- Update 49 (Version 1.2) - 3 March 2019
This update features some pretty drastic improvements to the Customize Character menu, some AI improvements, a return of the “classic” version of the Temple map (that some long-time ZGA players may remember as being one of the three maps included at the Early Access launch) and also some contributions from Ex3m (Max Graw) in the form of some improvements to CTS_One and some cleaning out of old, unused assets which has yielded a surprising reduction in the game's storage usage. For those unaware, the weekly game sessions that were popular during Early Access have now resumed on Sundays at 19:00(GMT). Everyone is welcome and one will be taking place today so do please feel free to join and try out the new features. -Jon MAPS: The old version of Temple has appeared in the community made map section. CTS_One now has a rounded floor transition between the sections at 90 degrees. Various mino…
- Zero G Arena now available on Linux - 23 December 2018
Linux support is finally here! There might still be a few hitches still on some setups, but at this point I think it should work as well as the Windows build for the majority of users. If you run into any non-trivial problems on your system, just make a post in the bug-reports forum ( https://steamcommunity.com/app/467820/discussions/2/ ) I've been wanting to add Linux support for well over 2 years now. The problem last time I tried (before the early access launch) was that different distros had completely different and sometimes quite serious issues. Recent testing of the Linux build has only encountered minor or very intermittent issues, all of which seem to be specific to certain systems. Most users, including myself with my Ubuntu installation, don't find any issues specific to Linux at this point. Anyway, if you're a Linux user please do let me know how ZGA is running for you.
- Zero G Arena participating in Yogscast Jingle Jam - 8 December 2018
This is the announcement that I referred to earlier in the week. As the title suggests, Zero G Arena is participating in the Yogscast Jingle Jam. For those unaware, this is an annual fundraising event organized by The Yogscast in collaboration with Humble. This includes a special Humble Bundle, from which all revenue goes to charity. As of today, Zero G Arena has been announced as part of that bundle! You can view the bundle here: https://www.humblebundle.com/yogscast Previous Jingle Jams have proven to be hugely effective fundraising events, with last year's raising over 5 million dollars for charity. If ZGA's inclusion in the bundle helps in the fundraising effort then it's worth it on those grounds alone. Anyway, as alluded to in the previous announcement, I'm hoping this will also benefit you, as players, by helping with ZGA's playerbase problem. Firstly, the bundle can sell a maxim…
- Update 48 (Version 1.1) - 7 December 2018
Firstly, this isn't the announcement referred to in my last announcement. That's still happening Tomorrow (8th of December 2018). This is just a little update with a few fixes and improvements. Most notably, a rework of the map CTS_One which Ex3m started on before the full launch. -Jon MAPS: CTS_One has had a rework by Ex3m, including drastic visual and structural changes. The map should be faster paced now compared to the previous version, which was quite large and a bit too maze-like. TUTORIAL: Added a section to the new tutorial level explaining the various kinds of jumps (including the wall jump). It's a bit basic (just some text and things to jump over to one side of the weapon room), but better than nothing, as this was something that hadn't previously been carried over from the old tutorial, which was unfortunate as I think the various jumps are important in adding depth to the m…
- Announcement on Saturday (8th of December), stay tuned - 4 December 2018
I just wanted to make people aware that something's coming up this Saturday (the 8th) that might be of great interest to fans of Zero G Arena. I'm not allowed to give any details until then (I don't suggest speculating too much), but I think I can safely say that it's a very positive thing and I hope it will also prove to be very positive to you as players. Anyway, don't set any specific expectations, but I thoroughly encourage you to stay tuned and see what happens on Saturday. -Jon
- Zero G Arena leaves Early Access - 11 August 2018
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F25805321%2F7474bca25c49b9e48c065e1a93a409833b35ba9b.png Well, with all the launch problems, I've just realised I never actually explicitly announced that Zero G Arena has left Early Access! It didn't really happen as a single event in the end so much as a series of them: ZGA was removed from Steam when I pressed the launch button on the 8th of August, and became unplayable to Early Access owners. ZGA was put back on Steam and set to a released state, but appeared on page 949 of new releases, next to games from November 2016. I do not believe the launch visibility was working either, which I imagine was related. Finally ZGA was put in the correct place in the new releases list as though it had launched on the 9th of August (in my time-zone), although by this point it was on page 3 of new releases, so was never actually at t…
- Got a response from Valve! Issues possibly resolved - 10 August 2018
Just as I was about to don my tinfoil hat and try to work out who I'd upset at Valve, I got a response. They've acknowledged the issues so I think ZGA should now get it's proper launch (although given the number of issues so far I'll wait and see...). It's 01:50AM here in the UK now and I've been up late several days between all these issues and what I thought was going to be the original launch, so sadly I'm not going to be able to stay awake to see the launch in much longer. If it really has worked, there are probably going to be a lot of new players coming in overnight. I would have hoped to be around to offer tech support but like I say, I'm falling asleep right now. I'd like people to be aware therefore: What I found on the Early Access launch is that there are all kinds of things that can go wrong with the installation process that have got nothing to do with the game. You might h…
- Zero G Arena currently likely to fail completely due to more Steam issues - 9 August 2018
I would really appreciate if you could read this as I believe the last three and a half years of my life have just been rendered all-but wasted through no fault of my own, by a series of Steam issues which are yet to be resolved. When I tried to instigate ZGA's full launch yesterday, there was a catastrophic issue with Steam which resulted in the game vanishing from Steam rather than launching. See my last announcement for details on this. I woke up this morning to a response from Valve claiming that they'd fixed the issues. Thankfully, the issue with ZGA being erased from existence on Steam has been rectified, so existing owners can at least play it again. This alone would have had a terrible impact on the launch (something I'm yet to get an acknowledgement from Valve on). Unfortunately there have been more issues with Steam which are currently set to render ZGA a complete commercial f…
- Just tried to trigger the full launch. Problems, unfortunately - 8 August 2018
Well, at 8 minutes past 8pm (British time) I pressed the button to release ZGA from early access. Steam gave me an error and ZGA vanished from the Steam store. I've sent a message to Valve and hopefully they get back to me soon. Anyway, ZGA's community HUB also became hidden. I saw in the Steamworks settings that ZGA was now in an "unreleased" state. I tried marking it as "coming soon" in the hope that I could at least make the community HUB visible again to let people know what's happening. This did actually make the community HUB and Store page visible again (or possibly just the Store page, I'm not sure if I checked the community HUB), but it seemed to revert to being invisible again shortly afterwards, despite no further action on my part. I'm not sure if it was me trying to mark the game as "coming soon", or if the issue that'd already occurred was the cause, but it seems that peop…
- Thank you - 8 August 2018
For those unaware, this is ZGA's last couple of hours in Early Access (all going to plan ). I just wanted to thank the entire community for being great in so many ways. Firstly, without your help in testing ZGA would, without a shadow of a doubt, be a borderline-unplayable-bug-ridden monstrosity right now. It's hard to maintain any kind of realistic perspective on something that you've been working on every day for years. When putting ZGA in Early Access, I genuinely had no idea if people were going to love it, hate it or anything in between. I initially made the game free so that I could abandon the project if nobody liked it, without ripping anyone off. As it turned out, people, for the most part, loved it. So, I would also like to thank everyone who's ever told me what they think of ZGA. Without you, I literally would have stopped work on ZGA two years ago or otherwise would not have…
- Update 47 (Final Early Access Update!) - 4 August 2018
This is it! The launch is this Wednesday (08/08/2018) and unless there's a critical issue, this will be the final update in Early Access. Any remaining minor bugs will now re-branded as “quirks” or in some cases “features”. To be as sure as possible that everything's working, it would be good to get as many players as possible for the weekly game session tomorrow (which, for those who don't know, is every Sunday at 20:00 ). I'll be on the the “Official_EU_Advanced” server, and there should be at least one other server up if that's full. I'll be setting up more servers before the launch in any case. Anyway, barring any more catastrophes to fix (see the official discord for the most recent catastrophe), I'll be spending the next few days on marketing, so that hopefully you'll have plenty more people to play with post-launch, and hopefully ZGA sells enough units for me to fund future game…
- Update 46 (New community-made map!) - 27 July 2018
I'm aiming to have the game in it's final launch state by next Wednesday, which will be exactly a week before the launch. I think it's just about there, but there's time for some last minute improvements, and/or fixes if necessary. -Jon USER MADE MAPS: There's an amazing new map from DarkGuy1001, the creator of the map “Prota”. The new map is called “SelfTendedArchive” and seems to be themed around a kind of archive that's fallen into a considerable state of disrepair. I absolutely love this map, it's super inventive and it looks great too, so I think it's very fitting as what will almost certainly be the last user-made map before the launch. PERFORMANCE: I've set most of the SMG's particle effects to be hidden when Effects Quality is set to Low. I think the complexity of the particle system might have been the cause of framerate drops on very low-end PCs. This needs testing though. TUT…
- Update 45 (Fixes, new graphics option) - 25 July 2018
Exactly two weeks until launch now! Since I've started leaving the game packages to build overnight it's significantly reduced the overhead of releasing updates, hence the current assault of tiny updates. Some of the current issues are impossible to test without releasing an update, so I'll most likely be releasing small updates every day until they're fixed. Hopefully most of the remaining issues will be fixed with this update though. -Jon OPTIONS: The resolution scale text box now permits the entry of values over 100%. The slider still goes from 25 to 100 though, as setting the value over 100 will not be a common use case. This option was suggested to me by the Steam user Cheezitupp as an alternative to the anti-aliasing options which, while quite efficient, do produce some artifacts. Setting the resolution scale above the resolution of your screen will have a similar effect to anti-a…
