2013: A new year, a new game!

Here at LightBox Interactive, the new year brings with it a lot of change -- new office space, new production methods and a new game!

As some of you may already know, we're working on a new mobile game and its been incredibly exciting to see it take shape. We've been focusing on the core gameplay for a couple months now and no, it's not a "tend your garden" game! It's still a bit early to reveal a ton of details, but we can say that a single goal has been driving the design and development of our new game. Simply put, we want to let you experience epic space battles in the palm of your hand!

Picture capital ships ripping each other apart with explosive turret fire in debris filled fleet battles. Formations of attack fighters swarming enemy bombers as they execute torpedo runs -- It's about fast, real-time 3D action with controls and a supporting meta-game that just feels great on mobile devices.

Because we love to show you guys behind the scenes of game development, here are some pics of the team hard at work in our new studio. Its a pretty small space that used to be an old attorney's office. And yeah, there's wood paneling.... but hey, its the game that counts and not the smell of old attorneys, right!?!??

The artists are cranking away on graphics, 3D models and texture maps while the designers are spending a lot of time -- as you might expect -- on controls, combat, and the over-arching system of upgrades and customization. All the while the programmers are engineering the new code that supports and drives our new mobile game. Stuff like capital ship movement, AI, online features, and cameras.

As you can imagine, its one thing to design and engineer groups of attack fighters that stay in formation and strafe enemy capital ships, or to develop a system to customize and configure your own personal capital ship, but its an entirely different thing to do all of that and make the interactions, the "touches", the gameplay all feel perfectly at home on a mobile device. Not like a PC or console or web game jammed onto a tablet or phone -- but an epic space battle game that's been designed from the ground-up to be a mobile game!

Its definitely an exciting challenge for us and there are really no games quite like ours on the AppStore.  So be sure to stay tuned to our Dev-Blog right here as we start showing more about our game and letting y'all see how it's shaping up!

Starhawk 1.04.003 Update Today!

Today during a global server maintenance window at 3pm Central time, we deployed a small 1.04.003 Update to Starhawk which was almost entirely inspired by your feedback and we really hope you enjoy the update!

As some of you may know, in mid-October, we parted ways with Sony Computer Entertainment and it's Santa Monica Studio. Nevertheless, we have maintained a great relationship and we've worked together to release a small update for our Starhawk community. The release of this 1.04.003 update was something that everyone here at LightBox Interactive felt was the right thing to do for you, our fans. Our former colleagues at Santa Monica Studio agreed completely and graciously offered to have their QA team provide all the testing support needed for the 1.04.003 update even though it really wasn't an "on-the-books" project for them.

Now of course we were limited in what we could develop for this small update since it is not a full patch with a funded development cycle. However, we were still able to make a few really positive changes:

• Added new Arena load-out for small maps.
• Reduced Grinder damage in singleplayer.
• Added Grizzly to Lone Wolf [Blitz] load-out.
• Replaced Cloak & Shield in Gatekeeper game mode.
• Removed Outposts from small maps.
• Cluster Bomb weapon balance.
• Fixed spawn-in bug for Assault game mode.
• Changed Skill Score Leaderboard.

New Arena Load-Out:
There had been a request by the fans for awhile now for a simple non-vehicle load-out that could be used in our small maps and for modes other than DeathMatch. To help give players this option, we have added an Arena Load-Out to the small maps Junction, Relay and Glade, and it includes the Shield Generator, Pod Cannon, Supply Bunker, Watchtower, Auto-Turret, and Wall. This new load-out is available for CTF, TDM, Zones, DM and Assault.

Reduce Grinder Damage in Singleplayer:
Sure, most of our updates have to do with Multiplayer but we never lose sight of the solo experience! And for that reason, we felt we needed to make a change to the Grinder only in the campaign. For those of you who played the SP campaign in Starhawk, you may have noticed that when you got the Grinder, it was CRAZY easy to cut through enemy units under a stream of molten sparks. In fact, it was too easy. To help balance this weapon and maintain the right level of difficulty for the later missions in the campaign, we have reduced the Grinder damage by 33%.

