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Hi folks,

We’ve got a Madballs PC/Steam update for you today…  here’s a quick summary:

New features

• New Maps! We’ve got 3 new maps for you - Cold Night, Castle and Hyperspace.  But they’re not free - you’ve got to earn them!
• Community Missions! Play any MiBI online/multiplayer mode and rack up kills in order to unlock the 3 new maps.  Everyone out there in Babo-land will be contributing to a shared pool of kills - so invite your friends and see how fast you can get your hands on these fresh new maps.  Any versus or co-op / survival game counts!
• News feed! We’ve added a news feed so that you can stay up-to-date with the latest and greatest in Babo/Playbrains news!  The feed is even clickable so that you can get more details (note - it uses the Steam web browser)
• Animate your Babo! Hit the [F5] key to play a facial animation and [F6] to make your Babo wobble.  Mock your foes!  Chat with your team members!  [And cool for creating custom Babo movies - think Red vs. Blue!]
• Movie spectator cam! We’ve added a new console command that allow you to freely move the camera - should be great for folks entering the eBum Madballs Video Contest!  Details at the end of the post…
• Better mission time tracking! Our system is now more generous in awarding mission time for the collectible skin missions…

New Maps

Coldnight (10,000 kills) - Scorched commandos surprise a BDI patrol surveying the icy caves near a Terracite production facility. Before the BDI can escape and warn their allies, both groups are blocked in by a sudden avalanche. Will the BDI team survive until rescue arrives?

Castle (25,000 kills) - The BDI detect an unusual power signature hidden below an ancient fortress. As they complete the excavation of a tall central platform in the middle of these grounds, they chillingly realize this was once a sacrificial altar. Suddenly, the Scorched swoop in and attack! Goop will once again be spilled on these ancient rocks and it will seep down and awaken the deadly evil locked below!

Hyperspace (50,000 kills) - A deserted alien vessel enters BDI space and a science team is sent to investigate. Unbeknownst to them, the Scorched have already boarded the vessel and are decoding the ancient knowledge incribed within it’s huge databanks. When the BDI arrive, the Scorched are ready and waiting to devour the confused team.

Movie Spectator Cam

To turn on the camera:

• Open the console (with the tilde ~) key and type
• set cl_enableSpectatorCam true

You will be unable to control your camera while in spectator cam mode.

To go back to the regular camera:

• set cl_enableSpectatorCam false

That’s all folks - hope you like the update!

Paul.

Sorry folks - we had a hard-drive failure and have lost a bunch of our blog entries.  We’re going to see what we can do to retrieve / recover / replace the missing entries…

New Christmas skins, plus a sale!

We at Playbrains would like to wish everyone the happiest of holidays!  We hope that you all use this time to rest, spend time with family, and catch up on a game or two — we know we will!

And for those of you who’ll be spending some time playing Madballs on PC/Steam, we’ve got 4 new Christmas-themed skins for you to enjoy.  You can play multiplayer to earn them for free, or if you don’t have the time, just pick them up in the store — we’ve made them available early in our Christmas Carnage Pack.  [And for our fans on XBLA, we're currently working on your next update - stay tuned in the new year.]

And did we mention that we’re on sale? Madballs for PC/Steam (and all of it’s DLC) are currently on sale for 50% off!  So there’s no better time to pick up the game, or give it as a gift to friends!  Buy the game here!

Oh, and don’t forget to pick up Stocking Stuffer for your iPhone - we developed it for our friends at Bytemark games. Now free for a limited time!

Thanks folks - and Happy Holidays!  See you all in the new year!

Paul.

Hi folks,

We’ve got another update of the PC/Steam version of the game - and this one is a doozy…

We’ve had a lot of fun working with Valve to bring MiBI to Steam, and players have really embraced the crazy, hyper-kinetic fun of our game. But ever since our release, there’s been a common feature request from the community (besides the request for dedicated servers, which we delivered a few weeks ago).

Folks wanted another game mode - a mode where we just throw waves and waves of enemies at them, and players do their best to work together (co-op) and survive the onslaught.

Well, I’m happy to announce the delivery of our first Survival Mode challenge -
Night of the Chompiis!

In this chapter of Babo history, members of the B*D*I and Scorched Militia must band together to fight off hoards of attacking Chompiis and Moltoks — including Feralon’s newest mutation, the fearsome Spider-Chompii! [oooooooh, scary ]

Anyway, it supports 4-player co-op and features 20 wavies of enemies (old + new) to fend off. Can you survive?

[And once again folks, this is a new PC/Steam feature - but we fully plan to roll up the new game features into an update for our XBLA players... The good news is that the economic models of Steam development allow us to increment and polish the game a lot faster (with lots of player feedback) -- the bad news is that it means you XBLA players have to wait a bit longer for us to polish everything and then roll it all up - but we definitely plan to do so...]

