APB Reloaded

Things to do in San Paro when you're Dead

2013-05-17T18:00:00.000-07:00

We all know that San Paro can be a pretty volatile place to live, but when you're dying and coming back within thirty seconds, death really is more of a speed bump than anything worth writing home about. We figured it'd be pretty great if you could pick where you re-spawn, so over the last couple of months we've been working on a feature called Elective Spawning, which lets you pick your spawn location. We spoke to APB Reloaded's Lead Designer, Qwentle for more information about this latest revolution in resurrection...

Current System

The spawn system in APB: Reloaded has long been a bone of contention for players. It doesn't garner a mention when it runs okay, but when it screws up it can lose you missions and cause massive frustration.

When you die, the current system grabs all the spawn zones in the district, then starts a process of elimination to find the best one for you. First, it removes everything too far away from your death location or teammate locations (we don't want players suiciding to teleport large distances). We then remove any objectives too close to enemies. Once we have this initial list of valid points, we run a formula to determine which of these is the 'best' for you. This weighs positively towards living teammates and objectives, and negatively against enemy players, your death location, and the death locations of teammates. The objective of this system is thus to get you as close to your teammates and objectives as possible, and at the same time far away from enemies and direct death locations.

This can fail in one of three ways. First of all, the system has to use direct distances when determining this, as it would be much too heavy on the server to determine likely foot patterns between the objectives / teammates and the hundreds of potential spawn zones (see below for every spawn zone in the game):

This can lead to situations where it picks a location that's best as the bird flies, but leaves you stranded behind a block or otherwise out of the way; for instance, the piers in Waterfront can be quite bad for this. Here's an image of Waterfront spawn points:

Secondly, there is a potential that the constraints fail to find any valid spawn zones (this mostly happens during large matches in edges of the map). In this case, the system will revert to the original spawn system, which will simply pick the nearest spawn zone out-with 70m of your death location. This fall-back system doesn't take enemy location into account, so may result in you spawning on an enemy. Finally, you can be in a situation where the current spawn zone is the best as far as the system is concerned, due to lots of live teammates nearby and objectives, but you keep dying and it sends you back to the same spot each time. Not ideal...

New System

We've been working on an Elective Spawning System which will allow players to choose where to spawn themselves. At its core, this uses the same set of rules that our current spawning system does, but instead of choosing the best one, it chooses the top five. We have also added an additional rule to remove spawn points close to chosen ones, so once it chooses the first spawn point, it won't pick the one beside it as well.

Now, when you die, you will be returned to a spawn map with a selection of spawn zones. The system still picks a favorite (and it will eventually spawn you here if you don't pick yourself), but if you feel that one of the others is better for you, you can use that instead. During the spawn time, you are free to change where you are about to spawn, and when the timer is up it will spawn you at your chosen point. In addition, you can see where any other dead teammates are about to spawn, allowing you to make tactical decisions about where you want to be.

There is one caveat here. If an enemy gets too close to one of your spawn zones, that spawn zone will be rendered invalid as long as they are close. Any players that have chosen that spawn zone will need to select another.

On top of this system, we have also added Spawn Waves. If you die shortly after a teammate, you will inherit his spawn timer and his choice of spawn points. This will especially help fights in public groups, where players often attack piecemeal. Now, if you all die close to each other, you'll spawn together, which will help increase group cohesion and provide more opportunities for teamwork.

Finally, we've added a fairly major feature to this new system, which is a modification for spawning within vehicles. Any group with these mods in their vehicle can choose to spawn directly into it instead of at one of the other spawn points, as long as the vehicle isn't too close to an enemy, on fire, and has available seats (and to avoid some exploiting, is within bounds). This is a huge change. It potentially opens the game up to be much more heavily based around player vehicles, and hunting them down / protecting them. As such, we need to open this functionality to everyone, so this modification will be unlocked to all players by default, and will also be available on the default starting vehicle.

Next Time

Next time we're going to ask StuartReloaded to explain a little more about the technical side of Elective Spawning. He programmed it and - well, you'll have to wait until next week because things are going to get in depth and they're going to get weird... Trust us, it's gonna be great.

Songs of the City

2013-05-04T09:21:00.000-07:00

We sat down with our very own in-house DJ, music producer, and audio engineer Farfletched for a Q&A session about the APB Reloaded Artist Program, and also to find out a little bit more about this most elusive of developers. The setting for this impromptu interview was Farfletched’s desk at the Edinburgh office of Reloaded Productions.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

My first job in the games industry was with Rockstar North. I managed to bag five days of testing and ended up staying for a year and a half. I had prior knowledge of audio DAWS (going back as Scream Tracker, for those of you in the know) and was producing music at the time. I kind of latched onto the audio department and pitched as much material at them as I could. It was a really good learning experience. After Rockstar came Realtime Worlds. I fell into a QA role on APB: All Points Bulletin before becoming an associate audio engineer. When that ended, I got picked up by Reloaded Productions and hired as a Community Manager. When they realized that they 1) had no audio team, and 2) that I shouldn’t really be allowed near the forums, I became the sole audio engineer on APB Reloaded.

Any other claims to fame?

Mostly from DJ'ing and Producing. Through the years I’ve had the privilege of playing alongside some ridiculous acts: Tiesto, Pendulum, Faithless, Mylo, Underworld, Pete Tong. More recently I’ve released tracks on FUTURECOP! Compilations, and record labels alongside my idols. I’ve also done work on TV adverts and some neat indie iPad games.

What inspires you musically?

An extremely diverse set of places - often it's just an individual sound. I remember watching “The Running Man”, and there was a sound as a camera panned down over the first arena. As soon as I heard it, I knew I had to emulate it and expand upon it. Musically, The Labyrinth Soundtrack / Bowie in general, Giorgio Moroder, Harold Faltermeyer, Retro Chipsounds, and non-generic movie soundtracks like “The Life Aquatic”, “Explorers”, “Mad Max”, “Robocop” etc. I also have a mild case of Synesthesia (seeing notes as colors), so often I feel like making some “Green” music...is that weird?

Can you tell us a little bit about some music you listen to outside of work?

I can do better - here's a YouTube playlist.

What’s the best concert you’ve ever been to?

At the height of the Trance scene I had some amazing nights in Ibiza, Paul Oakenfold at Amnesia spamming the ice/smoke machine. However, the best gig I have ever been to would probably have to be Green Day at the Barrowlands in Glasgow. Crazy crowd, and I spent most of the evening crowd-surfing to the front, being booted about a bit by security, and then I would run to the back and start all over again.

If you could have anyone make a song for APB, who would you have make that song?

A three-way collision between Kavinsky, David Bowie, and Haezer.

Can you tell us a little bit about the Artist Program? What inspired you to give this a try?

The Artist Program is something of an ongoing project at the moment. Player content is the heart of APB:R, and we’re always trying to find new ways to bring really cool player content into the game from our end. Speedball plays a bit part of this, for example. The Artist Program is one of those things that’s as old as time itself. Before we approached bigger bands and record labels, we wanted to try and open the game to bedroom producers and garage bands and give them a shot at the limelight. I’m glad we did, as some of the content we’ve received is nothing short of amazing. All chosen artists will get a mention on our Facebook page and have their tracks appear in the music player in APB Reloaded. It’s all about giving them publicity. Some of them will even get a bit of extra attention when they're chosen as a featured artist.

What exactly is a featured artist?

With each Artist Program update, we would choose one artist to be a “Featured Artist.” Aside from being featured on our Facebook page, the Featured Artist will get plastered on billboards around the game.

So, you’re turning APB:R into an advertisement for someone’s new album?

I don’t think it’s quite like that. It’ll help keep the backdrop of the game fresh, with billboards that get updated regularly. We got a really good reaction from people when we changed up the billboards to feature Mr. Bunnyface and Speedball.

How do you choose the featured artists?

The featured artists will simply be the artist with the best all-around track in each update. Whichever artist has the track that really shines in the game, along with fantastic quality and style, will be chosen as the featured artist.

Music in the background has always been a part of APB Reloaded. Do you create all the music in-game?

Yeah. All the new tracks that have appeared since Reloaded launched were produced by myself. Check out the new sounds at the Joker Store, Gaijin, Myst, Celestial, Rimbaud and Asylum. We’ve got a nice treat in store for people that remember that weird piano conservatory music from Asylum…

Is the Artist Program still taking submissions? What kind of music are you looking for?

Yeah, it’s still open! Give us all your music! All genres! Check out details here!

In a nutshell, all you need to do is submit your track as a Soundcloud link via email to artistprogram@gamersfirst.com. You can only submit one track, but it must be a quality recording, and it must be a completely new creation (no copyright materials allowed). We accept all genres, but as you can imagine some styles have more chance than others…..Drum and Bass > Accordions , Metal > Boy Bands, Electro House > Latin Ballroom.

If chosen, you will enter into a non-exclusive agreement with GamersFirst, which basically means that your track still belongs to you, but you are giving us permission to use the track in APB:R and affiliated products.

What’s your guilty pleasure track? (C’mon, we all really love Britney, so just admit it…)

Munamies – Pomppufilis (the hook at 28 secs in makes me smile EVERY time) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHReqKRvonE
Also, I wouldn’t pass up a little bit of Perfume – Electro World (when no one is watching) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewhfe19B25E

So there you have it. A little look into the mind of Farfletched. He's a pretty cool guy and someone that everyone should give their music to.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

2013-04-19T21:50:00.000-07:00

Today we're going to officially reveal all the new stuff that's coming out in the next release. It's content - BIG content - so get excited!

Shake that asset

Customization is one of the core features of APB Reloaded, and it's also one of the main reasons that our game is so unique. There's no other game that allows you to customize virtually every aspect of the game in as much detail as APB:R, and every time we speak to someone about what they like about the game, customization is one of the first things mentioned. We have a dedicated art team that are always hustling to bring more clothing, weapons and vehicles to the game, and today we’re going to look at some of the fruits of their labor.

The average clothing asset takes one of our artists about three weeks to create. Every item needs to be prototyped, modeled in high poly, normal mapped, modeled in a low poly version next, and then have color masks created for it - all of this before going into testing. There are other steps, but we won't go into the details of that just now.

We asked Tim, one of our Senior Artists, about his time working on the clothing in APB Reloaded. "Each item presents us with a different series of challenges. One of the strangest difficulties is being able to find a way to make an item of clothing that looks unique and very cool, but also generic enough that you can customize and do plenty of different things with it," said Tim. His favorite clothing item he's created for APB:R is the jumpsuits for the new Bishada packs, and his favorite item ever created by our team is the Desert Scarf (which was created by another Senior Artist).

Speaking of which, here's another image for your viewing pleasure:

Something that’s become fairly critical to our team is trying to get a stronger sense of parity between the genders and factions in APB:R. At the moment, male characters have far more clothing items than female characters, so some of the old assets that weren’t released are awaiting creation of female counterparts. We’re finally getting through some of the backlog of old items though, which means that the Desert Scarf is, at long last, on the list for the next release!

Where we’re going, we don’t need roads

A while back, we showed everyone a piece of concept art that showed the new, cross-faction Bishada Rapier. Since then, our vehicle team has been hard at work turning that concept into a reality, and we’re really excited with the final product. So, ladies and gentlemen, the Reloaded Team is proud to present to you the first official images of the new Bishada Kissaki and Bishada Mako!

When we design a new vehicle pack like this, we tend to think about it in terms of how the two sides play off each other.We like to think of the Enforcers being better funded than their Criminal counterparts – Criminals tend to have to work their equipment out of gear that’s believably available on the open market. Enforcers should be capable of getting their hands on more military spec and specialized equipment. While this isn’t a rule that we treat as gospel, it’s something that we run with when possible, and we feel that the hybrid we managed to achieve with the Criminal Bishada is great. A lot of the styling for the vehicle was provided by our Senior Vehicle Artist as something akin to his dream car.

