Another week, another fresh build of Zero Gear on steam to play with! If you haven’t checked out our beta yet - you can grab a key here and start playing! Also, help show your support by joining our steam group!

1.0.1.1 Change Log

* 65 MS of lag removed
* Increased the network sync time to 30 times a second from 20
* Quick play button added to the main menu which will join the best server or start a local server if there aren’t any good servers to join
* Reverse speed increased slightly
* Soccer ball tweaked so it is easier to hit around
* Player karts colored based on their team in Goal mode
* Tag rules modified
* Spring and punch strength increased slightly
* Punchbowl tag map reduced in size and other tweaks
* Some trees removed from downhill part of Chill Mountain
* Min players now defaults to 4 instead of 0
* The score now sorts correctly in Target mode
* Significantly improved the performance of the collision detection code when there are many objects in the world
* Bandwidth usage improved now as time shift wasn’t enabled in the last build (oops)
* Going in reverse at the start of Chill Mountain will no longer cause the player to get stuck at the starting line
* The number of bots can be adjusted during play by changing the minimum number of players in the server manager GUI
* The maximum number of player will not be exceeded on a server anymore
* The player list in the server manager GUI now updates correctly when people leaving/join the server
* Pressing connect at the server browser when no server is selected no longer tries to join a local server
* Mouse sensitivity slider added to settings
* New “auto” mouse look mode added as default, the old mode can be enabled in the settings if desired
* Bots ping times in the roster GUI are now listed as “BOT” instead of the real ping time
* Players in result GUI no longer display above other GUIs in Goal and Tag mode
* Kicked players now go back to the main menu after being kicked
* Players with names longer than 32 character no longer cause the server to throw an error
* Exit removed from the key binding list in settings
* XPadder profile added to the Assets directory for the PC XBox 360 controller

4 days after our beta went live we have a new update for everyone! Here is the changes:

1.0.1.0 Change Log

* Kart physics modified, the kart is much heavier now as well as other subtle tweaks
* Air steering is now only engaged by pressing the steer direction after leaving the ground
* Some maps updated to work better with new kart physics
* Camera adjustments, closer to kart, fixed distance, crosshair added to aim mode
* Ice cube will not ice the player who dropped it behind them when it obviously shouldn’t
* Win score changed from 500 to 400 in Tag mode
* All players given springs in Target mode and bumpers removed until they are functional again
* Soccer ball/hockey puck larger and easier to hit
* Country code added to the server browser so you can see how close a server is to you
* Rank sorted correctly in the server browser now
* Setting added to enable the screen blur effect on boost as some players were reporting problems
* The game responds to input correctly after closing the settings or server GUI while in game
* The map change timer works correctly in the server settings GUI
* Map name and server name added to the player roster GUI
* Laps/Place GUI is now visible in spectator mode
* The goal GUI now tells the user which goal they need to shoot the ball/puck into
* The signal GUI will warn the user if they connect to a server with a very large ping
* Upon pressing the reset key, a GUI pops up to notify the user they will soon be reset
* GUI is now visible in Skate
* Newb loading screen key layout image simplified
* Music updated and Hyperduck accessory added (quack quack!!)
* Sound errors no longer print out to the log which seems to prevent the game from slowing down over time
* Bug in sound priority system fixed which should prevent more important sounds (music, engine noises, etc) from cutting out on some sound cards
* Fixed the “Failed to find receive data peer” bug that happened sometimes after exiting the game and starting it again quickly

Go check it out!

We are pleased to announce that the very groovy chaps over at HyperDuck music studios are producing the official soundtrack for Zero Gear. Their bouncing, pounding, surging and chirping tunes will be assisting you in your physical mischief in game. Here is a sample from their work, Zero Gear’s main menu track:

Zero Gear OST Sample

Make sure you stay tuned for a very big update tomorrow, you are not going to want to miss it if you have been following the game and yearning for a chance to play!

“A project is complete when it starts working for you, rather than you working for it.” - Scott Allen

Spending a day in Dillon Beach was a nice reward for the past 3 weeks of hard work and a couple full days of driving to San Diego and back to SF.

The game has progressed greatly the past few weeks. Caffeine is a hell of a drug. The start of last week was about getting a new build out. I worked on polishing the server browser by displaying map name and player counts as well as filtering out servers running an older version. I also smoothed out weapon spawning a bit and fixed random other bugs.

The end of last week was spent tracking down some excessive network lag related to servers with high ping and high packet loss. We found the source of the lag on Friday so I will continue efforts to fix it this week. I am also planning on fixing a bug where the windows timer loses precision when a computer is left running for too long. Timing in windows is not fun!

My tasks last week involved drinking coffee, and then drinking more coffee! Between drinking coffee, I managed to make the usual pruning, prodding and polishing efforts to the build. I also spent a good chunk of time getting some delicious music into the game, from some very cool cats that we will reveal in a future post! I have also been very busy making sure everything is in place to simultaneously open our beta sign-up, and unveil our new game trailer. I have been writing up a short little casual press release as well that I am planning to send out to lots of people in order to try and generate more interest in Zero Gear. It’s just about time for us to come out of the shadows and start pushing this awesome game we have been working on for over 2 years!!!

This week, I am hoping to be very busy mailing out press releases and managing the signups for our beta.

More usability improvements and bug fixes last week, we’re getting so close to a bigger beta release I can taste it! More subtle race bot improvements, they’re going to surprise you with when they use their items and you can now see what items people have in spectator mode. Luv bots will no longer latch onto their owners, and tweaks to the Sea Mine make it a little more dangerous! We’ve also added some more visual indications of the quality of your network connection to make it more obvious to people when they are playing on a poor server connection. The bottom corner of the screen is now home to a “signal bars” icon showing a graphical representation of your ping, and ping values in the player roster are now colored from green to red.

Last week’s SVN log:

“Time is not measured by the passing of years but by what one does, what one feels, and what one achieves.” - Jawaharlal Nehru

In the hectic switch over to the new networking layer, I missed one small detail. Every packet of data sent wasn’t being cleaned up properly. 100 bytes isn’t that much data alone but at a rate of about 30 times a second for many seconds, it adds up. Hey, at least it was caught now and not 3 weeks after release, give me some credit for that…

Another victory was finally figuring out what was causing the game to crash on about 10% of player’s computers due to a shadow setting some graphic drivers on some NVidia 6 and 7 series cards didn’t approve of. Many other bugs were fixed last week, more than I thought now that I look at the changes, nice!

This is a big week. Lots to do, little time, lots of pressure, little beef jerky left.

Last week I spent a lot of time reproducing bugs, and trying to help figure out how to fix them. I also spent a day tuning the kart physics, and by adding a point on the bottom of the karts and tweaking a few suspension values was able to pretty much eliminate an annoying tendency the karts used to have of spinning around 180 degrees on hard landings. I also conjured up some new screenshots to put on our media page, and started cataloging some possible Zero Gear achievements and icon designs.

This week I will be doing everything I can to facilitate getting another build out, and hopefully along with it - opening up the beta further.

Last week I fixed around 1,000,000 bugs in Zero Gear, give or take a few. These included dead bots, over-active bots, sounds not playing, sounds still playing, GUI bugs, weapon bugs, spawn point bugs, camera bugs and more. We massaged more things like soccer ball mass, bunny hopping, and kart physics. I also added an entirely new weapon to the game, the Spring! With this weapon you can spring forward to gain on a rival, avoid obstacles, or make a shortcut. You can also “drop” use the weapon to spring straight up (especially useful in tag when someone is barreling towards you).

Last week’s SVN log: