Developer’s Diary #13

Hey guys!

It’s been 2 weeks since the start of the Tanki X Open Beta Testing, and during this time we’ve worked hard on defining the future development of the game. Based on your feedback, we’ve already taken some important decisions, such as increasing the maximum number of players to 12 on the Iran map, and decreasing it to 12 on the Massacre map. We’ve also optimized game performance, and much more.

During these 2 weeks, we’ve also received a lot of questions from you, and today we’ll be answering the most important ones.

Let’s go!

• The OBT has started, and after that, the release of the game will follow. Will our crystals, equipment, upgrades and ranks be wiped again, or will we be keeping them throughout the release.

The wipe before the Open Beta was the last one, and we’re not planning on having another one. There’s no reason to worry — keep calm and play Tanki X.

• When are you going to introduce new payment methods?

For now, there are only a few payment methods available. These include credit cards, mobile sms in Russia, and prepaid cards in Europe. The next step is to introduce Paypal, and after that, there are plans to add eWallets such as Webmoney, Qiwi and others. Mobile sms payments for other countries are also in the pipeline. We expect to have the above methods implemented by the end of this fall.

• When are you going to introduce general chat?

The first step towards the implementation of non-battle channels, will be chat channels. Any player will be able to create a channel or a room where he or she can invite friends and discuss any topic, just as in Skype. General chat for all players is a bit trickier to implement, and we’re still looking for the best way to do that. The issue is that in Tanki X, the lobby area is common to everyone. This means that there’s only one general chat room, and since everyone would be chatting in there, the conversation would be too fast to follow.

• The game is lagging a lot. When are you planning on fixing that?

According to a recent study that we conducted among Tanki X and Tanki Online users, not everybody understands what lag is, so we’d like to explain the term properly:

Lag is a noticeable delay between the action of a tanker, and the reaction of the game server. Lags may be caused by high latency due to a player’s bad internet connection  or the performance of the game server. Is there lag in our game? Yes there is, but it doesn’t disrupt the game so much

What many players are experiencing are just low FPS or short freezes. To run Tanki X on high graphics, players will need a high spec computer. Setting the graphics to high on a low spec computer will result in a lot of freezes and fps drops, making the game almost unplayable. This is how we recommend that you solve this problem:

Go to the game settings and set the “Screen resolution” to the lowest one available. Set the graphics “Quality level” to “Minimum”, set the “Saturation level” to “Very low”, and try playing the game. If the game runs smoothly, you can try to increase the level of the above settings one by one in order to find the best compromise between good graphics and optimal performance. If the performance of the game is still suffering even after setting everything to low, you will have to wait for more upcoming graphics optimization updates. This is something that we’re constantly working on, along with server optimization.

• When are you going to get rid of cheaters?

Last monday, september 26th, we introduced an update that included a pretty substantial anti-cheat pack, closing the majority of our vulnerabilities. Many of you have probably noticed a reduced cheater activity during the past couple of days. According to our statistics, their numbers have been cut by almost 50%.

• When are we to expect the new map that you promised to introduce as a reward to the Closed Beta Quest?

Our 3D artists have done some amazing work, and the map is almost ready! It is called “West Prime” and it is based on the Barda map from Tanki Online. Geometrically, the map is identical to Barda, but it is very hard to notice this, because West Prime has a totally different artistic direction with a lot of new elements. A detailed review of the map will be available in our next episode.

And a bit about the future development plans of Tanki X. Very soon our game is going to have its own Lore. It is the history of our game. We’ll be telling you about how the war between tanks started, the different factions, and a lot more. From that point on, the game will be developed in accordance with its Lore.

That’s it for today. Subscribe to our channels and stay tuned for the next episode of our Developer’s Diary.

See you soon!