Hello everyone!

While we haven't been very good with communication lately please be assured that we are still working on the game. There are some major changes in store that simply take a lot of time for our small team. But good things are waiting for the patient!

In the meantime we just published a few improvements for the current version of the game.

New Browser-based Buzzer

When you open a new game now you will notice that there is a new text above the lobby's QR code reading something like "buzzer.link/some-text". This is a link you can open in any web browser (on your phone, tablet or PC) to join the game. The text after the slash ("/") is a randomly generated lobby code. This way people who spontaneously want to join the quiz can do that immediately and do not have to install an app beforehand!

So from now on to join the game with your phone you can scan the QR with your phone's QR code scanner or enter the displayed link directly in your browser. Alternatively you can also visit just https://play.askutron.com and enter the lobby code (the random text after the "/") there.

The new buzzer will also display the QR code and link in the ready screen so you can easily share it with your friends.

Please note that we are in the process of replacing the old Android and iOS apps with enhanced versions based on this new version of the buzzer. Until then please simply use the browser-based buzzer. The old apps do not work with the new version of the game.

Online-Multiplayer Improvements

A new version of our online multiplayer server has been deployed and should be more reliable than the old version.

While news have been slow, the work on the next version of Askutron Quiz Show is still very much in progress. The goal is to leave Early Access before the end of 2019. A new version will be ready for testing soon and new features will be rolled out on a continuous basis.

What to Expect

One of our goals for the new version of Askutron was to improve the graphics, finally giving the game the appropriate TV studio set it deserves. But we also made changes to the core gameplay and eliminated many bugs based on the feedback of our valued Early Access players.

Here is a list with just some of the most important changes you can expect in the new version. Many of which will already be included in the upcoming test version, while others will only arrive later next year.

• completely new 3D TV studio set
  
• improved overall graphics and user interface
  
• better question selection algorithm
  
• revamped core game mechanics, especially in "Cake Conflict" and "Finale" modes
  
• more powerful game options including the possibility to mix and match different quizzes in one quiz round
  
• 2 players can play on one keyboard
  
• join the game with your mobile devices even without downloading the app, just scan the QR code and the Buzzer will open in your browser
  
• players can leave and join the game at any point in time, even during the game
  
• further improved Buzz! buzzer support (showing the appropriate colors in the user interface)
  
• a new browser-based quiz editor that allows players to collaborate and share more easily
  
• and more...
  

Good morning everyone!

While updates have been scarce over the last months we are still working on the game. In fact there are a lot of improvements coming to graphics and gameplay. Our goal was to have all of that done by Christmas this year. We're trying hard to make it happen in time.

In the meantime we just released a small but important bugfix release that was long overdue. Sorry to all the players who experienced problems!

Askutron v0.5.2 - Patch Notes

• Fixed: Finale was skipped for some players after the first game played in a session
  
• Fixed: Some players saw repeating questions because the "already seen questions" weren't properly saved
  
• Fixed: In certain configurations the mode "Viewpoints" always lead to the finale, even if more play time had been configured
  
• Fixed: "It Is Known" achievement didn't unlock by playing "A Quiz of Ice and Fire" from the Workshop
  

Happy Easter everyone!

Here's what today's patch brings.

Quizatars a.k.a. Ghost Mode

With today's patch we've added what we call "Quizatars" to the game, which allows playing online against other people even when they are not online at the same time.

This works by tracking the answers of all players on our servers. For every Askutron player there is an online "Quizatar" (quiz avatar) that behaves just like them. When it encounters questions the player has already played, it will answer exactly like them. For new questions the player's category-specific accuracy is used to determine the answer.

When you select the Online mode, these Quizatars will automatically join and fill up the game if there are not enough actual players online at the same time. Can beat the other players in the Askutron community? Find out!

More Opinion Questions

We've added more than 150 new opinion questions to test how well you really know your friends!

Bugfixes and Developer Console

As per usual we included a bunch of bugfixes. Also, the developer console that displays errors when they occur is now disabled by default. It has to be specificallly enabled by pressing F2 in order for it to show error messages.

