Posts by zaphod

New beta is live on Steam:

1.0.1.4 Change Log

* New race map added: Zero Circuit!!!

* Network bandwidth usage optimized, uses up to 75% less data

* Skate now has a simple point based game mode

* Puncher can be used behind kart, has better range, and causes the punched object to spin more

* Reduced the time it takes for a twister to become active once deployed from 2 seconds to 1

* Soccer ball mass increased slightly

* Forced race mode back to warmup if there is only one racing player left

* Camera follow rotation is now 3 times faster when the kart is moving slowly

* Changed quick play to look through the first 3 lobbies for a valid server instead of just the top lobby

* The server browser now only shows how many humans players are in a server

* Added dialog box to warn the user when they connect to a server running a map they don't have

* Texture filter mode now saves when changed in the settings GUI

* Other player's ping times displayed in the player roster GUI will be more responsive

* Upon detecting that the required shader model 2.0 isn't supported on the player's computer, it will ask the user if they want to try running the game anyway

here is a sneak peek of a map I just finished that will be in the next beta update (hopefully out by the end of the week)

[Blocked Image: http://nimblebit.com/zerocircuit.jpg]

Quote from Lord Ned

Something you might want to look at is Garrysmod's implimentation of Lua/Gamemodes. To my understanding it provides a lot of functions hooks in Lua for the gamemode maker to different things with. Then custom gamemodes are as simple as a folder + an info.txt file that gives some information about it, and then the game lets you load it.

As for the color thing: Same issue in TF2, people can use the "XX Has found " colors .

cool, I will have to take a look at Garrysmod.

We will support custom game modes and with it probably custom items. It is not super straight forward though, there is a lot of things in lots of different lua files to touch. Hopefully we can simplify it some.

You can sometimes color text in the game by adding hex #00ff00 color codes in front of things.

This weeks update is live on Steam:

1.0.1.3 Change Log

* New Target mode map: PACHINKO!!!

* Experimental gamepad support, only tested with the 360 controller so far, please give feedback!

* Fixed the checkpoint random reset bug, you should no longer be reset while going through the correct checkpoint

* Stunt tracking added, you will gain boost after a sound and particle effect fire off after performing a barrel roll or flip

* Air steer force increased so it is easier to do rad stunts

* Pressing Apply in settings will now close the settings GUI

* Added a button to reset controls to default in settings GUI

* Servers in your country are specially indicated

* Removed ability to color player names so the names are colored according to teams in Goal mode (server names can still be colored)

Here's a short clip of a new pachinko type map that will be in the next build:

Just a few errors from yesterdays build to correct, and a few other things thrown in. Version 1.0.1.2 is now live on Steam.

1.0.1.2 Change Log

* The game will no longer throw error: "OGRE EXCEPTION(10:MyGUIException): ComboBox::setIndexSelected : index number 8 out of range [8]" if the min players is set to 8 in the server settings file

* The game will no longer throw error: "RaceServer.lua: 1042" when resetting at the start of a race map

* Quick Play now defaults to 4 min players and a random map order

* New default camera angle in the garage

* Added another checkpoint towards the end of Chill Mountain

* Red arrow point loss rate decreased from once every 2 seconds to once every 3 seconds, this means you lose less points while in red mode

* Point loss particle effects in tag now show the correct points lost

* Client and server log files added to error report in case of a crash

New build is up on Steam:

1.0.1.1 Change Log

* 65 MS of lag removed

* Increased the network sync time to 30 times a second from 20

* Quick play button added to the main menu which will join the best server or start a local server if there aren't any good servers to join

* Reverse speed increased slightly

* Soccer ball tweaked so it is easier to hit around

* Player karts colored based on their team in Goal mode

* Tag rules modified

* Spring and punch strength increased slightly

* Punchbowl tag map reduced in size and other tweaks

* Some trees removed from downhill part of Chill Mountain

* Min players now defaults to 4 instead of 0

* The score now sorts correctly in Target mode

* Significantly improved the performance of the collision detection code when there are many objects in the world

* Bandwidth usage improved now as time shift wasn't enabled in the last build (oops)

* Going in reverse at the start of Chill Mountain will no longer cause the player to get stuck at the starting line

* The number of bots can be adjusted during play by changing the minimum number of players in the server manager GUI

* The maximum number of player will not be exceeded on a server anymore

* The player list in the server manager GUI now updates correctly when people leaving/join the server

* Pressing connect at the server browser when no server is selected no longer tries to join a local server

* Mouse sensitivity slider added to settings

* New "auto" mouse look mode added as default, the old mode can be enabled in the settings if desired

* Bots ping times in the roster GUI are now listed as "BOT" instead of the real ping time

* Players in result GUI no longer display above other GUIs in Goal and Tag mode

* Kicked players now go back to the main menu after being kicked

* Players with names longer than 32 character no longer cause the server to throw an error

* Exit removed from the key binding list in settings

* XPadder profile added to the Assets directory for the PC XBox 360 controller

Also, you can help show your support for Zero Gear by joining our Steam Group we are slowly climbing the official game groups listing!

added another gameplay video I had capped last week:

how else would you expect a cactus to be able to wear a hat?

Quote from Chrono

Any chance of this being fixed in the next patch? [Blocked Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/434057/spikyhead.png]

what is the bug?

ok, sounds like the server just crashed. If you could save the console.txt from the server directory from the host machine the next time this happens it would be much appreciated!

