Hello all,
The first stage of winter celebrations is now upon us! To get ready for the holidays, we have added 3 new maps for PVP and Mob-Arena, a new holiday spawn, as well as a returning holiday playlist!
In addition, many improvements and bug fixes have been made to fire support such as the Mortar Strike and Drone Strike to improve their balance and consistency.
NEW LIMITED TIME MAP: SNOWHOUSE
Snowhouse is a holidays version of the Shoot House map built by James_4007. With a festive design and a new Christmas tree in its center, Snowhouse looks and plays different while retaining the same iconic layout as the original map! It is available for a limited time in the TDM, King of the Hill, and Mine-Spades.
NEW MOB-ARENA & PVP MAP: AVALANCHE
Avalanche is an expansive Mob-Arena map by James_4007 set in an expansive snowy mountain range. It is a medium-difficulty map that provides a new challenge through unique mobs and bosses themed around the elements. It also has a secret area used for the final boss fight on Expert difficulty!
The Mob-Arena map will always be available, but a PVP version of the map is also available for a limited time in the TDM and Arms Race mode.
NEW PVP MAP: STEIN
Stein is a new map by MontanaMob set in a brick ruins. It features an asymmetric layout with a variety of combat ranges. It is available on the Team Deathmatch mode.
AIRSTRIKE IMPROVEMENTS
In this update, we have rebalanced and improved two airstrike call-in options in GunColony.
- Mortar Strike: now fires 3 barrages of 5 mortars each, rather than continuously firing 15 mortar shells. Shells within each barrage are 0.3 seconds apart, and there is a 6 seconds delay between the start of each barrage.
- This change is intended to add a time window to run across the Mortar Barrage’s target area between the barrages.
- Drone Strike: Molotovs now fall straight down rather than having the same horizontal velocity as the drones. However, there is a greater delay before Molotovs are launched by drones.
- Although less realistic, this makes the drone strike much more consistent and less likely to result in Molotovs spawning inside walls and detonating immediately.
MOB-ARENA CHANGES
- Added a feature where waves can be excluded from the Endless Mode
- This is used for the final Expert Mode boss in Avalanche
PLAYLIST CHANGES
- Enabled the winter PVP playlist, containing three existing maps: SantaWorkshop, Christmas Inferno, and Christmas Summit, as well as the two new winter maps added in this update
- Enabled winter COMP maps including Christmas Inferno and Christmas Summit
- Increased the max players where the Subway TDM map will appear
- Removed the Cinder FFA map playlist since it is shaped more like a TDM map
NEW WINTER SPAWN
In this update, we have added a new festive winter spawn to GunColony to celebrate the holidays!
OTHER CHANGES
- Edited the 7N1 Sniper ammo description to remove the reference to a defunct WWII game, but don’t worry as there is another reference in the Blizzard map
DEVELOPMENT PROGRESS UPDATE
As planned in the last major update, the data system in the Place engine has been overhauled with a different backend due to issues with our previous backend. The engine is now able to reliably load and save player data.
Using a custom locking protocol, the Place engine can achieve in-memory reading and editing of player data while ensuring data integrity across multiple servers. The result is the ability to manipulate data with far higher performance than the typical game or app.
The next step will be to switch GunColony’s live player data to the Place engine, which includes both developing the feature as well as a migration of all existing player data.
BUG FIXES
- Fixed a bug where you could not vote for Mob-Arena normal mode due to the click events being assigned to the wrong button
- Fixed a bug where the .357 SIG Special Heavy Ammo had 0.25x range multiplier rather than the intended 1.25x
- Reapplied the Duplex Ammo velocity bug fix since it seems to have not gone through in the previous updates
- Fixed a bug where being killed by the Mortar Barrage or Cluster Strike showed “Impact Grenade” in the killfeed
- Fixed a bug where drones from the Recon Drone and Drone Strike were flying backwards
- Fixed a bug where when there is a difficulty voting delay, the number of seconds before you can vote again is shown as 60 seconds longer than what it actually is
- All Mob-Arena difficulty votes will now be reset a few seconds after the last player quits the lobby. This prevents lingering votes from affecting the difficulty if the map starts later, which was unintentional