And of course, there’s more than just Survival Mode to the release - check out the rest of the goodies below.

—

MiBI PC/Steam Nov 3 ‘09 Release

Feature updates in this release:

• Night of the Chompiis !!! - the first map of our new 4-player Co-op Survival mode, is now available! And includes a new Chompii mutation – the Spider-Chompii (or Spidii! )

• Weekly Missions – the weekly mission system is now in place – new missions (to unlock character skins) each week! This week’s skin – Obsidian Magmor! Note - check the status of your missions / collected skins via the new Collectibles section in the Unlocks screen.

• Dedicated Server enhancements – you can now see and participate in chat from the Dedicated Server console (useful for debugging, or letting folks that you’re going to do server maintenance, etc.). We’ve also updated our Server Guide doc.

Other fixes/updates in this release:

• Hallowe’en skin fixes! D’oh - we fixed a defect that caused folks to lose their hard-earned Hallowe’en skins – to compensate we’ve extended the Hallowe’en promotion (until Nov 12^th) with minimal mission times (5 minutes / 15 minutes)
• Weapons tuning – we’ve tuned up the Slicer a bit (faster traverse) and Striker weapons (especially Harpoon mode – faster re-fire, less kickback, more lethal damage) to make them more competitive in combat – give ‘em a try. The Riffer incendiary nail got a bit more fire aftertouch as well. We’ll do more updates on these in the next week…
  
• Smaller updates! We’ve re-packaged things so that on average you’ll have a lot less to download each time we update the game (which is important, ‘cause we keep adding new features! J )
• Achievement checks! MiBI now does extra checks to ensure that it keeps your Steam achievements and MiBI unlocks in sync with each other
• Special unlocks – info on the Slicer and Striker weapon unlocks have been added to the new Special unlocks section
• Voice chat controls – we fixed a defect where voicechat could get unmapped from the keyboard and/or 360 controller… (especially troublesome since there was no way of adding it *back* to the 360 controller). You need to hit [Defaults] on the Controller config menu (just this once) if this issue has already affected you though…
  
• No more duplicate servers – we are no longer showing servers twice if they’re located on your local LAN

—

Anyway, we appreciate y’all buying and playing our game - and keep bringing your friends over too! See you online!

Paul.

Hi folks,

We just got word from our friends at Microsoft, and it looks like our next set of DLC is being readied for their servers… This means that it’s likely to go live in the next day or two — which means that I can finally tell you about it!

So, what’s coming? First of all, we’ve got a snazzy premium theme (240 points). We’re pretty happy with it - it features a bunch of our characters in different settings - and overall the aesthetic is bright and happy (we find a lot of the themes on the 360 are pretty dark and serious - I mean, Marcus/Dom/Master Chief - smile! Lighten up! ).

After that, we’ve got two (not one, but two!) sets of Gamerpics. Show your Madballs pride by displaying your favorite in your Gamercard! Each pack has 12+ gamerpics in it (both B*D*I and Scorched teams) - but the aesthetic of the two packs are different. One pack features rendered images, while the other features illustrations of our characters. Pick you favorite - or get both!

Illustrated Gamerpics (80 points)

Rendered Gamerpics (80 points)

And finally, the DLC you’ve been waiting for — new weapons! The Scorched and B*D*I R&D folks have been working hard — and each faction is rolling out a new weapon to use on the battlefield.

The new B*D*I entry is the high-tech Slicer - it’s primary mode shoots heat-based Land Saw’s that roll along the ground, and up walls, over practically anything - they’re unstoppable! And it’s secondary mode, Ice Rupter shoots torpedo’s into the ground that erupt skyward in a huge explosion when you tap the fire button a second time. Perfect for killing burrowing Pett’s, and Colossal Magmor’s!

The Scorched have been busy too though. The Striker is a vicious weapon - it’s primary mode shoots deadly Harpoons that spear enemies - but the big deal is the Energy Strike mode, that switches to a top-down view for aiming and calls down a satellite-based energy strike upon your unsuspecting victim. You old-time BV2 players will recognize the Striker as our take on the BV2 Sniper Rifle (you didn’t think we’d forgotten it, did you? ).

Note that these weapons are intended for Arena combat only — athough you could select them at the start of a campaign, they’re aren’t any weapon drops with them in the campaign.

The weapons pack is 240 points.

Hope you guys like the new stuff! And see you online!

Paul.

[Note from Paul - Microsoft has confirmed that the tuning update should go live first thing Saturday (Sept 12th) morning...]

Hi all, my name is John, and I am the Senior Designer on Madballs in… Babo:Invasion. We are going live with our first weapon and character tuning update and my boss Paul asked me to put together a list of changes players will experience in this update for Madballs.

