Netblast

Devlog

• New Crosshairs and Higher Visibility Pickups
  March 05, 2019 by atomic-lollypop

  New Crosshairs You can now select a custom crosshair cursor in the main menu settings. The new crosshair cursors are higher visibility, larger, better shaped, and don't mix in as much with the new an... Continue reading
• Elo Ranking System
  March 01, 2019 by atomic-lollypop

  Elo Ranking System In an effort to amplify competition and progression within Netblast, we've added an Elo-based ranking system. This is the same system used in Chess to rank players based on their s... Continue reading
• Crash Fix, New Music, Knock Back, SMG Fix, Screen Shake, Melee Fix, Bug Fixes
  February 17, 2019 by atomic-lollypop

  Crash Fix Fixed a major crash that was happening during gameplay when grenade or other explosions occurred. New Music Added a cool new track to the player select screen to replace our old Castlevania... Continue reading
• Animated Backgrounds, Ambient Music, Miscellaneous
  February 16, 2019 by atomic-lollypop

  Animated Backgrounds In order to make the levels feel more alive and give us extra graphical eye-candy, we have added some amazing new animated backgrounds to the game. You will now see moving clouds... Continue reading
• Spectator Smooth Camera and Spectator Player Tracking
  February 07, 2019 by atomic-lollypop

  Spectator Smooth Camera Added smooth camera movement to spectator mode. Spectator Player Tracking Added the ability to automatically track individual players in spectator mode... Continue reading
• Gun Aim
  February 06, 2019 by atomic-lollypop

  Gun Aim After adding the laser sight, it became apparent that the gun, bullet, cursor, and laser sight were not perfectly aligned. This has now been fixed and your overall gun aim/accuracy should now... Continue reading
• Health & Shield Bars, Laser Sight, Bug Fixes
  February 04, 2019 by atomic-lollypop

  Health & Shield Bars Added small health and shield bars under each player. Now, you can see exactly how much health and shield you and your opponents have at a glance. These new health and shield ba... Continue reading
• Lighting Toggle, Extra Blood & Guts, Bouncy Grenade, Double Jump, New Bling
  January 31, 2019 by atomic-lollypop

  Lighting Toggle Added the ability to turn on/off lighting in the settings window so lower-performance computers can run the game at 1080p and a solid 60 frames-per-second. We found the trade off is w... Continue reading
• Player Levels, Extra Coins, Auto Arm Level, Secure Updates, New Website SEO
  January 28, 2019 by atomic-lollypop

  Player Levels Players are now assigned a level based on adding up the levels of their armed strap, aug, and mod. For example, if you have a level 5 strap armed, a level 3 aug armed, and a level 4 mod... Continue reading
• Bug Fixes
  January 26, 2019 by atomic-lollypop

  Bug Fixes We fixed the following bugs: Can't hear dash sound on remote player. Can't hear melee sound on remote player. Melee should not be usable when you are dead. Melee needs to not do damage to in... Continue reading
• Rail Gun, Hit Points, and Contra Skin
  January 23, 2019 by atomic-lollypop

  Rail Gun Added an amazing new weapon called the "rail gun." This gun rounds out our core weapon offering and adds a high powered, accurate, fast, and long range weapon to the game. This thing is dea... Continue reading
• Music and Sound Effects Volume and Display Settings
  January 18, 2019 by atomic-lollypop

  Music and Sound Effects Volume Now you can adjust the volume of the music and sound effects individually from the in-game escape menu. You can now turn down the default level music and crank up your... Continue reading
• Crash Fix, Update Interval, and Auto-Update Fix
  January 12, 2019 by atomic-lollypop

  Crash Fix One of the final remaining crashes would happen after a game was won and the level was switching. We believe we have finally fixed this for good! With this crash fixed, we believe the game... Continue reading
• Dash Gear and Melee Ability
  January 10, 2019 by atomic-lollypop

  Dash Gear We have added our first "Gear" to the HQ Bay as the ability to "dash" your player. For only 500 coin you can boost your player's speed for one second to close distance on other players. Th... Continue reading
• Windows Icon, Credit Card Form, Version Message, AmericanDad Skin/Bling
  January 06, 2019 by atomic-lollypop

