Since the last Gang Beasts build was published in July we have been working with Coatsink to migrate the official Gang Beasts servers to a scalable low latency hosting solution, we have also made a series of significant optimisations and modifications to progress the performance and stability of the matchmaking , UI, and character systems. We have been testing potential 0.6.0 builds with Coatsink, Double Fine, and support from a QA team at Babel since the start of September, the matchmaking system, new server architecture, networking scheme, and costume fixes are at a stage where we need to test at scale to identify issues that are difficult to find when testing in the office.



Currently we are working on standardising the optimised UI, localisations for French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese (support for other languages is planned), costume fixes, post processing, achievements, a modified implementation of the current camera system (built on Unity Cinemachine procedural camera system), and additional game modes (the 0.6.0 unstable build has the first public implementation of the local gang game mode, the gang mode is not supported online currently).

The 0.6.0 build as an unstable beta with this post for testing and patching before it can replace the current default Steam build (build 0.5.7a), to test the 0.6.0 build right-click on the game name on the Steam library page and select 'Properties' from the dialogue window that opens, from this window select the 'BETAS' tab then the "unstable" option from the dropdown menu (the menu labelled 'Select the beta you would like to opt into:’).

Please note the 0.6.0 unstable build has been explicitly made for stress testing servers and only has support for the melee (local and online) and gang game modes (local only) and has some UI settings and other content disabled.

We are testing stage wins in preference to stage rounds in the 0.6.0, the implementation is similar to the previous implementation but a new stage is loaded after each stage win (currently the win parameter is set to 2 wins for public online games and limited to 1-4 wins in local and private online games.

The key modifications and fixes made in the 0.6.0 unstable Early Access beta build are:

• added a force that applies when releasing grabbed characters and objects (the force is applied in the same velocity vector as the released character or object (making throws more forceful)
• added an limited input deadzone to mouse input (to ignore small mouse movements and minimise conflicts with other input sources)
• added contextual support scripts to dynamic objects to improve stability, and character and object interactions (dragging, lifting, hanging etc.)
• configured stages to use the modified targeting system (significantly lowering the number of hidden colliders in each scene)
• fixed an exploit where devices with support for rapid-fire buttons gamed the concussion system
• fixed an issue that erratically applied movement forces when jumping from climbing states
• fixed an issue where the grab system could fail to reset temporary joints in some contexts
• fixed an issue with character sliding movement that could lock the character in an endless sliding state in some contexts
• fixed an issue with concussion length scaling
• fixed an issue with force and direction calculations (to make glancing blows less frequent and increase the number of successful blows)
• fixed an issue with the character system that gave NaN and INF errors (triggering a fatal exception)
• modified force parameters for the character support geometry increased physics stability
• modified inertia tensor properties for character body parts to stabilise character on character interactions (and other interactions)
• modified physics calculations for damage to account for optimisations to the character movement system
• modified score sequence to render on stage end with background blurring (currently implementation disables input soon after the win state is met, this will be reviewed in a coming build)
• modified secondary character moves (diving headbutts, dropkicks, and sliding kicks) to carry more damage, failing to land a more forceful move can concuss the assailant temporarily
• modified the character costume colour cycle sequence from yellow, green, blue, red etc. to red, blue, green, yellow etc.
• modified the character movement system to optimise performance and standardise mass, drag, and force parameters
• modified the character systems to remove tags use and string comparisons (to reduce the number of game object in scenes and improve scene loading times)
• modified the characters arms configurations to minimise contexts where arms can get stuck behind characters heads
• modified the hoisting implementation for climbing to inherit the direction of character movement
• modified the pause menu to limit input to the device the menu is invoked from
• modified ropes on the ring stage to stabilise interactions with characters and objects
• modified the targeting system to remove the need for assistive geometry and set hierarchical priorities for body parts, objects and surfaces (assistive geometry is still used for specific contexts)

The key issue with the 0.6.0 unstable Early Access beta build are (this list will be updated as we collate information on issues):

• camera rotation in game menus can over rotate in some contexts
• message strings can clip stage and character geometry
• parameters for rope break tolerances need modifying to make breaking
less difficult
• escalation patterns for some stage need modifying to improve gameplay