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Battle Stations now on Friendster

Battle Stations is now available on Friendster as well!

:)

http://widgets.friendster.com/battlestations?src=add&instance_id=1

New Hangar/Ship Interface

More aesthetically pleasing interface for managing your equipment.

Also allows saving "builds" for easy swapping of entire equipment sets.

:)

Ocho Cash Shop

Our Ocho cash shop is now available for Battle Stations players in Facebook.

Check out the items on sale:


Demon Battleship



Outfits


Hats


More here: LINK

I got banned from Facebook....

This morning I got an email from Facebook:

"You made one or more wall posts that violated our Terms of Use. Among other things, posts that are hateful, threatening, or obscene are not allowed. We also take down posts that attack an individual or group, or advertise a product or service. Continued misuse of Facebook's features could result in your account being disabled."

What the *bleep*?! The only wall posts I made within the last month were:
- review of the movie “Wanted” which I posted on the wall of the Singapore group and mySingapore app
- a message on the Battle Stations wall asking players not to post their problems there because we don’t check the wall regularly

Possibly I was removed for “advertising a product” so better not post movie reviews.

I have NEVER made an obscene, profane, hateful, attacks an individual or group wall post (forum posts during the Chaos days yes, but wall posts never).

There wasn’t any warning or a pink box of death or anything. I just got removed.

I'm not going to create a new account because I don't believe in creating multiple fake accounts (not to mention all the photos and apps that I’ve added, I don’t want to have to start again from scratch).

I've sent an email to disabled@facebook.com and started working on a Facebook clone which I’ll call “Freedombook".

BS new title screen

Made a new title screen for the about page in Facebook since we've already swapped to the new character graphics for the live servers.



Also made this new screen for the character creation showing all the base classes. Hope that'll entice new players to endure the not-so-friendly interface long enough to learn the game.

New York, New York

I was away from BS most of last week trying to clear work before by my trip. After almost 24 hours in the air and transit (managed to practice some 日本語 on the flight since I flew ANA), I'm in NY. I'm stay just a few blocks away from the bull. Would be really convenient to get posted here considering you can stay a block away from the financial district.



I had a discussion with friend who is a marketing consultant (the kind offers practical advice doesn't just spew crap about 4Ps). She commented that it's rather impractical to allocate resources to provide the close communication with the players as our user base grows (much less hire a communications director for 4000 USD /month to do PR for a free game). I'm also behind on my studies for my exam in June so I going to be on the BS forums a lot less often.

Someone will probably say I used the earlier paragraph just as an excuse. I just want to piss him off by doing that which he hates so much.



Eating like this everyday could quickly turn into a health hazzard but I thought I should indulge just a bit before I go to Europe. Damn record high Euro.

Red Dragon!

Actually the new NPC is called the Crimson Drake but it'll give you an idea of the new NPCs you're likely to encounter in the new version.



Watch the replay here!

Countdown to the Full Version

TY's uploaded the demo replay that uses the new battle system and interface. The demo of the combat system isn't yet fully optimized so it might take a while to load.

Watch it here, now!

Here's screen shots, basically the same thing you'll see in the demo:




I'll put Reuben's combat music in as soon as we're done with optimizing and fixing up the rest of the skills.

New character selection screen (still needs some work):


I estimate we're about 3 weeks from the full version. Would have been earlier but some of us have to go for reservist.

PvE for BS + why we trashed the ship system

So there I was playing Tabula Rasa defending the the Arieki Landing Zone control point and thinking: "You need a bunch of tier 3 players to defend this place properly it keeps getting overrun and I can't do my quests properly if it keeps getting taken over."



I also thought: "Hey we should have something like this in Battle Stations where players can defend and assault a control point. It's like the clan wars but it's PvE and you can do it frequently instead of waiting for the clan fort to rez."




So basically we can set up control points between certain ports. The Imperial City is at war with Al Amraan so it's not unexpected that there'll be a blockade of sorts. If you travel between these cities while the blockade is up you'll encounter NPCs which will attack you. If you survive you can still get past the blockade.

There'll be a fixed number of NPC ships in the blockade (maybe a mobile fortress as well) and if players manage to sink all the NPCs the blockade will be removed (for a while) and players can travel between the cities freely once again.

Why we trashed the old ship system

There are gameplay reasons (trying to remove the huge power difference at level multiples of 5 and 10). Another reason we got rid of the old ship system because this is how we want to render our ships from now on:



... and we can't make 50+ of these ship designs which is why we have the new ship system to make all ships last longer. I've yet to assign this design to a particular ship (yes this what it'll look like in the game).

Battle Stations full version MEGA update

Here's a super progress update on our work for the full version. I've been holding back for a few weeks but I think since we're quite close to launching this it's about time for an update. Below are some of the screen mock-ups for our full version due out in a few weeks:



These are work-in-progress screen mock ups so we'll be replacing the icons with our own and making a few more changes before the final version goes live. We hope the new interface will make navigating the game easier for players as well as streamline our database calls.



We're still committed to our mission of making Battle Stations the best MMOG app on Facebook and we'll be really rushing things along in the next few weeks to get all of this live ASAP.



New system updates
Some other changes in the full version besides aesthetics:

- New calculations for craft, gunnery, navigation bonuses
- New ship system (completely new, simpler than the one in the trial server)
- New combat system with skills
- New Tavern system where you can buy food and drinks <- used to power skills
- Class skills (Grappling hook, gold cannon, etc)
- Weapons rebalanced and with added effects (slowdown %, flaming, etc)

Not all the new character outfits and background images will be ready by the time we launch so we'll add those in progressively.

New ad network - ValueClick!
You might also have noticed the new banner ads displayed at the top of each page. I'm please to announce that Battle Stations is the first Facebook app in the WORLD to be added to the ValueClick, Inc. network (NASDAQ: VCLK), which is one of the world's largest integrated online marketing companies.

We'll need a few days to filter out the campaigns we want. I assure you that even though we need ads to support our continued development of Battle Stations and other games, we will try our best to ensure a enjoyable gaming experience. I'll be getting rid of the smiley and glittery ads.

For an added bonus here's the Aeros background. The city isn't colored yet so it's just a line art overlay for now.

Chill Pill

Got this from the S.S.U. group page a long time ago. You guys need to chill because
a) it's a game
b) we're fixing it

New melee weapon - Chainsaw Blade

Here's a preview shot of the new "unique" melee weapon. It's a "unique" weapon which means it's even rarer than the regular rare weapons. The ship mounted chainsaw blade was inspired by one of the ship designs from the Last Exile.



Thanks to Adrian for helping out with the demo.

We'll need to make some updates to the combat client to not display the drill image when attacking and allow the melee weapon to be shown on the outside all the time.

Battle Stations Tavern

The label on the bottle is available to advertisers who want to advertise in our taverns. :-P

New Interface Design, Corxas Port Screen

Here's a sample of the new interface designs that'll be in the full version. Just to show we're working on it. :-P

Textured Avenger MKII *draft*

The red bits are definitely too intense so I'll probably want to get those recolored.