Gang Beasts Ping
Nicol Allphin
We are happy to announce we have fixed the notorious loading screen bug, that has been plaguing some people, and we wanted to explain a few things to help shed some light on why it took so long for us t o fix it.
The bug initially was just incredibly hard to reproduce internally, which is the first step towards finding out what was actually happening. To find it we had to create a new debugging tool for the server and client builds to help us track it down. With this new tool we managed to reproduce the issue consistently, and in a way that we could generate logs to help guide us to a solution. This highlighted to us that in fact, it was several bugs manifesting as one! All of which we have fixed and should never rear their ugly heads again.
You may be wondering why we released the previous update with such a glaring bug? Well, to put it simply, it hasn't turned up before. The trigger case is very hardware and connection dependent. Although we have found out that some of the bugs have been there all along, they were very rarely triggered, at least on tests we did with the hardware we have.
It also appears that the more recent optimisations and fixes, which made certain aspects of the game quicker, inflamed the issue, making it more prominent for these users. In addition, there was a significant engine upgrade (Unity 2017 to 2020), which made unnoticed changes to the networking library we use, adding many more avenues for the issue to manifest.
It is annoying that these things happen from time to time (especially for us!), but we are always working to improve Gang Beasts, which has been evolving for 6+ years now. So thank you for being patient with us, and hopefully, we will not have anything as problematic in the future.
We have tried to fix this a few times and, although each attempt reduced its frequency, it was still being triggered. In this update, we have added two more solutions: one that should stop it from happening, and another that will guarantee that if it happens the players get eliminated anyway. The first measure is adding a few more checks to the characters when they enter an Elimination Volume, so it is more likely to be detected, and expanding these volumes further to increase the chance of detection. The second measure bypasses the physics system entirely, and will always eliminate players regardless of velocities or any other issues inherent to physics that can prevent the first method from working.
It has been a turbulent year for many reasons, but we are starting to climb above the pile, with help and support from our partners at Coatsink, SuperGenius, Robot Teddy, and Unity. Because of this we wanted to update you on what has been going on at Boneloaf, why updates have been slow, and our plans for the next year.
In order to be able to release the update, we needed to fix certain things. And to start fixing things, we needed to review systems that touch on a multitude of parts of the game, including Online, how we build stages, and how we build costumes. Some of these fixes are in this update, such as the new glass fracture and buoyancy system, which not only look substantially better, but also are more optimal (aside from a few bugs we are still working on).
Coatsink has also been making many fixes, improvements, and optimisations to the online portion of the game. Some of these are in this update, which is why it now plays a lot more like local play, but there are many more improvements to come!
We have also partnered with Robot Teddy to help us with the game production and business decisions. It has been an invaluable aid to us throughout 2020 and one of the main players to make it possible for us to release this new update while self-publishing Gang Beasts.
Something is lurking in the Beef City Aquarium, the Gang Beasts Aquarium Update (build 1.13) will be available tomorrow (Dec 9th, 2020) as a free download for XboxOne, PS4, Windows, macOS, and Steam supported Linux platforms (SteamOS and Ubuntu). The update has a new Aquarium stage, an updated Wheel stage that works online, a series of super hero/villain costume sets, and numerous fixes for stages, online, and gameplay issues.
The "Yogscast Charity Drive 2015 DLC" has been added to the game as a default option, this was done as we found far too many people trying to exploit our users on grey markets by trying to charge exorbitant amounts of money for legacy codes. Since the DLC has achieved its purpose of raising money for charity and it has been several years since its release we figured this was the best way to protect our players.
Fixed a significant stability issue on Vents that appeared in the update from 2017 where as soon as the main fan activated the stage would explode and characters would find themselves embedded in the walls or ceiling.
Updated some physics settings to take advantage of some of Unity 2020's improvements. This will be an ongoing process to fully take advantage of all the changes. These changes should provide some small performance and stability improvements.
Stamina now always drains when grabbing, even if feet are touching the floor. Most players will not notice any change with this. This is to try and prevent people from getting into exploitable positions where they can hang on forever. Additionally this should help reduce stalemates where someone can hang on to another player indefinitely.