Thanks for all the feedback guys, the more we get the easier it is to prioritize where to spend our extremely limited dev resources!

The physics should be a lot more stable after the release last week, although we are always looking for ways to improve it where we are able. The butt-tap can be either frustrating or a rewarding tactic depending on your point of view, but I definitely have never seen someone stay behind for two laps from being spun out. You can hit hop a few times to rotate yourself 180 degrees and sometimes don't even lose that much momentum, and even if you came to a dead stop for 10 seconds - you would get so much boost through the rest of the race from being behind that there is no way you should be "out" for 2 laps.

Timing out on your own server is really bizarre, can you give me any more information about that? Was there people connected to your server, did you notice an abnormally large ping to your own server or anything? What are your PC specs? Did the server crash or could you see it in your server browser still?

here are a few gameplay videos I capped yesterday:

http://%7Boption%7D

yea, we hear that a lot. If you look at the top of the screen there is an outline around your team score and some text as to what goal to hit the ball into - but short of something on the character itself it seems like most people are not going to get it.

4 days after our beta went live we have a new update for everyone! Here is the changes:

1.0.1.0 Change Log

* Kart physics modified, the kart is much heavier now as well as other subtle tweaks

* Air steering is now only engaged by pressing the steer direction after leaving the ground

* Some maps updated to work better with new kart physics

* Camera adjustments, closer to kart, fixed distance, crosshair added to aim mode

* Ice cube will not ice the player who dropped it behind them when it obviously shouldn't

* Win score changed from 500 to 400 in Tag mode

* All players given springs in Target mode and bumpers removed until they are functional again

* Soccer ball/hockey puck larger and easier to hit

* Country code added to the server browser so you can see how close a server is to you

* Rank sorted correctly in the server browser now

* Setting added to enable the screen blur effect on boost as some players were reporting problems

* The game responds to input correctly after closing the settings or server GUI while in game

* The map change timer works correctly in the server settings GUI

* Map name and server name added to the player roster GUI

* Laps/Place GUI is now visible in spectator mode

* The goal GUI now tells the user which goal they need to shoot the ball/puck into

* The signal GUI will warn the user if they connect to a server with a very large ping

* Upon pressing the reset key, a GUI pops up to notify the user they will soon be reset

* GUI is now visible in Skate

* Newb loading screen key layout image simplified

* Music updated and Hyperduck accessory added (quack quack!!)

* Sound errors no longer print out to the log which seems to prevent the game from slowing down over time

* Bug in sound priority system fixed which should prevent more important sounds (music, engine noises, etc) from cutting out on some sound cards

* Fixed the "Failed to find receive data peer" bug that happened sometimes after exiting the game and starting it again quickly

Go check it out!

yea, race times is an oft-requested thing that I don't think would be very hard to add

hmm, I don't think it is a win 7 issue - we are all running win 7 and have tested it pretty throughly.

If you could post the problem here: http://www.nimblebit.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=20 then our programmer will be sure to try and figure it out

Quote from Nysuatro

Are here other people who use windows 7 . The installer wlaywas stops while installing

We have seen this happen to a few other people, do you mean the installer when you first launch the game? On some peoples configurations the visual studio redist is behaving badly. We are trying to track it down.

Quote from Pericolos0

I played this for about 2 hours yesterday, damn fun and it's really hard to quit playing! Lag seems to be a problem though, the game felt fine when I had a friend in stockholm here start a server, but playing on other ones i always had some noticeable lag. Maybe it would be nice if the player gets a warning about lag when he joins a server too far away? I was also confused about what the best server was to join, the server rank numbers were in random order so I never knew if 6 or 1 was the best =), took a few tries to figure that out.Overall the racing feels pretty nice, but it can get damn hard to control the carts though! As soon as I hit something, it always took me ages to get back on the track. And it can be very frustrating, if there is only like half a second of lag happening you often find yourself hitting a wall or falling of a cliff.

But still, damn fun! There seems to be quite a bit of tweaking left but it's getting there =).

Yea, those seem to be the 2 biggest criticisms we are collecting so far. For the lag one, we can't actually make the game handle large latencies any better, but we do need to make it more obvious what the latencies are when you are joining a server like you say. In the next update that ranking will be sorted properly, and we have added country codes so that you can see what country the server is in. There is also being able to see your ping by hitting tab and there is an indicator in the lower right hand corner of your ping. The entire time we thought we were going to be able to list ping times like is traditional in the server browser, but since we switched to steams lobby system (same as in l4d) we don't have access to that information. The lobby system is great because it does nat-punchthrough and makes it super simple to host a game - but you can't figure out the actual ping to a server until you do that nat-puncthrough when connecting so we can't list them in the browser. The only information we get with the list of servers is the order, which is supposed to be from closest to farthest away by geographic location. We are just now talking about once in game having some kind of warning like you mention when we detect a ridiculous amount of latency.

About the controls, many people say it feels too floaty - and I think this also has to do with people playing on high latency games and not realizing it. We are working on some tweaks to the physics right now to make the karts have a little more weight and fly around a little less.

Hopefully those things will streamline the game for the majority of people. Still, I think those are mostly things we can either fix or make satisfactory - so I guess we are in good shape!

Beta signups are live! Go here: http://myzerogear.com/beta/invite.php