If you want to participate – please send an e-mail to kratertest@fatshark.se and write iKrater in the header and your hardware setup in the mail. We will randomly distribute a number of codes to the community after the holidays.

Thanks for your support. You rock!

FS Crew

v1.1 main features:

• First step towards a great coop feature. It is kept relatively small to make sure that we have resources to handle any issues or bugs that might arise when large number of players are playing it. Krater v1.2 and v1.3 are going to expand on this.
• Support for handling several profiles with different saves connected to your Steam accounts cloud saves. Your old save is labeled Default in the profile list.
• Engine upgrade for improved performance and better stability.
• We have looked over player stats and their effect on damage, armor and abilities.
• New achievements added.
• The game is now translated into Russian, Portuguese and Polish. The single player content is translated into German, German coop strings are still to be added (shortly).
• Enemy AI is also being looked over and tweaked
• Loot drop rate and epic item generation is also being reworked; the first changes are implemented already in the 1.1 build.

Mayhem Mk13, the pinnacle of aggressive assault technologies formed from the knowledge extracts of a Mutant Slayer’s brain and the latest cybernetic limbs collected from the Underside.  The Mayhem Mk13 will be your tank’s best friend close up and your medikus’ saviour from afar.  Dare to delve deeper on high-risk excavation ventures where the Mayhem Mk13′s tactical flexibility will be the difference between life and death.

More on the Mk13:

The first of many planned cybernetic characters, the Mayhem Mk13 offers a new and exciting add-on for your team.  It is a Hybrid melee assassin/ranged DPS class that combines high damage output in both close quarters and from a distance.  He is also well suited for co-op since his guided strike ability is able to take out very powerful enemies entangled by other characters abilities.

The DLC can be bought on Steam or here: http://store.fatshark.se/games/mayhem-mk-13krater-special-character-dlc.html

The patch also support multiple profiles to be used. Your old save will be named Default in the new profile list.

If you are experiencing any issues with the new save and would like to restore your old saves you can do that by:

1. Right Clicking the game in your Steam Library
2. Choose Properties
3. In the General tab write, click the SET LAUNCH OPTIONS
4. Write reset_save in the field
5. Start the game and press the Restore Save button in the bottom left corner. This will delete all your progress from this update (non-reversible)

Main features added
- Support for creating several profiles with different saves
- Multi-language support
- Engine upgrade for improved performance
- Support for new DLC character (Cyborg DPS)

Its all starting to come together. Krater will finally get it´s coop update – free of charge!

October 23 there will be a massive update to the game on Steam that will add not only coop but updated visuals, game play tweaks, new content, new maps, more songs to the soundtrack, improved user interface and much more.

We will keep you posted on our progress and more details about the release further on…

Prior to that the Polish version of Krater will be released. ETA is October 18. We are also currently putting in the final touches on the Portuguese, French, German and Russian versions of the game (some via publishers, others via the heroic efforts from the community).

First of all – thanks for your patience and support. I know the process of getting coop out there for you is taking time, longer than we hoped and wished and I thought I should shed some light on our current status of the coop.

With coop we are reworking large part of the game code. Areas such as the level creation systems, save and load system, animation and combat state managers and not to mention the whole network part. Basically everything that needs to be changed to facilitate cooperative gameplay with a client-server solution is now changed. But we will not press the button just yet. Not until we are 100% sure that the new features:

- will not destroy peoples save files
- crash frequency is reduced to an absolute minimum on most hardware setups
- offer enough new content to feel worth it to buy for those that so far haven’t both the game.
- builds a solid foundation for us to continue work and add stuff to the game (this means a large player base, a code base and tools that caters for easy addition of more content and a game design that is modular in the sense that new features can be added without beraking old ones

and most important…

- is good enough to get your approval and not being written of as a piece of junk produced without passion

Right now we have positive but still not absolutely totally certain answers on all points listed above. Until we have that we wont be able give you a release date or start an open beta testing (but keys are handed and the test group is growing).

And oh – for you who play Cyanide’s online version of BloodBowl. Krater is sponsoring the next Crunched Cup, a tournament organized by the site www.bbtactics.com.

We have a couple of fanatic BB-players in our team and are thrilled to see Kraters name appear in such an event .

A new hot fix for the crashes on the build uploaded yesterday evening is deployed to the test_version beta now. If it turns out ok it will be deployed to the main game tonight.

Abilities

The introduction of coop have made us re-think how we would like player abilities to work in Krater. We can’t really go into details right now but we are working on a design that will put more emphasis on synergy effects when using different abilities together. We are also preparing for a new race that will be introduced as the first major gameplay update after coop.

Cheers!

/The Fatshark team

Coop

We currently have a internal rough version of the coop game mode where we try to remove CTD’s and game breakers. This is to allow external testers to focus on functionality, difficulty and fun level rather than crashes.

How it looks like? Well at the moment it mostly looks like a single player game with twice the amount of characters. We have added some notes of how we are going to get adjust the user interface.

The coop release plan as it stands right now (still subject of change) is:

End of August – External testing of the coop core mechanics is started (number of testers will be increased to reach sufficient numbers beginning of September.

Beginning of September – build iterations of the coop game play will be published on the coop beta until we (based on test feedback) deem it good enough for release.

Release - exact release date is determined by the tests in above post, and when Steam have an available slot.

General Gameplay

Since we with the main release created a solid base for the RPG experience to stand on the updates that comes around the time for the co-op (prior, during and directly after) will be more dungeon crawler oriented to better cater for the coop release.

This means that we will focus on more weapons, items and ways to customize them. We are also planning rather extensive overhauls of how abilities are distributed to the classes where randomness (and more important, more abilities) will be added.

Enemies also need an overhaul – we will add new behaviors to the enemies (and new types such as spawners)

Mac Release

The work on the Mac release of Krater has now started and it is proceeding according to plans. The delay we are experiencing are due to the fact that the PC-post release support took more resources than initially planned for. We will give you an more exact release date once we have a better picture of the work and any difficulties we might encounter.

Cheers!

/The Fatshark team