WIP: Quarks Primal Form
over 3 years ago – Mon, Nov 02, 2020 at 02:36:16 AM

Welcome to another WIP for the upcoming 0.6.0 update of M.A.S.S. Builder. In this week, we're showing you a sneak preview of new enemy variants coming into the update. They're the primal form of each Quarks that have not been weakened by traveling to our world, with their behaviors changed and strengths multiplied. 

Join early access: http://bit.ly/2vcipiZ

Join discord: http://discord.gg/quS7E46

WIP: Challenge Mode Boss Rush
over 3 years ago – Fri, Oct 23, 2020 at 11:46:42 PM

Welcome back to another WIP update, this week featuring something that will arrive in 0.6.0. Let us first say that they're still in a very early phase and there aren't any images we can show you of the feature yet, but we're here to give you a sneak peek for the upcoming Challenge Modes! We do hope that we'll be able to show them soon enough but for now, the first one we'll be discussing is a concept much requested by our players, something called a Boss Rush. 

For clarification, the Boss Rush challenge will have players pit their strength against consecutive boss fights to see if they can survive the onslaught of bosses, possibly eliminating them all with the lowest time possible. In addition to the challenge, we will be upgrading all bosses with new attacks, movesets, and an updated behavior that will turn them into a threat of the highest level. We hope that you'll like it as much as we liked this concept. Also, take a look at this image.  

How about two bosses at the same time?

Join early access: http://bit.ly/2vcipiZ

Join discord: http://discord.gg/quS7E46

M.A.S.S. Builder Q4 2020 to Mid Year 2021 Development Roadmap
over 3 years ago – Sat, Oct 17, 2020 at 05:55:00 PM

Hello everyone, welcome to another development roadmap, this time covering all that would come in 2021. Without further ado, here is the graphical and short version of what you can expect to come in the future. We won't list any dates this time around due to how we're shifting to around 13-15 weeks development cycle per patch (12-14 weeks for updates development + 1 week for hot fixing after release). Also, we'll be separating them into two-parters, one about the main features of each update, and the other about additional contents that we'll be adding to each update if we do have time to work on it during the update.

0.6.0 (New Year's Update pending January 2021)

• Repeatable missions mode: Challenge modes
• Rework mission select UI
• New armor parts
• New weapon parts
• New enemies and behavior improvements

0.7.0 (Update pending April)

•  Accessories part
• A lot of accessories part
• No new armor set, but did we mention a lot of accessories part?

0.8.0 (Update pending July)

• Energy Launchers rework
• New armor parts
• New Bullet Launcher parts

Additional and unplanned content updates on each patch

• More close combat weapon parts
• More ranged weapon parts
• More enemies

First, let's talk about the 0.6.0 and the 0.7.0 update. We will be first, working on various repeatable mission modes and tackle the accessories system next. Reasons are that both personally and through feedbacks, we agree that the depth of our gameplay is still too shallow, and with each patch update, players were only able to have fun with new missions for a few days before they get back to grinding and waiting another few months before they get something new to play with. So, we wanted to put something out that players could enjoy during the update development period and these planned repeatable missions fit the job well.

With that said, we will announce that we are going to stop working on new story missions for the whole of 2021 to fully focus on everything else. Story missions have always been a crucial and large amount of work for us. Honestly, we used at least a few weeks to work on each Story mission, crafting their levels, working on each asset used, and creating a short cutscene for each. We'll be cutting that down so more time can be used to work on something else, something much bigger, and something much more exciting. 

So what are the repeatable missions? Frankly, they will be special missions just like Hunting Grounds, but each will have a special ruleset. Many of the factors will also be randomly generated with an algorithm (what was the word? procedural generation?) so each time players enter into the same missions, they will be facing different enemies, thus, an experience that always evolves. We have planned for quite a few types of them as well and we expect that there will be at least one enjoyable mission for everyone and we promise to make it challenging where you can have competitions with each other. We will also be working on improving enemies' attack patterns and their behaviors as well.

