Day: April 24, 2015

Hello all!

I wanted to give a quick update on the Tech Preview release…. Just about there. The testers found a few issues that must be fixed before release and we are working on those. We are also trying to squeeze in a few more features that may seem small, but play a large role in defining what Ground Branch is all about. The Tech Preview is a huge step for us and one that we want to be absolutely sure that those that play it are able to come away understanding what we are going for and what Ground Branch is going to be. I am also trying to finalize some storefront issues as well. So the countdown is in days now, not weeks. 🙂

Two of those small but significant “Ground Branch” features that we’ll give a glimpse of here are user patches and control scripting.

PATCHES

We have basic support in for user created patches. At the moment, there are slots on each arm and the baseball hat to place a patch. Each slot can have its own patch as well. We haven’t worked out all the backend stuff just yet, but patches are images on disk that are loaded directly into the game either locally or from the server. Of course there will be rules that are setup and restrictions on how things work so not to create issues for people. For you old schoolers…. think back to how Rainbow Six worked in this area.

Of course, everything is work in progress here.

 

CONTROL SCRIPTS

This one is definitely more behind the scenes….something so simple yet so powerful. Our key binding works in the traditional way, but you can also craft a script that sets up custom actions or binding groups. Almost anything that is bindable is scriptable as well. Instead of these actions being hard coded you have complete control to setup what you want. For instance, say you don’t like the standard toggle lean setup. Simply make a script that changes it to a momentary one that requires you to hold the key to stay leaned and release the key to go back.

Here is an example of the LeanLeftToggle control script:

{
"ActionName": "LeanLeft",
"Version": 2,
"Name": "Lean Left (Toggle)",
"Description": "Press to left left. Press again to cancel.",
"ScriptData": [
{
"ButtonUsage": "Pressed",
"Entries": [
{
"Is": "Leaning",
"Parameter": "Left",
"TrueEntries": [
{
"Function": "StopLeaningLeft"
}
],
"FalseEntries": [
{
"Function": "StartLeaningLeft"
}
]
}
]
}
]
}

We will provide a cheat sheet of all the necessary keywords from the code to make your own scripts as well. These scripts are loaded from disk by clicking the ‘Options’ icon for each keybind.

So there you go. Not much longer and some cool stuff. Have a great weekend!