RTS

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ZeroK: ZK 1v1 Tournament May 30th 2015

3. 2. 1. 0. And we have a takeoff! The end of May closes by, which can only mean we are going to have a go at yet another 1v1 tournament. It will be starting on 30th of May, as always at 10 AM UTC. Registration will close on 29th of May, at 23.59 UTC. However due to unavailability of EErankAdminAnarchid the tourney will be hosted by PLrankOrfelius.

Tournament format & rules:
– Double elimination
– Random seeding
– First map of each round is predetermined. After the first game, the losing player will suggest two different maps, from which the winner will choose the map for the next game. Maps must originate from 1v1 map pool.
– All winners bracket games will be best of 3 (including finals). All losers bracket games will be best of 1 with the exception of the losers finals (bo3).
– It is possible to substitute for players who don’t show up. If you have signed up, make sure to show up on time. Those who fail to show up will likely be subbed out by 10:30 UTC.
– The players coming first, second and third will receive special unique collectible awards to their player profile, and receive tournament points which will at the year’s end determine the year’s altogether best tournament player.

First maps for each round are as follows:

Round 1
Cooper_Hill_TNM02-V1

Round 2 and losers round 1
Quicksilver

Round 3 and losers round 2
Trojan_Hills_v02

Losers round 3
Hide_and_Seek_v03

Semifinals
wanderlust_V01

Finals
Forgotten_Crossing_v1

Current bracket can be seen here.

Sign up in the comments and good luck to all of the participants!

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ZeroK: ZK 2v2 Tournament April 25th 2015

With April comes another tournament. It is scheduled to take place on the 25th of April, at 10:00 (10 AM) UTC. Registration is open up until 1 hour before that time.

Tournament format & rules:
– 2 human players per team
– Double elimination
– Random seeding
– First map of each round is predetermined, the following maps in the winners bracket will be selected by the loser of the previous game from the featured 1v1 map pool.
– All winners bracket games will be best of 3 (including finals). All losers bracket games will be best of 1 with the exception of the losers finals (bo3).

It is possible to substitute for players who don’t show up. If you have signed up, make sure to show up on time. Those who fail to show up will likely be subbed out by 10:30 UTC.

The players coming first, second and third will receive special unique collectible awards to their player profile, and receive tournament points which will at the year’s end determine the year’s altogether best tournament player.

Current bracket can be seen here.

Sign up in the commments!

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ZeroK: Zero-K v1.3.4.1

While we had many releases in the last 3 weeks none of them felt large enough to make an image and a set of notes. Easter brings with it a bit of free time so here is a release and some notes on the last few weeks.

Engine

The greatest recent advance has been the permanent adoption of the latest engine version. Nothing is “official” but with week of successful use it does not look like we are going back.

Here is a list of some of the readily visible things that the engine does:

  • Desyncs seem to be much rarer and if they do occur the engine devs will care.
  • Gunships can crash when they die. Just like planes.
  • Pathfinding updates much faster. Earlier units would take a while to notice that a ramp exists and use it in their pathfinding.
  • Units don’t get stuck on terrain. In situations where they previously got stuck they now slide off.
  • The line of sight view looks a lot nicer.
  • Units can be prevented from occasionally firing sideways. It has been applied to Big Bertha, HLT, Grizzly, Penetrator, Annihilator and Starlight.
  • Units can be told to ignore the terrain while firing. This is useful when they either have a massive spread or enough deformation to knock down any wall.
  • Everything costs exactly how much it says it does. In 91.0 the costs were off by 16/15.
  • Units are ‘forgotten’ by enemies much more rapidly when they cloak. In 91.0 a Scythe would be targeted by a Raven or Swift for so long that it looked like the plane was cheating. Now units forget after a few seconds.
  • With bombers, queuing anything after an attack ground order does not destroy the attack ground order.
  • Heatrays now do their correct distance-reduced damage against shields (previously they always did full damage).
  • Transports no longer randomly de-exist their cargo if they die over blocking terrain.

There are many things behind the scenes in the update that make it easier to develop and could lead to more features. For example save games are now possible.

Balance

Not much has been happening in balance recently. The recent tournament went well in terms of unit diversity and the games looked very good. Vehicles were a bit dominant but Veh/Tank/Hover have a history of moving around a very fine balance point.

