Open world top-down tactical shooter for Windows, Mac and Linux

Hey there!

RWR 0.98.8 is now out with plenty of tweaky changes as seen in the change log. Since the previous dev blog post a month ago, also minor update releases 0.98.7 and 0.98.6 happened.

While the Minimodes system created initially for Moorland Trenches in 0.98.5 didn’t quite work as well as expected, mostly due to combat ending up happening out in the open fields without any cover, we’re giving it another shot at Rattlesnake Crescent in this update. The modes themselves have gone through minor improvements such as the teddy crates being visible in map view to minimize the time to locate them, team deathmatch comes with player count based max scores, that kind of thing. Bots are now more eager to follow players as leaders so the modes should play better with smaller number of players as well. Looking forward to another announced event to get more people to play PvP for a change!

We’re really close to RWR 0.99 now and have decided to sync that major milestone with the Mac port release. I will be adding the Mac port demo in Steam a bit early, hopefully this weekend, to help testing compatibility between different Macs, so if there are Mac people reading the blog, all testing help and reports would be highly appreciated once it’s out!

RWR 0.99 also means that we’re closing in on the final 1.0 release, the goal we’ve been working towards for the past 4 years. 1.0 on the other hand will mean a goodbye to Steam Early Access and Desura Alphafunding, and to avoid sudden price changes at the final release, the final price has now been made active as 14.99 USD/EUR. If you’re coming late to the game, just sit tight right now, Winter Christmas is coming and you might still have a chance to grab it with the previous Early Access price!

Hey there!

RWR 0.98.5 has just been released! Mostly the polishing and tweaking work continues as seen in the change log, including the earlier 0.98.4, 0.98.3, and the two hot fix updates 0.98.2 and 0.98.1. For 0.98.5 we’ve also added a new online gamemode targeted to provide a tighter PvP(vE) experience versus the sandboxy Classic mode.

The gamemode – we shall refer to it as minimodes until someone comes up with a name for it – features several short objective based scenarios for team based battling between two factions with preferably players for at least 3 vs 3, but the more the merrier. The scenarios take place in varying active zones in Moorland Trenches consisting usually of 2-3 base areas with restricted access outside the zone. To get started, we’ve got modes set up such as

Team Deathmatch, pretty self-explanatory

King Of The Hill, fight over one base and defend it for a given time to win

Team Teddy Hunt, where a crate is spawned at a random location guarded by a few bots, a hint is given about the location and the teams must locate the crate, fight for it and destroy it, and deliver the contents to an armory; while delivering the cargo, both factions see the carrier in the map view

There is a total of 16 zones where the modes take place, and by default, the modes last for 10 minutes each or less in case the target objective score is reached.

Additional modes will be worked on in the next updates. We’ve been bouncing ideas about at least

a vehicle escort / ambush mode, where one team escorts a vehicle from location A to B while the other attempts to stop the delivery

assault / defend, where one team builds and defends a base which the other team attempts to reach

capture the flag mode

Hey there – the wait is finally over, RWR 0.98 has been released!

This update was a huge crunch for us taking 9 weeks to get here. We began the work with the finale battles, bringing out the first one in this update. What it means is that once you defeat an enemy faction so that they have no presence in any of the areas in campaign, the final mission extraction point becomes available in all maps. In Invasion online, the final battles are just fought after all regular maps.

The final mission against the first fallen enemy is a stealth themed mission. This effectively made us take a closer look at the AI stealth defense behavior and we found a number of things we could adjust to improve the experience. The behavior of the defending AI should be a bit more predictable this way, also you can use distraction to a greater effect now. The AI is more aggressive though so you may need to bail out more often; good to change position a lot anyway!

The mission is designed for single player or for a small number of cooperative players. We have no idea if it makes sense in Invasion with 20-50 players in the same team but it’s there, will be interesting to find out!

We are mainly in polishing phase currently on our way towards the 1.0 release. This results in crazy amount of tiny but much needed changes here and there – here’s a few:

* squad names and color matching, for organizing players into squads in online, with squad chat
* new player markers, with Steam friends shown differently
* sortable scoreboard
* pause state for single player, check your key config
* bigger capacity for stashes, you’ll need it, trust me!
* a bunch of vehicle delivery objective fixes
* ladder visualization behind buildings
* new settings for quick matches, also with possibility to play with customized start commands
* more audio volume controls
* some RP rewards tweaked
* connection error messages now show properly inside menu
* a short celebration occurs after a map is completed, will be further worked on in the next update
* speech bubble fader option, fades out all bubbles if mouse hovers over one
* riot shield can now stop one blast, second stuns and consumes the shield
* neutral faction related reports removed
* server mode shown in server list
* see the complete list here

We also worked a bit with a few active community members (thanks to warbrand, DoomMetal and harr for the great character models) to extend the racing mod that has been floating around for a while. It’s now included in the RWR release so make sure you join us sometime on a racing server for some serious laughs, we’ll be setting up a server soon!

Mac port is also starting to be in a pretty good shape. It runs fine already so what’s on the lacking side is just the packaging and making it available in Steam and get a few more people testing it out and find if anything’s missing.

Chances are we’ll be making a few smaller update releases before 0.99, the Mac variant will likely be included in one of those. We’ll see what happens in the coming month!

Hey there!

It’s update time again, beta 0.97 is available starting now.

Gonna keep the post short this time, mostly highlighting that the 9th map has been added in the game – huge thanks to Bonzaibier for the backbone of the map! Other changes include some new stuff to do in campaign, i.e. the possibility to unlock enemy weapons and to find hidden cargo pickups around the maps. Most other improvements are related to usability, the boring stuff -> feel free to read more about it in the change log.