Well... that took longer than expected! This was supposed to be the "February" update but a series of unplanned real-life-related hurdles ended up making it take a bit longer. No worries! We made the patch extra awesome to make up for it! Anyway here's the patch you've all been waiting patiently for:

• Added Steam Workshop support for custom maps! See here[bombernauts.com] for instructions.
  
• Custom maps now store the author of the map (For existing maps you will need to open them in the editor and re-save to get your author data saved in)
  
• Added "custom map folder" to the create game panel to let you make map sets
  
• Added author data for all the default maps

• Added a new powerup (regular pinata): The Fire Barrel! Kinda looks like a makeshift rocket engine doesn't it?
  
• Added a new powerup (golden pinata): Bun Bun! Nobunny crosses Bun Bun...

• Offscreen indicators now open up to show a camera view of players you have last-hit with a bomb. This is basically a kill cam, so you can always see who you kill even if they are offscreen
  
• Player you have last-hit with a bomb now have a highlighted smoke trail
  
• Increased the stun-scale when spamming bombs slightly
  
• Stun-scale now applies to explosions too (up to 100% extra stun on yourself when you are spamming bombs, from all force sources) (this will not kick in until spamming > 2 bombs per second)
  
• Pinatas will no longer spawn until at least 1 player has spawned
  
• Stun is now capped to 5 seconds maximum while you are on the ground (no cap while you're in the air)
  
• The lava now stops you if you whiff a lucha slam

• Added 2 new chat commands, "-sing" and "-fancysing". These can be used by anyone as customizable taunts. You are allowed to sing once every 120 seconds, however this timer gets reset if you get a kill. See below the patch notes for more info on how the sing commands work!

• Default setting for music and sfx volume is now a lot lower (this will only effect new players or playing the game on a new computer)
  
• Fixed an issue with sound effects where some sounds being played at a lower pitch would cut off too soon (this noticablly affects fire tiles, and fixes a few pops and clicks elsewhere)
  
• Added sound effects for players joining and leaving
  
• Added sound effects for getting a kill and respawning
  
• Added a real sound effect for the EMP
  
• Added a whoosh sound effect to players when traveling at high speed

• Fixed bat swipes using the old unity tons-of-polygons-quad
  
• Fixed a few powerup graphics self-shadowing when they shouldnt have
  
• Fixed the 1 pixel white line on the bottom of the scoreboard in some resolutions
  
• Block rubble now gets shadowed
  
• Fixed the bouncy block spring sometimes not showing up over the correct bouncy block
  
• Fixed rocket graphics overriding some other powerups graphics when it launches
  
• Oiled up the steroid arms :larm::bombot::rarm:
  
• Black hole bomb's particles now more accurately reflect the range of its force

• Reworked the layout of the tilemap textures to reduce RAM and disk usage.
  
• Optimized the file size of a number of assets to reduce RAM and disk usage.

• Fixed larger bombs not spawning in the correct location
  
• Fixed minor issue with shuffling RNG (used for powerups)
  
• Fixed an issue where bomb-player collision wasn't registering unless a player threw a bomb in the past second OR got hit twice in a row with bombs
  
• Fixed double respawning if you get a double kill as a ghost
  
• Fixed larger bombs not being effected by ice, mud, or springs
  
• Added additional error handling and logging in the server code. Please send me a debug log if you were host and another player couldn't connect after being lagged out.
  
• Fixed an issue with LeadBomb+Wrecking Ball+any splitting powerup that could orbit you sometimes

• Fixed map editor being able to sometimes place extra blocks while trying to save a map
  
• Fixed an issue in the editor where it would sometimes not save a level (and subsequently break the save dialog)
  
• Fixed an issue in the editor where double-saving a file would mess up the path in the save file dialog
  
• Added additional error handling to the editor load/save file dialog (should be no more breaking with a messed up path)
  
• Custom map sets will now ignore empty folders (you do not need the seasonal folders anymore if you don't want any seasonal levels. Just neutral is fine.)
  