The latest addition to APB Reloaded’s arsenal – The Nekrova N-SSW, which we mentioned in a recent post, will also be released in an upcoming update. We’ll be bringing two versions of this gun to the game: one version that’s obtainable through the Armas Marketplace and another version that’s obtainable through Joker Tickets.

We’re shaking things up a bit in our next post, with a Q&A session where we lovingly interrogate our Audio Engineer about the Artist Program (and his guilty music pleasures - Prefab Sprout anyone? Google it if you don't already know...), so stay tuned!

From Your Mouth to Our Ears

2013-04-12T20:39:00.000-07:00

It's crunch time once again at Reloaded Games. It’s been a pretty hectic week with "Settle the Score" getting ready to make its way out the door, not to mention the recent announcement of APB Vendetta. You should check out the Vendetta Kickstarter (if you haven't already), to find out more about the exciting game in the making, inspired by the APB Reloaded universe.

But first stick around!

We're going to talk about the process of how our Community team reports issues and ideas from our forums, twitter, Facebook and blog back to our Development team. We're also officially introducing you to the new Contact, Speedball, who will be joining us in the version 11 update.

Manning the Floodgates

One of the things that we're really working on this year is the quality and frequency of communication that goes on between Reloaded Games and our community. We're constantly striving for new and better ways to communicate with you guys, and it’s always good to see feedback on our efforts, be it positive, negative or (in some cases) outright weird.

Trouble is, there’s a lot of information coming in, so the community team needs to filter through a lot of the noise and try and get the strongest signal to pass along to the development team. What are the real concerns or ideas that the majority cares about the most, and how do we tackle those ideas?

We have a page on our Reloaded internal wiki that details the top ten issues in the community with links on how we intend to actually fix those issues. We're aiming to start crossing off more and more of these throughout the year. Some of the issues that we've got plans for are (in no particular order): server performance, new content, mission balancing, and in-mission spawning.

Cool Community Stats

We keep track of a lot of stats in APB Reloaded – just about everything that players can do in the game is tracked and collated into spreadsheets that we access and use to analyze player behavior. Recently we compared a list of the most lethal weapons over a week long period on Joker NA East before the weapon balance patch, and then again after the weapon balance patch when we saw a similar number of players on.

Over a 24 hour period on NA East we saw 203,055 kills; that’s 141 player deaths per minute. The most lethal weapon in the game was (prior to the weapon balance patch) the NTEC-5 with the STAR 556 coming in a close second. Shotguns accounted for slightly more kills after the balance patch than they did before, and the STAR and the NTEC had swapped places. Keep in mind that these stats don't reflect the lethality of particular weapons, rather they reflect their popularity. These stats also didn't include kills caused by vehicle explosions that were triggered from weapon damage.

Also, the total number of Easter Eggs delivered this year was a staggering 10,543,233 - that's over 8 eggs per second for the entire duration of the Easter Event! The person that delivered the most eggs was Colby’s DonCostello. Well done DonCostello, you had some tough competition!

The New Dealer

Who's this new Contact hanging out in Social? His name is Speedball and he works for the new faction, Joker Associates.

Speedball is a character that we're very proud of because everything about him has come from the community! The appearance of the character was taken from the winner of the Almost Famous contest that was run on the APB Reloaded forums for Reloaded Day 2013. His look and biography was created by Darrell Kayne from Obeya, his voice was provided by Bumbleton from Joker, and the outfits that he sells at the moment were created by players from all over the game.

Speedball will be selling player made content for various upcoming Joker Associates contests, as well as stuff that we find in the community that we think the rest of the world deserves to see and use. If you think you make stuff that other players would love to have, then keep an eye on the APB Reloaded forums for more Joker Associates contests in the near future for your chance to win. Together we can all help Speedball build a decent stockpile!

Winners of Joker Associates contests will get listed as the creator of the item in-game, and they'll be sent the new, super-exclusive Joker Associates weapon skin (props to Vivianne from the APB Reloaded forums for the inspiration on this skin!), as modeled by Gumball below. So far only twelve people in the entire game have this weapon skin, so it really is as exclusive as it gets!

That’s everything from the Community team for now. We hope this has given you some insight on what we do and how we work, as well as helping to bring you up to date on the latest in 1.11. Our next blog post will be up soon and should have details about a much requested item that’s finally going to see a release. Some sort of… dessert scarf? How the heck would you wear a dessert sca -

Oh... right. Desert Scarf.

Settle the Score - Version 11

2013-04-04T17:21:00.001-07:00

Earlier last month we announced we were working on "Settle the Score" - the Version 11 update (a.k.a update 1.11). We've been a bit coy about the fine details on this update, mostly because there were a few things still being finalised for release. We know everyone's been waiting in anticipation for more info so today we're going to show you some of the things that are absolutely pinned down and ready to go!

To start - there's a whole new Scoring System and two new weapons – the LMG and a shiny new secondary weapon. There’s plenty more going into this update, but here's the scoop of what's been finalized so far to get your appetite started.

New Weapons

This is the Nekrova Squad Support Weapon, a brand new LMG. It’s Nekrova’s first entry into the field of Light Machine Guns and it’s a hybrid of the ALIG 762, SHAW 556, and the N-TEC. Less damage than the ALIG and a slower rate of fire than the SHAW, but a much faster setup time. Other LMG’s suppress from a stationary position and are really effective, but this weapon’s more about mobility – it’s an LMG you can sprint with to get into position quickly before setting up and pouring the pain on your enemies.

The Flare Gun has been a concept that we've been throwing around for a while now. It’s a secondary weapon that we think every team is going to want one of, and it's going to be a total game changer during missions! It carries four shots at the moment, but these bullets aren't like anything else in the game – they bounce and explode causing very light damage (don't worry, it’s less damage than a perc.)

The real beauty of this weapon is that the flare tags every enemy in line of sight of the explosion on your radar and HUD. It’s an AOE tagger and can change the flow of any match by highlighting your enemies for the rest of your team. It’s the ideal support weapon and a must have for San Paro's elite groups.

New Scoring System

(Edited Section on 4/5/13.)

Ever since the start of APB Reloaded’s development, we've wanted to make player performance more of a factor in how you get matched up. One of our earliest tasks in the bug database (the 19th task that was brought into the database, in fact) was to simplify the scoring system and expose what it did to the player.

Version 11, introduces a whole new version of the score mechanic – everything you do while on Mission will count towards your score and your score will count towards your Threat. As you can guess, this feature inspired the name for the update - "Settle the Score."

Here’s the current system (this is a really, really simplified version):
You ready up, you get into a match and you win the match. Your threat goes up a little bit. If you lose your threat level goes down.

This is an ‘okay’ system. It works fine, but it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of edge cases. What if you lose because someone called for back-up with a minute left on the clock? What if you stomp on the other team but lose at the last second? What if the other guy on your team does really badly? And why should that guy get to be gold if they're getting carried there?

While some of those edge cases are covered (players called into a mission late only receive a fraction of the penalty) we can do better. These are the sorts of edge cases that we really want to address with the new system.

From Version 11 onward, when you kill an enemy player you get 100 score. Objective completion scores vary depending on the task. When you're near an objective getting completed you get 75 score for providing cover to your team mates. You get more score for kill streaks, blitzkriegs, arrests, stuns, freeing teammates, and vehicular kills. You get a major chunk of score for winning a match and a lot of score even if you lose.

At the end of each Mission the system will rank everyone according to their Score (people that win matches get a bonus to their score that averages around the same amount of Score as about five kills). The Threat system looks at everyone’s score and then ranks them against each other as if it were a free-for-all match. While it’s likely that the team that won will have the most score, it’s not always the case. We've seen occasions on OTW where the losing side had higher individual scores but these were when matches were incredibly close calls.

If you're below a certain threshold in score events or participation then your score and rewards are nulled. If you AFK through a Mission you gain zero cash, zero standing and zero threat. If you join a Mission very late but don’t have time to interact with anything (even things that don't score itself, like damaging other players), you won't gain or lose any threat at the end of the Mission.

Score also factors into your rewards after a Mission. If you play really hard, then you get a bigger cash reward – in fact, you get a percentage of your score as a cash reward up to a Mission-determined maximum. Getting a significant amount of score in one match compared to everyone else won't move your threat any more than a very close win but it will give you a significant amount of cash as a bonus.

So there you have it folks - the first round of feature and content details on "Settle the Score" Version 11 update! Don't forget to stay tuned for an upcoming post where our Community Team will share some cool APB Reloaded statistics we’ve gathered, and chat about the process of how community feedback gets filtered through to Development.

In the meantime, here’s a picture of the new Joker contact. Enjoy!

The First Annual San Paro Egg Hunt

2013-03-17T10:53:00.000-07:00

(Warning: Egg puns in the following blog post)

It’s Easter, which means it’s time for an egg-straordinary and egg-citing San Paro event! This year we’re pulling out all the stops to try and give you the most egg-cellent Easter we can, in a two week egg-stravaganza from March 20th to April 3rd. We’re giving every player the chance to win a customizable Animal Suit and Rabbit Head hat in our in-game Egg Hunt Event, and we're adding eggs-essively brilliant Easter content to ARMAS in the way of an Easter Egg Weapon Skin and an eggs-travagant Chicken Costume!

The Chicken Head mask (bundled with the Animal Suit) will only be available from ARMAS, so you can finally be the Baddest Motherclucker in the city!

All you need to do is log into the game and go into either Financial or Waterfront. Then find one of the Bunnies walking around the city, mug them by pressing your interact key (usually F), and take their eggs to your nearest Faction Contact. You’ll hit five stars as soon as you finish ‘interacting’ with Mr. Bunnyface, so you’ve gotta run if you’re going to get to your contact before someone takes you down and steals your eggs! It’s sure to be egg-splosive! Killing Mr. Bunnyface doesn’t make him drop his eggs though, so you’ve got to make sure to go up to him and press F. And remember! Enforcers can mug him too so everyone gets to play!

Level 1 of the new role gets you the Easter Bunny Suit. Level 2 gets you the Easter Bunny Head and level 3 gets you the ‘Easter Bunny’ Title!

Now, if you’ll egg-scuse us, we're off to compile an egg-saustive list of egg puns for future reference.

Welcome to the Future of APB Reloaded

2013-03-06T18:37:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of 2013, we promised we’d take a lot more time to communicate what’s happening with APB Reloaded and our plans for the future. Starting March 2013, we’re going to make “Reloaded Day” the start of our Reloaded calendar year. In this blog post we’re going to share an overview of our plans for the year.

2012 was a massive year for Reloaded. We had a newly-launched game and all the associated teething issues that needed to be ironed out that we attacked with zeal - things like compatibility with thousands of different PC set-ups, launching localized versions in Russia and Brazil, and creating and managing in-game events for Valentine’s, Halloween, and Christmas to name a few.

For us, 2012 was the year of Consolidation – making sure everything worked, that the game was fun and that we were listening to your comments, suggestions and bug reports from the community. 2013 is the year of Delivery. With the game and our development systems improved and more advanced, we can look to delivering more new features and content; things that we all want to see, and that you've been asking for.

Everyone knows that game development is a very fluid process – new software and hardware is released all the time, new ideas are born, new, unforeseen challenges appear. Regardless of the challenges that all passionate game development teams face, our goal for 2013 is to do everything possible to deliver on planned updates, so long as they are highly polished and ready for our players.

New & Improved Features for 2013

Our ‘To Do’ list for this year is pretty ambitious. Some projects are only in the design stage, but others are being coded as you read this. We’ll also be constantly working on performance, anti-hack measures, and bug fixes throughout the year.