Happy Easter everyone!

Here's what today's patch brings.

Quizatars a.k.a. Ghost Mode

With today's patch we've added what we call "Quizatars" to the game, which allows playing online against other people even when they are not online at the same time.

This works by tracking the answers of all players on our servers. For every Askutron player there is an online "Quizatar" (quiz avatar) that behaves just like them. When it encounters questions the player has already played, it will answer exactly like them. For new questions the player's category-specific accuracy is used to determine the answer.

When you select the Online mode, these Quizatars will automatically join and fill up the game if there are not enough actual players online at the same time. Can beat the other players in the Askutron community? Find out!

More Opinion Questions

We've added more than 150 new opinion questions to test how well you really know your friends!

Bugfixes and Developer Console

As per usual we included a bunch of bugfixes. Also, the developer console that displays errors when they occur is now disabled by default. It has to be specificallly enabled by pressing F2 in order for it to show error messages.

While it has been a bit quiet on our end in the last few weeks we can assure you work on Askutron Quiz Show continues.

The next update is planned for Saturday, March 31st 2018. It will include bugfixes, more questions and the new "ghost mode", that allows playing against other players online even when they are not online at the same time. More details about this new mode will be found in the release notes.

Additionally we are planning on adding new official question packs for languages other than English and German. If you use Twitter, please feel free to give your vote in our small survey:
https://twitter.com/askutron/status/979039582351224832

Currently we're thinking about Russian, Chinese, Arabic or Spanish. Please let us know what you think!

While it has been a bit quiet on our end in the last few weeks we can assure you work on Askutron Quiz Show continues.

The next update is planned for Saturday, March 31st 2018. It will include bugfixes, more questions and the new "ghost mode", that allows playing against other players online even when they are not online at the same time. More details about this new mode will be found in the release notes.

Additionally we are planning on adding new official question packs for languages other than English and German. If you use Twitter, please feel free to give your vote in our small survey:
https://twitter.com/askutron/status/979039582351224832

Currently we're thinking about Russian, Chinese, Arabic or Spanish. Please let us know what you think!

Happy new year everyone!

We hope you had a relaxing christmas and a good start into 2018.
In our first update this year we fixed a couple of bugs.

Bugfixes

Mobile controller connection issues

Mobile controllers had trouble connecting to the Askutron relay which is why they only worked when in the same wifi network as the computer hosting the game. This is fixed now, so you don't have to be in the same wifi. For instance it's enough for you phone to have internet access via 3G.

Exclamation mark!

We had a bug in the host's voice where it would read out punctuation in sentences such as: "Wrong again !"
Here it would read "Wrong again Markus, exclamation mark". This does not happen anymore.

Repeat questions

Some players were rightfully complaining about repeat questions. This should not happen seeing as we have several thousand questions.
The reason it did happen was our question selection algorithm.
It's supposed to favour questions that have been upvoted so that players will get better questions.

Unfortunately we overdid it a bit which is why people were seeing repeat questions. The algorithm always picked the questions in more or less the same order from only the highest rated ones. We now fixed this so that this shouldn't happen anymore.

Upcoming

We're still working on our new "ghost" mode. More about that later this month.
Also we are still adding more opinion questions to have a wider variety of them.

Happy new year everyone!

We hope you had a relaxing christmas and a good start into 2018.
In our first update this year we fixed a couple of bugs.

Bugfixes

Mobile controller connection issues

Mobile controllers had trouble connecting to the Askutron relay which is why they only worked when in the same wifi network as the computer hosting the game. This is fixed now, so you don't have to be in the same wifi. For instance it's enough for you phone to have internet access via 3G.

Exclamation mark!

We had a bug in the host's voice where it would read out punctuation in sentences such as: "Wrong again !"
Here it would read "Wrong again Markus, exclamation mark". This does not happen anymore.

Repeat questions

Some players were rightfully complaining about repeat questions. This should not happen seeing as we have several thousand questions.
The reason it did happen was our question selection algorithm.
It's supposed to favour questions that have been upvoted so that players will get better questions.

