Weekly Updates
This is how the weekly updates will work from now on, so welcome to Update number one!
Stop! Hammer time!
Well thanks to a recent bug that Sally come across, hammer has full on died. But we've repaired the hell out of it and he should be up and working soon, sally is officially working on around 8 maps now. Seriously.
Anyways, I've finally come to my senses and decided to release some inside information on the maps that will ship with the game (We say ship because it makes us feel better)
Here's the list of maps (fresh off the design docs):
- Rooftops
- Alcatraz
- Powerplant
- Dusk
- Drako
- Air Support
If you thought that's all that we're going to release the game with. You're wrong, try again.
We want you!
No seriously, we do.
We need you, the magnificent community that we all love and care from. (We also love to hear from you, things get a little quiet over here sometimes..)
Anyway, we have a priority list for the skills that we're looking for, here that is going from most needed to least needed.
- Programmer (Source, C++)
- Web Programmer (HTML, PHP, Java..)
- Player Modeller
- Texture Artist
- Animator
- Modeller
- Mapper
- Sound Artist (Not musicians!)
- Concept Artist (And general artist)
- Source Filmmaker maker (lol, maker maker) No but seriously, we recently found out, thanks to Valve, that Source Filmmaker is really good for well, making films. Or in our case, trailers.
We'd love to hear from you if you fit in to any of these categories, we're a really well working team and we don't seem to have any issues!
Features
Now, if you didn't know already, War of The Servers is one of the most feature filled mod out there, let a lone a standalone game. And when we say out there, we mean in the works. But still, we've been told many times that War of The Servers could actually be more fun than some of the retail games out there now.
Anyway, we like to pay full attention to detail, gameplay mechanics and aspects. We playtest everything we do! Literally, we don't want people running around causing full on mayhem with the MP5 now do we? (Happened in the most recent playtest, whoopsie!) Anyway, we've put a lot of thought into these features and thought a lot of how they'd play through, so here's some features that have been given the greenlight to be in!
Ordnance Drops
Ordnance drops do pretty much what they say on the tin. Ordnance drops in some maps can randomly come in, most commonly when a team is losing by a significant amount of points. Now, usually in the random ordnance drops, they land in a fair place in the battlefield, don't worry, the other team won't get ordnance drops knocking on their front door.
On the other hand, some maps allow ordnance drops to be called in after certain intervals. Unfortunately, these ordnance drops that are called in fall within a small area range so it can be determined where they are going to land, which could give the opposing team the upper hand, another downside to the called in ordnance drops is they don't have the BFGs the normal drops have. But hey, if you've got good aim you could always land one of those bad boys onto the enemy! Hoo-rah!
RQ-11 Raven & Puma AE - Unmanned aerial systems
These two UAVs or UAS's can be a really big game changer to the battlefield given the right pilot!
-RQ-11 Raven
The RQ-11 Raven is a small unmanned vehicle that can be launched from anywhere at any time. The operator is given a pair of portable lenses to look into and see the view from the Raven, however whilst viewing the battlefield from the Raven, you are not able to see your surroundings, so make sure you tuck your self up nice. The whole idea of the Raven is to give your team intel on the battlefield. The raven gives you the option to spot out targets that are out in the open, you may then broadcast your spottings to your team to help out. It isn't as easy as it sounds though. Due to how small the Raven is, the camera isn't the best and sometimes can be hard to spot enemies out. Also, you must aim at them for a certain amount of time for them to show up on friendly radars.
-Puma AE
The Puma AE is like the Raven but double the size. The Puma AE allows the player to get even higher and there is no limit to how far the Puma can go from its operator. The Puma can show you exactly where every target on the battlefield is, however the spotting system is much like the Ravens, you'll have to aim at the target for a while for it to appear as spotted to your team. But, to improve on the Raven, the Puma has a better camera that is capable of zooming, making it easier to spot out targets. However, the Puma has it's flaws. The Puma AE requires a mobile satellite linkup station, that can not be moved. So, the Puma can only be used at a station. Puma stations can be found most commonly in bases but can be found in Ammo caches too.
Also, a downside to both UASs is that, once landed they cannot take off again, as upon landing both systems break up upon impact.
Dynamically Changing Maps!
Now, you may have already seen this with Powerplant, but this was originally Zecrah's idea and we've decided to incorporate this into most of the maps we have, but not all. Don't worry, this may sound like a bad idea but it's nothing that will ruin the gameplay. For example in powerplant, there is a bridge that players are likely to cross, the more you play, the bridge will eventually fall apart, changing which route you'll have to use, eventually, a pool will flood and you can then use an alternate route. We noticed that this is a really good gameplay aspect and we hope you enjoy it too.
Blame Drako!
Well, that's it for this week, hopefully that was a good taster of what to expect from future updates. However I would advise you that if you want War of The Servers's features to be a total surprise to you on Day 1, you skip reading some of these. Please let us know what you think, we love to hear from our community. <3
Thanks!