Added Grizzly to LoneWolf [Blitz] Load-Out:
This change is very straight-forward and is simply a bug fix so LoneWolf and LoneWolf [Blitz] load-outs use the same Build & Battle units.

Replaced Cloak & Shield in GateKeeper Game Mode:
GateKeeper mode is very fun however some players had found that when using the Cloak and Shield in this flight-focused mode, a player could essentially be unstoppable. And the fans were right it was exploit-tastic. We looked at a variety of solutions and the one we settled on for the 1.04.003 Update was to replace the Cloak and Shield pick-ups with the Homing Missile and Flak Cannon pick-ups respectively. This change is isolated to just this gameplay mode and makes a huge improvement to the balance of GateKeeper!

Removed Outposts from Small Maps:
The small maps we added in the 1.04 Update were a great addition to the over-all set of maps in Starhawk! However, the fact that you could use Outpost Build & Battle structures in these intentionally very small maps was really not yielding the proper game experience. To resolve this, now Outposts are removed from the load-out if you choose one of the small maps like Glade, Junction or Relay. This change helps make these maps feel much better and the removal of the Outposts really helps drive more tactical gameplay rather than just the Outpost spam we were seeing.

A point of clarification: You can still choose the Trooper load-out on a small map like Glade, for example. It will show you that the Outpost is contained in that load-out however when you get into the game, the Outpost will be selectively pruned from the Build & Battle wheel. And again, this change is only for the small maps.

Cluster Bomb Weapon Balance:
Due to the way the Cluster Bomb was being used there were a couple of changes that we felt needed to be made. We still want to preserve the weapon's power on the battlefield but the sheer volume of Cluster Bomb kills relative to the other weapons needed to be adjusted. To resolve this we have made the pick-up take a bit longer to respawn. It was previously 60 seconds and now it is 75 seconds. While this may seem like a subtle change, 15 seconds does make a difference!

The second change we did to the Cluster Bomb was to combat the degenerate behavior of using the weapon at nearly point-blank range. In this situation, a player flying a Hawk could just jam a Cluster Bomb down the throat of a player or more often a group of players at such a close range that there was no real counter defense. To help resolve this, we have fixed the Cluster Bomb so that its explosive area of effect can damage the player who launched the Cluster Bomb. This means that a player STILL can do a point-blank Cluster Bomb attack however there is now some significant risk to do so.

Fixed Spawn-in Bug for Assault Game Mode:
When we released the new gameplay mode Assault in the Starhawk 1.04 Update, players were able to find a bug that allowed a player to spawn into the enemy team's base during certain rounds. This, as you can imagine, resulted in an erosion of the gameplay experience were were looking for! The 1.04.003 Update simply fixes the bug so you can no longer spawn into the enemy base.

Changed Skill Score Leaderboard:
We had received many comments about our Skill Score and Skill Score Leaderboard. Some players were seeing odd behavior like their Skill Score going down after a game they just won or other such seemingly odd changes. This definitely needed to get fixed. So we spent some time investigating and found that while the underlying math for the Skill Score is actually working quite well, the issue seemed to arise from server delays when a player's Skill Score was updated. This would result in you never really seeing the proper Skill Score when you looked at the Leaderboard.

We really wanted the Skill Score Leaderboard to be a very real-time leaderboard with high-frequency updates but the practical fact is that it never worked exactly the way players expected because it simply WASN'T as real-time as we needed. So, to improve this, we have made a change to how Skill Scores are processed.

Now in the 1.04.003 Update, all Skill Scores are collected for 24 hours and then processed all at the same time (at 4am Central time) in a much more complete and global fashion. This results in a Skill Score that reflects your overall game performance for the past 24 hours and greatly reduces the odd behavior of Skill Score changes that just didn't make any sense.