  • Raven change from 10 days ago: Dives is slightly steeper but costs a lot of speed.
  • Applied overkill prevention to Slasher.
  • Doomsday Machine can now shoot at planes.
  • Hacksaw missile turnrate increased slightly.

Defender buff:

  • Damage 103.1 -> 104

The recent damage rounding changes resulted in Defender dealing slightly too little damage.

Brawler and Warrior gained 5.5% and 9% extra DPS that was taken from them in the transition between engines.

### Graphics
Now that most people can run the latest engine some possibly problematic features can be re-enabled. Explosion shockwave distortions are now back after a few month of absence. Also:

  • Fixed many particle effects (shimmers, plane jets) being invisible for spectators and some players.
  • Improved flaming units particle usage.
  • Improved Catapult missile effects.

Interface

Here are some recent changes to the interface:

  • The minimap has the option to fade on zoomout.
  • Camera shake is configurable.
  • Metal spots are displayed as white when unclaimed and have the option to show teamcolour.
  • Better support for translations (the new engine supports utf8).
  • Structure terraform can be activated by holding left mouse button and not moving the cursor for a second while placing a structure (the not moving time is configurable).
  • Structures with absolutely no reason to have the Wait command no longer have the Wait command.

Fixes

  • Fixed Reef drifting.
  • Fixed Geothermal being difficult to target.
  • Fixed Tidal Generator hitvolume.
  • Fixed set target stipple weirdness.
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ZeroK: Zero-K version 1.3.3.7

It’s time for a new version, and we’re using the 1.3.3.7 version number again because ZK is too l33t to use any other number.
In this update there are various improvements across all factories, many important bugfixes and some new features.

Shield Bots:
– Shield Bot Factory can now only be built by people with prior ban history to better reflect its criminal theme.
– Roach renamed to Rapist, for what it does to light units.

Spiders:
– Legs 6 -> 8.
– Vulnerability to newspaper +35%.

Aircraft:
– Raven replaced by Kestrel.
– Kestrel changed to a melee dive bomber.
– Kestrel renamed to Raven.

Buildings:
– Defender missiles 3 -> 5, for better defending.
– Newton is now unable to work by default. An apple needs to be dropped on it to enable it.
– Storage rebalance:

  • turn rate +65%
  • speed +80%
  • DPS -15%
  • range -40%

– Silencer nukes now cost no metal, for consistency with other weapons.

Miscellaneous:
– Dominatrix capture is now permanent. Obedience is the correct behaviour.
– Warrior weapon sound improved: replaced pew pew with WUB WUB.
– Penetrator renamed to Penis. There is no need for euphemisms.
– Zombies, CTF, KotH, and Lava are now all enabled by default.
– New Auto-Resign feature: detects *pluks and automatically resigns them.
– Updated translations for the Nahuatl and Icelandic languages.

Bug fixes:
– Fixed Screamer being unable to target ground.
– Fixed Flea decloaking when moving.
– Fixed Commanders being unable to morph to level 10.
– Fixed Scorcher not doing full damage at range.
– Fixed Ducks being unable to access their Rampage Special Ability Ninja Weapon Technique.
– Fixed slowdamage being unable to achieve 100%.

This patch also introduces the Featured Map Pool Rotation. You will only be able to play on featured maps from the rotation. Here’s the pool for this month:
– 1v1:

  • TinySkirmish
  • Chicken_Nuggets_v4
  • Trololo_v2
  • SpeedMetal_Duo_Extreme_NoMetal_fix_final_v3
  • DarkSide Remake

– Teams:

  • DeltaSiegeDry
  • DeltaSiegeDry_Deluxe
  • MiniDeltaSiegeDry
  • DeltaSiegeX
  • DeltaSiegeDuo
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ZeroK: ZK 1v1 Tournament March 28th 2015

The March tournament is scheduled to take place on the 28th day of March, at 10:00 (10 AM) UTC.

Tournament format & rules:
– Double elimination (!)
– Random seeding
– First map of each round is predetermined, the following maps in the winners bracket will be selected by the loser of the previous game from the featured 1v1 map pool.
– All winners bracket games will be best of 3 (including finals). All losers bracket games will be best of 1.

It is possible to substitute for players who don’t show up. If you have signed up, make sure to show up on time. Those who fail to show up will likely be subbed out by 10:30 UTC.