So on to the good stuff! (Please note the list below is not in order of release or priority.)

Our major goals for 2013 are:

Score system update
New tutorial
Brand new front-end design
Mission re-vamp in mission districts
Elective spawning
New contacts
Asylum map with new game mode
Threat segregation
Joker Ticket activities in mission districts
Smart district spin-up
Re-designed HUD

“Settling the Score” (Version 11)

We’ll be releasing a few major updates throughout the year, the first of these being called “Settling the Score” (Version 11), set for an April release. This update will feature an improved District instancing mechanic, a new scoring system that balances arrests, kills and mission objectives, and a new way for players to choose their own spawn point after death. We’ll write a blog post with full details just before release.

ARMAS Marketplace Content

We have a small but talented team of artists constantly working on new content for the game.

As we've already revealed in a concept teaser we’re working on an Enforcer Performance Kit for the Bishada, and of course we’re working on the Bishada Criminal Performance Pack too. There will also be some new clothing elements for both packs, and these will be revealed a short while before release. This is all a few months away, so consider this a very early sneak peek.

Special Events

We’ve had a lot of positive feedback about our in-game special events because they allow us to create some fun seasonal gameplay and rewards. We’ll be doing major events for the usual big holidays - Valentine’s, Easter, Halloween and Christmas – and there will be plenty of other stuff in between. Our next major holiday is Easter, and while we don’t want to reveal it all yet, let’s just say that you can expect to find a brand new character walking around the streets of San Paro.

We’ll continue to work on improving online game performance, update current anti-hack measures, pursue new possible anti-hack measures and destroy bug that may pop up throughout the year.

A Bright Future

Improving APB Reloaded is a continuing conversation with our community. We appreciate your feedback and we read every Forum, Facebook, and Twitter suggestion. We’ll continue to work on improving online game performance, update current anti-hack measures, pursue new possible anti-hack measures and destroy bug that may pop upthroughout the year.

So 2013 is the year of major updates, more content, and more communication. We appreciate your support, we hope you like what you've heard so far, and we look forward to seeing you in the game.

The History of Reloaded Productions

2013-03-05T16:13:00.000-08:00

Before we take you on a journey through the history of our game development studio – Reloaded Productions, we would like to apologize for publishing this blog post a day late. We have been in crunch mode trying to get everything ready for Reloaded Day, especially all of the celebration gifts we mentioned in our previous blog. So without further ado, please join us for a stroll down memory lane …

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Back at the end of 2011, we finished up APB Reloaded’s open beta period and went live with the game. It was a pretty eventful time for us, and we’d like to share some stuff about what we’ve done in the last year and what that start-up was like for us.

While the initial development of APB happened in a huge multi-floor building in Dundee, the continued development of APB Reloaded has been taking place in a single floor building located in the bustling city center of Edinburgh. It started as a fairly spacious location, but in the last six months, as we’ve brought on more staff from around the world, we’ve found that it’s actually starting to get a little cramped! The pictures below show what the room looked like before we’d really moved in, and what the same space looks like right now.

You can see our audio, production, design and community departments. Qwentle, Scottomon, Jotunblut, Revoemag and Farfletched all share this area and it’s typically the loudest part of the office. To the right of the picture is where our artists are kept, which probably explains the sheer number of action figures that there are loitering in the area (‘they’re for anatomical research reasons only, honestly’). We keep the programmers in the background of the picture. Aphadon, StuartReloaded, Hezeki and Androvald are just a few of the programmers that we have on site. Over on the right behind the glass wall is the QA area where Funkadefunk, A3 Paper and Digitalbeeps keep an eye on features to make sure everything’s ticking as it should.

The last two years of APB Reloaded’s development could be described as a kind of ‘organized chaos.’

We’ve really gotten to grips with a lot of the unusual methods that were employed during APB’s original development. The last eighteen months have been all about us learning the framework of the game so the next year can be all about more fixes, more content and faster development.

We’ve added a lot of content (six new Contacts, Fight Club, server performance fixes, environment changes, new Weapons, new Mods, new Vehicle Kits, more clothes), all while coming to terms with a huge game and codebase. Now that we’ve had time to get to know the systems that exist in the game , we have some very cool plans for the 2013 that we will tell you all about in our next blog post.

We’re really proud of what we’ve achieved with APB Reloaded. We have to make a lot of difficult decisions every week – which feature gets pushed to the next release, which assets to include in the next update, sugar or no sugar – but we feel strongly that we’ve done the best that we can and we’re in a fantastic position for the road ahead.

We’re really excited about the next twelve months and beyond and hope that you all are too. It’s great to see so many people that are so passionate about the game and it’s always heartening for a developer to have a dedicated and lively fan base. Thanks for reading and remember: tap fire the n-tec for greatest damage!

We asked our developers what their favorite moments of the last twelve months were:

“I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.” – Senior Systems Developer, U.N.C.L.E.

“Killing pumpkins! The squeaky laugh you got every time you killed one was great. The whole Asylum preview was really fun for me.” – QA Tester A3Paper.

“I think the highlight of my year was getting sent muffins in the mail from the SPCT. Muffins and brownies.” ‘So what you’re saying is that free food is the highpoint of your year?’ “Kind of, yeah.” – Androvald and Alistair, Game Programmer and Hosting Programmer respectively.

“Does the time someone kicked a hole in the wall count? Okay then, how about when we went live on Steam?” – Revoemag.

“Staffing up with people from back in the day.” – Tim, Clothing and Character Artist.

“The CS ticket explaining in great detail what a camel-toe is, and then asking for one for their character.” – M, Head of Intelligence and Office Manager.

“Getting our clothing pipeline actually fixed so we can start turning out more clothing faster.” – SoleSurvivor, Lead Artist.

“Getting visual studio 2012 up and running. Performance boosts all round.” – Aphadon, Game Programmer.

“When the folks at Effigy News sent me a real life Joker box for Christmas. That was pretty much the best.” – Jotunblut, Community Manager.

“I have to say my favorite moment was basically everything that went on in the ‘Monte and Kogey’s Stupid Competition’ thread. There is no prouder moment for a developer than watching folk sacrifice themselves in formation just for the fun of it and because you are an egomaniac with too much time on your hands in the evening, a keyboard, and a varying list of whims with which to formulate your demands. It was fun, and the community availed themselves magnificently.” – MonteCristo.

“Late night totally sober community interaction.” –Qwentle, Lead Designer.

“My favorite moments of the last twelve months are not suitable for public consumption.” – Michael Boniface, Studio Manager.

Get Ready for Reloaded Day!

2013-03-01T13:25:00.003-08:00

Hello from sunny Scotland to all our Reloaded fans! It’s time to kick-off the month of March with style AND substance as we share our plans for the year ahead and reward our loyal players.

March 7th is the birthday of the APB: Reloaded team and so we’ll be celebrating this as “Reloaded Day” with a whole week of free stuff and the best contests we've ever launched. We’ll also be blogging about the history of APB: Reloaded and what we’ll be doing in the future.

We’ll be giving away over 400,000 G1 Credits in total prizes with Kill and Customization Contests. The ‘Almost Famous’ customization contest gives you the chance to see your design in the game and featured on billboards across San Paro as the new Joker Industries spokes-model!

Other giveaways include an in-game party hat & streamer and FREE 3-DAY PREMIUM for everyone – you get Bonus XP, Bonus APB$, and 20% off purchases from the ARMAS Marketplace!

We wanted to come up with something to reward our long-term players so we've created totally unique Titles for Closed Beta Test and Open Beta Test players. We truly appreciate all the help in getting Reloaded started.

Thanks for all your support,

The Reloaded Team

________________________________________________________________________

Upcoming Blog Posts

4^th March – “History of Reloaded” blog post.
7^th March – “Future of APB: Reloaded” blog post.

Reloaded Day ‘Kill-a-thon’

Duration: 00:01 hrs UTC Monday 4^th March 2013 to 23:59 hrs UTC Sunday 10^th March 2013.

This is a simple “Most kills wins” event. The top three players with the most unique kills in each world will win a prize (Mission and/or Fight Club Districts).

Top 3 players per World win:

1st Place – 40,000 G1 Credits
2nd Place – 20,000 G1 Credits
3rd Place – 10,000 G1 Credits

Winners will be announced week commencing 11^th March.

‘Almost Famous’ NPC Contest

Duration: 00:01 hrs UTC Monday 4th March 2013 to 23:59 hrs UTC Sunday 10th March 2013.

Design a new Joker Industries “Spokes-model” contact! Your character will be added to the game and will also appear on Joker Industries billboard ads throughout the game.

Design a character on your account and submit their image, character name and up to 750 word back story to the forum post. One entry per account, please see forum post for full rules.

The Top three creations as judged by the Reloaded Productions team will win:

1st Place – 40,000 G1 Credits + Character appears in game!
2nd Place – 20,000 G1 Credits.
3rd Place – 10,000 G1 Credits.

Winners will be announced week commencing 18th March.

Celebration Gifts

Free ‘Reloaded Day’ Party Hat and Streamer

Log-in to the game and automatically receive these two customizable in-game items for free.

Duration: 00:01 hrs UTC Thursday 7th March 2013 to 23:59 hrs UTC Sunday 10th March 2013.

Free 3 days Premium Account

Log-in to the APB: Reloaded ARMAS store during the offer period and enter the following code to receive a free 3-day duration Premium account:

ReloadedDay2013

Duration: 00:01 hrs UTC Thursday 7th March 2013 to 23:59 hrs UTC Sunday 10th March 2013. (3 days Premium begins when you enter the code during this period. Even if you enter the code on Sunday, you will receive the next three days as Premium).

Get the following benefits in-game:

20% discount in the Armas Marketplace.
Up to a 90% bonus to all Contact Standing (XP) gains.
125% bonus to all APB$ (in-game currency) gains.
50% reduced cool down on activated abilities.
Advanced access to customization suites (up to 100/50/50).
Extended duration for free Armas trials.

Free Titles

Free in-game titles for players who have been with us since the Closed Beta and Open Beta days.

Duration: A promo code will be automatically delivered to qualifying players on Thursday 7th March, and is available to redeem until the end of this month. The code can be claimed by logging into Armas and going to the 'Redeem Code' page.

“CBT Veteran” Character Title Unlock (Account Lifetime)

Closed Beta Players (First logged in before 23rd May 2011)

“OBT Veteran” Character Title Unlock (Account Lifetime)

Open Beta Players (First logged in 23rd May 2011 - 6th December 2011)

Many Cheers and Happy Birthday!

Optimization Magic - Part 2

2013-02-26T18:19:00.000-08:00

(link to Part 1 of Optimization Magic)
(a slightly circular reference to forum discussion)

First; barring any unforeseen issues we are launching 1.10.2 globally in a few hours (of course with the caveat that anything could be rolled back). We expect 1.10.2 to result in a 15% server-side performance improvement across the board on the existing hardware. So while that does NOT completely address the current performance spikes, it should generally improve the experience and allow the game to run more stable at its current 25 FPS server-side tick rate. Also 1.10.2 is the first of a series of optimization focused updates.

SPCT and trashing the new hardware.

Second; a big thanks to the SPCT (San Paro City Testers) who jumped in and tried trashing the new software and new server hardware on Saturday as well as some invited guests (and for those who don't know, you can join the SPCT program to participate in the public tests of new builds by applying through our forums. Keep in mind that part of your entrance exam is figuring out HOW to apply...)

