I’ve taken a bunch of popular requests and complaints in regard to the existing gameplay engine and decided to finally do something about them. A lot of the major issues were related to the free-for-all mode, mainly where you could be attacking another player and you wouldn’t get the kill credit because they’d kill themselves right in time. Well not anymore! You now get the full credit for pressuring another player to kill their character. You can also now see how many kills that player has in FFA by looking above their head!

Other players’ scores will appear next to their name as shown in the picture above. This is a response to the complaint where you would never know how close players are to each other. You let your guard down for one second thinking you’ve got a lead but then bam, “Roach has 19/20 kills!?” Woops.

I’m not going to go into full detail anymore, but here’s a list of everything that’s been changed!

Spherack Reloaded – Client Changes in Build 069

• Fix glitch where weapons can obtain the properties of others during map changes
• Suicides in Free-For-All now reward the last person to damage the suicidal character
• Direct hits from the grenade launcher now instantly kill players
• HP now regenerates slower based on how much energy your character has
• Fixed an issue with the auto-updater on Windows 7
• Fixed Spherack’s internal error-reporting function
• Added visible player scores to free-for-all mode

Spherack Reloaded – Server Changes in Build 069

• Code and graphic output optimized to reduce RAM usage by up to 60%
• Server now displays more status information through website
• Fixed an issue with the auto-updater in Windows 7

I hope everyone’s excited for and will try out the new build! Grab a couple friends one night and play a round!

Also, I’m holding another public online match to introduce more people to Spherack. Join us tonight, April 7th at 8pm Eastern Time. We’ll be playing on ZNet-IV. Be sure to RSVP to the Facebook event to let us know you’re coming!

Click here to go to the Download Page!

Between school, work and music rehearsals, I’ve been working on the “Spherack Reloaded Engine.” (pending title, perhaps?) This is in short, the backbone to Spherack Online 3 but without all of the networking material that makes the game online multiplayer capable.

Instead, this is designed as a base to power single-player shooters. I still haven’t decided however, whether or not I’ll be releasing the engine to the public or keeping it private for my own use. Maybe if someone or enough people beg (ask kindly) I’ll put it out there. For now though, if you’re a follower of mine on Twitter or at least follow the Spherack Online account, you may notice I said I’ve also been working on “AI.”

That’s for you to learn about my next update here

Stay posted!

So now, a few months later, with time to actually work on the game again, I’m including a brand new menu & server browser as part of the game’s big 3.1 Update. I can’t say I’ll be retaining the chat system just yet, but I can say it’s faster and far less glitchy to use.

If you’re interested in catching some previews, follow me on Twitter!

Yes, an actual options menu, and I mean IN-GAME options! Rather than instantly quitting the game when you hit the escape key, you’ll open up this window from which you’ll have quite a few choices I think you’ll all like. As I said, you’ll be able to adjust the in-game settings, and you’ll also be able to change your team in-game and switch weapons. New weapons! They’re coming! I’ve already got a rocket launcher made up and its filled with awesome!A variety in weaponry is sure to bring a fresh approach to gameplay as some have their advantages as well as disadvantages. Choose what works best for you and suits your interests.

There’s a lot of things to come in the future update. When it will come I can’t say, but for now stop by my new bug tracker at http://flyspray.AndrewNatoli.com to browse and submit your own feature requests and bug reports! I’d love to hear your ideas on what I should add and change, so why keep them to yourselves?

I might go about posting some screenshots from the upcoming build soon. I apologize for the lack of progress the past few months but hope you’re excited for what’s to come!

You venture off into the middle of no-where, which ironically everyone visits all the time and open up your own chowder stand by the shore. The question is, how long can a one man shop supply the entire community before everyone moves on?

Click Here to Download!

Alternatively, if you’re on a machine running java, you can use the “play game online” feature which will load the game without installing it to your computer. Just ignore the little security warning you may get (it’s nothing bad, promise) and hit the button below!

Well, Spherack Reloaded having been released a week ago, I’m looking to start on new projects finally, while keeping the existing ones up to date. This will be started by reviving two of my older projects, Racer Online & Spherack 2 and re-releasing them. Pretty much my plans for both consist of fixing a few minor bugs and integrating the D+Pad Games Accounts. After that they’ll be released publically. I’m starting with Spherack 2, then continuing with Racer Online later. Expect more news on them to come.

I continued on-ward to reading a GIMP tutorial on how to use unimask (which is an awesome feature) which helped me to design new product images! Yay. I’m not really all that creative so they’re pretty much based off of Link’s, but I spent a while making them and them and am quite happy! I’m using them within the My Games and My Software pages. 

Speaking of which, I also managed to start on those. I haven’t gotten everything posted yet, like none of the software pages are up yet and only the Spherack2 page is up for games, but I’ll get to everything eventually. I didn’t have time to really because I had to go to work today from 4-9. It was alright… I dropped a jar of baby food while leveling the section (ugh, worst aisle to level) and took a fifteen minute break the last fifteen minutes of my shift. Makes plenty of sense, right? 

So anyway, I got home and then I tried to make some new group icons for my forum because I felt they were a bit outdated… so here we have them!

And yeah that’s pretty much it. I should probably go to bed now because I have work at 10am…