Also! There has been a lot of feedback on how the mission select screen is difficult to navigate with no clear distinct separation of Story Missions and Hunting Grounds, misunderstandings were had and progress was blocked for some players. For that, we will be reworking the whole mission select menu and provide mission categories to improve player Quality of Life. We are also working to improve our mission editor tool. Reasons are that we aim to create something much more than the simple large room or corridors level design with simple tasks for future missions, be it stories, hunting grounds, or challenge missions, and if we do have time, we will return to work on the older missions themselves. This is also another reason we decided to stop working on story missions for now and we hope you can all understand.

Onwards from there, we will be working on Accessory parts in the 0.7.0 update. Accessory parts, for those who are wondering what are they and how will they work. They are basically 3D decals, small parts that can be attached to each armor part themselves. See the [IMAGE] below for clarification. Each armor and weapon parts will be able to have a few accessory parts attached to them and players will be able to enhance their customization to another level. Thinking of adding small vents or thrusters to an armor? Accessory parts will provide that option to you.

Accessory parts are a very large system that will require a lot to make it work properly, thus we think that we should dedicate a whole patch cycle to perfect it as best as we can instead of putting it somewhere in between other systems. Working on it for a whole patch cycle will allow us to provide a lot of accessory parts on the first release so that they may be used to fill in all the customization desires that have been there for players since 0.1.0. It is also a system that we deem as second-most important after we can create more depth in the gameplay department and we have decided to push them in 0.7.0. We hope that accessories, when multiplied by the number of armors that we can push out in each patch, will be satisfying enough to play with and allow players to create something that truly matches their aesthetic tastes.

0.7.0 is done, now let's talk about 0.8.0. The 0.8.0 update will be all about reworking Energy Launchers to what we said in our AMA video as well as creating more firing methods for Bullet Launchers. If you haven't watched the AMA yet, let me remind you what we planned to do for their rework. 

Currently, there is only one type of launcher which are automated drones that attack the same target as the player. After their first release, we've come to realize that this inactive style of equipment might not be to everyone's taste. We have been planning their rework for months, many months indeed but to work on them would be like creating new weapons in themselves to make them different enough than before while still retaining their identity (and difference to bullet launchers which are like AoE bombardment skills).

As we have worked on core features (challenge missions and gameplay stuff) in 0.6.0 and core contents (accessories) in 0.7.0, the 0.8.0 has been decided to be the reworking update. We will be moving the current Energy Launchers into an automatic drone (pending name) category while creating various new firing methods such as Beam Cannons, Drones that are one button press and deplete all ammo, things like that. Again, we planned to work on lots of them so that each one is different enough to be shown nicely in the photography mode, and thus it will take the whole patch cycle to finish it. However, we also do plan to work on some new Bullet Launchers at the same time so they can be of the same level with more firing methods such as straight firing with no lock-on and such. 

Now... let's answer some questions that many of you might have

Where along the line are dual-wielding ranged weapons?

Frankly, we don't know. As we have answered in our AMA, to work on dual ranged weapons will require us some time due to how much it can affect the gameplay itself. Things like ammo counts, targeting, animations, all must be worked on to make dual-wielding ranged weapons a possibility, and considering the time we have, we cannot decide currently when are we going to work on it. They will come, but not soon.

Where is Multiplayer?

With this new roadmap, we should be able to start working on it by mid-2021 and finish it by the end of the year. We don't know if we're going to release PvE or PvP first or maybe we would release both of them simultaneously, very unsure but we will try to finish it by the end of 2021.

Shield with ranged weapons, at least in the photography mode?

They will need us to rework the whole ranged weapons and a whole lot more balancing to make it fully functional so we don't want to say if we're going to do them yet. For photography mode, just continue using the use of the exploit. Ok real talk, if we do have the time to work on them then we will do it. It will require us to set up poses and correction systems for them to work (like 2H shooters not being able to equip one and whatnot) so we have not done it yet. Pray that our single 3D artist will be available to work on everything.