It was a pretty fun event since we basically put up the new hardware, upped the CCU to 100 per server core, then unlocked the FPS-lock on the new software, and asked everyone to show up in the same spot and "shoot and holler" and basically perform as many close encounter actions as they could (which in turn trashed client FPS for most players, since rendering 100 other players within 90m actively shooting at you and setting off explosions turns out to have its own client FPS issues, though that's separate from the server effects).

In short we tried creating the worst possible scenario for the game (server wise) and we think we pulled that off pretty well.

The good news is that on the new hardware running 1.10.2, we saw a stable server side FPS around 40 FPS (basically frame ticks stayed around 25ms), with the biggest spikes at 28ms (which is a server side FPS of 35FPS).

This means we should be able to comfortable return to 100 CCU and set the server tick to 35FPS using the new hardware combined with the upcoming software version of 1.10.2.

You can see the video of the carnage here:

Here is the resulting performance graph from the test above:

In fact, as an added bonus, during the 1.10.2 maintenance we are going to put SOME of the new hardware into production for SOME (not all) of the Financial Districts on US-West.

Due to some quirks in the configuration system, we will not be able to change the 25FPS limit until ALL the districts have new hardware, but at minimum US-West should start seeing more and more stable performance in Financial as a result. After all the US-West Financial have been upgraded, then we will move on to Waterfront.

Next steps

Next step is to evaluate 1.10.2 after the software patch, find other obvious performance issues, and then review what other optimizations we will focus on next. After that we will monitor and measure the effects of the OverKill hardware being put in US-West in production, and hope it doesn't physically explode or blow up, or catch on fire in our datacenter given it's 'pushed' pretty hard.

Presuming all goes well, we will expand the roll-out of the new hardware and progressively replace Financial and Waterfront in each of the worlds, while at the same time continuing software optimization.

One of the challenges on the client side remains the giant particle-effect slow-downs. Unreal has a known issue where unlit particles cause large FPS hits. Epic addressed some that in the 2009 build of the engine with the introduction of the Light Mass system, but unfortunately APB Reloaded pre-dates that particular engine build, and does not have access to that lighting system.

We have various ideas of how to upgrade or replace parts of the engine over the next few months, and some are more radical than others (maybe just creating a whole new APB game using the new Unreal engine instead?.... :) ), but the basic direction is to continue with optimizations in any way shape or form we can think of, and to continue keeping you informed via the blog and forums as we roll out these changes.

See you in San Paro!

/TechMech

Optimization Magic

2013-02-17T21:59:00.001-08:00

(a slightly circular reference: link to forum discussion)

One of the hardest things for a small team like ours to fit in to the product cycle on a regular basis is optimization.

Optimization is a little bit like making sure we are eating our vegetables every week. Every time we add or change a feature in the game, in theory we should also refactor everything around the code that just changed. Since that's usually not practical, large scale optimization really tends to happen in chunks when the team is finally given some time to focus on the task.

Now that we are about to release newly optimized code, I wanted to take some time to lift the hood on the work being done, and to share some insight into issues we have to contend with - from the software engine to server hardware.

We are really proud that APB Reloaded has remained a consistent top-5 (out of 100+) in Steam's Free2Play category since its December 2011 launch (as an aside; the game actually gets the vast majority of its traffic directly through http://www.gamersfirst.com/ rather than through Steam, but Steam provides a convenient benchmark to compare against other games), so we are planning for this game to provide many more years of entertainment for all its fans. But this tension between short term and long term goals (survive today, but plan for a 5+ year lifespan) means that every day we struggle with what we should focus on next; features, maps (Asylum anyone?), game content, security or optimization? All of these are pressing needs for one reason or another.

Given that turning off the game and entering an optimization-only cycle is not possible, we instead attempt the next best thing; we optimize while running full speed. It's a little bit like changing the oil in your car while travelling at 65 MPH down the highway. What could possibly go wrong?

APB - a server resource hog?

Few Unreal engine based games have attempted to throw 100 fully customized players (how many FPS games ever give you 50 v 50 in a single map?) in a twitch FPS/TPS setting on a single area, where each player can have a fully customized character, car and skinned weapon, which means at least 200 fully custom player items (cars and characters), up to 850 autonomous NPC pedestrians and 350 autonomous NPC cars driving around in a district, in addition to everything that's movable and destructible (traffic lights, dumpsters, billboards etc.).

This means roughly 18,000 dynamic actors for the server to track while running in a single shard, and in fact on a single server core (and read more on the 'single-core' issue down in the hardware section).

Granted newer games using other engines like Planetside 2/Forelight have used a very different 'continent', 'distance' and 'mission' optimization system to allow much larger factions on a continent (though not necessarily in the same firefight), and even Fallen Earth uses a system of dynamic shards to allow 10,000 players in an area. But neither is an Unreal game.

Technically speaking customization has some impact on the server side performance (mostly due to large amounts of asset streaming), but customization has a larger negative impact on the game client, and tends to drive client-side frame rate lower than the expected frame rate from someone's gaming rig if customizations had not been such a central part of the game.

While there are clearly other FPS/TPS' that perform amazing graphical feats on older hardware (CoD-MW series, Crysis series, Gears of War series, Far Cry etc.), they rarely allow this many complex humans and AI actors in a single battle area, or when they do, the participants are streamlined and unified and do not permit nearly APB's level of insane customization (or city-wide destruction). Or they behave more like RPG or RTS games and generally have much lower requirements for hit registration, server tick rate and movement prediction. The amazing feat in APB is that this game still actually works on a lot of pre-2009-era hardware given the extreme computational complexity of the game.

Server FPS vs Client FPS

As a general rule, we want the server to perform a full pass of computations for all the 100 players and 18,000+ district actors 30 times per second (giving each CPU core at most 33ms to complete all computations in that one frame). If we achieve 30 FPS on the server, then connected game clients can easily run at 2X-3X the server tick rate (60FPS - 90FPS) without any noticeable loss in accuracy. At 1:2 or 1:3 server-to-client ratio movement prediction and frame-interpolation provide a very smooth game experience.

Unfortunately during the last few updates we have had to temporarily lower the server tick rate to 25 FPS and reduce the max CCU per core, so it's high time to perform another full optimization pass.

Software Optimizations and Server Side Computation times.

Below is a graph of what version 1.10.1 server-side computations look like under ideal test circumstances AND using our new test hardware (more details on this new hardware at the bottom of this post).

In the current 1.10.1 build the server completes 1 full frame (moving those thousands of actors around) on 1 core in 1 full district using the new hardware type in 19.2ms. In 'theory' this means the server on the new hardware is capable of running at 52FPS tick rate (!).

This is to be compared with the 'current gen' hardware, where we have only been able to run a 'safe' server tick rate of 25FPS in the current 1.10.1 build.

The lower part of the graph shows version 1.10.2 with the new software optimizations.

From the synthetic test it appears the team has been able to squeeze a 16% performance improvement in software alone (which amounts to about a 10 FPS improvement on the server). This improvement drops the per-frame processing time to 16.1ms, which means a theoretical 62FPS server tick rate (again on the new hardware).

This 'should' mean that software optimization alone (the 16% improvement) will let us go from 25FPS back to the original 30FPS serverside tickrate on the current hardware as part of the 1.10.2 update (to be determined after the game is live).

You can read these graphs from the bottom up, starting with receiving network packets from all connected actors, updating game elements and physics, updating cameras and streaming, and ending with sending data back to all clients. What's rather surprising is that almost 50% of the entire server processing time consist entirely of receiving/parsing and serializing/sending network traffic. The actual game updates (players, objects, physics etc.) take only 50% of available CPU time.

From the above graphics you can see that the team has been able to really squeeze and optimize the "Receive Network Traffic" and the "Update Game Objects" steps. We expect to continue optimizing all the steps in the system, but presuming QA signs off on the upcoming patch, we will measure the real-world impact of these improvements in the coming week.

The Single-Core Engine Conundrum

First a disclaimer. The Unreal Engine has served us (and thousands of other games and companies) incredibly well. It's a great engine and a fantastic rendering system. Now the engine has certain design choices that create certain hard-to-overcome limits (as all engines do).

The biggest one for large scale games is Unreal's monolithic and (almost) single-threaded server-client-response system. The philosophy behind Epic making that design choice back in the era of Unreal Tournament / Gears of War makes perfect sense, given the engine's focus on small-scale lobby based FPS/TPS games or even single player or co-op games. Some Unreal based RPG's (for example Blade and Soul) have clearly adopted the engine as a renderer, and then created an entirely proprietary server system to handle RPG style updates and connection loads (which usually requires 2000-3000 players per shard but only a server tick-rate of 10FPS or less in RPG mode).

APB Reloaded uses a hybrid of standard Unreal server code (originally we used Unreal version 2008, so the engine is getting a little aged at this point) and its own proprietary TCP message stack coordinating the communications between worlds and districts, as well as a very proprietary customization system. But the general actor-to-actor interaction relies on a system that's very close to the original Unreal system. Mostly handled in a single game update loop.

This means all the processing in a single district happens on a single core and in a single thread.

One way to think of this is that the engine fundamentally works like a turn-based game where each actor has 33ms to move per turn. Within the scope of a single server core/thread, the process gives each actor one chance to make a move (or combination of moves). When all actors have signaled their move, everyone is told of everyone else's updated moves, and the game now proceeds to the next move (though from the chart above you can see that we actually only spend about 7.5ms moving stuff around, the rest of the time is spent sharing that information).

Human reaction time (or as it's called Mental Chronometry) is around 160ms, so processing everything at 33ms on the server, plus the packet roundtrip time (ideally less than 40-80ms) for a total of about sub 120ms of processing delay, should give us sufficient headroom to provide a good player experience.

However, even just a slight improvement in server side processing will actually enhance the fluidity of the game. We humans are very good at processing sequential frames of information and can easily spot the visual difference between film at 24fps and video at 30fps (or as the case may be "the Hobbit" at 48fps for those of you who now hate Peter Jackson). This means we will notice visual processing hiccups long before we react to new on-screen events.

Why does all this single-threaded-ness matter to us? Well, it turns out that most of the performance gains in recent years in server processors from Intel and AMD have NOT come from performing more computations on a single core, but rather to have many parallel cores performing parallel tasks.

Sadly for APB Reloaded, that type of parallel task division does not improve individual district performance... But... there is hope...

New OTW Hardware Test World going live: OverKill

In the near future we are about to release a new OTW (Open Test World) called OverKill. OverKill is actually an apt name and is the result of a lot of hardware experimentation by our IT team (and the above computation tests were run in this hardware as well).

The current generation APB servers consist of Intel Xeon X5570 "Nehalem" based processors (operating in 3.2Ghz Turbo Mode) with 4 cores x 2 processors each. We use Dell M610 blades like these (just recently pulled from our datacenter).

The benefits of blade servers are that we can increase the density of the hosting operation, since we can fit 16 servers in 10 "rack units." The drawbacks - the types of processors supported by blade servers and the inability to overclock those processors - have caused us some serious problems in optimizing the hardware for the game.

For quite some time we have been looking for a new processor solution specifically to handle Financial and Waterfront (and eventually Asylum) districts. Something that can live in our three datacenters, but at the same time give us a cost effective solution to run at much higher single-core clock speeds, while also taking advantage of the newer "Sandy Bridge" and "Ivy Bridge" Intel processor architectures.

After much playing around with various combinations of server chips, it turns out that server boards and server chips really don't like or even permit overclocking and they are almost never engineered to optimize single-threaded performance (other than the incidental improvements that come from larger L2 and L3 cache systems), and we also need at least 6 cores to be able to perform these calculations in a cost effective manner (which let's us run 3 fully loaded districts on a single server) which left us with a conundrum.