  Windows Icon Added an official Netblast Windows icon to launch the game from making it look more professional. Credit Card Form Added some card, SSL, and Powered by Stripe images to our credit card fo... Continue reading

  
• Auto Updates
  January 02, 2019 by atomic-lollypop

  Auto Updates We've been waiting for this feature for quite a while. Before, you had to manually figure out that you needed a new version, uninstall the current version, go to our website, download th... Continue reading
• Epic Release: Skin/Bling Purchases and Grenade Launcher
  January 01, 2019 by atomic-lollypop

  Epic Release This is one of those rare releases where we add in some literally game changing features. Skin/Bling Purchases The new skin/bling purchase system pushes the technical boundaries of indie... Continue reading

  
• Fixed Crashes, Auto-Spawn, Cancel Buttons, Level Rotation, Arrows, and Colorized Usernames
  December 06, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Crashes Some players were experiencing crashes while loading into new levels. We traced this back to clearing VRAM during level loading and commented out that code for now. Auto-Spawn Players on bad... Continue reading
• Coin Collection, Auto Spawn, Chat at Victory Screen, Escape to Close Menu, Bullet/Blast Knock Back
  November 23, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Coin Collection Fixed a problem where you wouldn't collect the correct amount of coins after a kill. Auto Spawn Now you auto-spawn after the map rotates. Chat at Victory Screen Now you can chat while... Continue reading
• Map Rotation
  November 22, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Map Rotation We just added map rotation to the dedicated servers. This does a couple cool things: It greatly reduces the number of dedicated servers we are running. For example, we just went from 16... Continue reading
• Freeze, Crashes, and Bug Fixes
  November 14, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Freezes There was a major game freeze where bad network data could be sent to the physics engine causing it to choke up. This caused the game to become completely unresponsive. This has been fixed!... Continue reading
• Team Deathmatch and The Rising Level
  November 05, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Team Deathmatch We have finally added a team mode with Team Deathmatch! This mode is super fun, action packed, and allows you to coordinate with your team member to dominate. This mode currently off... Continue reading

  
• Player Twitch, SMG Fire Stuck, and Click to Chat
  November 02, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Fixed some very annoying bugs including the player twitch when moving up or down the screen fast, the SMG getting stuck sometimes after firing it, and clicking the mouse into the chat text input causi... Continue reading
• Location Arrows, Hit Points, Announcer Sounds, Bug Fixes
  October 31, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Location Arrows The new location arrows allow you to see the general location of other players within the level. This greatly helps when you have only a couple players on a larger map and are running... Continue reading
• Password Reset, Custom Controls, and Multiple Improvements and Bug Fixes
  October 26, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Password Reset You can finally reset your password inside the game now. Simply load the game, request a code, and enter the code with your new password. Hope this will help to preserve more Netblas... Continue reading
• New Sounds and Bug Fixes
  October 13, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  New Sounds Added new bullet impact sounds to walls and to players, new rocket canister ejection sound, new shotgun shell impact sounds, new rocket canister impact sounds, and new dirt impact sounds. B... Continue reading
• New Sounds, Performance, AFK Fix, Kill List, Control Hints, and New GUI Colors
  October 12, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  New Sounds Added awesome new sounds to all bullet shell impacts. Big thanks to Juhani for making these so quickly and professionally. Now you hear the clinking and clanking of your bullet shells wit... Continue reading
• New SMG Gun
  October 07, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Just added an amazing new SMG gun to the game. This baby has fully automatic fire and is super fun to use. It also takes advantage of our new in-game store called the HQ Bay where you can buy it alo... Continue reading
• Epic Version! HQ Bay, New Sounds/Music, Company Logo/Splash Screen, TwitchCon
  October 04, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Well, we just launched an amazingly epic version tonight after a month long sprint and a 20 hour final crunch! Roger that. HQ Bay This is now the heart of the entire game. The HQ Bay allows players... Continue reading

  
• The Ruins Map
  September 02, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  The Ruins Map We have another amazing update today. We now have the 3rd official map completed and launched called The Ruins. The Ruins map takes place in a rundown Gothic church with beautiful view... Continue reading