Greatswords and other new close combat stances

While we are committed to making them, weapons like greatswords, whips, flails, and other things that required new stances, they will require a lot of time to work on so we are very unsure of when will they be available. We do plan to put more animations, stances, weapon parts, etc. into every update, but we do not know how much we can do nor we know which parts will come first (thing 0.5.0 claws that came as a result of extra time we had).

Update 0.5.0 Released + Patch Manifesto
over 3 years ago – Wed, Oct 07, 2020 at 02:54:31 AM

Additions

• Added tier 5 nodes into the game.
• Added a small knockback on melee impact so players will less occur body overlaps when using close combat weapons.
• Added missions 12 and 13 and HG4. This now concludes Chapter 2 of the story. We'll prepare a manifesto next week to explain what we're doing next going forward.

• Added various new weapon parts for both close combat and ranged weapons, including new Claw assaulter parts. 

• Added a new Bullet Shooter firing method: Detonator, slow firing pod that stick to the ground or your enemies and explode after a few seconds dealing high amount of damage.

• Added a new Energy Shooter firing method: Wave, a low damage full knockback weapon that pierces through every enemy it hits.

• Added new photography mode poses into the game.

•  Added new photography mode backgrounds that can be unlocked after clearing some story missions.  

Improvements

• Improved strafe-firing animations.

• Improved descriptions to specific nodes such as ones that unlocked new Quantum Break forms.
• Improved optimization on mission 11 "Tempestuous Sector"
• Sound effects upgrade for attacks. They now vary more from each other and should deviate more from the designs before.
• The physics collider has been updated, players will now have a better time in close combat attacks with new modules that prevent players from accidentally moving into enemies' body. Animations have also been improved to reflect the module usage.
• Improved Quarks texture.  

• Increased draw distance to display decals while in missions

Changes

• Reduced elite enemies' effective HP.
• Added shields to some enemies.
• Changed enemies' damage scaling and some behavior. Elite Quarks should now be much more challenging in Very Hard without higher HP or damage, but more attack patterns and aggressive AI.
• Lowered Empowering Void's Void Crystals Durability by around 40% in Normal and 25% in Very Hard difficulty.
• Reduced the health of most enemies to almost the same amount as their normal difficulty counterpart. This will also reduce its SHIELDS and thus will make the regenerated shields after the bosses' "stagger" state not as annoying as before.
• ONCE AGAIN, enemies' and players' status are rebalanced. This is an experimental work that involves almost every node available in-game to provide a more consistent progression to players.
• Changed various tech nodes that provided damage or defense buffs to nodes that promote a certain playstyle through drastic status changes. You'll mostly see these at the Tier 5 nodes.
• Changed more nodes to effect ACCELERATION balancing, it is now more difficult to reach maximum ACCELERATION without using dedicated ACCELERATION nodes, but those nodes will provide higher ACCELERATION as well.
• Lowered the number of lightning strikes in mission 11 "Tempestuous Sector"

Bug Fixes

• Fixed missing localization and missing texts.
• Some parts that have missing paintable sub-elements or sub-elements that don't work can now be painted. If you still encounter these, please notify us so we can fix it.
• Fixed a critical bug that prevents certain blueprints from dropping for certain players.
• Fixed texture bug that causes higher resolution textures to not load on settings other than ULTRA.
• Fixed a decal related bug that prevents players from applying decals #5-8 on various pieces of weapons and armors
• Fixed Slayer OS description to show correctly unless it decides to be sentient and not show up once again.

More Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where players can pause and still fire some ranged weapons, causing an instant burst of damage on unpause.
• Fixed a bug where players jitter awkwardly forward after ending boosts.
• Fixed a bug that causes Joint Sliders to reset to default in Photo Mode
• Fixed a bug that causes wrongly mirrored weapons when using as dual hands
• Fixed a bug that causes weapon alignment to be wrong when displayed in a cutscene

Known Bugs

• There are bugs that made us not push forward with PROPERTY DAMAGE changes in this update. They still retain their 0.4.5 values.

