damage when it explodes.

Abilities:

Ability 1 – Hornet is Audax’s first ability, which is a projectile and root ability type. When Audax activates this ability, projectile leaves from the centre of the turret of the hovercraft. If Hornet hits an enemy the target is stunned and you can reactivate Hornet, to dash to that target.

	1st Ability: Hornet
	Audax roots an enemy in place and can then dash to it.

Ability 2 – Tranquillity is the second ability of Audax. This ability is an Area of Effect Silence ability that makes all enemy hovercrafts inside the radius of the ability unable to cast abilities for a period of time.

	2nd Ability: Tranquillity
	An aura emits from Audax, making all enemies in the area unable to cast their abilities.

Ability 3 – Aquila Claim is an Area of Effect, Root and damage ability. When Claim is cast Audax releases a mini Black Hole on its position. The Black Hole roots and attracts all enemy hovercrafts in its radius, to the centre. While a hostile hovercraft is in the centre of the Black Hole, it takes damage.

	3rd Ability: Aquila Claim
	Audax summons a mini black hole, drawing all enemies inside and damaging them.

Ability 4 – Aquila Wormhole is flash ability, meaning your hovercraft can travel a set distance (blink) in an instant. No traveling through walls or other players is allowed.

	4th Ability: Aquila Wormhole
	Aquila Audax instantly teleports a small distance, in the direction it sees.

General Tips:

· Audax is a great initiator. Consider utilising its heavy Crowd Control to start a fight. A good combination could be to catch an enemy with Hornet, dash at them, and once close to them open Tranquillity and Claim. No escape.

· Remember that while you can CC multiple enemy hovercrafts at once with Aquila Claim, Audax deals very little damage without any help for your allied hovercrafts. Team coordination is the key.

· Hornet can be used as your first ability onto an enemy hovercraft. Consider using this ability to catch a fleeing enemy hovercraft or dodging a projectile ability.

You can read in more detail about Audax’s abilities and stats on our Wiki here:

http://crash-force.wikia.com/wiki/Aquila_Audax

Added Tutorial button on the Home screen.

The Crash Force tutorial in now live! New and accustomed players, please check it out and provide us with feedback!

Community Happenings – Double XP Weekend

We are kicking off February with a Double XP weekend, on Saturday and Sunday, February 11th - 12th from 8pm CEST to 11pm CEST AND 8pm CEST to 11pm PST!

Log into Crash Force during these hours and receive double experience from playing matches in Crash Force.

Get to level 30 faster, and earn your first Aviation point!

See you in the battlefield!

You can join our Curse Server during the event:
https://www.curse.com/servers/To79Sj

And our Discord Server here:
https://discord.gg/zwEVaj9

February 10, 2017
0
Published in Patch Notes
Written by Ascanio

Crash Force - August Double XP Weekend

We are kicking off August with a Double XP weekend, on Saturday and Sunday, August 5th - 6th!

Log into Crash Force during these days and receive double experience from playing matches in Crash Force.

Get to level 90, fill out your Skills Trees and gain Lootboxes faster!!

See you in the battlefield!

You can join our Discord Server here:

https://discord.gg/zwEVaj9

Devtip: If you buy an XP Win Boost you can quadruple your experience gained when you win a game.

August 4, 2017
0

Early Access - Patch v.1.2.2161

Patch v.1.2.2161

31 JANUARY

Bug Fixes:

Fixed Ability Icons Rebinding on the "In-Game HUD".
Fixed clearing all game actors upon "Match End".
Fixed Market "Data-Transfer" widget bug.
Fixed the "End Match Summary" report.
Fixed an issue with the Re-spawn sequence.
Fixed the priority of the explosion effect upon death.
Fixed in-game chat scroll issue.
Fixed ability cool-downs display on the in-game HUD.
Fixed stunned status disruption.

Changes:

Changes on the rates of the leveling system.

Added Features:

Points of Interest have been added on the mini-map.
Implemented further voice effects.

February 1, 2017
0
Published in Patch Notes
Written by Ascanio

More...

Early Access - Patch v.1.2.2124

Patch v.1.2.2124

27 JANUARY

Fixed:

Fixed an issue where SteamVR would open when you launched the game.
Fixed an issue where resolution options would sometimes not show up.
Fixed an issue where some achievements were awarded incorrectly.

New in-Game HUD

The UI has been changed in order to be easier to see your abilities and cooldowns (located at the bottom center part)
The minimap has been relocated for easier visibility (located at the bottom right)

Main Menu UI

Changed the cursor to its default configuration since cursors designed with umg seem to be having some sort of acceleration, hence hard to handle on machine that produce low frame-rates

Ammo Packs

Ammo packs now display a timer when picked up, indicating how long until the next pack is available.

Voice Fx

We have implemented voice effects for better feedback when performing certain actions in the game. We will continue developing the feedbacks system in general so stay tuned for more.

Clava Diphylla is now available

Being the second hovercraft of the Clavae family.

Weapons

Weapon 1: Rifle
Weapon 2: Bladerunner

Abilities

Ability 1: Diphylla can target an enemy and curse him for x amount of time impairing his movement and damaging the enemy.
Ability 2: Diphylla scarifices health to increase it's power. Less health, more power.
Ability 3: Diphylla sacrifices energy to regenerate health.
Ability 4: Diphylla scans the enviroment making it able to see enemies behiund objects and structures

Bug Fixes

Fixed empty messages bug

January 28, 2017
0
Published in Patch Notes
Written by Ascanio

Early Access - Patch v.1.2.2081

Patch v.1.2.2081

23 JANUARY

Fixed:

Fixed an issue where SteamVR would open when you launched the game.
Fixed an issue where resolution options would sometimes not show up.
Fixed an issue where some achievements were awarded incorrectly.

Thank you for your feedback. Stay engaged.

The Ascanio Entertainment Team
Crash is imminent...

January 26, 2017
0
Published in Patch Notes
Written by Ascanio

Early Access Trailer of Crash Force

The official trailer of Steam Early Access for Crash Force:

January 26, 2017
0

Early Access - Temporary Patch

Early Access - Lobby/Match-making arrangement Update

After monitoring the game creation, queue times and all the games on the servers, we have decided to push a temporary update in order to shorten the queue times and make matches a more engaging and interactive experience. To do so we will temporarily limit the possible combinations of map/mode selection. That way, we will meet in bigger lobbies and have a better experience with much lower queue times.

We also want to let you know that we are taking your ideas and suggestions in the Discussions under serious consideration and we encourage you to keep doing so.
Update: