Hey guys,

We’ve talked a little bit about the upcoming patch in the last few weeks, and I wanted to give everyone another quick update.

First of all, I’m just going to pull the band-aid off quick and let everyone know that we’ve opted to push the date back at least two weeks for additional testing and polish. As you guys know, we’re a small, independent developer and we don’t have deep pockets, so we’re forced to do most of our testing internally. This is going well, however, but there are a few areas that just need more time before their ready for the public.

But wait, I’ve also got some really good news! From the testing we’ve done, it appears that we’ve finally had success at rooting out the virtual memory error! Now, with the massive variety of boxes people play on, we can’t say with 100 percent accuracy that it’s definitely gone, but it does appear that the error will be extremely rare for most people. I personally have experienced a drastic change on my home computer, which suffered from at least one VM crash an hour. On the new build of the game, I’ve gone more than 8 hours at a time without a crash!

In addition, I’ve got a sneak peek at the 32-player map for you guys! Here’s three shots of the biggest CrimeCraft map yet!

 

 

You’ll be able to play 8v8 all the way up to 16v16 Shootout matches on this new map!

So, I know the delay isn’t good news, but in the long run, this is going to be best for the game.

We’ve got a ton of content, including a significant list of fixes coming. Here’s just a bit of that list:

• Grenade animation fixes
• Applying handicaps to all attributes
• Flag glitching
• General Protection Fault Error fix
• Rendering Thread Exception error fix
• General client crash fixes
• Mesh tearing fixes

And that’s just a part of the list. One of the reasons we’re pushing back the patch release date is to ensure all of these bug fixes and all of the other features are tested as thoroughly as we can.

Bear with us, and I’ll update you on the date as soon as I can. Right now we’re looking at a two to three week delay, which would put us in mid-March at the latest.

--KevinB

Ladies and gentlemen, it's time once again for my favorite part of my responsibilities in the CrimeCraft world: announcing the winners of a competition. It's like Christmas, except without having to sit on the lap of some fat guy with a fake beard -- which, let's face is, gets uncomfortable after a while.

 

Anyway. The competitions are long over, and we've tallied the raffle tickets earned by the players and held the raffle. Before we get to the winners, one final reminder: If you find your name on this list, that also means you're going to have a Customer Service ticket taken out in your name. You MUST reply to the ticket with the requested information in order to claim your prize. If you don't claim your prize within 30 days, it may be considered forfeit, and nobody wants that.

 

Without further ado ...  here are the winners of the Bandanas and T-shirts (one prize per listed name):

 

CrimeCraft Bandana

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Glykon

blackmask55

Dragastar

Pops12

Driven

tmxExterminator

Ramses

FAZE

cuckls

xDukexNukermX

bonez7126

Kheradruakh

1RichDaddy

TheBringerOfLight

cbhunter

 

CrimeCraft T-Shirt

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lias101

Starmaster29

Lamfir

Simpleminded

BDARmech

regal

Swordsmenjr1

 

 

 

And here are the big winners:

 

CrimeCraft T-Shirt signed by the Dev Team

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Pkirker

 

 

ATI 3870 X2 Video Card (one per player)

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CoCheez

Savage55 (edit: this was originally listed as Sav, which was the character's name that won the competition for raffle tickets)

 

[If you want to mentally add a drumroll, now would be a good time to do it. Go ahead. I'll wait. What, you've already skipped this and read the name? No, that's okay. I understand. And the big winner is ... ]

 

Alienware Notebook

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alkalifly

 

 

Thanks to everybody that participated in the events. We hope that even if your name didn't appear on this list, you still enjoyed playing and were able to win some Gold Bars.

 

And, of course, a big congratulations to the winners! ... now go check those tickets before Santa puts you on his naughty list!

Hey guys, between all of the work that's going on for the upcoming patch, I was able to get Executive Producer Matt McEnerney to take a little time to answer your questions. We'll do another round of questions a couple of weeks after the patch goes live and everyone has a chance to see what it's all about!

Synapze asks: Is there more going on that meets the eye in Sunrise City? - here I'm thinking new common enemies besides the Triads and Rogues, or will their presence be further developed in the future?

Matt: Oh, we certainly have something planned for the future enemies. In fact, we have a popular comic book writer currently working on some possible scenarios for us as we speak.

Will there be more Pve content coming - like "Raid" orientated maps - just like my favorite map Safeguard.

Matt: We are certainly working on more PvE content that is similar to Safeguard.

KidKapone asks: I have just 1 area that i'd like to address, and that's the Virtual Memory bug. I'd just like to ask the devs if they could give us some insight as to their progress addressing this issue. Have they made any real solid progress, can the issue be fixed, or will it be an issue that we will have to face indefinitely.

Matt: We have devs working on the memory issues that have plagued us since launch. As you can imagine, it is not an easy task given the nature of our game and content. We certainly have made strides to reduce the frequency of these crashes.

Xnighthawkx asks: The time to wait for the gang house production tab to put out such a small amount of items, and the fact that there is no real reference for which formula puts out what makes for a difficult time trying to figure out which ingredients you get and which formula is most worthwile to run. Are there plans in the works to cut the production time and make lists for those of us who run gang house production tabs, and has any thought been put into a revamp of the crafting professions so that it is not so insanely difficult to advance in a given profession?

Matt: Crafting will go through some revisions in the next update. We found that some of our recipes were not dropping as frequently as we anticipated, so we will be adjusting the drop rates. We also will be introducing a Scavenger Tool, which will help improve chances of finding a particular type of ingredient. Because of the drop rates and some minor bugs, advancement has been pretty difficult, but this will even out with the above improvements.

Raekin asks: (What about) a 32-player arena map?