• The default built-in custom maps folder has been renamed from "default" to "sample" (because the default setting is now "all sets", which would be confusing) (this effects new installs of the game only)
  
• The game will now avoid loading bad custom map data* (too large, too small, wrong filesize for dimensions, wrong file extension) and will hide any "empty" map sets from the list of available map sets.
  *note that this is not actually checking the contents of the map, such as making sure tile values are correct and levels have spawns, so it is still possible to make garbage maps that pass the test. I'm not looking for bug reports related to those, just ones that crash the game or cause it to seizure out when loading.
  
• Fixed the game seizuring if it failed to find a custom map

First of all, in sandbox mode there are no limitations or cooldowns songs, so this is the mode you should be in to test these! In a real game, these commands have a 120s cooldown, and can't be longer than 10 seconds or have more than 100 notes.
Try these 2 sample commands first:
-sing {4,2,0,2,4,4,4,x,2,2,2,x,4,7,7,x,4,2,0,2,4,4,4,4,2,2,4,2,0}
-fancysing {(1,0,500),(0,2,250),(1,-2,400),(2,0,1000),(1,3,500),(0,2,250),(1,-2,400),(2,0,1000)}
-fancysing {(0, 3, 0)(0, 8, 150)(0, 3, 0)(0, 8, 150)(0, 3, 0)(0, 8, 150)(0, 3, 0)(0, 8, 150)(1, 1, 0)(1, 6, 300)(1, 1, 0)(1, 6, 300)(1, -2, 0)(1, 3, 300)(1, -2, 0)(1, 3, 300)(3, 1, 0)(3, 6, 300)}

"-sing" is a list of pitches (with 0 being C3). Valid ranges for pitches are -40 to 40, with an "x" indicating a rest. Each note lasts for a quarter second. Simple songs are very easy to make with this command, however if you want better control over timings you'll want to use the fancysing command

"-fancysing" is a list of sets of 3 numbers, each representing 1 note. The format is (sound, pitch, delay). Sound is 0-4, with each number representng a different sound clip to use. Currently it's 5 different "la" sounds, however we may add more in the future. Pitch is the same as in "-sing", however "x" as a rest is not enabled here (just use a delay on the previous note, or a pitch outside the valid range). "Delay" is how many milliseconds to wait before playing the next pitch. You can use 0ms delay to play notes at the same time for chords.

In both commands, the commas and parenthesis are optional, however if you use spaces to separate things the note list should surrounded in brackets {} or quotes ""

I expect people to create and share all sorts of crazy sings they come up with. Eventually I will integrate this into the game better so people can save them and play them automatically as a taunt without having to paste stuff into the chat, but for now this is pretty fun as is.


(Special thanks to Sven Bergström[underscorediscovery.com] and Andreas Jörgensen[www.hideou.se] for helping with the patch)

Bombernauts OCTOBER UPDATE is here! This one is BIG!
(previous version patch notes here)

There are 2 MAJOR new features in Bombernauts now! Saturday Specials and unlockable cosmetic hats! I'll go over how both of those work here.
A crazy new game mode every weekend!

If you play Bombernauts on a Saturday (Saturday Midnight to Sunday Noon, Pacific Time), a new game mode called "Saturday Special" will be available from the main menu.

This mode will feature a different variation of the Bombernauts rules every weekend, from interesting powerup setups to different win conditions or even something completely unique! They may be great, they may be terrible, each week is an experiment and we hope you have a... blast...

If you play a full round of Saturday Special, you will unlock a RANDOM HAT for your robot! You can equip these hats onto your bot in the Garage.

There are 2 ways to unlock hats. The first is to play a whole round of Saturday Special, as mentioned above. You can earn 1 random hat drop per week this way. It does not matter if you win or lose, as long as you were there for the whole round.

The second way is through Hat Tokens. You can earn up to 3 hat tokens per week by playing regular mode, they unlock at 5, 15, and 30 wins. You can then exchange your hat tokens in the hat collection for whatever hats you desire!

(There is a good chance hats will be reset before the game exits early access, but if this happens I will make sure everyone who unlocked hats before then gets rewarded for it)


Both of these new features are meant to make it easier to find people to play with, by encouraging people to all play on Saturdays, and encourage people to keep playing throughout the week to earn their tokens.

In addition, there is another awesome facet of Saturday Specials which I have not mentioned yet,

Saturday special game modes are all created with simple Lua scripts. This is the first step towards full custom game mode support, where people will be able to create their own custom game modes, however making the API for this flexible and stable enough is going to take a lot of work. Saturday Specials are a way to test out features for custom games while also providing people a reason to come and play every week.