After experimentation we have settled on having a public test using a custom solution that uses a high end desktop board (ASUS Rampage 4 Extreme) combined with an unlocked Intel i7-3930K 6-core processor that in a datacenter settings (with lots of cold air) easily runs stable at 4.25Ghz (technically we can push it to 5Ghz, but we are starting small).

Will it work once we throw real APB district computations into these systems? The synthetic test indicates it will indeed work. Will I/O performance hold up (given the strangle-hold that network I/O has on server CPU)? That's much harder to test, so we will find out as soon as we start running the OTW tests.

In a synthetic benchmark the i7-3930K OC (compared to the stock X5570) shows raw gains of nearly 70% in single-threaded performance (!). We do lose two cores per server, but the extra expense (more servers) seem worth the vast performance gain.

CPU Bench – Single Threaded:
[ORIGINAL X5570] – 1349
[EXPERIMENTAL 3930K] – 2284

If we can capture some of these performance gains in the real world, and translate it into improved Action District performance, then our longterm goal is not only to ensure a stable 30 fps server tick-rate, but gradually be able to raise the CCU in each district as well.

From the graphs on software optimization, you can see that the new hardware with the new software 'COULD' run a theoretical server-side tickrate of 62 FPS, which is 206% more than we actually require for the 30 FPS tick target rate.

Our plan is to use the extra performance (again once we have run the real world tests) to ensure we can increase CCU in a single district. Since CCU taxes the server in a non-linear fashion, we expect to only increase CCU 25%-50% before dragging the server back down to 30 FPS tick. Of course this is still speculation, and is still to be determined during live testing.

Higher district CCU would mean better matchmaking (but THAT is a whole other blog entry, though needless to say 80 people in a district means 20 teams with potentially 10 ongoing matchups whereas 120 people in a district means 30 teams with 15 ongoing matchups, resulting in 50% improvement in match availability. Of course it's not quite that simple - but you get the gist). More players = better matchmaking.

OUR hardware, software and network vs. YOUR hardware, software and network.

In this post we have only talked about server side processing and optimization, and have not touched the OTHER things that also affect performance First and foremost - you need a good gaming rig to play APB. We always recommend having 8GB of RAM and using 64-bit Windows 7. Anything less is asking for trouble. In particular using 64-bit Windows is critical. Also client-side FPS in most Unreal games tends to drop dramatically during very large semi-transparent VFX events (i.e. very big explosions where the player does NOT die - something APB of course has a lot of) so only higher end graphics cards tend to perform ok during those big VFX events (and to optimize that part of the engine code is a whole other ball of wax, far beyond the scope of this current post).

Of course network connectivity, and your latency to our core datacenters are critical as well (Los Angeles, Washington DC and Frankfurt) or to the datacenters managed by our Russian (Moscow) and our Brazilian (São Paulo) publishing partners.

I hope this article has shed some light on the optimization work currently being done. If you are one of our OTW testers, then expect to see the "OverKill" world come online in the next two weeks. And for everyone else we expect to release 1.10.2 very soon, which should have some immediate performance improvements.

Til Next Time!
/TechMech

From Reloaded, With Love

2013-02-01T01:08:00.001-08:00

As I mentioned on Twitter, here is the blog we've been working on to let you know in advance all of the plans we have for Valentine's day this year.

Pink and heart-patterned weapons are back! Use them to participate in our Massacre Event or participate in one of our community contests.

We have a fairly new member of the team that will share more details on the festivities on all of our behalf. Please meet Simon, one of our Producers.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Written By, Simon

Reloaded Producer

Romance is in the air here at the Reloaded love-nest as Valentine’s Day is fast-approaching. Our Valentine’s update includes new role levels, contests and the all-new Fallen Angel costume pack!

'Valentine's Week Massacre' 2013

To keep things interesting for new players and long-term fans alike, we’re taking last year’s Roles and adding in more levels and rewards. Please note any kills made during last year’s event will be carried over to this year, so you don’t have to start from zero again (if you already hit over 750 kills last year you’ll instantly get the top level reward).

The levels for the ranks of the 'Valentine's Week Massacre' role are:

Rank 1 - Requirements: 50 kills. Reward: Death Theme 1.
Rank 2 - Requirements: 150 Kills. Reward: Love Heart Glasses.
Rank 3 - Requirements: 300 Kills. Reward: Death Theme 2.
Rank 4 - Requirements: 500 Kills. Reward: A leased M1922 (Tommy Gun) + Pink Preset Police Hat.
Level 5 (NEW) - Requirements: 750 Kills. Reward: 'Casanova' Title + Valentine's weapon skin.

The 'Snubby Love' role, tracks kills with the Colby SNR 850 'Cherub' secondary weapon, which is gifted to you when you login to the game.

The levels for the ranks of the 'Snubby Love' role are:

Rank 1 - Requirements: 25 kills. Reward: Ophelia - Blonde Decal Unlock.
Rank 2 - Requirements: 75 Kills. Reward: Prentiss (Enforcers) / Bloodroses (Criminals) symbol.
Rank 3 - Requirements: 150 Kills. Reward: Ophelia - Red Head Decal Unlock.
Rank 4 - Requirements: 250 Kills. Reward: Colby SNR 850 'Cherub' unlock, so it can be purchased from Contacts at any time (including outside the event).
Level 5 (NEW) - Requirements: 375 Kills. Reward: 'Cherub Chaser' Title.

New “Angel Wings” Backpack Item

We’ve had a lot of positive feedback about the skateboard and radio backpacks we recently released, and you’ve been asking us to make more available on ARMAS. Our art team came up with plenty of cool ideas and the first one released is Angel Wings for Valentines!

To get the detail required, one of our artists, Tim, used a piece of software called ZBrush to digitally sculpt the feathers. Digital Sculpting is exactly what it sounds like and can be compared to carving clay or marble, but it’s all done virtually using a PC & graphics tablet instead of a workbench & chisel.

The sculpted model was then exported to a design program called 3D Studio Max where it was tweaked and tested with our APB characters. The final stage meant adding the wings to our test version of APB and checking that they work with other customization items, running around with the item deployed, getting in and out of vehicles, and more.

The final customizable item will be available as part of the “Fallen Angel” pack on ARMAS. As a special bonus we’re adding in a customizable Halo and a “Fallen Angel” title.

In summary, the “Fallen Angel” Pack includes:

• Angel Wings (customizable).
• Halo (customizable).
• “Fallen Angel” title.

Valentine’s Community Contests

In addition to all this new content, we’re going to be running a couple of Valentine’s-themed contests from February 1st to 14th (US Pacific time).

“Rev My Engine”

Keeping the Valentine’s Day theme in mind, players must trick out their ride by designing their own love machines!

14 Entries will be chosen by a unanimous decision.
Each winner will receive a Vehicle Selector - choice of one Account Lifetime Vehicle!
Starts Feb. 1st and ends Feb. 14th

“Be My Valentine”

Love is in the air and it’s time to capture it! Players can design two matching or complementing outfits, one outfit per person.

Players may submit their outfits and characters for only ONE of the following categories:

1) Most Fugly
2) Most Sexy
3) Celebrity Look-A-Like
4) Fictional Icons
5) Star Crossed Lovers

Each character must take one in-game editor screenshot and submitted in one entry.
Each entry must also have at least one in-game group photo with their matching / complementing outfit worn.
Two characters max per couple.
One couple per category will be chosen by a unanimous vote. (10 player winners total)
Each winning couple (2 different users per couple) will win 300 G1C + A Valentine Weapon selector 90 days!
Starts Feb. 1st and ends Feb. 14th.

New Year New Stuff!

2013-01-25T13:36:00.001-08:00

It's January and now that everyone is back in the office from the Holidays (or recovering from the epidemic flu season going around) - we are picking up full steam ahead on all sorts of projects.

Server and game optimization, 1.10.1 patch update, Hit Squad Clan Event 2, Joker Jackpot, San Paro Royalty Event, and upcoming plans for Valentines Day! We are starting off the New Year right by working on a bunch of new stuff for all of you. And part of our New Year's Resolution includes informing our community more frequently about all of the stuff we are working on as we are working on them.

So what's this 1.10.1 patch we speak of? Our Dev Team has been focusing on various Weapon Balance modifications, crouching modifications, a couple new Weapon Skins, and some minor bug fixes. We are looking at releasing this patch in a few weeks time.

For a more in depth discussion about the Weapon Balancing and other modifications we've asked Qwentle to comment:

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Written by Qwentle

(Lead Designer APB Reloaded)

1-10-1 Weapon Balance

Afternoon guys,

I promised an update prior to the Christmas release but getting those elves into their costumes and ready to go outside took a little longer than anticipated, so I’ll just talk about what we’re working on now.

As promised, we’ll be making a number of balance changes to APB: Reloaded in our next patch, mainly concerning Damage over Range and Crouch heights.

Damage Falloff

Currently we have an ‘Effective Range’ distance, which determines at what distance weapons do their maximum damage. From this point, the damage they do falls linearly down to 35% at the weapons maximum range, which for almost every weapon is 100m. This means we have a damage graph like so.

For 1.11.0, we’ll be adding a further stat, ‘MinimumDamageRange’, while also adding the ability to adjust the minimum damage on a per-weapon value. This allows us a lot more flexibility when determining damage over range, especially for weapons we want to be fairly accurate, but quite low range (i.e. the Joker Carbine and the Nano). It will also allow us to add a more effective niche for sniper rifles, making them the only weapons effective over 85m (I’m also currently playing around with having a 150% effective range on the DMR, making it a 2 shot at extreme ranges and a 3 shot at closer, but I’ve not committed to this yet).

This gives us damage graphs more like the following:

This means weapons fall better into their range niches, with snipers dominating extreme range conflicts, and longer range weapons beating out hybrid weapons such as the Carbine at mid-ranges.

We’ll also be making a number of individual balance tweaks on the weapons, but as these are still being play tested, we’ll wait until they are finalised before revealing the changes.

Crouch Heights

The other thing we're looking to address with this patch is the crouch heights of players. Currently the hit-box for players when crouched is significantly taller than their player, even for large characters. As such you can often shoot at players that are very deep behind cover by aiming above their heads and checking the reticule colour. This is because when players move while in a crouch state their models rise significantly (as they’re standing on the balls of their feet).

To solve this we’ll be adding a third hit-box which will take effect when the player is crouched but not moving, that will be significantly smaller than the current crouched hit-box. This allows the player to fully hide behind most pieces of low cover around San Paro, and they’ll be safe from incoming fire that would previously hit them, but only as long as they don’t move.

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As mentioned earlier, we also have a few different Community events going on this month. Seeing as we'd like to continue fostering more Clan-based activity, we decided to launch "Round 2" of our Hit Squad Clan Event.

From our first Hit Squad Clan Event, we received a lot of good feedback from the community. It seems a lot of players were given an opportunity to group up and meet with new people. There were a lot of new Clans which formed and some older Clans recruiting new players too.

Round 2 offers some of the same rewards from the first event. That includes free Joker Boxes for participants who simply complete the required number of Missions, and for the top Clans per server a "Clan Shout Out" (in-game broadcasts for their World).

This time though instead of using Backpacks as our random drawing prize, we thought it would be interesting to change it up with Joker Tickets. It's kind of an indirect introduction of Joker Tickets becoming a reward for Action District Missions. Currently, they are only obtainable through Fight Club Missions, but as we mentioned before, we have plans to have them for Action District Missions too.

San Paro Royalty Event rewards players for finding players in game who have won the elusive Crown from Joker Distribution. If you saw these "Kings" and "Queens" on the streets of San Paro and took a screen of them you would be rewarded. And if you get the San Paro Royalty to emote you could earn more rewards.
A simple sighting event that everyone could participate in was what we had in mind, which also gave some recognition to those who worked hard to earn Crowns.

