We have some exciting news for all Steambirds out there: starting from 18 July, we will be opening up the servers for all players with a Steam key 24/7. This will be the start of the servers running continuously, a “private beta” if you will; so Meowza won’t have such a relaxing time any more! Within a few weeks after this, we will be sending a message to everyone subscribed to the newsletter, with instructions on how they can get a Steam key and join in the fun! Are you ready?
Art
This has been a week for ideas hitting (digital) paper with concepts popping up for many upcoming things! Among those concepts we’ve got the big boss of thunder, Rei, and the up-and-coming bandit class. Speedy as can be, the bandit has been modeled, textured and integrated… and is flying in skies near you!
Also on the drawing board are player portraits that match our current art style, lots of experiments happening and we should have some cool bird-brained folks to show in the coming weeks!
Premium Emotes
Premium emotes are now a thing in the game! They can now show up in the store, with a little popup so you can also see how they will look. These are still a work in progress, but they work, as you can see in this carefully choreographed display below.
Polish and Bugfixes
- Cloud FX (like healing aura) have received an overhaul so now they can correspond more closely to the game logic and won’t get cut off unceremoniously
- Fix white steam bar bug (steam bar got stuck as white)
- Legal notices: remove scroll requirement so UX is smoother
- In the Nexus, only show portals to servers with the same protocol version
- Fixed the main wandering bug (hopefully). At a minimum we’ll get more useful data if it happens again
- Lobbyist wandering bug is a work in progress. This one is specific to lobbyists and their wandering tendencies.
Other
- Blocking: you can type ‘/block name’ to block a user and hide their chat messages from your sight. ‘/unblock’ and ‘/blocklist’ also work like you might expect.
- Some new setpiece tweaks and changes
- In the works: a new build server
- Implemented store analytics
- Some basic DoS mitigation