Unfortunately we overdid it a bit which is why people were seeing repeat questions. The algorithm always picked the questions in more or less the same order from only the highest rated ones. We now fixed this so that this shouldn't happen anymore.

Upcoming

We're still working on our new "ghost" mode. More about that later this month.
Also we are still adding more opinion questions to have a wider variety of them.

Unlockable Characters

With the latest version of the game we added two new characters and 9 new buzzer sounds to the game! However, these won't be available from the start. Instead they have to be unlocked using "Stars" you gain for completing quiz rounds.

The total number of stars earned is displayed below your character's name during the lobby phase. Characters and buzzers have to be unlocked for each player profile individually. Locked items are displayed with their "Star cost" like in the following image:



The mobile buzzer app has not been updated with the new characters and buzzers as of now, but will be in the following days.

Changed Answer Button Layout



Thanks to the feedback of user 'MASHED POTATOES' we changed the layout of the answer buttons to make them more intuitive. They are now aligned analogously to their actual positions on the gamepads.

Work in Progress

There's much more to come in the next few weeks as we are working on finishing some new features including improvements to the online mode and new game modes.

Happy Holidays

We wish all of you happy holidays and that you can enjoy some quality time with your family and friends. And maybe you even get to play a round of Askutron Quiz Show with them! ;-)

Unlockable Characters

With the latest version of the game we added two new characters and 9 new buzzer sounds to the game! However, these won't be available from the start. Instead they have to be unlocked using "Stars" you gain for completing quiz rounds.

The total number of stars earned is displayed below your character's name during the lobby phase. Characters and buzzers have to be unlocked for each player profile individually. Locked items are displayed with their "Star cost" like in the following image:



The mobile buzzer app has not been updated with the new characters and buzzers as of now, but will be in the following days.

Changed Answer Button Layout



Thanks to the feedback of user 'MASHED POTATOES' we changed the layout of the answer buttons to make them more intuitive. They are now aligned analogously to their actual positions on the gamepads.

Work in Progress

There's much more to come in the next few weeks as we are working on finishing some new features including improvements to the online mode and new game modes.

Happy Holidays

We wish all of you happy holidays and that you can enjoy some quality time with your family and friends. And maybe you even get to play a round of Askutron Quiz Show with them! ;-)

This week we fixed tons of bugs in the game and the editor. Thanks to everyone who reported their problems!

Improved Quiz Editor



The new editor UI makes it much easier to quickly enter questions and makes much better use of screen real estate so that you can see the maximum number of questions.

Upcoming

We are still working on new, unlockable characters and buzzer sounds, the 3D studio environment and a few more exciting things that we hope to be able to finish before Christmas so that you can enjoy them with your family!

This week we fixed tons of bugs in the game and the editor. Thanks to everyone who reported their problems!

Improved Quiz Editor



The new editor UI makes it much easier to quickly enter questions and makes much better use of screen real estate so that you can see the maximum number of questions.

Upcoming

We are still working on new, unlockable characters and buzzer sounds, the 3D studio environment and a few more exciting things that we hope to be able to finish before Christmas so that you can enjoy them with your family!

This week we have quite a few exciting improvements to the game!

Statistics and Ranks



With this patch we're introducing basic player statistics along with global ranking! Stats and ranks are only recorded for plays starting with this version, so it will take some time for all players to be ranked.

The stats for your main profile (which is named liked your Steam user account) are now displayed right in the main menu. Ranks are updated after every game.

Popular Player Quizzes



To make it easier for you to discover Workshop quizzes created by other players we added a small list of currently popular player quizzes to the main menu (see screenshot above).

Clicking on the title will open the Quiz's workshop page if you want to see details. The stars (between 1 and 5) show ratings by other players. To make it even easier, we added a download button that immediately subscribes, downloads and installs the quiz so you can start playing it right away! (Quizzes downloaded via the Workshop website can only be played after restarting the game)



We hope that this way more players will discover the awesome player-generated quizzes already on the Workshop, such as:

• Star Trek Voyager by clemenskaa
  
• All About Harry Potter by kidrocket
  
• Inconceivable! The Princess Bride by kidrocket
  
• A Quiz of Ice and Fire by blackpirateroberts
  
• Video Games by blackpirateroberts
  
• and "alles mögliche" by Larumpa
  

This week we have quite a few exciting improvements to the game!

