Happy New Year
posted Jan 1, 2014, 4:08 PM by Snelle Eddie
Hello Everyone,
All the best wishes and welcome to a special news update to kick off the new year.
We're leaving 2013 behind us as a very productive year, and without any fancy charts we'll start with some actual numbers:
Total Registered Accounts: 2635 (Everyone registered since the early beginning)
Total Avatars: 1256 (Everyone actually logging, making an avatar and playing)
Total Items: 31403 (Including recycled items and those for sale in the pwn shop)
Top 3 Hunting ATH:
Team Bob - 601.03 Dinar
Team xXx Namo xXx - 459.80 Dinar
Team ATH TIME! - 456.31 Dinar
Top 3 Mining ATH:
Tom Hunter Smith - 350.60 Dinar
Helena Star Dark - 255.98 Dinar
Gonçalo Tartaruga Genital - 203.23 Dinar
Top 3 Treasure ATH:
Mr Monax XXX - 354.43 Dinar
Jay DeadEye Chronic - 351.25 Dinar
Theone LaMoar GR - 350.26 Dinar
And that's not all... Just before the end of the year we were able to confirm that the Pro License Purchase Fund reached a coverage of 104.5%. The final donation needed was made by The Chosen One and he received the promised x2 bonus multiplier. (which was swiftly converted to some excellent equipment, supplies and cash.)
An explicit thank you is in order for all who helped raising enough funds to purchase a Unity Pro License, which happened much sooner than we anticipated. This is a huge milestone for the project so it's safe to say we are now officially ahead of schedule. We're also confident that the changes coming with Unity Pro will be documented nicely thanks to all of you who are spending time and energy on the promotion of Project ION through blogs, fora, videos and livestreaming. We've actually set a new record with 33 concurrent users on our 'old' hardware during a recent stress test. Very cool stuff!
Needless to say, we are very happy with the way things are going. The selfless manner in which people are contributing to a virtual world like ion is truly inspiring. We sincerely hope to see this type of attitude increasingly affecting the real world in 2014 and beyond...
Cheers!
The news section is where we keep track of noteworthy events.
Development progress, server downtime and future events will be officially announced on this feed.
VU 0.5.9 - Watch Your Bag
posted Nov 18, 2013, 1:31 PM by Snelle Eddie
Hello Everyone,
Before dumping the official 0.5.9. release notes, I'd like to thank all of our regular suspects for their patience while we were finishing this new VU. It took us a while to overcome the erratic fps behavior after the engine update, but things are running very smoothly now. From observations (after silent launch yesterday) the server actually consumes 50% less resources and almost no increase in CPU consumption with a bunch of players hunting (each other ;))
Alright, and now on to the official introduction. The most noticeable additions in this update are the new PvP areas, one of which is shown on the map. Be careful in this area, even though it appears to contain a lot of valuable resources, you will lose all your raw materials upon death. The resources will be contained in a bag and can be picked up by anyone. The other PvP area is a small cage in Zion where players can conveniently challenge each other and practice their twitch skills risk free.
We hope you enjoy the new update and report any bugs potentially still lurking under the hood somewhere. There are also some nice surprises left to find out for yourselves and perhaps you might even find some clues in the following release notes.
release notes 0.5.9
- fixed: falling through the ground due to some holes in the terrain mesh and a bug in the input/position controller
- fixed: fall damage while teleporting and stamina loss while running on steep hills (up and down)
- fixed: water shader showed semi-transparent artifacts from distant trees
- fixed: the huge radar object which could be seen while falling through the ground
- fixed: readying and using tools/weapons by pressing the toolbar quick keys
- fixed: awkward behavior of the item info window (right-click inventory interaction)
- fixed: automatic unequiping when items are moved to storage etc.
- fixed: multiple issues fixed in the Pwn Shop (clean up on isle 5)
- fixed: adjusted healkit recipe missing 1 part
- fixed: a couple of issues with trade and team requests
- fixed: synching jump to remote players
- optimized: storage and inventory processing needed on the server
- optimized: character input controller almost completely rewritten
- optimized: AI server processing needs are reduced to a minimum
- changes: AI was changed to allow implementation of flying creatures
- changes: arrow buttons were added to the list of selectable inputs
- changes: some adjustment to mining now with three types of bombs
- new: PvP area where players drop their raw materials as a pickup when they die.
- new: in the new PvP area only team members or creatures will be visable on radar
- new: replaced johns ancient spider model with a free mutant spider asset from kalamona
- new: the first flying creature has been spotted, caution is advised considering the area
- new: buildings based on schlumpfsack's scifi package modified using a custom editor tool
- new: props from the unity asset store and some custom made using bits and parts
- new: recipes for the new bombs used in underground mining
- new: a medium PvP ring in Zion (as per player request)
- new: button on login window to reset player preferences
- new: server side storage and retrieval optimized for bulk data (preparing for skills ;))
News
Incoming Awesomeness...
posted Sep 23, 2013, 11:01 AM by Snelle Eddie
Hello Everyone,
So what's up? Well, multiple things, really...
First of all, we are finally able to confirm that the server is running smoothly again. A lot of time was spent to investigate the lag spikes introduced after the engine upgrade to version 4.2.0. The biggest issue being there were no clues from the engine as to where the issue originated. Luckily Unity released the 4.2.1 patch when we were at the verge of rolling back to 4.1 and this patch turned out to show a big improvement. Some final work is being done on the server side which needs to be finished before we can continue working on the client release.
Another big thing is the donation side of the project. Without any official publicity we are well on our way towards a Unity Pro License. A special thanks is in place for those who are helping us reach this goal. For clarity: Every donation is rewarded with game credits at a conversion rate of 100 Dinar for 1 Euro. This can be pure credits or specific (special) items of choice with a similar value. There will be a special reward granted to the one who makes the last donation needed for a Unity Pro license. The first part of which will be a x2 multiplier bonus on the conversion rate. The other part will be unique and secret until it's built... ;)
Then last, but certainly not least, perhaps even the biggest surprise and reward for us here at the TestBuilt Laboratories...
It would be a waste of words trying to describe the awesomeness of this promotional video by ahh the egg. (one of our regular suspects) So we'll suffice by leaving you all with a graceful bow and hope you will enjoy what is coming...