While those events are coming to a close soon, we are already brewing up some events and contests for next month. Stay tuned for our next post where we'll be sharing more details on how we'll be celebrating Valentines Day in San Paro this year!

Coming next: APB version 10, "New Breed Part 3"

2012-11-26T18:53:00.002-08:00

Written By Qwentle, Lead Designer

Now that Halloween is out of the way, it’s time to talk about APB Reloaded v 10 (aka 1.10.0), which will appear in the next few weeks. This is New Breed Part 3, and introduces two new T5 contacts, "Birth" and "Templeton," which will be available to anyone that has completed the two boss contacts from their faction’s organisations.

Birth and Templeton bring with them a large number of goodies that players can unlock through pledging and completing missions with them. Along with a selection of vehicles, presets and Capacity increases, they also bring a number of new modifications and weapons to the table. Let’s take a look:

New Modifications

With Birth and Templeton, we’re mainly focusing on character modifications. With a number of very useful modifications in all categories, we hope to see a much larger amount of diversity on the streets of San Paro.

Field Supplier – Wide Radius: This field supplier can supply teammates from a longer range at the cost of a slightly shorter deployed time. In addition all ammo suppliers will now automatically resupply any valid targets in range that are not actively firing.

Spotter: An activatable character modification, this works similar to tagger but without requiring you to hit an enemy. Simply activate and paint enemy targets to show them to all teammates, even through walls.

Car Surfer: A utility character mod, this allows you to ride on the roofs of moving vehicles. Great for hitching a ride when there’s not enough seats, or when using a heavy weapon, it does however leave you heavily exposed and without the safety of the car interior to hide when you are hit.

Flak Jacket: A Health modification, this heavily reduces damage taken from explosions. This comes at the cost of your ability to dish out explosive damage however, reducing the number of grenades you have available by 1.

Fragile: A Health modification, this slightly reduces health (14%, just enough that you won’t be 1-shotted by an HVR), but increases your sprint and run speed by the same amount. Perfect for fast assaults and task item carrying.

High-Magnification Scope: An upper-rail modification for weapons, this is functionally similar to a Hunting Sight. It also sets your weapons zoom to a very high value (4.66x normal magnification) and replaces your reticule with a Sniper crosshair at the cost of removing your non-marksmanship crosshair completely.

New Weapons

Half-Brick / Eight-Ball: These are new Grenades that physically hit the target for high damage, depending on how long they have been in the air. At extreme ranges, these can kill instantly, though require high skill to land hits on an aware target. The Eight-Ball flies faster, but the Half-Brick kills earlier in its flight-time. Due to the lack of noise, these can be devastating as stealth weapons, for targeting stationary campers from long range, or just for a bit of fun.

OSCAR : Obeya Corps. Armory have made several modifications to their successful OBIR range in order to provide a weapon for the close-quarters urban market. With the brake removed, iron sights, a 2 round burst and a CQC stock, the Obeya Systems Carbine is much more accurate on the move, giving a burst fire alternative to the Joker Carbine.

We’re also making a number of substantial bug fixes and changes to the game. The most noticeable one is the OSMAW. We wanted to keep our Rocket Launcher feel very powerful, but be primarily useful in an anti-vehicular role, and be very counterable while on foot. In this regard we’ve implemented a Wind-Up system for it. When firing you now need to hold the button for 1.75 seconds while the rocket is primed then fired. This stops players firing it directly after exiting a vehicle, or directly at your feet from point blank. Due to the balancing brought about by this change, we’ve been able to buff the launcher in several other areas to keep its power. It now carries three spare rockets (so can be affected by Bandolier), has a larger kill-radius, and has a faster travel time. While this may seem like a lot of improvements to an already very formidable weapon, the wind-up timer ensures that it performs most actions either the same or slower than before.

Here's a bit of maths on the subject.

	Old OSMAW	New OSMAW
Firing after leaving a vehicle	Instant	1.75 seconds
Switching to an OSMAW and firing	2 seconds	0.7+1.75=2.45 seconds
Reloading and Firing	3.5 seconds	2.25+1.75=4 seconds

Overall it takes longer to perform actions with the OSMAW, hence the improvements to projectile speed, ammo capacity and kill radius. This should make it a more effective primary weapon, and feel snappier to use, but in reality be quite easy to counter by an aware team.

Other improvements include weapon damage visually affecting vehicles, a new alternative weapon skin for players that have progressed past tier 1, changing the default pistol to the FBW, and a lot more. We’ll have full patch notes for you soon.

Next time we'll be talking about the next patch, 1.10.1, which includes a number of fundamental balance changes among other additions, and our upcoming plans for Christmas Fun.

A San Paro Thanksgiving

2012-11-21T19:01:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving time is here! While this holiday may be viewed as controversial nowadays, over the years it has also become a shop-till-you-drop and eat-till-you’re-stuffed holiday. On more positive note, Thanksgiving also celebrates a time of thanks, and what better occasion to give thanks to our community! So starting today the Thanksgiving festivities begin and carry out through the weekend.

Base image courtesy of Salek (Colby)

Black Friday deals are coming to the Armas Marketplace early this year.

50 % Off ALL Premium Packages

Starting today through Sunday all Premium Packages are discounted 50% off. If you’ve never experienced the benefits of Premium Membership now’s the time. For those of you who may not know or need a refresher, Premium Members enjoy the following benefits:

Up to 90% Bonus XP
125% Bonus in-game currency (APB$) earnings
50% reduced cooldown on activated abilities
Advanced customization abilities
20% Discount on Armas Marketplace purchases

50 % Bonus Loyalty Reward Points

Shop the Armas Marketplace from today through Sunday and get an additional 50% More Bonus Loyalty Reward Points towards your APB Credit Counters for every G1 Credit spent in Armas.

Thanksgiving Day Login Event

For every Character you login to the game with November 22nd - 25th (PST), you will receive an exclusive Character Title Unlock: “Pilgrim” for FREE. It’s that simple all you need to do is log in and unlock. Just a little something to thank you for being a supporting member of the community.

Daily Credit Counter Deals

Starting Black Friday Day through Sunday you’ll find Daily Credit Counter Deals in the Armas Marketplace. Each day (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) a new Daily Counter Deal will have a different Joker Mystery Box available as your promotional reward. Friday- Sunday (Nov. 23^rd – 25^th)

Lastly, thanks go out to all the participants of the “48 Hour Turkey Gobble Contest”. We saw some very creative ways to dress up Characters as turkeys, just like the one posted above, courtesy of Salek. On a side note, we’ve learned to be a little more careful what we name our contests – seeing as we have a global-wide community and certain terms may have different meanings in different cultures. For those of you who may not be aware – the unintended meaning of ‘gobble’ can be found in the Urban Dictionary. Clearly this is an M-rated game, but unlike what some may think, we STRICTLY meant 'gobble' in that Turkey and Thanksgiving kind of sense.

So - Happy Thanksgiving San Paro!

And don't forget more Holiday fun (and our One-Year Anniversary for our official Live Launch) is around the corner for December so be sure to stay tuned for more details about our Holiday Events!

Asylum Preview – Halloween Just Got A Little Crazier

2012-10-22T19:32:00.002-07:00

On October 11^th, an anonymous user posted a mysterious audio file and tiny image on the APB Forums.

Players were intrigued. What was that haunting score with eerie Tubular Bells' style syncopation? And what was up with that 200 x 200 pixel image?

Over the next few days a new image was posted in random forum threads. Some valiant players started putting together the pieces.

After some time it all became clear… we have arrived at the Asylum.

On October 22 we took down Fight Club to make way for our October 25 preview of "Asylum" to San Paro in the form of, “Fright Club.”

While this is not the full version of our soon-to-be new game area and game mechanics designed for the Asylum, we wanted to give players a serious taste of what’s to come and a chance for the community to provide layout feedback on the core game map.

When you log into the Asylum District for the first time you will unlock a new Title – “Asylum Seeker” since nothing says, “I’m a little off my rocker,” to the world than "Asylum Seeker” floating over your head. Whether you’re hearing voices in your head, or just morbidly curious, this new Title is just the thing for you.

Fright Club includes 7 new Missions and some pumpkin smashing activities that would make Gallagher want to trade in his watermelons for pumpkins. Just leave your Gallagher-style sledgehammer at home and do it San-Paro-Style and shoot that pumpkin!

Players will also get Joker Distribution tickets when they advance new roles in the Asylum district.

Enjoy the Asylum, collect those Joker Tickets, and go to the forums and provide map feedback on the Asylum. Regular Fight Club will return the week after Halloween.

Also here is quick note from Qwentle:

A Message From Qwentle, Lead Designer

“Hey guys,

Due to its construction (multiple level indoor areas with very limited vehicle access) and lack of mission targets, the current version of Asylum is not a straight up Action District.

Our final goal for Asylum is a free-fire district with elements of "turf control" and it also adds some non-PvP oriented goals (emphasising completing non-opposed objectives in enemy territory over engaging in combat, even rewarding players for avoiding combat during certain engagements). We paper-prototyped a number of solutions for more flexible and less goal-oriented designs, and our final design can best be described as modified small scale Turf Wars.

Completing the full non-opposed objectives for Asylum will still take quite some time, but since the map is very close to complete, and we felt Asylum fit Halloween perfectly, we wanted to take the opportunity to share it with you as quickly as possible. This meant temporarily making it a Fight Club map (or in this case a 'Fright Club' map with some modifications).

Keep in mind that the current game modes are not yet finalised, but certainly feel free to give us constructive feedback on the map layout itself.

With those important caveats in mind, please go out and enjoy this preview of Asylum!”

Don’t forget to stay tuned for more details regarding all of the Halloween Contests and Events we have going on starting this week!

Trick and Treat Time Again

2012-10-21T22:23:00.002-07:00

It’s that most wonderful time of year again. Halloween is here San Paro, and we’re bringing back a couple of familiar faces from last year.

Trick and Treat are back! Little is known about the origins of Trick and Treat, but some claim that they are the spirits of dead Criminals and Enforcers called forth on Devil's Night to count the cost of the fallen. These two Halloween Contacts will be chilling in the Asylum District, a place we know you’ll be visiting soon (stay tuned for the blog update shortly with all the "2-Weeks of Asylum" Details!).

Trick and Treat in the Asylum

For those of you who may not be familiar with these crazy characters, there will be four levels of Missions to complete just like last year. Criminals and Enforcers get the same number of Missions to complete for their respective Contact.

Level 1 – Start

Level 2 – Spooky Symbols (Unlock 4 Symbols)

Level 3 – Terrifying Themes (Unlock 4 Music Themes)

Level 4 – Petrifying Pumpking Mask (Unlock Pumpkin Head)

This year we’ve added 2 more Levels and all new Mail Rewards:

Level 5 – Thrilling Titles (Unlock Title: “Wraith” or “Ghost”)

Level 6 – Wicked Weapon Skin and a Horrifying Headband
(Unlock Halloween Weapon Skin and A-Knife-Through-the-Head )

When you go visit Trick or Treat in the Asylum district you’ll notice that it has been decorated with some spooky looking pumpkins all over the place. One can only assume the patients residing there did not do the carving themselves; mentally unstable people and sharp objects tend to not mix.

These pumpkins aren’t just lying around for you to admire the Halloween spirit of the place. It’s smashing pumpkins time! (Not to be confused with the legendary rock band.) Smash these pumpkins for quick cash rewards and keep smashing them to progress a special new role. Every Level of pumpkin smashing gets you a new Title:

Level 1 – Unlock Title: “Pumpkin Chaser”

Level 2 – Unlock Title: “Pumpkin Murderer”

Level 3 – Unlock Title: “Pumpkin Assassin”

Final Level – Unlock Title: “Pumpkin Terminator”

The top pumpkin smasher in each world will be awarded an exclusive Title Unlock: “Pumpkin King” or “Pumpkin Queen.” This special title for the top smashers will be given sometime after the Halloween event has ended, giving everyone to the last second to maximize their Pumpkin Kill Count.