0.5.0 Post-Patch Manifesto

Additional patch notes are done, now we'll welcome you to another chunk of texts giving out our reasons for decisions for the drastic changes we've made to the game with the 0.5.0 update. Let's start talking about the more obvious ones first.

[b]Rebalancing of nodes and enemy statuses to provide smoother progression.[/b]

Let us first say that, since the first days of M.A.S.S. Builder's creation, we've designed and created a progression graph for players up until tier 7 of the game, which translates to around mission 26. The progression we've planned was to be quite exponential where early progressions start out slow and drastic increases in number happen later in the game. However, this has created a problem where older missions and bosses are unappealing to replay once players start using tier 3 and 4 nodes, while players will also need to grind a lot in order to progress their story mission. We've been collecting quite an amount of feedback regarding these matters for some time now but all the partial rebalancing we've made since 0.1.0 up to 0.4.5 did not provide as much help as we wanted them to be.

So in the 0.5.0 update, we've decided to just raise all the floor (tier 1) and lower the exponential curve to match what we think is a good level of ceiling of the current patch (tier 5). We've also reworked most of the enemy AI, giving them much needed aggression to compensate for their lower status. This should provide a much (and we meant it) better feeling to not have enemies be bullet sponges, and players can still have fun without much grinding over and over of the same stages involved. The difficulty will raise aggression to another level as well, and we think this will provide a more "fun" experience to everyone. Once again, we will monitor these over the first few days after the patch is out to see if any hotfixes or changes to the numbers are needed, so please provide us with your feedback, they are very precious to us and we cannot thank you enough for the help.

Playstyle Nodes on Tier 5

These are one of the most exciting changes we'd like to introduce into the game at some point, a method of "going all out" on a playstyle. Throughout this journey of development, we have been reading up on how you players have tuned your M.A.S.S. and how effective they were in dematerializing your enemies, but how you also wanted to solidify the playstyle and going full head-on while ditching another status. Our internal discussion also yields the same way, as our small team mostly had differing playstyles, some never used their Bullet Launchers and opt to remove them for aesthetic purposes. 

We knew we had to do something to provide something that says "let's go further down that road then" but we weren't sure when we could work on it. With the rebalancing and prospect to change our nodes to a certain degree already, we decided to remove more generic ones up on the tree and replace them with these "alternate playstyle" nodes instead. Some of them might be too weak, some of them too strong, but if the end result means fun then hey, be our guest to have fun. If you're a player of a certain playstyle and felt that the nodes you're having fun with are too strong though, feel free to chime in and tell us how you feel after using it.

Addition of enemies that break the archetypes

In 0.5.0, one of the main content that we're also introducing here are the new M.A.S.S. unit enemies, alongside newer Quarks that behave differently than those of before 0.5.0. This was a much-requested content that we've been hearing since day 1 (with some even to the degree of removing Quarks and make this a M.A.S.S. vs. M.A.S.S. game solely) but we were only able to work on them this late into development. The reasons are simple, while we are developing the game, we are also trying to learn what would be the best way to put them into the game through the lens of our players.

We have always been using generic enemies (bipedal, the brutes, the rangers, etc.) archetypes to test the water on how players approach and fight each one of them, and how smart or aggressive our players wanted them to be when the M.A.S.S. they are controlling is that mobile. As we've collected a good amount of data and with the conclusion of Chapter 2 in 0.5.0, we think it's a good time to present these new enemies' behaviors, be it M.A.S.S. enemy units to unorthodox Quarks to you players so we can further iterate them when future approaches. Have fun.