Matt: Our arena map is currently in testing phase. We’re still working out the bugs and balancing a new game mode that will be associated with the level.

Questions from Russian community:
Are there plans to add ‘Last man standing’ gametype? Or its variations?

Matt: We have several gametypes that we are exploring for future updates for both PvP and PvE modes. We have tested many different modes in the past and will certainly look to incorporate more game types into our world.

Will there be a gang logo constructor or an option to upload custom made logos?

Matt: We had logo creator on our feature list, but we were forced to cut it before we hit beta. There are issues as to how many logos we could allow to be created and possible legal issues surrounding the possible content that users can create. The feature has been on our radar and is something that could be considered in the future. What logos would you like to see?

Can we get an in-game radio or built in game mp3-player? More or less like it’s done in GTA?

Matt: In-game MP3 players were talked about for a while, but we decided wasn’t worth the development effort. There are several reasons we didn’t add this feature from technical limits to licensing issues. Keep in mind all of the songs in GTA are fully licensed at an enormous cost to Rockstar/Take Two Interactive. Unfortunately, small independent developers like Vogster Entertainment do not have the same resources to secure licensed music.

Will there be new content? Increased level cap, new weapons, apparel, locations?

Matt: We are always on the move to create new content for the game. We have new maps, weapons, skills, missions, and items currently in development. You may not see all areas of content addressed in each update, but they are all being addressed.

What new are we going to see in CC in 2010?

Matt: We are currently working on a major update for the game. We have a lot of things on our plate, so I don’t want to make absolute promises yet. We will post a feature list when we get closer to the launch date. I can tell you that you will see improvements in just about every area of the game.

Are there any plans to diversify gang related features? For instance, add real estate building and gang shops, territory wars?

Matt: Absolutely. We are certainly planning on incorporating more “empire building” into the game world. You will see the first of these features in the next update.

Will we ever be able to alter game UI with custom made modifications?

Matt: Not at the moment. We have several other features/fixes that are higher priority. It is certainly something that we will look into for future releases.

When and if will there be European game server? Russian game server?

Matt: We are currently looking into several localization possibilities for our strong European and Russian community. I can’t give you a time frame, but we certainly have started working on it.

Hey guys,

I thought I would let you all know today that we’ve targeted late February for our next patch release. I’m going to run down some of the changes and upgrades that will be coming in this patch and a few things we’re working on for future updates.

First of all, we’re working on client optimization that will require less hardware power. So far, we’re seeing a steep decline in client crashes, and we’re not done working on the problem yet! We’ve got 16 workstations dedicated to stamping the issue out and we’re confident that we’ll get it done. This is a deep game architecture problem that requires substantial coding changes to accomplish. I’ll keep you updated as we move forward with any updates I get from the dev team.

We’ve also got a 32-player Riot map in the pipeline. This map is BIG! Additional game modes will be added in future updates. The best way to describe the map is to say that if you stuffed a psychobilly circus/white trash flea market/shantytown into a post-apocalyptic domed football stadium, this would be the result! The map is still in test, and since we pride ourselves on creating balanced/polished levels there’s some potential it could slip to March, but it’s targeted for February.

We’re adding a daily tournament system with all-new prizes. Three divisions (novice, intermediate and expert) will compete in skill-based PvP events that run Monday through Saturday. I know some of you are thinking that players who are currently gaming the PvP ranking system are going to screw up the divisions, but we have a fix coming that will put an end to that nonsense. Players will form four-man teams, sign up through the UI and KILL KILL KILL! Matches will be single-elimination shootout on a variety of maps. Later this week I’ll talk more about this feature.

Up next, we’ve got some fairly extensive changes to the PvE bot AI. We’ve made improvements to the AI logic and we’re allowing the bots access to a wider variety of abilities to give players a more challenging experience. That said, we’re also taking out some of the more annoying AI “features” like insta-kill Clearshots and Shockwaves. These changes will add great depth to Stockpile, Safeguard and Headhunter PvP matches.

We’re making some changes to our subscription system to make CrimeCraft a better value to our players. Free to Play accounts will now essentially be the same as what we formerly called Standard, meaning they will get to customize their character and get full access to the auction house, ATMs, trades and instance creation. We’re also increasing the rate at which F2P characters gain experience.

Next up will be the $4.99/month price point that will be the same as what is currently the $9.99 Premium subscription. Same features, just $5 cheaper! We’ll keep the $9.99 subscription in place, but it will essentially be the $4.99 subscription with an extra $6 of gold bars added to your account each month.

The next feature is an extensive overhaul of the economy. Most vendor prices will be increasing and there will be a number of changes to loot drops, item durability and the crafting system. Some of these changes won’t seem justified at first, but they are absolutely necessary to ensure the long-term health of our in-game economy! Specifically, these steps should help lower some of those insane prices on the auction house. We’re also making some adjustments to the crafting system that you’ve been anticipating. I’ll come back to both of these topics in a couple of weeks with a number of new details of how these changes will affect the game.

We’re also adding an in-depth tutorial for new players that introduces them to the world and combat system without throwing them directly to the wolves of Sunrise City. We’ve targeted late February for the tutorial, but it’s a feature that might slip.

Another feature that might take more time than we’ve got for this update is Night Clubs! These are gang-owned customizable spaces where characters can host a variety of parties that can be as open or as exclusive as the organizer wants them to be. We’ve got some special surprises in this feature as well that I’ll talk about as we get closer to patch day!

As you can see, we’ve got a lot of changes and enhancements to get done over the next three weeks! I hope this look at what’s coming has whetted your appetite for more CrimeCraft, I know I’ve worked up an appetite just typing it all out :)

--KevinB