We’re crazy about our pumpkins so we’re also bringing back the Pumpkin Head Customization Contest. In homage to Sleepy Hollow we are calling this year’s contest the, “Headless Gunman Pumpkin Head Contest.” We’re even increasing the stakes this year by improving the prizes for the winning submissions. Use your old Pumpkin Head that you’ve kept from last year, or get one by completing Missions for Trick or Treat this year.

Costume Customization Contest

We will also be holding a Costume Customization Contest again this year, so be sure to join the “Halloween District Parade Costume Contest.” Check out the APB forums for further details on rules and prizes, and submit your entries there. On Halloween, Wednesday, Oct. 31st, San Paro Citizens are invited to dress up in their Halloween costumes and go to Social District to participate in our GM-led Halloween District Parade. Trick out your characters and there could be some treats waiting for you.

Saving the best for last, this year we will be celebrating Halloween with “Fright Club” our introductory preview of The Asylum District! Fright Club will replace our regular Fight Club for the duration of the Halloween event, so starting Monday (October 22^nd) regular Fight Club will be unavailable. Fright Club will be going LIVE on Thursday, Oct. 25th.

But have no fear. You will be able to still earn Joker Tickets during this time! All those goodies in Joker Distribution are within reach. And just so you know Fright Club has the following Missions set up:

Moving Target Item
Moving Target Item Large
Team Death Match
Territory Control 1 Point
Territory Control 3 Points
Territory Control 5 Points
VIP Survival

You’ll get a lasting souvenir upon your first visit to The Asylum District as well! When you log into the Asylum District for the first time you will unlock a new Title – “Asylum Seeker.”

Please keep in mind that this Asylum preview is your chance to give all your initial candid feedback on Asylum as we work on completing it as a district (it's left as a Fight Club only temporarily). We are eagerly looking to hear back from all of you to see what you think.

Halloween 2012 – Let’s do this San Paro!

Urban Warfare Escalates

2012-10-13T13:24:00.000-07:00

It wasn’t too long ago, but those early riots seem like a walk in the park compared to life on the streets of San Paro nowadays. Take but a few steps down the sidewalk and you can feel bullet shells roll underneath the soles of your shoes. More shells collect around storm drains and all along the curbsides. You’re moving too fast to even notice anymore. No time to stop and smell the tear gas.

Block after block smoke rises and dims the sky. Be it from fire, gas, napalm – who knows. No time to make out who that silhouette is at the other end of a cloudy alleyway. Secure your helmet and strap that bulletproof vest on tight.

Everyone is trying to represent Criminals or represent Enforcers in their own unique way. But in the end everyone is the same; everyone is raging on the inside thinking about the loss of friends and family to the cause. No need to show off those tattoos, scars, or war paint to let the world know which side you're on. Now is the time to cover every last bit of exposed skin you have and make sure you survive.

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Next week a whole new set of Combat Gear is coming to the Armas Marketplace. Urban Warfare escalates and it’s time to armor up.

Enforcers can get the Armored Urban Warfare Pack and Criminals can get the Impact Urban Warfare Pack. Both packs will contain the brand new set of heavier Combat Gear, the never before released 4 Slot Performance Vehicles, and a FREE never before released ATAC 424 mid-to-close range Assault Riffle. We will also have the Combat Gear sold separately also with a FREE ATAC 424. Here is the breakdown of the NEW Urban Warfare Packs and Bonus Packs coming out next week:

Armored Urban Warfare Pack

· Combat Gear: Armored

· V20 Patriot Pursuit Special (4 Slot Performance Vehicle)

· FREE – ATAC 424 (Mid-to-Close Range Assault Rifle)

Impact Urban Warfare Pack

· Combat Gear: Impact

· V20 Nightrider (4 Slot Performance Vehicle)

· FREE – ATAC 424 (Mid-to-Close Range Assault Rifle)

Armored Bonus Pack

· Combat Gear: Armored

· FREE – ATAC 424 (Mid-to-Close Range Assault Rifle)

Impact Bonus Pack

· Combat Gear: Impact

· FREE – ATAC 424 (Mid-to-Close Range Assault Rifle)

Players can also have a chance to win these soon to be released packs for free by participating in our “Heavy Metal Fighters” in-game event starting TODAY until Tuesday (Oct. 16^th, 12 PM PDT):

Complete as many opposed missions as possible from now until Tuesday at Noon. The top 500 players with the most opposed missions completed will be entered into a random drawing to win. 10 Winners will get their choice of either new Urban Warfare Pack (depending upon whether they want Enforcer or Criminal), and 10 Winners will get their choice of either new Bonus Pack (Enforcer or Criminal). (For further details visit our APB Forums)

We’ll have more screen shots and images of the new Gear and the ATAC later, but for now here are some concept art and screen images of the new Vehicles and kits.

(Please note that players who have previously purchased the Performance Kits will be sent a free update for the new kits, shortly after we have updated the current Performance Kits on Armas.)

Stay tuned for more updates regarding the Armored and Impact Urban Warfare Packs coming out next week and join us for the Heavy Metal Fighters event.

Armor up San Paro. Armor up.

In the Spirit of Scots and Schoolgirls

2012-08-13T16:54:00.005-07:00

Now that 1.9.0 (New Breed Part 2) has made its debut to San Paro, we can take a brief moment to share some of the things going on behind the scenes leading up to the big launch. We have a few stories of travel and adventure to share first, and then we’ll get into the title of this blog post.

About 2 weeks prior to 1.9.0 launch, some members of our US Team (including myself), went to visit out UK Team. For many of us this was our first time visiting Scotland. For those of you who are not familiar, our Reloaded Studio is located in Edinburgh, Scotland - a very beautiful European city rich in its history and culture. Our office is located right in the heart of Edinburgh within walking distance to many historical and famous attractions such as the Scot Monument, Edinburgh Castle, and the National Gallery. Not quite the birthplace you’d imagine for the chaotic world of APB Reloaded.

Let me paint a picture of some of the stark differences between a city like Edinburgh and a city like San Paro. One city has cobblestone-streets lined with quaint cafes, brownstone buildings, and red double-decker buses passing through. The other city has asphalt roads lined with looted electronic stores, neon-flashing billboards, and sidewalks littered with pedestrian corpses throughout. One city was founded before the 7^th Century AD – antiquated and European. The other was founded in the New Millennium- modernistic and Californian-inspired.

Our journey to Edinburgh did not come without a few hiccups. I’ll start off with the security line at LAX airport. One of the guys traveling with us forgot about a USB at the bottom of their bag. This was no ordinary USB, it was a special USB we made specifically for marketing APB Reloaded… and it was in the shape of a bullet! Needless to say we had to wait for our lucky travel buddy to pass security after some scrutiny.

Outside of some rain the first day we were there, the rest of the trip was pretty smooth. In a nutshell – lots of meetings, lots of cross training, lots of lunches, plenty of haggis, blood pudding, and whisky. Not to mention some of the best scones I’ve ever had.

For one full week the Reloaded team was under one roof in one singular spot on the globe. Not only did we get the opportunity to spend time with each other in person (versus video conference), we were able to have more in-depth discussions going about our plans for the future and how to move forward with those plans. Included in those plans were the new sets of Gear we had thought about right around the time we launched the Combat Gear and Tactical Gear Packs & Bundles. Enter scene – Schoolgirl and Highlander Packs! We are excited to announce that these new additions to the Armas Marketplace will be available this week or next.

What might have inspired this particular combination you might wonder? Well, the connection to the Highlander Packs and Scotland Weapon Skin I’m hoping is apparent. Plus if female characters are going to get skirts shouldn’t the male characters get something similar? So there you have it – Highlander (Enforcer) and Goth Highlander (Criminal) Packs. Both packs include the Scotland Weapon Skin (a.k.a. Saltire Flag Weapon Skin). One little fun factoid –the kilt included in the Enforcer Highlander Pack was inspired by our Lead Designer’s family tartan. That’s right – now you can pay homage to Qwentle and family in game!

As for the inspiration for the Schoolgirl outfits, some of you may remember our live-action trailer. Although, this concept for the Schoolgirl outfits was something the community has wanted for a while perhaps the trailer reminded everyone. On a side note, one of our artists was inspired by…well… the desire to see female characters in little skirts. I’m not naming names, however, the in game description specifically for the Schoolgirl Skirt hints that there was some ulterior motives when this pack was conceived. The in game description says:

“A schoolgirl skirt. 100% cotton and schoolgirl cut. Someone ‘accidentally’ moved a zero from the length to order number category when ordering skirts for San Paro High. This is the result.”

Guess who that “someone” might be? Finally, the fun factoid for the Otome Neko Weapon Skin – this was inspired by one of our very own APB Community members. Now player-made content has made it into the game and into Armas. We are pleased to have such a creative player community!

So as I mentioned keep your eyes peeled for these tantalizing editions to the Armas Marketplace we will be releasing this week or next. You too can soon celebrate APB Reloaded in the spirit of Scots and Schoolgirls.

APB Reloaded 1.9.0 Now Live! Big Bonus Offers and Free Premiums

2012-07-27T14:48:00.000-07:00

Every 4 years countries around the world send their athletic elite to compete in their honor. Every 7 years one can view a full Solar Eclipse from the same spot on earth. Every 13 years cicadas come swarming from the sky to inhabit the US Eastern Coast. But only once in an entire lifetime does New Breed Part 2 go LIVE. That’s right APB Reloaded version 1.9.0 is live!

We’ve started the celebration early by offering a limited-time pre-launch promotion – the 20% G1C Rebate Promotion! Players will get 20% of the G1 Credits they spend in the Armas Marketplace back on their accounts shortly after the promotion ends. We’ll be counting all G1 Credits spent in the Armas Marketplace starting from yesterday until July 31^st, 11:50 PM PDT.

That’s not all! We are celebrating the release of New Breed Part 2 by sending all players a FREE gift of 1 Day Premium and 400 Joker Tickets. All players have to do is go to the Redeem Code page in Armas and click on the promo code link. But everyone should hurry to redeem their codes because they will expire at the end of the month - July 31^st, 11:50 PM PDT!

As Qwentle had mention in one of our earlier 1.9.0 preview blog post that one of the big new features New Breed Part 2 was bringing was the Joker Distribution in Social District. After everyone’s redeemed their promo codes and have their Joker Tickets in hand – go to Social and say hello to our new NPCs - Ophelia and Wilde! They’ll have some fun stuff for you to buy with your Joker Tickets – including Titles and Armas Items. You’ll also dig the new tunes playing inside Joker Distribution and be sure to check out the crowning glory of all Joker Ticket prizes!

Onto the next brand new feature – Activities! This feature we are introducing first with Fight Club where players can complete smaller tasks while in a Fight Club Mission and get additional rewards. Those smaller tasks could be things like “Get X amount of Assists” or “Kill X amount of enemies with your side arm.” There are 3 tiers of Activities: Bronze, Silver and Gold. Each tier becomes increasingly challenging but also increasingly rewarding.

Attaining a Bronze or Silver rank will immediately reward you on the spot, but attaining a Gold rank will win you a significantly larger reward at the end of the week. Activities can also be skipped if there is another Activity available that you want to go for instead.

Please advise, Activities will be available in game as of Monday (7/30/12), in order to follow our regular Fight Club Challenge Rewards cycle. Although we are introducing the new Activities system with Fight Club, our hope is to add them to general Missions as well. So while we are testing out the waters with Fight Club Activities we’d love to hear from all of you to see what you like and what you don’t like about this new feature. We want your feedback!

