The Scale of Scaleform

We've got a little surprise in store for you all with the 1.12.0 release of APB Reloaded. One that we've been keeping very quiet on. Patch 1.12.0 will bring with it the first implementation of our new Scaleform User Interface.

We've spent a long time working on this, getting all the systems and mechanics in place. One of the biggest challenges has been creating it in the background of the game without disrupting the existing User Interface. The first release of this major improvement contains entirely re-made 3D versions of the Login, Character Select screens, and more. While our newly revamped front end doesn't include updates for the HUD or Editors yet, we hope to have more news on that in the coming months.

It's also bringing a new theme song to APB Reloaded. Sharp-eared listeners might recognize parts of this new track from Asylum back in Halloween 2012. We hope you enjoy more of the unique work by our very own in-house audio guru, Farfletched.

There's another secret in this update, but that would be telling...

Anarchy in the Streets

Well, you finally did it.

You finally pushed San Paro too far.

Maybe it was that last rocket that sailed over your shoulder and into an SUV. Maybe it was the stray bullet from the PMG that you were firing out of the side of the car window. Maybe it was just the day-glow shirt you were wearing yesterday. Regardless of what it was, it looks like Anarchy has finally descended upon San Paro. We expect to restore order by the end of the week, but in the meantime we'll try and explain what's going on...

Transient Aberrations

We're going to be testing out Chaos Mode on the live game between May 30th and June 6th. This is a very early prototype for the mode that doesn't contain all the social features or game play elements from our finalized version, but we're finally ready to bring this to the game at large.

The first thing you'll notice once you join a Chaos District is that the contacts have gone - you can't run missions in Chaos Districts at the moment - and have been replaced by Shadow Strike Elites and Bloodrose Assassins. They serve as vendors while in Chaos Districts, just in case you realize that your LTL gun might not be up to the task in this brave new world. You'll also notice that you have a couple of counters at the top of your screen.

The number on your left is your Score for this life. The number on the right is your current survival time. The small numbers behind those ones are your high scores, which is a number that's tracked in perpetuity, so it won't reset even if you log out. Your job is to go out and hunt the opposite faction and get the highest score. You can see a list of how well everyone in the district is currently doing by pressing Tab and bringing up the Chaos Scoreboard.

Some of the prizes that will be available during the course of this event include two brand new titles for your character; one is awarded for killing 100 players during the event, and the other for staying alive for a total of ten minutes, which is way harder than it sounds! We've also added a new role just for this event! The Score Streak role rewards players for reaching certain score totals during a single life - if you score 500 points, you get 150 Joker Tickets. 1000 points will net you 350 Joker Tickets. And finally, a score of 1500 will get you a 10 day lease of the new Nekrova SSW Light Machine Gun!

This game mode will only be available to play for a week, so enjoy it while it lasts! Remember, this is just a test of this system as it is at the moment. We want to see how well it works and whether you guys like it or not, so don't hesitate to come on over to the APB Reloaded forums and tell us what you think.

Elective Spawning: Programmer Edition!

In our last post, we began talking about our new spawning system in a general overview kind of way. Today, we're going to expand a bit into the technical side of the exciting improvements we're making to the system. This is the first blog post to be written by a member of the programming team, in our continued effort to give you perspectives from all around the studio. Stuart is going to be giving you a taste of how he and the other programmers actually created the new spawning system. We're going over some basic stuff first for those of you who may not already know, so for all you smarty pants out there - bear with us for a few paragraphs until we get into the specifics.

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The Basics

APB – and every computer program ever created – is comprised of two essential ingredients:

• Code, which is the list of instructions telling the computer what to do and when to do it, what decisions to make and how often to do things.
• Data, which is the set of information about the game world and every last detail within that world.

We write code, which works with this data to create the game, but the code and data are organised in a very specific way.

Everything in APB is an object. Programmers see everything in terms of objects. An object is a small, self-contained clump of code and data which interacts with other objects to make the game work.

The complexity of APB is formidable, but because everything is enclosed in its own object, I can focus intently on one small piece of APB at a time without worrying about anything else. APB has many thousands of objects, all working together to make the game work, so this is the only possible way to tackle this complexity.

Objects generally correspond to “things” in the game. Each character is an object, every vehicle and pedestrian, each stop light and fire hydrant - they are all objects. There are other objects in the game world which you won’t be able to see. Spawn zones are a good example, as they exist in the world at a particular location but are ultimately just areas of empty space. Yet more objects work entirely behind the scenes, such as those which calculate collisions or run missions.

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Everything in APB is an Object

All the objects in APB are organised into a hierarchy depending on how they are to interact. The way in which objects relate to one another tells us what this hierarchy should be. There are two key ways in which a pair of objects can relate to one another:

“One object has another object.”

A spawn wave is a set of characters which will spawn at the same time. Everything in APB is an object, so naturally we created a new spawn wave object to represent this. Characters in a spawn wave will always be on the same team and indeed there is already a team object.

We say that a team object has a spawn wave object. This means that the spawn wave object is owned by the team object, and as such the team object will be responsible for creating new spawn wave objects and putting team members into spawn waves when they die.