When custom games are eventually opened up for anyone to create, all the saturday specials will have their source released as sample code to build off of. This will probably happen towards the end of early access.

The first Saturday Special will be "Power Stacks!", you can no longer spam bombs, but you get a new random stack of powerups to through every 4 seconds! If you're curious, the Lua script for it looks like this[pastebin.com].


But that is STILL not all! We added a bunch of other powerups, bugfixes, and balance changes, and here they are!

• triple-blast whackamole now puts the whackamole in a new position for each blast
  
• added Elemental-Ice, Elemental-Fire, Elemental-Growth, and Elemental-Mud powerups (regular pinata set). These make a bomb replace tiles with special tiles instead of destroying tiles.
  
• wrecking ball now has a cap on the force it can apply to the player
  
• added a railing to the winter level, "RaceCondition"

• added 5 new achievements
  
• designed achievments are no longer hidden. It was a nice idea to make all the achievements user suggested, but we didn't quite get enough suggestions to do that, and there were gaps we needed to fill for easy/basic ones. We will still try to add as many user suggested ones as we can.
  
• "screenshake off" setting will now still screenshake when king server smashes

• significantly reduced packet count when initiating bombs with powerup stacks
  
• powerups boxes/items now have their contents chosen by the server at spawn, rather than in a separate packet (no more green question mark)
  
• disabled lobby auto-rehosting (if the host leaves the lobby is just dissolved now)
  
• bombs/crates/etc now get cleared when the scoreboard opens (should fix the "explosion effects future levels" issue)
  
• reduced "bomb explode" packet size
  
• slightly reduced bomb, player, and pinata/item sync packet size

• removed some old deprecated features from the Bomb code
  
• removed some old deprecated features from the Player code
  
• added an "Off" setting for Block Rubble and improved performance on "Low"

• the winner animation now plays its text correctly if the winner's username has unsupported characters in it (will display ? in place of an unsupported character)
  
• unspawned players should now be fully invisible to other players
  
• fixed spirit bomb + wrecking ball launching you into orbit
  
• fixed glitchiness with inner tube + wrecking ball, and when wrecking ball goes under lava without hitting the ground first
  
• fixed an issue where you would keep sliding on growth blocks next to ice blocks
  
• fixed an issue where gold fake-pinata particle effect was unintentionally casting shadows (and massive slowdown when stacked up as a result)

The September Update is here!

(previous version patch notes here)

• Neutral level "JellyDonut" adjusted to help with visibility
  
• Neutral level "DivingPlatform" adjusted to have less bouncy blocks
  
• Summer level "Plywood" adjusted to help with visibility
  
• Summer level "Rails" adjusted to have larger platforms
  
• Summer level "Raft" adjusted to no longer have bouncy blocks on its lower level
  
• Autumn level "StickyPillars" reworked
  
• Added new Summer level "Fort"
  
• Added new Autumn level "RoadBump"
  
• Added new Autumn level "CloseCastles"
  
• Added new Autumn level "Stripe"
  
• Added new Winter level "Chess"
  
• Added new Winter level "Slalom"
  
• Added new Winter level "IcePlus"
  
• Added new Spring level "Screen"
  
• Added new Spring level "PottedPlant"
  
• Added new Spring level "Beams"
  
• Added new Neutral level "BoostPads"
  
• Added new Neutral level "TwistyKnot"
  
• Added new Neutral level "CrissCross"

(there are now 15 levels per season plus 71 neutral levels)

• Added new powerup to the regular pinata set: The "Whack-a-Mole"! Whack it and it pops up elsewhere... and grows stronger. Much stronger.
  
• Added new powerup to the regular pinata set: The "Inner Tube"! Hope you packed some lava-proof swim trunks...