About Tuning Updates…

When we were making the game, we wanted to ensure a long life for the multiplayer community. We devised our tuning system, (known internally as a TMS Update), which is a special feature not seen in other XBox games.

It allows us to update the attributes of characters, special abilities and weapons without going through a lengthy and expensive recertification process.

This lets us act on community feedback and keep refreshing the gameplay over the life of the product. Indirectly, it also allowed us to make a game with deeper gameplay, since there is confidence that balance issues can be adressed quickly and easily.

We look forward to your feedback and adjusting the flavor of the game over time to keep things interesting!

Overview for Tuning Update #1

The theme for this tuning update sees substantial improvements for 2 BDI characters, power upgrades for 7 weapons, and Invasion mode upgrades for base durability and both deployable types.

Here’s the breakdown:

Characters:

• Robo (BDI Heavy) gets a health boost and improved radius for his Mass Disarm ability making him a much better tank character than before.
• Boba (BDI Flyer) is now slightly less vulnerable to cold attacks, but due to improvements to cold damage in several weapons, he is still a situational character.
• Jenkins (BDI Support) has discovered how to build a bigger healing bubble and a more powerful nuke making his role easier to fulfill.
• Magmor (Scorched Heavy) Rockshield mode now resists 3/4 of all incoming damage (was 4/5ths), and temporarily removes his vulnerability to cold.
• Asceu (Scorched Support) is now slightly less vulnerable to fire damage.
• Daemonak (Scorched Flyer) is slightly larger in stature, but a bit less resistant to impact damage types. He remains king of the skies with his double jump and glide abilities.

Weapons:

• BDI Shotty now does more damage and knockback and has improved range in both modes. Watch out for the kickback though!
• BDI Lobber Ice mode can now fire faster, and heat mode does more splash damage.
• Players using Scorched Ruptor’s ninja stars deal more damage and players can now see farther ahead while fliging them, making it easier to supress enemies at extreme range.
• Scorched Incindiary Rocket mode can see farther, travels faster and does more splash damage.
• The Scorched Stormer energy mode (mobile minigun), shoots farther.
• The Scorched Flamer does more instant damage but the sustained napalm effect does not last as long.
• Some of the damage of the Scorched Heat Riffer mode was transferred over to the Cold mode of the same gun, bringing this weapon closer in character to the BDI Beamer.

Invasion game mode:

• Invasion bases have 50% increased health which should increase match times and allow more back and forth.
• Invasion base turrets and rocket turrets now deal piercing damage to all enemy characters regardless of the character’s natural resistance.
• Rocket turrets shoot farther and their rockets do more splash damage, and this deploy now self-repairs faster.
• Healing towers now have additional hitpoints, making them tougher to destroy. Each healing tower deployed also increases allies max health by 10 (on next respawn)

Conclusions:

BDI gets some big upgrades in this update, especially the Shotgun, which is bound to become a staple item for faster characters. Both faction’s Support characters are better, but in different ways. Scorched players have more long range options to counter the Beamer and Dual Machine Gun. And the Invasion equipment changes will change combat quite a bit as well.

Look forward to seeing you online, and hearing your wishlist for the next Tuning update.

Hi folks,

I’m pleased to announce that the beta of the PC/Steam version of Madballs in…Babo:Invasion is now live! Some of you are already have keys - others will be sent keys later today - and finally we’ll be giving away beta keys on our twitter feed - so be sure to sign up - www.twitter.com/playbrains.

Now - the build isn’t perfect yet (hence “beta!”) - but we’re getting very close. What we’re most interested in is getting information about how well the game runs on your machine. For obvious reasons, we’d like MiBI to run well on as many machines as possible. And as the BV2 folks know, running well means a silky-smooth 60 fps in multiplayer!

For those who’ve played the XBLA version, here are some of the details/changes you’ll see in the Steam version:

• Steam support: Of course, we’ve added full support for Steam, including:
  • Steam Cloud support: stores your saved games and unlocks on Steam itself - which is great if you sometimes play MiBI from work (which we know you would never do )
  • Achievements: we know a lot of you are addicted to Steam’s achievements - we’ve got your fix
  • Matchmaking & Invites: multiplayer is a huge part of our game - the Steam platform is perfect for us
  • Leaderboards: We’ve got a full slew of single-player, co-op and versus mode leaderboards for you to compete on
• Keyboard + mouse support: Of course, the game on PC/Steam supports full keyboard & mouse, in both our chase cam and top-down (i.e. BV2 classic) gameplay views. And you can rebind your keyboard+mouse controls, of course. And for those who prefer to sit back with a controller even while on a PC, we still support the Xbox 360 controller - so you’re covered.
• Base Attack: We’ve added a new versus multi-player mode called “Base Attack”. This takes the tactical combat gameplay from our Invasion mode, and it applies it to 12 of our crafted maps. It’s a super-fun part of Invasion mode, and you’ll find that it feels totally different when you apply it to maps and environments that you can learn and develop strategies and tactics for over time! [Contrasting Invasion Mode, where it's a new map every time]
• Improved campaign: We’ve heard your feedback, and have adjusted our game rules so that you no longer have a finite set of lives. This means that when you die, you always re-spawn at the previous checkpoint, no longer how many times you’ve died before. So no more having to re-do the entire level if you lose your last life near the end! This change carries over to level attack and co-op modes as well.
• Co-op improvements: We’ve made a slew of improvements to co-op mode, based on feedback from co-op players and the good folks at Co-optimus. These changes include:?
  • You can now start our co-op Enduro mode from *any* unlocked level (instead of always starting at First Contact)
  • You can now collect secrets while playing our co-op modes
  • Finally, we’ve added a buddy locator - which will help you find your friends when you get lost in a level (or rather, when *they* get lost )
• Versus improvements: We’ve also applied a lot of little tweaks and improvements to our versus modes - tweaks that make the game fairer (synchronized spawn times), discourage cheating (kicking has been removed), and keep the gameplay moving (if you pick-up a different weapon during play, you’ll still have that weapon the next time you spawn).
• Text chat: Of course, we’ve added text chat to our lobbies and in-game experience. And you can customize 10 quick-chat messages too.
• Tuning: A bunch of tuning changes have been applied since the last XBLA build. Once we’re happy with the tuning on the PC we’ll be applying an update to our XBLA folks as well.

Now of course, this wouldn’t be a beta without a few gotchas — here’s the major stuff that we’re aware of:

• Some sounds are getting clipped during playback - we believe it’s because we recently changed our sound file formats for the PC - anyway, we’re working on it, and should have it resolved shortly
• Voicechat isn’t ready for prime-time yet - we seem to be having challenges with the Steam Voicechat APIs - we’ve turned off voicechat for now, and are working the problem
• We’ve had intermittent reports of mis-behaving force shields in boot camp and campaign modes — once again, we’re looking into it…
• There are probably a few menus left here and there that don’t fully support the mouse - try the arrow keys, [Enter] and [Esc] when in doubt

Anyway, for those of you lucky enough to receive beta keys, here’s how you get everything set up:

• Go to www.steamgames.com - create and id and download the steam client (if you haven’t already done so)
• Launch the Steam client, go to the My Games tab, and then click on the [Activate a product on Steam...] button. Follow the instructions and enter the beta key when you’re prompted for a Product Code. Madballs in Babo:Invasion (beta) will be added to your games list
• To install and play MiBI, just double-click on it. Have fun!

We’ll be handling technical support and feedback for the PC/Steam beta from our Playbrains forums (in the MiBI | Technical Support section). You’ll see the beta thread near the top.

Have fun folks - and if you don’t have a key yet (and would like one), sign up for our twitter feed! (www.twitter.com/playbrains).

See you in the arenas,

Paul.

Hi folks,

Sure - we’ve got a cult hit on XBLA now, but do we stop there? No sirree!

We’ve just confirmed the date of the PC/Steam release of Madballs in…Babo:Invasion. The official press release will go out in the next few days — but just between you and me, Madballs will be released on PC/Steam on Sept 17th, 2009!

And to celebrate, we’re releasing a free MiBI Screen Saver for your PC ! You’ll find it at the bottom of the More Stuff page on our website. Note: There are two versions of the screensaver - one for 4:3 displays (the 1280 x 1024 version) and one for 16:9 widescreen displays (the 1280 x 720 version).

Uh-oh...

To install the screensaver:

1. Download the appropriate screen saver for your display type (they’re both the same - but there might be a white border outside of the pinstripe border on your machine if you choose the wrong one)
2. Unzip the contents of the .zip file to a temporary directly (if you use a zip viewer, you *can* just launch the enclosed .exe directly - it’s a setup program)
3. Run the MiBI_Screensaver executable to install the screen saver — just follow the instructions. The install automatically makes Madballs your active screensaver.

To preview it:

1. Right-click on your desktop, and select Properties.
2. Select the Screen Saver tab, and then press [Preview].
3. Enjoy! [Note - the preview cancels if you move the mouse].

Note - If you ever need to un-install the screen saver (sniff!), you can go to Control Panels | Add or Remove Programs, choose MiBI_ScreenSaver and then click [Remove].

Hope you like the screen saver folks - and we hope to see you playing Madballs on your PC on Sept 17th!

Paul.