The players coming first, second and third will receive special unique collectible awards to their player profile, and receive tournament points which will at the year’s end determine the year’s altogether best tournament player. Points standings will be posted soon after the conclusion of this upcoming tournament.

The starting maps for each round will be announced at some later date before the tournament starts, when the number of participants will be more or less known.

Sign up in the comments!
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ZeroK: ZK 2v2 Tournament February 28th 2015

It’s end of the month, and it’s time to host the monthly tourney.

It will start at 10:00 UTC (10 AM UTC) on 2015-02-28 and registration will be open until February 27th, 23:59 UTC. The current time in UTC can be seen at http://utctime.org/.

Players of all skill levels are welcome and encouraged to participate, however there is a limit of 16 teams, so don’t lose your chance!

Tournament rules:
– Teams contain two different human players
– Single elimination
– First map of each round is predetermined, the following maps will be selected by the loser of the previous game from the featured 1v1 or team game map pool.
– Finals are best of 5, all other matches including the bronze match are best of 3.

The tournament bracket will be seeded according to players’ teams Elo after registration closes. The players in the teams coming first, second and third will receive special trophy awards and score tourney points to determine best tourney players at the end of the year.

The first map of each round will be announced later in the week as the estimate number of players becomes known.

Check out the bracket at http://zk.challonge.com/zkfeb2015
Sign up in the comments!

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ZeroK: Server protocol change

Zero-K has moved into a new server software because old one (UberServer) could not handle large number of players in tests.

This will allow faster development of Zero-K lobby, proper matchmaking etc, but unfortunately breaks compatibility with existing non Zero-K lobby clients, so please use Zero-K lobby for now.

Because it’s a full rewrite of lobby server with changes done to springie autohosts, zero-k lobby and website/nightwatch, do expect some quirks. Bug reports are very much welcome at https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K-Infrastructure/issues

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ZeroK: Zero-K v1.3.1.17

Today we erode away a bit of Total Annihilation legacy with the removal of easy nano-shielding. While it was arguably ok at the small scale we are sure everyone would agree that blocking tacnukes with Zeniths was pretty stupid.

Also a reminder; the tourney is in a few days so don’t forget to Sign Up.

Removed Nano-shielding

Nanoframe hitvolumes now grow from ground level to full height during the first 40% of construction. This makes it much harder (and possibly pointless) to block small shots and fixes the Zenith nanoframe tactical missile defense.

Targeting

Vandal now has overkill prevention. There have also been some improvements in damage tracking.

Dominatrix now really likes to target things which are partially captured. Other units have a mild aversion against targeting such units.

The aimpoints (spots that are aimed at when trying to shoot at something) of commanders are slightly higher, especially for Support Comm. This is because their weapons could be much higher than their old aimpoints which would let them shoot over walls with no retaliation.

Fixed Penetrator aimpoint and hitvolume as well.

Fixes

  • Attempt to fix rare music pitch bug.
  • Nuclear missile launches are now always audible.
  • Fixed a rare case where undead aircraft would take up repair pad spots for eternity.
  • Some sort of Central Build AI fix.
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ZeroK: ZK 1v1 Tournament January 31st 2015

It’s time to open up this year’s supply of tournaments.

As has become customary for odd months, January will have an 1v1 tourney on its 31st day, at 09:00 UTC. The registration is open until Friday, January 30th 2015 23:59 UTC, and everyone is welcome to take part regardless of their skill.

Additionally, players can volunteer to substitute for anyone missing after the registration has been closed and before tourney itself starts. Substitutes will be used if the original signed-up players fail to arrive within 30 minutes of start without notice, in order of sign-up, based on this thread.

Tournament rules:
– Single elimination
– First map of each round is predetermined, the following maps will be selected by the loser of the previous game from the featured 1v1 map pool.
– Finals are best of 5, all other matches including the bronze match are best of 3.

The tournament bracket will be seeded randomly after registration closes. The players coming first, second and third will receive special unique collectible awards to their player profile, and receive tournament points which will at the year’s end determine the year’s altogether best tournament player.

The starting maps for each round will be announced at some later date before the tournament starts, when the number of participants will be more or less known.

You can inspect the tourney bracket at http://zk.challonge.com/zkjan2015

To sign up, post this forum thread and don’t forget to show up on time. Pay attention to the timezone, and set a calendar notification that will remind you. If you are going to be late, try to warn about this in advance.

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