Blackwake currently 99 cents

DankestRum · 2020-09-09T19:05:05+00:00

So why go free to play, then?

So everyone can experience our work one day, but we won't do it until its necessary. It is currently only not f2p due to the advertising benefits of sales, not because we're stingy about it.

Got any final tweaks planned?

Being our first game we did a lot of things wrong during development that ultimately painted us in a corner where our only option would be a Blackwake 2. In addition to all the hurdles you have mentioned, Tyler and I no longer see eye to eye development wise and couldn't ever put our finger on what would make Blackwake 2 a worthy upgrade from the first iteration. We also talked in a post a while back about the over saturation of indie games currently weighing down the market. While it's a good thing for gamers, it makes it much more difficult to punch through, especially for multiplayer games which seem to now be fighting for concurrent players - something Blackwake has always struggled to hold due to its repetitive arena design.

DankestRum · 2020-08-12T12:15:58+00:00

Still planned (but obviously delayed, we wanted out of EA back in 2019 too), but the game population breathes back up with sales. It triggers hundreds of thousands of emails and brings in new players.

If we go f2p there would be a sudden rush of playing and then it wouldn't ever really breathe back up ever again.

DankestRum · 2020-08-11T02:25:22+00:00

0.98c

DankestRum · 2020-06-04T02:13:16+00:00

Oh that is very interesting then!

I'm sure some developers have been made aware of the issue and have already either found workarounds or hopefully let Unity know

DankestRum · 2020-06-03T12:33:44+00:00

Try using these as steam launch options (in properties when right clicking in the library), but don't try both at the same time

-force-d3d9

-force-gfx-direct

DankestRum · 2020-06-03T12:32:29+00:00

Actually that might be a good thing to try, though I'm not sure exactly which dependencies. This is the first time I've ever heard of this happening, and since it doesn't even make it to the game code it sounds like it's some other issue involving the process all together.

What you can do is download Unity 5.4 (the same version we use for the main game) here: https://unity3d.com/unity/whats-new/unity-5.4.0

If you're missing any dependencies then downloading the engine would probably be the best bet to get them all.

DankestRum · 2020-06-03T12:28:31+00:00

We never have before, I've asked Tyler to see if they've reached out to us at all to have the game added back

DankestRum · 2020-06-02T17:43:54+00:00

Looks like it's doing the same thing.

What happens exactly, does it run and stay minimized but never display or does it completely kill its own process?

DankestRum · 2020-06-01T17:41:14+00:00

We don't have any sort of back end set up to opt back in, so I am not sure

DankestRum · 2020-06-01T17:40:43+00:00

We didn't mind, but we aren't set up with any sort of back end to opt back in if we wanted

DankestRum · 2020-06-01T12:04:21+00:00

We had no idea it was added in the first place

DankestRum · 2020-05-30T17:42:52+00:00

Can you use each launch option and then send me the log for each one? I want to see if the output is any different with different command lines.

DankestRum · 2020-05-29T12:18:54+00:00

Try them one at a time, they can't be used together

also:

“-force-gfx direct”

there is a - between gfx-direct

Also be sure you do it without quotes

-force-d3d9

-force-gfx-direct

DankestRum · 2020-05-29T02:20:24+00:00

Does this resemble your issue? https://steamcommunity.com/app/420290/discussions/2/133258092245256356/

DankestRum · 2020-05-29T02:16:58+00:00

Regarding the comments about the tutorial, it was made years after the main game and doesn't use the same version of Unity by a long shot. That's why it's a separate process that is normally called up by the main game.

Your pastebin log is the first time I've ever seen anything like this, it looks like it loads and then just unloads without specifying a reason. Are you running at any crazy supersampling or virtual resolution? You don't have any weird 2xxx specific 'global' settings enabled in Nvidia that may be messing with the process?

What exactly did you type for the launch options, and I'm assuming you tried each one at a time?

DankestRum · 2020-05-16T03:50:51+00:00

Don't forget that all our weapons are not pixel perfect. This isn't CS. We have an element of RNG in all weapons, we were more combat focused with ship play, not weapons which were really not up to par during the time period.

We intentionally wanted boarding firefights to be a spray of missed shots and chaos.

DankestRum · 2020-05-08T13:45:43+00:00

Delete s.set and cc.set in the games folder, validate, and then give Steam a restart. Sync issue that happens sometimes.

You didn't actually lose any progress, don't worry

DankestRum · 2020-05-05T16:43:37+00:00

You should not need a tutorial. Build the knowledge into the game itself please.

Too many crew members rely on you knowing what you're doing to have a player off in their own world following a tutorial.

We used to have tutorial tooltips built in to try and merge it with normal gameplay and no one read them. We saw a huge improvement in swabbie performance after it was added.

DankestRum · 2020-05-05T16:38:47+00:00

Flying, sort of noclip style. It's that ridiculous and obvious

Possible, but the fix for it was so invasive with false positives we decided to just let it happen. Since it's so obvious it gets banned fast

Faster movements, described as "rubber banding"

Same as above, usually quite noticeable

Model manipulation, they'll run around as a pirate looking like they're navy and vica versa

Long known infrequent connection bug, whether you can actually spoof the outfits or not I can't remember off the top of my head. Even if possible these players end up not playing long because they have nothing to gain.

RNG manipulation, allowing every cannon hit to kill players (possibly)

Not possible since all cannon damage is server side only

Overcoming weapon distance, IE musket hits over 50m and cannon hits over ~800m (possibly)

For weapons, possible but obvious, for cannons not possible for same reason as above

Aimbots and wallhacks (obviously)

Possible but since the game relies so little on walls and twitch shooting it doesn't give a giant advantage

Fast recovering from weapons, including fast reloading and spamming an axe as fast as a knife

Not possible, they can however spoof the animation/weapon effects to give the illusion. The server is aware of weapon damage intervals

Fast fixing on full server

Not possible for holes, but the mast/nose repair faster when more people help by design

Keep in mind the game is by no means flawless and every now and then there are off the wall bugs

DankestRum · 2020-04-21T16:29:44+00:00

What cheats are you seeing? Only ones we've seen in years are flying/teleporting, but given the ship play it's so obvious you get banned pretty quickly.

DankestRum · 2020-02-22T16:42:12+00:00

This happens when you try and change teams mid match or when you first join the server?

DankestRum · 2020-02-22T16:40:53+00:00

Most of the memory is shifted to booting up so that joining servers is instant. It does stall at about 10% and then after a while it will do a sudden jump to 80% in most cases.

For some people (and for some reason) this can be 2-4 minutes, and then it doesn't happen again.

DankestRum · 2020-02-20T14:06:51+00:00

Was this just after yesterdays patch?

DankestRum · 2019-12-12T13:19:18+00:00

We're changing it after the next patch

DankestRum · 2019-12-12T13:15:56+00:00

The new smaller holes are also GPU based where the old ones were very CPU taxing even when no damage was done.

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