• Spirit Bomb now charges twice as fast
  
• Steroid Arms now fall off when you get batted instead of after a random timer
  
• Pinata spawn rate increased from 15-20 seconds to 10-15 seconds
  
• Bounce Block input leniency from .16 seconds to .20 seconds
  
• Regular Pinata now has a small chance to drop a Gold Pinata powerup
  
• The first bounce on a bouncy block will now always go full height for players and non-ghost bombs
  
• Baseball Bat charge force rescaled for bombs only (a no charge bat will effect bombs a lot more than it used to)
  
• Reworked the calculation for explosion destruction radius / metal destruction radius / force radius / force power to be consistent (previously powerups were altering each of these individually, now all are calculated from one "Power" value. Destruction radius should still be the same between all of them, other variables wont. This effects most powerups differently, some nerfs some buffs)
  
• You now die if you reach Y=1000 (1000 blocks above lava level), good luck astro-nauts.

• Mega Bomb now has its own model
  
• The light source on explosions now more accurately reflects the force range of the explosion
  
• Tweaked the distortion effect on explosions especially for larger ones
  
• Adjusted the particle effect + graphics on Black Hole and White Hole
  
• The game now displays indicators around the edge of the screen showing the location of offscreen living players
  
• "Low" Particle setting now disables weather effects, explosion smoke, and a few other particles. "Medium" now tones down the amount of particles on a couple effects.

• The game now avoids choosing the same map twice in a row (it keeps a history of the last 12 maps you played on and tries to pick a different one each time)(If you have custom maps enabled this just keeps a record of 1 previous map instead)
  
• Pinata contents now pull from a shuffled deck instead of completely randomly. When the deck is half empty it resets it.
  
• Match winner detection timer now resets if someone respawns (you have to survive for 4 seconds after zombifying before the game declares you the winner)
  
• Added "Advanced Settings" menu to the Create Game panel. Moved a few options into here.
  
• Added "Force Spawn" Game Setting. This will force all players to spawn if they haven't yet a few seconds after a game begins.
  
• Added Powerup spawn options to the advanced game settings.
  
• Added "Uses per Bomb Item" to advanced game settings. Grants you multiple of a powerup when you pick them up from an item.
  
• Lobby Browser now shows game settings.
  
• Certain game settings will now disable the lobby from quick-play joining (you can still join them via the lobby browser or invites). Currently the following settings will disable quick-play:
  - "None" or "Insane" item rate
  - More than 1 use per bomb item
  - Custom Maps
  - More than 10 max players
  
• "Awesomeness" setting now allows for manual text mode. Burrito mode re-enabled. Future awesomeness settings will not be documented in patch notes. Perhaps I added some in this patch even? heh heh heh
  
• Spirit Bomb now grants a chat title

• Fixed an issue where bounce block jump timing was wrong if you missed a jump previously
  
• Fixed an issue where bouncy bombs were not bouncing full height on bounce blocks
  
• Improved error logging
  
• Fixed an issue where the game would freeze for a second when trying to spawn a pinata when there are no tiles left in the world
  
• Fixed an issue where Pinata position was incorrect for a split second at spawn for clients
  
• Fixed an issue where some parts (Jetpack) were not transparent on the player's speed trail

• Added Achievements! (Achievements cannot be unlocked in a sandbox server.)
  
• All public achievements will be community suggested and voted (hidden achievements are my own >:). Check the thread here if you'd like to suggest one.
  
• Added Follower of the King (suggested by Hammerfan)
  
• Added Bombernaut Space Program (suggested by Mystic Asian)
  
• Added ???

Bombernauts patch 0.11.0 is out! This is the first update with NEW CONTENT and not just bug/balance fixes!

• new powerup, "Spirit Bomb" added to the gold pinata set. Super powerful but takes a lot of episodes to charge up.
  
• new powerup, "Slime" added to the gold pinata set. Duplicates when whacked with the bat!
  
• added "meteors" as an option to limit game length. By default meteors begin 2 minutes after a duel has begin. They start off slow and pick up speed over time.
  