Statistics and Ranks



With this patch we're introducing basic player statistics along with global ranking! Stats and ranks are only recorded for plays starting with this version, so it will take some time for all players to be ranked.

The stats for your main profile (which is named liked your Steam user account) are now displayed right in the main menu. Ranks are updated after every game.

Popular Player Quizzes



To make it easier for you to discover Workshop quizzes created by other players we added a small list of currently popular player quizzes to the main menu (see screenshot above).

Clicking on the title will open the Quiz's workshop page if you want to see details. The stars (between 1 and 5) show ratings by other players. To make it even easier, we added a download button that immediately subscribes, downloads and installs the quiz so you can start playing it right away! (Quizzes downloaded via the Workshop website can only be played after restarting the game)



We hope that this way more players will discover the awesome player-generated quizzes already on the Workshop, such as:

• Star Trek Voyager by clemenskaa
  
• All About Harry Potter by kidrocket
  
• Inconceivable! The Princess Bride by kidrocket
  
• A Quiz of Ice and Fire by blackpirateroberts
  
• Video Games by blackpirateroberts
  
• and "alles mgliche" by Larumpa
  

This patch contains a few bugfixes and improvements. Here are the most important bits:

Online Mode Fixes

Until now the online mode had some serious bugs, which mostly have been fixed now! From a technical point of view the online should just work now!

We're still working on how to better present and perform the match making. Currently you can select all the same settings as in single-player mode including the quiz to play, and once you're matched with someone the host's settings will be applied. Ideally in the future you will be only matched with players that have the same / similar settings. Though as the number of players right now is quite low, we figured this way would be better fow now.

Of course you can also still simply open your online game with a private lobby and simply invite friends to join via Steam.

There is one outstanding issue with the online mode which is image question. Players that do not already have the image for a question (because it's not a standard question and the client hasn't subscribed/downloaded the selected themed quiz) will not see the image in question. This obviously needs to be fixed now by either requiring all matched players to have subscribed to the selected quiz or transfering the image on-demand.

Improved Question Selection

The randomization in the question selection algorithm has been improved to produce more random results from game to game.

The tracking of which players have seen which questions already was also fixed to minimize question repitition (which is already quite low due to the number of questions). When selecting questions the game first computes for each question how often it has been played for each player in the lobby. Subsequently questions are sorted by the number of occurances first so that a question moves to the very end of the selection list once it has been played.

Master Volume Setting

We added a master volume setting to the options.

This patch contains a few bugfixes and improvements. Here are the most important bits:

Online Mode Fixes

Until now the online mode had some serious bugs, which mostly have been fixed now! From a technical point of view the online should just work now!

We're still working on how to better present and perform the match making. Currently you can select all the same settings as in single-player mode including the quiz to play, and once you're matched with someone the host's settings will be applied. Ideally in the future you will be only matched with players that have the same / similar settings. Though as the number of players right now is quite low, we figured this way would be better fow now.

Of course you can also still simply open your online game with a private lobby and simply invite friends to join via Steam.

There is one outstanding issue with the online mode which is image question. Players that do not already have the image for a question (because it's not a standard question and the client hasn't subscribed/downloaded the selected themed quiz) will not see the image in question. This obviously needs to be fixed now by either requiring all matched players to have subscribed to the selected quiz or transfering the image on-demand.

Improved Question Selection

The randomization in the question selection algorithm has been improved to produce more random results from game to game.

The tracking of which players have seen which questions already was also fixed to minimize question repitition (which is already quite low due to the number of questions). When selecting questions the game first computes for each question how often it has been played for each player in the lobby. Subsequently questions are sorted by the number of occurances first so that a question moves to the very end of the selection list once it has been played.

