24.11.2016

Developer’s Diary #17

Hello, tankers!

In today’s episode, we’ll be telling you about the new updates that we implemented during the past two weeks. We’ll also be telling you about how we’re fixing the most complex issues, and a bit about upcoming updates.

Updates Overview

Over the past two weeks, we’ve released several long-awaited updates that were announced in October.

victory and defeat

Let’s start with the battle results screen. The first screen you’ll get at the end of every battle, now notifies you about the outcome of the battle, whether it’s a “Victory” or a “Defeat”. This is followed by the results screen.

The third screen will display the rank and mastery progression, for both your turret and hull. You no longer need to visit your garage in between battles to check your remaining progress to the next rank or mastery level.

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We’ve also added a “Play” button to the home menu, which was designed to save you time when searching for battles by picking the most appropriate battle for you.

The daily quests were introduced last week. Two of them reset daily and require you to destroy a certain number of tanks. The third one is harder. You will need to complete this mission every day for seven consecutive days. Completing this chain will reward you with X Crystals.

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The difficulty of the daily quests depends on your rank… and the higher your rank, the better the reward.

Earlier this week, we implemented the crosshair, which we believe will greatly increase firing accuracy.

A diamond shaped crosshair will appear on any enemy tank that enters your turret’s firing sight. The mechanic is different for each turret.

  • When using Smoky, Vulcan, Thunder, Railgun, and Shaft in Arcade mode, the crosshair will focus on the target closest to you. Shaft’s aiming mode hasn’t changed.
  • Isida, Twins, and Ricochet have a limited firing range. If the target moves outside the turret’s range, the crosshair disappears. Additionally, when aiming at friendly targets with Isida, the crosshair turns green.

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The crosshair on Thunder is a bit smarter. It will mark every target affected by its area of effect damage. The crosshairs for Freeze and Firebird are scheduled to be added in later updates.

You can always disable this function in the game settings menu, and go back to the original aiming method.

We are continuously working on the development of skins. In the past few updates, we’ve added steel skins for Thunder and Isida, as well as the second tier of skins for Viking. XT hulls got new sound effects.

Very soon, we will be releasing the next Closed Beta Quest reward.

In mid-November, we conducted a survey in which we asked our Closed Beta Quest participants to choose the skin they want to receive as a reward. The majority voted for the Golden Hornet Beta skin… therefore it will be added to their garages for free. Its analog, with the carbon elements, will become available for purchase for X Crystals.

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Our developers will continue working on the next reward — the Railgun shell.

Infinite Battle Time

Our Tanki X programmers are always working on developing the game, as well as fixing bugs. Just recently, our players faced two very unpleasant issues. One of the old bugs that makes battle time infinite, is back. What happens is that the timer gets stuck at 15 minutes, locking the players in battle without giving them the possibility to claim their hard-earned battle fund.

The bug has now been fixed, but our programmers and analysts are continuously monitoring its state.

The second annoying issue is the imbalance in player distribution in team battles. We’re still trying to work out a solution for this. As soon as we do, we will let you know. 

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The Hackathon

As part of an experiment in AlternativaPlatform, last week we organized an event called Hackathon.

Hackathon (which is a combination of the words Hack and Marathon) is a marathon among developers, aimed at rapid task development within the project. It doesn’t really have anything to do with Hacking in the conventional sense.

Such events are held in a variety of industries and are aimed at solving different tasks, but they have one thing in common: a 48 hour marathon of rampant development.

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For the Hackathon event, the Tanki Online and Tanki X teams split into several smaller teams, in order to develop a new game feature in a short amount of time. Programmers, artists, and game designers spent days and nights in the office, making sure to finish their task in the allotted time.

For the final presentation, each team showcased their feature with arguments and comments on why their feature is important and what benefits will it bring to the project.

One of the coolest things about the Hackathon is that you can see and test the functional product behind the idea, see it in action, and evaluate its potential. Besides that, the time is very limited. This forces the teams to decide on developing the idea or feature that they think will be the most useful. 

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Unfortunately, we can not disclose any of the ideas and features developed during the Hackathon, as they are only prototypes waiting to be approved for future development.

That’s it for today. Thanks for watching! Like our video and subscribe to our channel.

See you next time!

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