Added code to dynamically adjust characters collision mode based on context to help reduce likelihood of limbs getting embedded in objects, this helps reduce the frequency of a bug that appeared in the transition to Unity 2020 but more work is needed to fix it completely.
Fixed a long standing bug with knockouts not working as intended online. Locally it would increment by 1 second each time your KO'd to a potential maximum of 20. Online this would always be set to 4. This should significantly improve the feel of combat online.
Fixed an issue where some physics objects were moved using an incorrect method. This should help improve some stability issues when characters are pushed into strange positions or somehow move faster than usual (such as getting hit by a moving vehicle).
We love Double Fine and they have been really fantastic to us. What Tim and his company built is pretty wonderful, but with Double Fine Presents winding down due to Double Fine's acquisition by Xbox Game Studios last year, we think it is a good time for Boneloaf to stand on its own... legs and publish Gang Beasts ourselves.
We plan to make this build available for testing as a Steam beta next month. The 1.13 build will be released for supported platforms (Steam, Humble Bundle, PS4, Xbox One, and Oculus Rift and Oculus Rift S) when testing ends. We are also working on new stages and costumes, more information coming soon.
Concurrently with the work on the 1.0.5 build we have also worked to standardise, optimise, and modularise the game structure to support making new content and systems for a series of planned game modes, specifically we have made a full review of the processes and systems for prototyping and testing new costume parts and stage geometry for the game, the work on standardising content and systems was necessary to configure the game for the playset and story game modes, to support more frequent content releases and bug fix patches, and to support other platforms and markets without negatively impacting work on other game modes and game content.
We expect to release examples of this work in the next significant content release later this year with a series of updated hazard escalations, stage variations, and new costume sets.
Some inconsistencies with the stability of matching services is expected in the next hour as Coatsink transitions the game to use the revised online matching services and scale server capacity.
Since Gang Beasts left Steam Early Access and was released for PS4 in mid-December we have been working with Double Fine and Coatsink to monitor, optimise, and patch online matching services, address limitations with the current online session matching scheme[1], and identify and fix stubborn release issues.
Currently we are working on game content for a series of planned updates, information on specific post-launch content (stages, game modes, costumes, VR support, and other features) will be published in subsequent posts in the coming months as the work and testing on specific post launch content ends.
For those asking where to buy the Gang Beasts Soundtrack, there is a Gang Beasts Soundtrack page on the iam8bit store have a opened store page for taking pre-orders for the Gang Beasts 2xLP, Classic Black Vinyl by doseone & Bob Larder (with Album by Fat Knack).
We have written this post to summarise current and recent development work and to give more information on launch content for the game as we are still a number of weeks from publishing the next Steam build.
We plan to start testing the next build (build 0.7.0) from next week and have scheduled support from Babel, Coatsink, and Double Fine to help with the identification, documentation, and fixing of a small number of persisting issues preventing the release of the next Steam build (and to facilitate and optimise testing cycles).
The 0.7.0 build has a glut of fixes and modifications made to optimise, standardise, and refine gameplay, menus, messaging, networking, matchmaking, menus and other UI, interstitial game screens (hint screens, loading screens, and score screens etc.), the following is a summary of key game content modifications in the coming 0.7.0 beta build with information on the work left to finish before the full launch of the game.
We're working through PS4 certification currently and expect to have to make at least one more submission before passing, we can then schedule a meeting with Double Fine, Sony, and other partners to set a date for the PS4 release. We are currently on schedule to set a release date in late 2017.
The minimum limit for private online sessions was set at 4 players for testing when support for private online sessions was published in late September (concurrently with the move to Multiplay's server architecture), a limited number of issues surfaced with the matchmaking process during the Steam Free Weekend stress test and also in October but Coatsink have been aggressively addressing these issues and we expect to lower the minimum concurrent player limit for private sessions from a minimum of 4 to a minimum of 2 in the 0.7.0 beta build.