  
• Light Culling
  September 02, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Light Culling One of the biggest performance drains on Netblast was the lighting. So, I added a light culling algorithm that will not draw lights that are not visible on the screen. This should resu... Continue reading
• Server Slowdown, AFK Tweaks, Random Map Objects, Gun Swap, and Contra Easter Egg
  September 01, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

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  Server Slowdown There was a huge problem where after just a few minutes of play, the server would become extremely laggy, then unresponsive, and then crash all of the players. That's nice isn't it! I... Continue reading
• Server Authoritative Phase 2, Colored Scoreboard, Bug Fixes, and the CONTRA EASTER EGG
  August 28, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

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  Server Authoritative Phase 2 We have now moved all spawn, pickup, gun, map object, and player creation to the server. This means, you can no longer edit the map items on your own computer which great... Continue reading

  
• Multiple Logins, Server Crash, Player Twitch, and Lag Compensation
  August 19, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

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  Multiple Logins Multiple logins with the same username is handled. Now, if you login to Netblast with the same username that is already logged in on another machine, Netblast will end the other perso... Continue reading
• New "The Temple" Map
  August 17, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

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  We just launched the new temple map to compete with our new map called the falling. We made the level bigger, added new tilesets, added jumppads/wind tunnels, tweaked the lighting, and overall just m... Continue reading

  
• Ping, European Servers, and European Tournaments
  August 17, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

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  Ping: We added ping measurement into the in-game dedicated server list. This will allow you to objectively know which dedicated server is best to connect to as well as identify any internet connectiv... Continue reading
• Added Jump Pads, Wind Tunnel, New Theme Song, and Multiscreen Fix
  August 15, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

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  Jump Pads and Wind Tunnels: Have an update today that really brings out the fun in the new "the falling" level: jump pads and wind tunnels. We found that the falling, being so large vertically, caus... Continue reading
• Spectator Mode, First Tournament, and Tournament Schedule
  August 09, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Spectator Mode: We added spectator mode today making it possible to have our first official Netblast tournament! Spectator mode allows tournament officials to make sure everything is clean/fair in th... Continue reading
• Server Authoritative Phase 1 & New Level!
  August 08, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

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  Got some awesome updates into this release. Here's a video showing off the new level (sorry for it being so dark; will post a new one when I am at a better computer): Server Authoritative: One of th... Continue reading

  
• TLS Security Layer and Efficient Dedicated Server
  July 27, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Just made a couple major improvements: Secure network layer using TLS working Super efficient dedicated servers working TLS security makes it impossible for people to cheat on the network layer. Now,... Continue reading
• "YUGE" Update w/ Player Stats, Leaderboards, and New Game Won Cutscene
  July 22, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Got an amazing update today with the following added: Player stat tracking, storage, and viewing: Kills Deaths Wins Losses COIN Note: You can see these on the Netblast home screen after logging in. Le... Continue reading
• HUD, Health Pickups, Shield Pickups, and Ammo Pickups
  July 11, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  We have a new version available with the following improvements: HUD health. HUD shield. HUD primary weapon. HUD secondary weapon. HUD weapon ammo. HUD kills. HUD deaths. Health pickups. Shield pickup... Continue reading
• Stability, Performance, Bugs, Font, Death Animation, and Gibs
  June 28, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Just made an excellent update that has greatly improved stability, performance, and the overall quality of the game. Some of the modifications are as follows: Player spawn points can no longer be sel... Continue reading
• Rocket Launcher, Gun Inventory, Gun Spawn, Player Speed, and Optimized Deathmatch Level
  June 23, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Just uploaded an awesome new update with a brand new rocket launcher, gun inventory, player speed, gun spawn system, and optimized level in the game. The rocket launcher fires a rocket bullet complet... Continue reading
• New Deathmatch Level
  May 20, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Thanks to our new artist Abel, we have an amazing new deathmatch level. Not only did we create new tiles, but we created a whole new layout on a scale 4 times the size of our previous level: Some oth... Continue reading

  
• New Team Artist & Fixed a Massive Crash
  May 13, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  We are very proud to welcome Abel to our team as the lead artist. Abel has an awesome pixel art style, talent, and is extremely dedicated to video game development. Here's some rough sketches of his... Continue reading

