Determinance screenshot

Server downtime today

May 15th, 2012 by Ian

server-downtime-today

The servers will be going down about 12pm today for a few hours.  We should definitely have them back up by 6pm.

 

Sorry for the downtime.

Ian

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Scheduled server downtime

May 11th, 2012 by Ian

Hey guys.

 

We’re scheduling the servers to be down on Tuesday May 15th from 10.00 BST to 18.00 BST.  We need to do some stuff to get ready for the big new update and DLC launch.

 

Apologies for the downtime.

 

Ian

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Italian fan translation

April 27th, 2012 by Ian

italian-fan-translation

Lorenzo Troiano and Andrea Eramo have done a full Italian translation of Frozen Synapse!  Check it out and let us know what you think.

This is a great thing for our fans to have done – we really appreciate it.

Ian


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Tuesday update

April 10th, 2012 by Paul

tuesday-update

We have emerged from the chocolate egg dimension and are doing the following things…

- Robin is polishing the levels for the DLC mini-campaign

- We are tweaking the riot shield unit to makeit a bit more powerful and easier to use

- iPad interface work continues but is mostly in a bug fixing phases so we can evaluate some of our recent choices

- Work continues on the new game prototype, with Simon and Rich joining us in the office this week to start graphics stuff in earnest

- Last week I finished mixing the additional music for the DLC and it should be sent off to mastering soon.  There is a small chance I can get up to the original 6 tracks I intended but it’s looking like it may have to stick at 5 right now

- Last week I also did some good Secret Business Development Things that I hope will come to fruition this year

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Update

April 2nd, 2012 by Paul

update

A new week begins, so it does, so here’s a quick update…

We’re currently working on the following things:

- New music tracks for the DLC

- New levels for the DLC

- New game early stuff and graphical stuff

- iPad stuff including optimisation, and interface things

- Some interesting biz dev stuff will hopefully happen this week

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“Not Fucking Da Vinci”: Changing the Ending of Frozen Synapse

March 29th, 2012 by Paul

not-fucking-da-vinci-changing-the-ending-of-frozen-synapse

One week ago I changed Frozen Synapse’s ending from this…

…to this.

Today, as planned, it will change back.

I was inspired to do this by a couple of comments I read on Twitter about fans asking Bioware to change the ending of Mass Effect 3.

My intention was not to comment on that situation specifically:  only to explore the idea of changing the ending of games in general.

Changing the ending of a game that has already been released is a fascinating prospect to me because it is such a complex proposition. Could it make any sense?  What happens to the previous ending?  How can a story have two endings?  I thought I would conduct an experiment… Read the rest of this entry »

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We changed the ending of Frozen Synapse

March 23rd, 2012 by Paul

we-changed-the-ending-of-frozen-synapse

A lot of people have been talking about endings recently.

So we decided to take some community suggestions and change the ending of FS…

Here is a video of the new ending (thanks Dongulator), which obviously contains spoilers:


If you want to see this without completing the game, you need to download the update and then do this:

Open the console with `
playCutscene(alternate);
Close the console with ‘

If you are a Linux user, here’s Jimmeh to tell you how to update…

“Linux users can download the update from http://updates.mode7games.com/frozensynapse/fs_newending.zip

All they have to do is extract that zip file to the same directory they installed Frozen Synapse to (i.e. the one that contains the binary and the psychoff directory).”

This is not a criticism of Bioware or anything they have said / done.  It is an experiment: I wanted to know how this felt.  Honestly, it felt like vandalising my own work, which was interesting.

We took community suggestions about ponies and dinosaurs, as well as including the words “moist” and “dolphin-proof”.

The new ending will be around for about a week before it will disappear, and probably only be accessible as an easter-egg.

I am calling for other game developers to do this because I think it is a fascinating and weird thing to do.

Hope you like.

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An update from Paul

March 21st, 2012 by Paul

an-update-from-paul

Hello, world – Paul here.

Ian usually does the regular updates but he is away at the moment because (shh…) it’s his birthday.

We have just about recovered from our IGF win – once again, thank you so much for supporting us.

Firstly, as they say on the internet, “I’ll just leave this here.” It’s a mashup of one of the tracks from the FS soundtrack and one from the AssCreed soundtrack, by the amazing Jesper Kyd:

We love any fan stuff like this (naturally, I like music stuff!) so tweet me with it if you’ve done something – @mode7games

James, Mango (who you may know from the FS IRC) and I are working hard on the iPad version this week. My goal is to have the entire UI functional and bug-free enough to use sensibly by Friday. This is a somewhat ambitious goal, as we’re adding a couple of completely new things and obviously changing quite a bit, but I wanted to get a whole picture.

After that, it will be refined a bit and then we’ll do a very closed beta on it (possibly just friends and family) before refining it further and rolling it out to a wider closed beta.

The team in the office will expand significantly soon as two of our freelancers will be coming in to work for a bit. I’m actually looking forward to that quite a bit as we’ll get a lot more done with everyone together.

Work will also continue on the DLC soon – as some of you have seen, we’ve released a limited beta which has been useful. Art for the new unit is in progress and we recently had a pass on some of the menus and UI’s getting everything ready for use by Actual Human Beings. Bin and I still have quite a bit of work to do on the single player but I’m confident that will go well and it won’t be too long before we can get that out.

GDC showed me just how limited the current tutorial and early part of the single player campaign still are. I think there is still definite room for improvement there. We will be doing a new tutorial for the iPad (naturally) and that may lead to some revisions to the PC version.

I wanted to write a little bit more about our GDC experiences as well as putting some video up, so hopefully I will get a chance to do that next week.

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Frozen Synapse Wins the IGF Audience Award!

March 8th, 2012 by Paul

frozen-synapse-wins-the-igf-audience-award

It is an absolute privilege to win an award which is determined by a public vote – I want to say thank you so much on behalf of everyone at Mode 7.

I made this video as a token of my appreciation – time to collect your award!

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DLC entering beta – testers wanted

March 2nd, 2012 by Ian

dlc-entering-beta-testers-wanted

Please email jimmeh at mode7games with your account name *from the email you have registered with your FS account* if you would like to help us test.

 

Thanks,

Ian

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