The other way in which objects can relate is subtly - but fundamentally - different:

“One object is a type of another object.”

One feature of the new spawning system is the ability to spawn directly into a vehicle. Previously it was possible to spawn only using the spawn zones dotted around the district.

We use the general term of “spawn point” to describe spawn zones and vehicles; a spawn point is just a something you can spawn into, whatever that might be. We say that a spawn zone object is a type of spawn point, and also that a vehicle object is a type of spawn point object.

An important point to note here is that the new spawning system is designed to work with these generalized spawn points. It deliberately doesn’t worry about the specific details of what a spawn point is; it lets the spawn zones and vehicles themselves worry about the particulars. This means we could potentially extend the new spawning system to allow spawning using something else in the game, as long as it can be made into a type of spawn point. In fact, we wouldn’t actually need to change the spawning system itself, as it would carry on working with what it sees as “spawn points”.

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The New System

After we decided to move ahead with a new spawning system, the first order of business was to figure out exactly what we were trying to achieve. Our designer wrote a 'Requirements' document, which gave a high-level overview of all the features needed for the new system. There are three main features:

• Elective Spawning, where you choose where to spawn by clicking a spawn point on a map
• Spawn Waves, where you are able to coordinate spawning with team mates
• Vehicle Spawning, where you may spawn directly into a vehicle

Most of this information was given in the form of a timeline, which describes the series of events from the instant a character dies to their subsequent re-spawn, as seen below:

1. The character dies and joins a spawn wave with other dead teammates.
2. The death camera views the character’s rag doll.
3. The elective spawning map is shown with a countdown. It is a map of the district which shows the set of spawn zones and vehicles chosen for the spawn wave. The best spawn point is already selected for the player.
4. The player may click different spawn points. They will see which spawn points other members of the spawn wave are clicking, so they may conspire to spawn at the same location.
5. A spawn point will be disabled if an enemy approaches. This can invalidate the player’s selection and they will need to choose a different spawn point.
6. When the countdown reaches zero, the character will spawn at their chosen location. If their selection was invalidated and they did not choose another spawn point then a red countdown begins.
7. If the player clicks a spawn point during the red countdown then they will spawn immediately.
8. If the player still hasn’t choose a spawn point when the red countdown goes to zero, the character will spawn at a point chosen for them.

The document went into more detail about each stage, and included a mock-up of what the elective spawning map should look like:

An example of the spawn selection UI. As you can see, you are given 

information on where your team died and where they plan to re-spawn.

The Legend for the Elective Spawning Menu. 

NOTE: The enemy location visibility works in the same way as the 

radar - if they are driving or firing a weapon, they are always shown.

There were a series of meetings where the finer points of the requirements were discussed, and after these meetings a 'Design' document was written. This outlined the key strategies and decisions that needed to be made by a programmer when creating the new spawning system. The actual process of that creation is called the implementation.

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Server vs Game Client

There are two sides to every coin, and APB is no exception. There is the game client itself (which you will be very familiar with), but there is also the server, which hosts the game world and allows you to play with and against other people.

A key question we had to ask ourselves was: which parts of the new spawning system will be added to the server, and which parts will be added to the game client? In other words, who is in charge of what?

The server acts as the ultimate authority of all things. It has complete knowledge of every aspect of the game world. As such, it would:

• Remove characters from the world when they die and add them again when they spawn.
• Create spawn waves and put characters into waves depending on when they died.
• Choose the best set of spawn zones from those scattered across the world.
• Add any vehicles which have the appropriate modifier.
• Validate the spawn point selections a player makes.

The game client doesn’t have any authority to make decisions which would affect other players. It only has a limited knowledge of the game world, knowing only about that which is directly relevant to the player. As such, it does much less than the server, which:

• Shows the elective spawning map.
• Handles the mouse input as the player selects spawn points.

This division of responsibility also showed us the sort of information which would need to be communicated back and forth between the server and game client. The server will need to send the set of spawn points it has chosen to each game client involved in the spawn wave, to allow the elective spawning map to display them. The client will need to send the player’s selection to the server, when they click on a spawn point.

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Exceptions to Every Rule

The new spawning system must be able to handle edge cases. An edge case is a situation which is exceptional or out of the ordinary. We needed to take some time to imagine all these possible scenarios and think of the best way to deal with them. Here are some of the edge cases we came up with first:

• What happens if a vehicle is destroyed after you’ve selected it on the elective spawning map? Wrecked vehicles can’t be used for spawning.
• What happens if a mission ends when you are in the middle of elective spawning?
• What happens if you are kicked from a team while in the middle of elective spawning?

These won’t happen very often, but they still must be proactively accounted for and handled appropriately.

Edge cases can be time consuming and sometimes difficult to deal with, especially in testing. But we actually cheated a little to make testing of these edge cases easier - we altered the configuration of the new system so that it spent a full 60 seconds on the elective spawning map! This is nothing like the actual amount of time you will see the map for, but this gave us sufficient time to run through all the combinations we were interested in.

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So, perhaps that’s given you a little bit of an insight into the life of a programmer at Reloaded.

Next time…

Things to do in San Paro when you're Dead

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

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

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

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

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

(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

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

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!

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

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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!