  
• New Deathmatch Level and Process
  May 09, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  I decided to make this Devlog more interesting and in-depth based on feedback from someone. My previous posts are more like change logs than Devlogs. So, I just launched the official Deathmatch level... Continue reading

  
• Deathmatch Mode Added
  May 05, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Added deathmatch mode! Had to do quite a bit of work to make this happen as follows: Dedicated server needs to select its type during startup. Dedicated server needs to tell client what type of game i... Continue reading
• More Music & Updated Camera
  April 29, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Added and integrated more music into the game menus and the arena/level itself. The main intro song is my own, the second in from Castlevania, and the third is from Darkest Hour. I custom composed a... Continue reading
• Security, Sounds Effects, Music, and Bugs
  April 27, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Just got done with the following: Added security to the lobby server so users can't send just any crazy command to it (e.g. delete database). Added brand new custom sound effects (i.e. they are no lon... Continue reading
• Fixed Music Problem
  April 24, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Laptops and other low-fidelity speaker sets were not able to play the lower-end bass frequencies present in the previous music tracks. Therefore, you couldn't hear the bass track on a lot of computer... Continue reading
• New Name, UI Screens, Theme Music, and Security
  April 23, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  I have been mainly focusing on play testing, feedback implementation, and overall marketing/marketability of the project. Essentially, the project should look good, sound good, and not pose any poten... Continue reading
• Artificially Intelligent Creatures, Dark Water, Tweaks, and Marketing Update
  April 12, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Just made a very nice update. Some new things in this build are as follows: Cool artificially intelligent creatures roaming the level. Fully simulated fluid dynamics water pools. Spawn points clear ba... Continue reading

  
• Massive Sprint
  April 03, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Just did a massive 6 week sprint and got a ton of stuff done as follows: Improved instructions at the start of the game. Capture point art and capture visuals/effects. Arrows pointing to current objec... Continue reading
• Improved Level Design, Added Capture Points, Bugs Fixes, etc.
  February 25, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

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  Made some significant improvements to the level design as follows: Added some new grate and piping textures. Removed odd hanging wires (they didn't really fit in the level). Improved the parallax back... Continue reading
• Added Client/Server Version Control
  February 22, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Now clients can only connect to dedicated servers at the same version level. This will eliminate all sorts of crazy behavior, crashes, etc. Pretty cool and crazy!... Continue reading
• Fixed Crash and Started Level Design Improvements
  February 21, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  This is just a quick release to hotfix a massive crash that was occurring related to spawn point usernames. It also contains some small level design improvements that I am still working on... Continue reading
• Graceful Logoff/Disconnection/Quitting, Controller Support, In-Game Chat, and Major Bug Fixes
  February 19, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Had a very long two week sprint where I added and reworked a TON of stuff in the game such as: Graceful logoff, disconnection, and quitting (i.e. no more insta-quit on pressing escape). Added controll... Continue reading
• Added Graceful Disconnect and Quit
  February 08, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  I have added a graceful disconnect from server ability when clicking the escape key from within an active game. I have also added the ability to gracefully quit the game from some of the main menus w... Continue reading
• Automatic Login, Logoff, and Dedicated Server
  February 04, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Automatic login has been added now. After you login successfully for the first time, it will automatically log you back in every time you start the game until you logoff. Logoff has been added. This... Continue reading
• Fixed Installer Prerequisite Problem
  February 04, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  Fixed a problem where a Visual Studio 2015 Redist package won't install if you already have a Visual Studio 2017 Redist package installed since they have the same major version numbers (v.14). Now, if... Continue reading
• Fixed Blood Splatter Slowdown
  February 03, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

  There was an issue on slower computers where the blood splatter was causing a slowdown due to the massive amount of post-processing effects I applied to it. Although the effects looked great, they we... Continue reading
• Finally Launched the Prototype
  February 02, 2018 by atomic-lollypop

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  After a year and a half of engine programming and basic game development, I have finally launched something playable. It's raw and uncut but I wanted to just get something out there into peoples' hand... Continue reading