- Update 44 (Fixes and performance) - 24 July 2018
2 Weeks and 1 day until launch now. In accordance with sod's law there seems to have been a slew of new issues lately, but I think I'm just about getting through them fast enough. The pressure's really on now. Thanks very much to everyone who's continued to make bug reports and do please let me know if you find any new bugs. -Jon ACHIVEMENTS: Since it hardly features in any maps now, and was all-but impossible to get kills with, the homergun achievements are no more. I profoundly regret the inclusion of these achievements in the first place, which have tragically driven many achievement-hunters to insanity. I would also like to recognise the almost-implausible persistence of TheSodaCow in being the only user I'm aware of actually having got all of the homergun achievements (and, indeed, all of the achievements). Let me know in the comments if you also managed to achieve the impossible.…
- If you had modified controls before update 43, you might need to reset them - 22 July 2018
Whoops! As a side effect of the menu controls becoming rebind-able in update 43, anyone who had modified controls will probably find that the in-game menu doesn't open when they press ESC or M any more. You can either go to the edit controls menu and add a key for the menu (unfortunately, I've also realised that you won't be able to enter ESC for this, as it currently just cancels the key input), or just reset the controls to default, which is a function available in the edit controls menu. Sorry for the inconvenience! I've got just over two more weeks to pull this kind of nonsense after which I will try to avoid this kind of thing so far as possible... -Jon
- Update 43 (New tutorial) - 21 July 2018
Finally, a replacement to the old and extremely outdated tutorial. I personally feel like this is the final addition that promotes ZGA from an “early access” game into a “finished” game (although the full launch is still not for a couple of weeks or so ). Anyway, I am now planning to make very few functional changes apart from bugfixes, in order to reduce the risk of introducing new bugs before the launch. Please do continue to let me know of any bugs you find. -Jon Changes FEATURES: A brand new and improved tutorial! This is largely Max's work. It should be a better experience to the old tutorial, although it doesn't go into as much depth. It should provide new players with enough information to quickly grasp enough of the mechanics to join games and start having fun though. I would like to add “Advanced” tutorials in future, but that will most likely not be before launch. You can now…
- Update 42.5 (Hotfix) - 15 July 2018
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F25805321%2F4efbec247036e9370556a46b263a0ea9983996ae.png Well, it looks like there was a new server crash bug introduced with today's update. Luckily I think I just managed to break my personal record for fastest hotfix. In addition to fixing the crash, I also made a slight fix to the AI, as I noticed it was sometimes standing on a spawn platform and waiting for a weapon to spawn whilst ignoring other players (not good tactics, by the way).
- Update 42 (New map, AI KOTH support, new soundtrack pieces e.t.c.) - 15 July 2018
Just over 3 weeks until launch! This is really the last sprint to the finish now. Between now and then I'll most likely be focusing primarily on fixes, polishing and perhaps a bit more content such as soundtrack pieces. You can probably expect another couple of update or so before launch. Ex3m is working on some really cool new graphical improvements, and, for this update has made an entirely new official map, “Laboratory”. -Jon https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F25805321%2F50041d4bf5039faf1cca5136457e329d4fbfb4cc.png Changes Functional In team modes, automatic victory is now granted if there are no more players on the other team. Maps There is a new official map, Laboratory, made by Ex3m. The map may not be entirely finished, and does not yet support bots, but should otherwise be in a playable state. Graphics Avatar armour now has glowing sections irrespec…
- Update 41.5 (Hotfix) - 8 July 2018
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F25805321%2Ff3f0d4c0856a4de1761ffeb7007c167e3a4e46dd.png There were a few issues with the last update that I thought were serious enough warrant a hotfix, so here it is. -Jon FIXES The stationary kicking-practice-bots have found their way back to the tutorial. Why on Earth would they want to leave? The server list menu now has a sane layout again. For that matter, this is probably the sanest it's ever been. For some reason it was such an insufferable faff just getting the headings to line up with the info that I considered just claiming the bizarre text discrepancies of the update 41 menu as part of my artistic vision. I've regenerated the AI navigation data for the map Inception, as I believe it was out-of-date and causing the bots to get stuck in the round room. I think the problem with global stats not showing that I men…
- Official Discord server created - 8 July 2018
There is now an official discord server for Zero G Arena: discord.gg/SXET9j6 If you're a discord user then I encourage you to join. I'm not very familiar with discord (I've got some more experienced Discord users to help me), but I think it will be useful for organising games, discussions, perhaps in-game voice chat and I plan to use it to make announcements and perhaps organise some fun events or competitions at and in the run up to the full launch. Anyway, on a related note, I've also been using the Zero G Arena Twitter account to make more frequent announcements, and I also find Twitter quite useful for getting quick feedback from the community, so if you're a Twitter user, please do come and say hello on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Zero_G_Arena There's going to be a lot going on between now and launch (and most likely even more so after launch), so now is the perfect time to get in…
