For the past two months we have been working with Coatsink to iterate on the networking scheme and game content for the Gang Beasts online beta, in parallel to this work we have been collaborating with SuperGenius to scope and implement the game mode and character customisation systems for the game. The next stage is to merge the online support and stage optimisations from the online beta with the ‘unstable’ branch and then integrate the Character Customisation, Character Colour, and Game Mode systems. The rest of this post is a series of paragraphs with current information and summaries on what progress has been made to date on content for the game.

Online Beta

The online beta has been in testing for approx. two months and has been played or pre-loaded by ~60,000 players from 133 countries to date, the work on the network refactor has been committed to the Gang Beasts master branch and we have moved to merging the online multiplayer beta with 0.4.0 ‘unstable’ beta (for release later this month).

0.4.0 ‘unstable’

We currently expect to finish the work to merge online multiplayer support into the 0.4.0 ‘unstable’ alpha in July (for reference the current 0.3.4 ‘unstable’ alpha build will replace the current 0.3.1 default build on Steam when the 0.4.0 is published).

Online Beta Keys

We have postponed removing the Gang Beasts online beta signup page at http://beef.city/beta until Monday 4 July 2016 at 11:59pm EDT (Eastern Daylight Time) to give owners of Gang Beasts on Early Access additional time to requests keys before the signup page is removed. For reference there is no selection process for participating in the online beta and participants are not expected to promote the game, stream, or record gameplay (for information and signup instructions for the online beta please see the post at http://beef.city/u_0-3-4 or the pinned thread at http://beef.city/key_info).

Key Issues

Key requests made before 1 July 2016 have been sent out, if you made a request for a key or keys before this date and have not been sent keys, please populate and submit the form at http://beef.city/key_issue with your information for support. For reference the first batch of keys for the online beta expired recently and a second smaller batch with an incompatible release state were added to the distribute() system in error, these keys can be activated in the Steam client but the ‘Gang Beasts Online Beta’ title will not become available in the Steam Library. A number of the keys sent out on Friday evening and Saturday morning were from the second batch, if you received keys with the wrong release state please forward the email you received with the incorrect keys to support@boneloaf.co to get replacements.

Entitlement Issues

For online beta participants with the false ‘Failed. Entitlement’ issue, this issue has been patched in the 0.0.8 online beta build released last week.

Character System

Work on the character customisation and character colour systems is close to finished but we don’t currently expect to be able to include them in the 0.4.0 build but should have a version that is sufficiently stable for testing in the weeks after the 0.4.0 build is published.

Game and Gang modes

Work on the game modes system is also close to finished but can’t be fully implemented until the full Character Customisation system has been tested in game.

Stages

We have been working with Bruce Slater (a technical artist at Ruce) to build and optimise the stages for the full version of the game and expect to have some of this work in Early Access builds of the game soon.

Private Servers

Support for hosting private servers is planned but not supported in the online beta currently as we have to limit the number of server types at this stage of testing.

[ 2016-07-03 23:47:35 CET ] [ Original post ]