Lost Planet

I’m so excited that I finally get to talk about what we’ve been working on lately.

A few weeks back I talked about the update we are making to the text size of the score readout in Elimination for those running in non-HD resolutions, based on all the feedback we got from you guys.

Well, if you thought that was cool, this’ll be like Christmas morning for you! I’ve got a whole list of updates that are being made to the multiplayer game to share with you. This is stuff based on YOUR FEEDBACK.

Below is a quick run-down on all of the things that will be changed in the final version of the game when it comes out next month.

Click to read the list of updates.

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Private Slots and Friend Invites
When you go to set up a Player match, one of the available options is how many slots, out of the maximum number of players you have set (up to 16), to set aside for friends as private slots. Once you initiate the match and open up the lobby, those private slots can only be filled by people who come in through game invites. You can set 3 slots to private in a 16-player match, or even set the max number of players to 8 and specify 7 private slots to make a 4-on-4 team game that only your friends can join. Remember that there will be no private slots or invites for Ranked matches.

See number of players in a room before you join
When you’re looking at the list of games to join, in the final version you will be able to see the current number of players in the game and the max number of players allowed.

Game listing screen
One thing that people commented a lot on was being dropped out to the previous menu layer if they tried to join a match that had already started or had been canceled. Well, now if you try to join a game that is no longer open, you stay on the same screen and can select another game to join. This list will also refresh every 5~6 seconds to keep it up to date.

Post-game lobby
Another big issue raised regarding the multiplayer demo was the lack of a post-game lobby. Well, I’m happy to report that now in the final version of the game, players will be given the option to jump back into the same host’s lobby or exit and find another game. So when you finish viewing the match results and score screen, you can choose to either leave or play again. If the host doesn’t want to go again, all players will be disbanded. But if the host chooses to play again, the lobby will be re-opened and anyone who wishes to jump back in with the same players can do so.

Subsequent matches will carry over with the same settings as they were originally set by the host. So if the stage was set to Pirate Fortress, rematches will also be in Pirate Fortress. However, if you set the stage to Random, it will pick a stage at random for each match. In this regard it functions much like Gears of War, which lets you select a particular map or cycle through the list of maps in order. But in Lost Planet, the maps are shuffled at random as you play multiple consecutive times.

Text size on team select screen is being made bigger
Once the host starts the match, the game goes to the launch screen. This screen has a list of all the players in the match on the left side, and if it’s a team game, each name will have an orb showing the color of the team next to it (red or blue in the demo, with up to 4 teams available in the final release). To the right of that is the blue and red triangular areas that lists the players in their respective team’s listing. In the final version, this is the screen where team selection will take place if that option is turned on by the host.

The text for the names in the middle of the screen can be hard to read for players using non-HD resolutions. So, this text is being made much bigger so those players can read it better.

Launch timer and team selection
The launch timer before the game starts is being changed to 10 seconds for non-team matches and team matches where team selection is set to automatic. However for matches where the host has turned team switching on, the timer will be set to 20 seconds to allow everyone to get on the team they want to be on.

Max selectable match time limit changed
Among the available options is the time limit for the match. And in the multiplayer demo, that time limit goes up to 60 minutes and then there is a No Limit option. Some people have unknowingly jumped into matches set to no time limit, only to find the match never seems to end.

I’m working on a multiplayer FAQ that explains all of the rules and scoring and everything, but to be brief, elimination and team elimination games end either when the time runs out, or one player or team’s point bar runs out (reaches zero). If you’ve noticed, scoring can be a bit of a tug-of-war when it comes to straight kills, so close matches can go on for quite a while.

So in the final version, there will be no No Limit option, and the max time a match can be set to is 60 minutes.

Custom Match search criteria will be saved
A small but potentially time-saving new feature is that now the game will save your Custom Match search criteria each time, so you can perform the same search without having to edit all the options again each time.

The announcement is also up in our forums where you are free to discuss it.



—Brian