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We're incredibly fortunate to have such a passionate fanbase and we are truly thankful for all of your ongoing involvement in the Starhawk online community!

Hope you enjoy the update & have a very
Happy Holidays!

Stay tuned for an update on our new mobile game! 
 

MLG Quick Challenge #2 Winner!

Congratulations to TheGremlinKlown
winner of the MLG Roadkill Challenge!

GTK was a terror behind the wheel this weekend racking up over 2500 verified roadkills on poor unsuspecting foot-soldiers!  Unbelievable!  No one on foot was safe as he crushed them beneath his wheels, then did burnouts on their corpses!  In wreck-ognition for his weekend wheeled warfare MLG is awarding him the $500 prize!

Check out the graphs from the weekend carnage below!  You can see how many roadkills per hour he was racking up in the first image, and the second shows how much time the top 5 finishers spent playing this weekend!  These are just two of the nearly infinite number of graphs we can generate to gain insight into how people are playing the game!

Sign up with MLG before the next Quick Challenge starts by clicking here! 

MLG Quick Challenge #1 Winner!

Congratulations to Lightning__V
winner of the MLG Knife Kills Challenge!

The competition was fierce as he battled it out with several other top players over the weekend clawing his way to victory.  For his amazing knife skills MLG is awarding him the $500 prize!  If you missed out this week, don't worry, MLG has three more challenges coming up, each with their own $500 prize!

As with all of the Starhawk tournaments, we work closely with MLG to validate all of the leaderboard statistics through a very powerful system called Tableau.  In fact, we have a designer who is dedicated to the data collection and interpretation process who helps us understand all of the statistics generated by our game.  You've probably seen his charts and graphs when we post them on the forums.  He spent several days this week going through all of the top players in the quick challenge to ensure that everyone was playing fair and not 'killfarming' to inflate their statistics.  In the process he generated some really interesting charts such as this heat map showing where all of Lightning__V's kills took place over the course of the weekend!

 Sign up with MLG before the next Quick Challenge starts here!

Grizzly Week

Its Grizzy Week here at LightBox!  The new Grizzly Exo-Suit DLC has been available for a week, and the consensus around the community is that it's a pretty sweet new vehicle!  To celebrate its launch we're spending the entire week focusing on the development of the biggest new addition to the Starhawk arsenal with concept art and behind the scenes footage.

Today on the blog, we're showing off a few pieces from the initial weapon system exploration.  The first two slides were early ideas of what a fully armed Grizzly might look like.  These sketches show the artists playing around with various ideas for the weapons, but you can also see that the general look of the frame itself is starting to solidify (vs the image that we posted yesterday on Facebook).  There's still variation in the structure, especially in the legs, but by this point a direction has been selected, and our artists are starting to dial in the look.

The second two images show off detailed closeups for each of the Grizzly's long range and melee weapons systems.  During the process, our artists will use images of real-world objects to help them hone in on something that is fantastic, but also recognizeable to players as being rooted in heavy industry.  These are just a few of the many such sketches we produced, and are good representations of the weapon concepting process!

We'll have more Grizzly coverage all week so be sure to visit our Facebook page and follow @LBI_Studio on Twitter!

MLG Tournament Fair Play

Over the weekend there have been many posts, tweets and videos in regard to the Starhawk MLG tournament. We are fully aware of the situation and have several people from LBI and the MLG looking at all of the data.  Everyone here at Lightbox wants to see a highly competitive and fair play tournament. We are excited to see players who have earned it, take home the victory.  We also want to be absolutely certain that all players earn their rank on the leaderboard in accordance with the official tournament rules http://gamebattles.majorleaguegaming.com/starhawk/rules.  We take this tournament very seriously and it is paramount to us that any response issued is done in a thoughtful and accurate manner.

 We'll keep you posted with our findings just as soon as possible, please continue to play on!

Starhawk MLG Tournament with $20,000 in Prizes!

I'm excited to announce that the North American Starhawk MLG leaderboard tournament is now LIVE!