• added a new lobby type, "Sandbox", which is invite-only and cheats enabled (see here for a list of cheats)
  
• king server can now collect wins on the scoreboard

• moved "ScatterBomb" from gold pinata to normal pinata
  
• increased gold pinata chance from 25% to 30%
  
• bouncy bomb now gains power with every bounce (not linearly)
  
• bouncy bomb now bounces off lava too (unlike the baseball it does not come back to the stage though)

• fixed an issue where you could die but not become a ghost if you get pulled out of the lava before ghostifying
  
• fixed an issue where stealthed proximity mines weren't transparent if you disabled distortion in game settings
  
• tweaked the timings how when the game manager determines a winner
  
• "duel" will no longer trigger if the 2nd player is sinking in the lava when it wants to start the duel
  
• you can no longer respawn as a zombie after the game has ended
  
• you can now use up/down in the chatbox to tab through previously entered commands
  
• loading screne is no longer made in MS Paint

• disconnecting now deletes all your bombs when you disconnect
  
• a few minor fixes to the networking core
  
• significantly reduced the packet size for spawning child bombs

Hey Bombernauts fans! Bombernauts has been out on early access for a week now and it's been pretty fun watching people learn and enjoy the game. I found a lot of balance and other issues throughout the week and have been fixing them. I patched the game 7 times since it came out! You can read the full patch notes from the week here: http://test-steamproxy.haloskins.io/app/246920/discussions/0/541907867749521725/ but its crazy how much the game has improved in just the first week.

This is the reason we are doing early access. I don't have any previous expierence making multiplayer games so I had no idea what kinds of weird scenarios people would get themselves into. I had no idea people would stalemate on bounce tiles, or be sometimes be content mostly using the bat in duels, or stalemate on regen tile levels when the tiles grow back too fast, and many other little things I wasn't expecting to happen. So most of the balance fixes this week have been focused on making breaking stalemates easier, and allowing the powerups to shine.

We also ran a cool fanart contest on Newgrounds and gave away a bunch of steam keys to the winners, which you can see here http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1396086!

Whats Next?


Its no secret that Bombernauts's concurrent player count right now is a bit low right now. I sorta expected this with doing an early access release, so I really do appreciate everyone who is sticking around to play with new players. The game will pick up over time I'm sure of it (just need people to help spread the word!). But in the mean time I have a few ideas for how to concentrate the playerbase a bit more. We got a decent core of fans right now but it doesn't help when everyone plays at different times or different days, so I'm working on some design things to encourage people to play on weekends. They will be simple things at first, like a steam achievement for playing for a few hours on a weekend, but also...


Yeah I know people want hats. We want hats too. Rather than charging money for dumb cosmetic hats I am going to use them to reward players for desirable behavior in game, like playing on the weekend, or sticking around for a whole first-to-five round, or showing appropriate devotion and dedication to King Server (all hail). It'll be a little bit of work to get enough hats in game that this ends up being effective, so I'm not setting a timeframe for it right now. But we're working on it, and it's happening.


I have a few options I want to add in to help with game balance, but they will be *options*. Specifically, there will be an option for a game timer, implemented as meteors. Meaning, if a DUEL goes on for longer than 2 minutes or so (you'll be able to customize the time, and whether or not it triggers from overall match time or duel time), then meteors start falling from the sky and destroying the map, picking up speed and power the longer they've been active for. Meteor kills will count as kills for King Server.

Another option I want to add is "Super Smash Bros Damage Percent Style Knockback" but oh man do I need a better name for that. Basically people keep asking for it (more robot damage = more knockback) so I want to add it in as an option, but it will be a bit of design work because I don't want to discourage people from using bombs for bomb jumping or other strategic purposes. Perhaps having this on a global timer would be better. Dunno, it'll be something interesting to try out either way.


Netcode + Stability is PRIORITY ONE for me right now. Meaning, right now I am not going to add any features that make solving netcode/lag/crash issues harder until I feel like the game is stable. This locks out a few features people really want (game modes, local, bots, etc) because having those features in game make doing netcode work harder. If you find any bugs or weirdness with the netcode please let me know! Its hard to fix issues if I don't know about them.


There's a lot of small design things I want to do to make the game better. I want to make it more clear when someone else is still alive, and make it easier to find them if they're off-screen. I want to make it more clear when someone gets a kill, and when someone respawns as a zombie. The reasoning here is I watched a lot of people react like "Wait, how did I win?" when the final deaths happened off-screen. While a little bit of that is okay (as can happen in a chaotic free-for-all), I do want to make it more clear what's happening in game without having to pay attention to the chatbox.


I can add powerups and maps easily enough without making it more difficult to work on netcode, so we will be adding some soon just so theres constantly some new things to play around with in game.


It's been a fun week and I hope you all stick with us for the rest of our stay in early access
- Tyler