Introducing Your New Co-Community Manager: Apcizzle!
Hey everyone!
Most of you may know me from as early as beta 1.0 of Legions. Some of you may know me as the host of Legions Live. Or maybe from Legions Overdrive Top 10. If you don't know me at all, well shame on you!
Anyways, I'd like to welcome myself as part of the Legions development team as your new co-community manager along side with SeymourGore. Don't worry, cuddley wuddley Seymour isn't going anywhere so there is no need to panic.
As your new "go-to" guy, I plan to help this community enhance it's player base as well as their involvement within the community. I would like to bring back my radio show (announcement will come soon) for starters. Any idea's that any of you may have to help the community grow or anything along those lines, i'd love to hear from you so just send me a message on the forums!
Thank you everyone for making this community the way it is today and I plan to see nothing but great things in the near future!
- Apcizzle
Custom Legions Soundtrack and Volume Preferences
Legionnaires,
We have an update today that includes a custom music track by cruncha made exclusively for Legions: Overdrive entitled "Rugged". The track will play during the menu and loading screens and will be automatically disabled once you've completely entered the game. Frankly, it quite sets the tone for jumping into a server, so you'll probably find yourself leaving the menu screen up for a while just to pump yourself up.
In this update we've also added several preferences to the options menu giving you more control over the different sounds in Legions. You're now able to adjust the volume for the effects, events, overdrive, music, and the master volume.
Enjoy the new track and see you on the battlefield!
Mortar, Grenade, Blaster and Plasma Updates
OK so the polls are in and the vast majority say these need MOAR POWAR.
Green Boomy: Mortar has a larger explosion, slightly further range and a bit less arming time. It will be harder to dodge these babies now and I expect everyone to fear the green.
Grenade: Cluster is buffed back to the old grenade damage values so essentially it's the old grenade with the cluster ability at this point. Normal grenade got a slight increase in RoF.
Blaster: Now has a larger explosion to compete a bit more on interior battles with the rocket launcher.
Plasma: Got a slightly higher projectile speed and a bit further range.
Password for the public test servers is still: mortar
Big Fat Weapon Update on Public Test
This will be our second pass over weapons, and boy is there a lot to go over. Nothing is set in stone of course, so go stomp around and see what you think.
Mortar - The death blow has come. This green beast brings fear to all, regardless of what class you are. Anyone nearby will be annihilated, and Outriders especially better watch their step! Kept at medium range and the largest explosion in the game, this ballistic weapon is only allowed on Sentinels.
Plasma - While it might be slow and the weakest projectile in the game, it fires it at 20xs a second, almost double the chaingun, making it only beaten by the Mortar in pure damage. However the electrical charge quickly dissipates and this weapon is limited to very close range only.
Blaster - Slow and steady wins the race, and by slow I mean it fires almost 3xs a second. But this lumbering fireball is not to be ignored, 'cuz fire hurts like hell. Fighting in cramped quarters (like inside the Fallout base) this rapid-fire splash weapon demolishes everything. Using it out in the open though...you better know how to lead it.
Skybolt - After getting feedback this weapon was redone. With a faster reload time and reduced damage, this weapon now goes at extreme speeds, screaming past the sound barrier. This weapon will only favor the accurate too, since it has an extremely small explosion radius.
Grenade - Yes, the grenade has been touched, but in a good way. Given a deeper arch, a slightly faster reload, and a further range, this grenade won't fizzle at long shots. With a bit of extra bounce it now claims it's victims around corners and over hilltops that, until now, have always been safe.
Cluster - Now that the Sentinel has claimed the green death, the cluster has been moved to Raider only. This slower ballistic does not have the range that the normal grenade now has, but it bounces much less and can be armed for a period of time before manually detonating it. If detonated it will release fewer bomblettes than the classic did, but it still packs quite a wallop. If it is not manually detonated the GLII will explode on impact sooner than the normal grenade, but delivers a bit less damage as a result.
You might notice some weapon models have a colored glow, but this is only temporary until the real models are finished. Special thanks go out to PureWoopAss for helping us design the explosion effects. Sound effects are also in progress for everything and you might notice a few new ones on skybolt (courtesy of Metreon) and blaster.
The public test servers are passworded to prevent people getting confused, and please direct people to this blog post to get the password. Password is: mortar.
So go explore and tell us what you think!
Master Server Update
We've updated our master server with a replacement version which should return the server list faster and more efficiently for users.
Most of you won't notice any change, however we're just announcing this incase any players have any issues getting the list of games in the server listing. If you have any problems - let us know.
Server List Update
Since we've added the private servers and servers from new locations, the server list has been getting a bit too big.
We've pushed through an update so that the server list should scale with the size of your Legions window, and the sorting options get saved to your preferences file. It's also possible to refresh a single server by right clicking the server on the list, instead of having to refresh the entire server list.
We know things might not look right, and going from full screen to windowed mode will cause the server list column headers to disappear - however it should make things a bit easier until we get the time to fully fix it.
Rabbit on Public Test
Rabbit mode in Legions is one of BugsPray's creations from the old InstantAction days, and with plenty of updates to get the thing working with Legions: Overdrive - we've finally managed to get it up and running again. Rabbit is on the public test servers for you to play!
Simply kill the flag carrier and carry the flag for as long as possible to gain points. Every 5 seconds you hold the flag gives you an additional point, the winner is the player with the most points at the end of the map (15 minutes).
There are a few known issues:
- There is a rare chance of being respawned outside the playing area, resulting in instant death for the player (which in past has resulted in a crash).
- Flag grab message sometimes gets played twice.
- No winner notifications at the end of a game.
- No score limit.
The password for these servers is currently: wabbit
Please point players to this blog post if they want to play rabbit, so they can read about the known issues and not get confused when they connect to the server and expect to see a regular CTF game.
Spawn Updates on Public Test
On the public test servers we've made a few changes to how players spawn in the game:
- Players spawn as Outrider with rocket launcher and chaingun (no grenades).
- Players must go to their teams ammo stations to change to their selected loadout.
- Enemy ammo stations and central ammo stations will resupply ammo, but won't change your loadout.
- Spawn timer has been reduced from 3.25 seconds to 2 seconds.
Although the number of changes is rather small, it will have a rather large effect on Legions gameplay - this is why we're putting these updates on public test servers, to get your feedback.
Our aim is to improve the game with more interesting gameplay, and this could potentially be the start of it. These changes could lead to things like destroyable ammo stations, with teams having to defend their base assets if they want to switch to the more advanced weapons (sniper, sky bolt, and other new weapons coming soon).
Please note that most of the maps weren't designed with ammo stations in mind, so they might be in an inconvenient place from where you spawn. Just remember that these maps can be updated if needed to support the changed gameplay.
So - let us know what you think. Please try and be detailed in your feedback.
Elegiac now Live
We're mostly happy with the current state of Elegiac, so we've decided to push this map to live servers.
Elegiac will be in the rotation for large map CTF servers, and the small map servers with a minimum of 14 players.
Elegiac and Skybolt Updates
Elegiac has had the back corner slides lowered a bit and the Alpha side spawns have been repositioned for better starting routes.
Skybolt has a slightly lowered splash radius, increasing the need for accuracy even more and further emphasizing the railgun aspect.