 $20,000 in cash prizes!

Between now and November 11th players who are legal residents of the United States and Canada (other than Quebec) and register at http://gamebattles.majorleaguegaming.com/starhawk will be ranked on an MLG leaderboard.  At the end of that period the top 16 players will be sorted into two eight player teams with players 17-24 as alternates.  The winning team will  walk away with $1,500 for each player!  Second place players will take home a cool $750! That's $18,000 in prizes for the top 16 players!

In addition, MLG is running four weekend events, each with their own unique goal.  At the end of the two day scoring peroid the highest ranking player for each challenge will be awarded $500!

Here's how you get started!

1.  Register Now!
To get started, make sure you have registered a GameBattles id and connected it with your PSN ID. This can be done in your profile settings. This will allow us to associate your Starhawk activity with the MLG tournament.

2.  Play and Dominate!
Once you've linked your accounts, you're ready to compete for fame and cash prizes. Just play an online quick match in Starhawk and the results will be automatically recorded to the leaderboard here.

 3.  Your Goal!
Win as many online matches as you can between Sept 25th - Nov 11th. If you are ranked in the Top 24 on the leaderboard at the end, you will qualify for the final grand tournament to become our Starhawk champion.

Be sure to read all of the official rules before registering!

DLC - The Starhawk Way!

Last week we announced the new Starhawk 1.04 Update and hinted at the upcoming DLC.  Today, over on the PlayStation Blog, they revealed what the DLC would be, and...

PlayStation Plus members get all Starhawk DLC for FREE!

So if you're new to Starhawk -- and especially if you are a member of PlayStation Plus -- now is a great time to get into the game. Here's quick look at all of the new Starhawk goodies!
 

Over the weekend some players have had questions about how the DLC would be implemented and so right now we're going to demystify this topic a bit and try to answer them!

With our experience on Warhawk, we know that segregating players based on DLC ownership can force them into 'keeping up with the Joneses'.  The traditional expansion scheme essentially forces players to keep current with all of the latest expansions, or get left behind. When we set out to make Starhawk we really wanted to improve this experience, which is why we worked hard to make sure we could provide all of our new maps for free.  We knew that we would eventually have premium DLC content but our #1 goal was to maintain a great experience for all Starhawk players -- even those player who had not yet purchased the DLC.

The team here at LightBox Interactive explored a ton of different ideas to achieve this and we really think our final solution is simple and works great:

Purchasing DLC grants you the right to build it, but ANYONE can use it!

The way we're handling the DLC for the Grizzly and Pod Launcher goes like this:  If you purchased the DLC, you can use Build & Battle to call it down.  If you haven't purchased it, you can't call it down, but you CAN still use it!   If your teammate builds a Pod Launcher you CAN use it to launch yourself across the map.  If you find an unattended Grizzly you CAN mount it and use it in combat!  Hell, you can even use the LR3 Rail Gun to score a headshot on an enemy while he's stomping around in a Grizzly and then take his for joy-ride!

And if the battle is super-intense and you really need to purchase a Grizzly Exo-Rig or Pod Launcher ASAP, here's how!

So what about about the pricing structure?  Our other goal with for DLC was to make sure we were delivering a great value to the player.  And here we feel like we've really delivered.  Each skin is only 99 cents and is broken apart into various parts like boots, arms, chest, head, and legs that can be mixed and matched with any of your other skins! Some skins even come with color variations too. Vehicle paint-job packs are also only 99 cents and can be applied to any vehicle including the new Grizzly Exo-Rig! The Grizzly Exo-Rig and the Pod Launcher are only $4.99 each and never has there been a way to cause so much destruction for the cost of a cup of coffee!

Not to mention that each of the individual player skins, vehicle paint-job packs, Grizzly and Pod Launcher can all be purchased separately from one another.  Meaning you don't have to buy a big expansion if you're just interested in a single skin, vehicle or paint job!

It all hits the PlayStation Store tomorrow alongside the FREE 1.04 Update!