January Road Map

Russ Bullock escreveu:It's already time for another reflective glance on an entire year of MWO development. However as the entire team and I continue to soak up the last few days of our Christmas break I don't think I will have time to do it full justice. However in order to get a good grasp of everything that has happened in the last two years you can view the recent video shown at the launch party reflecting on the past two years. One thing is certain and that is that 2015 was our most productive year to date and it's going to be tough to beat it, but were going to try.

I am going to put up the January Road map in fairly rough form to make sure you have it tonight as promised, and I will have Alex come along make it a lot more pretty and add some links over the coming few days.


Here is the road map for January 2016:

Take note that January will have a single patch on Tuesday January 19th.

· New Classic/Unseen ‘Mech: Warhammer - I can't express how much this means to me personally. This was the original mech that introduced me to the franchise and the battlemech I would choose in the very first pen and paper experiences. We have taken the extra time to react to some player feedback on the positioning of the arms and cockpit placement and size. We will take extra care in the coming days to make sure the quirks pass is as solid as possible out the gate and speaking to its legacy of weapons.

· New Public Queue map: Polar Highlands - We are introducing a brand new map to MWO and a very big one at that. Originally we set out to do a modernization pass on Alpine Peaks but during that design process we came to the conclusion that it was easier and would produce better results if we just started from scratch with a brand new design. So this is not a "New Alpine Peaks" but a brand new map. It takes more of an old school twist in being more of an even elevation throughout with some shallow trenches and larger rocks for cover. We are hopeful that this will introduce an interesting and all new style of game play to MWO. At this point I believe the plan is to still remove Alpine Peaks from rotation, I know some players enjoy it but in general it was just such an unfair map.

· Pilot Name Change via Website Interface - The long awaited feature. This one snuck up on me as well and I do not have any extra details at this time but will look to flesh out this information over the coming week.

· Directional Arrow improvements (new look, displays on top of terrain geometry and texture as a decal)

· Hit box revisions for Hunchback IIC - A little more of the ST above and around the arm shoulder has been shifted to arm hit box for minor improvements to armor tanking.

· New laser visuals and range - For the reason of general improvement and for better visual feedback to the players we have changed lasers so that there beam gets thinner and ends at the point where they no longer will apply damage. This means you will no longer have lasers look as though they are hitting and doing damage when in fact they are out of range. There has also been minor changes to the range number and coloring on the weapon load outs to better display when the weapon is doing full, partial or zero damage. There is also a hope that these changes will result in at least minor FPS gains with ray traces not going out as far as frequently.

· Breakable trees and roots in Viridian Bog – Due to the extra effort of our level artist we have made an initial round of improvements to Viridian Bog. These should be considered a first phase as we continue to improve the levels collision and play-ability.

· Breakable trees and roots in Emerald Taiga - Being the CW map with the highest amount of trees we have made the initial effort to make the trees and roots breakable.

That is the list as it stands now for the January patch, I look forward to releasing this content in January and working towards the Patch in February.