Going beyond 0.5.0

We're sure that'll be a topic of interest for many, but this time, we'd like you guys to wait until we release our new roadmap in the coming weeks. For now, the recap from our AMA and how we're going forward shall be these first three things, in no particular order of priority

1. Repeatable Missions for players to be able to compete with each other through time records.

2. Accessories for more customization options.

3. Reworking energy launchers.

There won't be a WIP update next week due to how we're dedicating all our time to focus on upcoming bug fixes and hotfixes. That will be all from us, good luck and have fun! Also, just a shoutout for our community, our players are holding a M.A.S.S. building contest in their community discord server. You can join our discord through the link below and ask for an invite to the community server and participate!

WIP: Incoming 0.5.0 Patch Notes
over 3 years ago – Sat, Sep 26, 2020 at 03:03:18 AM

Hello everyone! Did you know that whenever we release our patch notes, it meant that the update is coming next week? If not, then now you know it! Update 0.5.0 will come on October 3, be prepared to face new stuff and everything that's changing with the patch!

Additions

• Added a small knockback on melee impact so players will less occur body overlaps when using close combat weapons.
• Added missions 12 and 13 and HG4. This now concludes Chapter 2 of the story. We'll prepare a manifesto next week to explain what we're doing next going forward.

• Added various new weapon parts for both close combat and ranged weapons.

• Added a new Bullet Shooter firing method: Detonator, slow firing pod that stick to the ground or your enemies and explode after a few seconds dealing high amount of damage.

• Added a new Energy Shooter firing method: Wave, a low damage full knockback weapon that pierces through every enemy it hits.

• Added new photography mode poses into the game.
• Added new photography mode backgrounds that can be unlocked after clearing some story missions.

Improvements

• Improved strafe-firing animations. 

• Improved descriptions to specific nodes such as ones that unlocked new Quantum Break forms.
• Improved optimization on mission 11 "Tempestuous Sector"
• Sound effects upgrade for attacks. They now vary more from each other and should deviate more from the designs before.
• The physics collider has been updated, players will now have a better time in close combat attacks with new modules that prevent players from accidentally moving into enemies' body. Animations have also been improved to reflect the module usage.
• Improved Quarks texture.

Changes

• Reduced elite enemies' effective HP. 
• Added shields to some enemies. 
• Changed enemies' damage scaling and some behavior. Elite Quarks should now be much more challenging in Very Hard without higher HP or damage, but more attack patterns and aggressive AI.
• Lowered Empowering Void's Void Crystals Durability by around 40% in Normal and 25% in Very Hard difficulty.
• Reduced the health of most enemies to almost the same amount as their normal difficulty counterpart. This will also reduce its SHIELDS and thus will make the regenerated shields after the bosses' "stagger" state not as annoying as before. 
• ONCE AGAIN, enemies' and players' status are rebalanced. This is an experimental work that involves almost every node available in-game to provide a more consistent progression to players.
• Changed various tech nodes that provided damage or defense buffs to nodes that promote a certain playstyle through drastic status changes. You'll mostly see these at the Tier 5 nodes.

• Changed more nodes to effect ACCELERATION balancing, it is now more difficult to reach maximum ACCELERATION without using dedicated ACCELERATION nodes, but those nodes will provide higher ACCELERATION as well.
• Lowered the number of lightning strikes in mission 11 "Tempestuous Sector"

Bug Fixes

• Fixed missing localization and missing texts.
• Some parts that have missing paintable sub-elements or sub-elements that don't work can now be painted. If you still encounter these, please notify us so we can fix it.
• Fixed a critical bug that prevents certain blueprints from dropping for certain players. 
• Fixed texture bug that causes higher resolution textures to not load on settings other than ULTRA.
• Fixed a decal related bug that prevents players from applying decals #5-8 on various pieces of weapons and armors
• Fixed Slayer OS description to show correctly unless it decides to be sentient and not show up once again.
• Fixed a bug that forces the player character to jitter forward after a boost.

Known Bugs

• There are bugs that made us not push forward with PROPERTY DAMAGE changes in this update. They still retain their 0.4.5 values.