Master Volume Setting

We added a master volume setting to the options.

Remember these? If you played the awesome "Buzz!" games on Playstation 2 and 3 you probably still have some of these buzzers lying around. Well, now you can get them out of the basement again, because we just added support for them in Askutron Quiz Show!

For more details, check out the user guide:
Playing Askutron with Playstation "BUZZ!" controllers (Windows/Mac)

Remember these? If you played the awesome "Buzz!" games on Playstation 2 and 3 you probably still have some of these buzzers lying around. Well, now you can get them out of the basement again, because we just added support for them in Askutron Quiz Show!

For more details, check out the user guide:
Playing Askutron with Playstation "BUZZ!" controllers (Windows/Mac)

Good afternoon!

As the game was just released 2 hours ago I'd like to point out a few things about the current questions and possible bugs.

During Early Access we're still actively developing the game and plainly some things are not finished yet. One of the things we're still working on is the categorization of questions according to difficulty and topic.

Difficulty

You may have noticed that there is no difficulty selection in the game yet.

The difficulty of questions is highly subjective and while we lack the data of how players handle the different questions the difficulty may be all over the place. As more and more players play the game we record how many people correctly answer each question and will be able to improve the difficulty ratings over time.

Once we have accumulated enough data to statistically determine the difficulty of most questions we will add the difficulty selection to the game.

Categories

We only introduced categories relatively late during development when we already had thousands of questions in the game. Also, categories may still change. Questions need to be manually assigned to appropriate categories. Due to the massive number of questions and limited number of hours in a day the categorization of all questions is an ongoing process. So we apologize if you occasionally encounter a question in the wrong category. This will improve over time as we manually go through the questions.

Bugs

Here and there you will still encounter bugs, though most should not be game breaking. Errors will appear as red error messages in the bottom left corner of the screen. You can just ignore them if the game continues. Errors are automatically tracked by the game so we can retroactively check what went wrong without you having to do anything.

However, sometimes it helps to have some context. If you'd like to report bugs, please use the community forum: http://steamcommunity.com/app/701280/discussions/

We're grateful for every bug report! Obviously we very much want to get rid of all the bugs.

Good afternoon!

As the game was just released 2 hours ago I'd like to point out a few things about the current questions and possible bugs.

During Early Access we're still actively developing the game and plainly some things are not finished yet. One of the things we're still working on is the categorization of questions according to difficulty and topic.

Difficulty

You may have noticed that there is no difficulty selection in the game yet.

The difficulty of questions is highly subjective and while we lack the data of how players handle the different questions the difficulty may be all over the place. As more and more players play the game we record how many people correctly answer each question and will be able to improve the difficulty ratings over time.

Once we have accumulated enough data to statistically determine the difficulty of most questions we will add the difficulty selection to the game.

Categories

We only introduced categories relatively late during development when we already had thousands of questions in the game. Also, categories may still change. Questions need to be manually assigned to appropriate categories. Due to the massive number of questions and limited number of hours in a day the categorization of all questions is an ongoing process. So we apologize if you occasionally encounter a question in the wrong category. This will improve over time as we manually go through the questions.

Bugs

Here and there you will still encounter bugs, though most should not be game breaking. Errors will appear as red error messages in the bottom left corner of the screen. You can just ignore them if the game continues. Errors are automatically tracked by the game so we can retroactively check what went wrong without you having to do anything.

However, sometimes it helps to have some context. If you'd like to report bugs, please use the community forum: http://steamcommunity.com/app/701280/discussions/

We're grateful for every bug report! Obviously we very much want to get rid of all the bugs.

We're happy to announce that Askutron Quiz Show will finally be available on Steam Early Access this Sunday on November 12, 2017!

For more information check out our website https://askutron.com.

We hope you'll have a nice and relaxed round of trivia with your family and friends this weekend!

You may have noticed a rather sizeable update coming to your Steam library for Askutron recently. Here's what we changed!

Completed Steam Workshop Integration



You can now create, share, download and play downloaded quizzes via Steam Workshop!