Finally, while you are taking a gander through Joker Distribution in Social, completing new Activities, or customizing your new Character Titles (there are some fun Titles our team took creative liberties with – you’ll see…), take advantage of a few other promotions and events we have going on to top off the New Breed Part 2 celebration:

· Double Premium Discount Weekend – That’s right it is back! From Friday through Sunday, (7/27/12 -7/29/12), Premium members will get 40% off all Armas purchases (double their regular 20% discount).

· Joker Mystery Box 2 BOGO Sale – From Friday through Sunday, (7/27/12 -7/29/12), buy one get one FREE – Joker Mystery Box 2. This Box will only be available for a limited remaining time on Armas after this promotion ends so stock up while you can. Delivery of the bonus Joker Mystery Box 2s will be completed shortly after the promotion end date.

· San Paro Triathalon – Enter this video and screenshot forum contest for your chance to win some cool Armas Kits, Packs and Premium Days. Check out our Forums for further details!

That about sums it up for all the goodies New Breed Part 2 has to offer for right now, but stay tuned as we have some other events, promotions, and new products in store for later…

Cheers to 1.9.0!

Account Wide Permanent Weapon Conversions in Progress, New Pricing Tiers

2012-06-28T02:29:00.002-07:00

Around 12:00 midnight PST (about 08:00 GMT) the team started the conversion progress. We expect the full conversion process for people that held permanent weapons prior to June 28 to take up to 24 hours, so if you are expecting a converted gun, please be mindful that there is some delay, and it also means it may not show up in your account until June 29.

New Account-Wide Permanent Weapons (AW-PW) vs Character-Bound Permanent Weapons (CB-PW):
The new account-bound weapons are available for purchase right away from the Armas Marketplace (go check them out). Going forward the price difference between Character Bound Permanent Weapons and Account Wide Permanent Weapons is around 20% (give or take a tad based on exactly which weapon it is).

In other words; if you have an active premium membership, an Account Wide Perma Weapon will cost you the same as it would have cost a non-premium player to buy a Character Bound Perma Weapon

AW-PW Pricing Tiers:
The pricing is now in three simple tiers; 1799 / 2899 / 3999 credits based on the gun, with an additional 20% discount for active Premium players, PLUS any potential future additional discounts and time based sales that our Designers and Producers may engage in for certain events.

That's a pretty decent value for money, given that in theory you can have up to 100 characters on one account (!). Not sure you'd want that many, but IF you did, you would also have yourself 100 permanent guns if you made one AW-PW purchase...

This means the lowest priced Account Wide Permanent (non-sale or "MSRP") at 1799 G1 credits gets you for example an NTEC PR-1. On the high-end, the most expensive Account-Wide Perma Guns (for example the pair of OCA-626 guns) will run 3999 G1 credits.

Translating those prices to "Real World Currencies":
For those not familiar with G1 Credits, this means...

NTEC-PR1 AW-PW will cost $22.49 USD / 17.99 EUR / 14.50 GBP if you are a non-Premium player, and $17.49 / 13.99 EUR / 11.25 GBP as an active Premium player.

OCA-626 AW-PW models will cost $49.99 USD / 39.99 EUR / 32.75 GBP as a non-Premium player, and $39.99 / 31.99 EUR / 25.75 GBP as an active Premium player.

Hopefully the above explains the new (and terribly simplified) CB-PW and AW-PW pricing schemes that are in effect as of right now.

Remember to "Try Before You Buy":
We always encourage you to first take advantage of the free trial-periods to try out all the guns in the game before you spring for any purchases. This way you can decide for yourself if any of the Armas guns are to your liking, or if in fact you like one of the non-Armas guns instead.

And yes, our games are free2play, and you WILL be competitive without buying these guns, though the style of gun (each with its own specialization) will truly allow you to pick a completely different playing style.

As we have pointed out many times before (and as is supported by those who actually play APB, and not just read about it), these guns are not OP, they are simply specializations catering to specific play styles. And yes - if you want a gun that fits your exact play style (think of it as an Armani suit, tailored to your specifications), you will in some cases have to pay for it. And of course, when you do, you also join thousands of other gamers in showing your direct support for the Development Team, as it continues on the very long and ardouous quest to create a bigger, better and more optimized APB...

That kind of support is greatly appreciated by the whole team. For example, last week we were able to hire a fantastic new UI and UX artist to tackle the conversion to Scaleform, and all those things that will make navigating the UI better, more intuitive and more efficient. That kind of improvement was directly funded by the ongoing support from gamers like yourself!

Thanks all, and see you in San Paro!

/TechMech

New Breed Part 2 - 1.9.0 Preview

2012-06-23T16:13:00.004-07:00

(Post by Qwentle, Lead Designer of APB)

Hot off the 1.8.0. release and Weapon Skin improvements, we wanted to get back to the New Breed series of patches.

Next up, APB version 1.9.0 where we'll introduce Ophelia and Wilde, our resident Joker Distribution representatives. Situated in what was previously the Star Screen Cinema complex in Social, Ophelia and Wilde stock weapons, vehicles, clothing, car kits, titles and other goodies that players can purchase through the use of a new type of "award/currency" called Joker Tickets.

With the first release of 1.9.0 you will be able to start earning Joker Tickets when you win Fight Club challenges. Over time we will also start adding Joker Ticket Awards to Mission Districts as well.

When you win a Fight Club challenge, you will receive a stack of Joker Tickets giving you access to exclusive items from our new contacts. While some of these will be short-cuts to in-game rewards or items unique to Joker Distribution, we will also be allowing players to use these tickets to access items previously only accessible through Armas. Items available through this system include several Car Kits, Clothing Assets, Vehicles, and a number of previously Armas-only weapons. This gives players a path to earn some of these exclusive items purely from in-game activities.

Oh, I also mentioned Titles up there. As part of 1.9.0. we will add the ability to show a preferred title as part of your name, for that extra little bit of customisation. By default this is your rank, but you can choose from a number of options based on how you've progressed through the game, what achievements you have unlocked, and various other activities. This is a totally opt-in activity however, and it's something you can choose to disable if it's something you'd not like to broadcast yourself, or see on others.

There are also various optimization and security enhancements planned for 1.9 (and later versions) as we continue working toward improving the game in all areas.

/Qwentle

A note from Tech Mech:
Sometime in the "near-ish" future we are going to start sharing info on some REALLY BIG items being worked on by our "special" internal teams. Most of these items are still a long ways out before they are even remotely complete, but we hope to start talking about our long-term plans publicly sometime in the near future.

Some of these new things may blow your mind when we can finally share more info... but until them - have fun in 1.8, and we are all looking forward to seeing you in 1.9 when we release this version sometime in mid-July.

/TechMech

Crazy Vegas Weekend!

2012-06-23T01:59:00.001-07:00

It all began with a fun little event called the 1.8.0 Challenge. At the end of it 10 lucky winners per world server were awarded the never before released Vegas G24 (4-Slot customizable vehicle) and the Vegas Hot Rod Kit.

Those 50 players were hailed the exclusive owners of the Vegas G24 and Hot Rod Kit with bragging rights included...until now!

Today we have launched three new products in the Armas Marketplace:

Vegas Uber Bundle
Spring Sale Price: 3119 G1C
w/Premium Price: 2495 G1C

Vegas Uber Bundle includes:

NEW! Patriot Vegas G24 (4 Slot Customizable)
NEW! Vegas Hot Rod Kit
Vegas G20 Mercury Kit
Vegas G20 Rugido Kit
Vegas G20 Wheel Kit

Vegas Kit MEGA Pack
Spring Sale Price: 1949 G1C
w/Premium Price: 1559 G1C

Vegas Kit MEGA Pack includes:

NEW! Vegas Hot Rod Kit
Vegas G20 Mercury Kit
Vegas G20 Rugido Kit
Vegas G20 Wheel Kit

Hot Rod Kit
Spring Sale Price: 969 G1C
w/Premium Price: 775 G1C

Vegas Hot Rod Kit includes:

Vegas Hot Rod Spoiler
Vegas Continental Spoiler
Vegas Hot Rod Rolling Cage
Vegas Hot Rod Skirts
Vegas Hot Rod Hood
Vegas Hot Rod Rear Bumper
Vegas Hot Rod Taillights
Vegas Hot Rod WingMirrors
Vegas Hot Rod Headlights
Vegas Hot Rod Front Bumper

Need a Refill on G1 Credits? CLICK HERE

LET IT RIDE" VEGAS CUSTOMIZATION CONTEST:

In celebration of this NEW edition to the Vehicles family - check out the “Let It Ride” Vegas Customization Contest for your chance to show off your customization skills, win Power Joker Boxes, and have your talent displayed in full glory in the Armas Marketplace!

Contest Rules Prizes:

10 Talented Winners will be selected for their customization skills!
All Winners will get 3 of each Joker Mystery Box (1, 2 and 3) - Total of 9 Boxes
If any of the winners incorporate at least 3 components of the new Hot Rod Kit in their design, they will have their Joker Mystery Boxes upgraded to the Joker Power Boxes instead of the regular Joker Mystery Boxes.
In addition to the upgrade in boxes, those winners will have some of their screenshots published in our Armas Marketplace.
Screenshots must be taken in the car customization window, UNALTERED - no use of Photoshop or graphics software permitted.
All submissions must include 4 total screenshots taken from different angles that best showcase their design work.
Please include your Character name and Server to your submission.
Submissions must be entered within the contest period 6/22/12 - 7/1/12 11:59 UTC
Winner will be selected, announced and awarded within a week after contest end date.

Post your submission for the contest HERE

Account Wide Permanent Weapons to launch June 28

2012-06-20T19:42:00.001-07:00

On June 28 we plan on launching the long anticipated Account-Wide Permanent Weapons feature.

It has taken quite a bit of back-end re-engineering to support this feature, but from a player perspective it makes total sense, and this feature makes your account as a whole more valuable, and also brings more purpose and meaning to having additional character slots now that all your slots will be able to equip the same permanent gun you have purchased.

At the launch of this feature we will convert ALL CURRENT PERMANENT WEAPONS held in your account to the account-wide version of the same gun.

Therefore ANY permanent weapons you purchase between today and June 28 (at the current lower prices) will become account-wide on the day of conversion (at the ‘single permanent gun’ price).

AFTER the conversion, going forward players will have the option of buying ‘single character permanent weapons’ (at a lower price) and more expensive ‘account wide permanent weapons’ (the latter of course given to ALL your characters in an account).

Now, there are people that have purchased two of the same permanent gun for two different characters on their current account. For those players we will refund the G1 credits used for the second gun +20% bonus credits that were part of that second purchase.

In most cases though it appears people have purchased different permanent guns for their multiple characters, and for those players the change will just means that ALL their account-wide characters can now access all the guns.

We will send out more details before the change-over takes place, especially while we are performing our last minute sanity checks over the course of the next 8 days to make sure the change will not cause any other issues along the way.

Cheers,
/TechMech

Version 1.8 released - 1 day FREE PREMIUM for everyone

2012-05-24T08:24:00.000-07:00

Just because we are feeling generous (and because our downtime and maintenance took much longer than usual) we have pre-loaded ALL ACCOUNTS with free 1-day Premium Codes. These can be redeemed anytime in the next 7 days, and after that they will magically disappear from your account again.

To redeem your 1-day free Premium Code, just log in to the game, then launch the Armas Marketplace, and then click "Redeem Code" at the top of the page.

After navigating to the Redeem Code page, select the code at the bottom of the screen, then click "Redeem"

Enjoy a Premium Day (and enjoy the automatic 20% discount for all the new items)!