To upload your own quiz, first create it using the included quiz editor, check the "allow sharing on Workshop" and save it. Then start the game and in the main menu press F6 to upload your quiz to the Workshop.

To download new quizzes created by other users open the Workshop page in your browser or in-game on the Themed Quiz screen by pressing X. Simply subscribe to the quizzes and they will be downloaded when you start the game the next time.

Achievements

We added 26 achievements including four hidden ones to the game! Can you unlock them all?

Cloud Sync

Cloud Synchronization now works across all platforms (Windows, Mac and Linux) to synchronize your custom quizzes, user profiles and statistics.

Performance Improvements

We improved performance of the game a little so that it runs more smoothly on laptops without dedicated graphics cards, such as my Dell XPS 13. We also added a simple graphics setting that you can use to squeeze out more performance by disabling effects such as Ambient Occlusion or Anti Aliasing.

Media Bundle

Until today the game always downloaded all audio and other media files on-demand as we were still changing things. Now we added a media bundle for German and English that is included with the Steam distribution including all media files, so that you can now play the game and have the host reading questions even when you are offline!

Note that this does not included audio for user generated quizzes from the Steam Workshop. You will still need internet access in order to have those questions read out aloud.

Online Mode

The online mode is still a bit buggy at times when played with more than two computers via network. We're still working on this!

Various Smaller Improvements and Bugfixes

On top of all of this several smaller improvements and bugfixes can be found here and there.

Soon To Be Released

We're relentlessly working on getting the first version ready for Early Access! Please feel free to subscribe to our newsletter over at https://askutron.com to be notified when the game is released!

We just send out the keys for the very first public version of Askutron on Steam. Welcome to all of our early alpha testers! The game is not yet publicly visible on Steam as we're still preparing the actual Early Access release, just in case you're wondering.

The game is playable but still has a few kinks we need still need to iron out and a long list of features which still need to be implemented. If you encounter any problems please do not hesitate to contact us or to create a post in the community hub!

The quiz editor is not quite ready yet, but we'll let you know when it's available for testing, too.

We're continuously working on the game and of course also on the questions, so expect changes and new content regularly.

At this point we also want to express our deepest gratitude towards our assiduous question contributors Katie and Yun! <3 Check out the first two themed quizzes "All About Harry Potter" and "History of the United Kingdom".

Looking For Alpha Testers

If you are interested in testing the alpha version of the game and don't have a key yet, please sign up for our newsletter over on our website!

Website: askutron.com

We're happy to announce the latest update to Askutron - the Quiz show game - brought a whole bunch of improvements!



Quiz Editor

You can now use the quiz editor to create your own quizzes! Add as many questions as you like. You can even add images to the questions. By default your own quizzes will only be visible to you on your PC.



Steam Workshop

We're working on the Steam Workshop integration and are halfway there. If you enable Steamworks sharing for your quiz in the editor, you can press F6 in the main menu of the game to upload your quiz to the Steam Workshop where other players will be able to see and subscribe to your quiz!



Well, that's the first half of the integration. The second half is the part where you can actually play the quizzes created by other players. This will be released with the next update, so stay tuned! Maybe you can use the waiting time to prepare your very first quiz for the Workshop!

Mode Selection

We just added a rudimentary mode selection. Where before the sequence of game modes was fixed you can now choose which of the modes you actually want to play.



Steam Cloud

User profiles, statistics and quizzes you created are now automatically backed up using the Steam Cloud!

Category Selection

The new and improved category selection now chooses the 4 random options more intelligently, avoiding duplicates and selecting categories based on how many questions they contain relative to the total number of questions in the quiz.



Various Improvements

On top of all this we had several smaller improvements throughout the game.

• Question difficulty is now managed by the game (UI for selecting the difficulty is still in progress)
  
• 2,500 new English questions added!
  
• Answers selected on the app are now highlighted more strongly by not only increasing the size of the selected answer, but also decreasing the size of the other options
  
• The "Ready" screen of the mobile app now also displays the QR code that other people can use to join the game