Developer Diaries

The team will preview upcoming developments here.
For the past couple months we have been gathering up ideas and thoughts on how to alter some values to reduce critical breakpoints in the gameplay experience while still staying true to MB2's signature feel. Before even trying them out, we would like to see some discussion on the potential implications and if there are some controversial changes in the mix. None of these changes are final and surely not all of them will ever see the light of day, but many of these ideas attempt to address issues that particularly new players might feel are frustrating. Note that these changes do not focus on Saber vs Saber mechanics as that is explored elsewhere in Tempest's tweak threads. General mechanics Getup from knockdown activates 0.5-1 second...
Gameplay Direction Post 1.4.3 Hi Guys, I am Hexodious - In the last few weeks I've taken over as Gameplay Lead for Moviebattles II and its occured to me that we've never actually told you where we are headed or why we make specific changes in regards to gameplay. I'd like to use this as an opportunity to change that for us as a team to be more transparent moving forwards as we look to improve the game throughout future patches. This will also allow you to know what we are looking to change, and what kind of feedback we are looking for. In 1.4.4 we are looking to freeze a solid core for Jedi/Sith in place so we won't have to touch these mechanics for at least a few major patches - This includes: Saber vs Saber, Saber vs Gun and Force...
There has been an awakening.....have you felt it? Hello MBII Community! Like Hexodious mentioned in this post, we at the MBII team are hoping to change the MBII direction to be more focused to new features rather than re-inventing the wheel by continuously editing existing features. After all, as a wise saying goes, "if it's not broken, don't fix it!". With Rogue One approaching, this is an excellent opportunity to pull up our sleeves and start implementing a number of features that have been in our drawing board for far too long. To do this we aim, as Hex said, to first freeze the Jedi/Sith lightsaber mechanics for the foreseeable future, something that we are currently working on. After the Jedi/Sith mechanics are frozen, our...
Hey everyone. I know that a lot of were expecting changes for the current state of saber v gunner and/or saber v saber in this patch but I assure you, things are still in motion to get those settled and pushed out! As a preface, MB2 has had a theme of changing things for the sake of changing or trying to address problems in really weird/roundabout ways and not actually solving the issues. This leads/has led to problems not actually being solved and/or creating new ones (although there's been a lot of cool stuff along the way). Moving forward, there's going to be more focus on adjusting things to being able to have more static baselines (e.g. there shouldn't be any major overhauls to saber v gunner interactions once all of this stuff is...
Over the course of Movie Battles 2 Duel of the Fates has seen many iterations over the years. The first of which starting in Build 17 and ever since then the community has continued to enjoy it throughout the years. Within that time we have made numerous changes some for the better and some for the worse resulting in the level we currently have in public today. I will be making a brief summary of those changes over the years then detailing some of the changes made over the years to its hopeful successor known to everyone as Duel of the Fates Version 2 or DotFv2 for short. For those that just care about seeing the new DotF scroll down until you see the large layout image. History of Duel of the Fates Duel of the Fates was initially...
15 years ago today the original Movie Battles released its first full version for Jedi Outcast. Hard to believe isn't it? On eve of the release of a new Star Wars movie none the less! We wanted to take this opportunity to show off some of the upcoming changes to Movie Battles II. However, for those who haven't seen the 10 year anniversary send off by our founder RenegadeOfPhunk I highly suggest checking it out here: 10 Year Anniversary news - Movie Battles II mod for Star Wars: Jedi Academy he goes over some of the history creating the very first version of Movie Battles. The core new player experience for Movie Battles is about to change drastically. We are working on making the UI much easier to navigate and handle, adding...
Almost 1 year ago I threw together the official web-based server list as a replacement for Jacklul's after it stopped working. Since then it's received some visible and less visible enhancements, the most significant occurring earlier this year when we started collecting server statistics. Now I'd like to introduce a new service that reuses some of that prior work: a Discord bot! Features Just like the web version of the server list, the bot makes it easy to see what servers are active without needing to start the game: You can also get some basic stats or a list of maps distributed with the launcher: While that's all useful, I don't think those commands alone would be enough of a reason to bother writing a bot - if you're...
Hello Young Padawans! We have some connection issues, so please stay tuned. Launcher should work within few hours, we are doing our best so you can download, update and play Movie Battles as soon as possible! [UPDATE] For now we have two mirrors: Torrent: http://update.moviebattles.org/MovieBattlesII.torrent (torrent) ModDB: Star Wars: Movie Battles II v1.3.2 Full download (normal download speed) UK: http://update.moviebattles.org/MovieBattlesII_FULL_1.3.2.1.zip (heavy load - slow download) 1. Pick one to download and extract data to GameData folder 2. Double click on launcher May the Force be with YOU!
Hey everyone here to share a quick update with you all a few new additions to the rosters, that will be coming in the next update! Along with a small preview of what's to come :) General Hux First up is the First Order's Elite favourite whipping boy, General Armitage Hux. Naturally he will be joining the Commander role, and will come with the option of being coat or coatless. First Order Office To go alongside Hux there will also be a Generic First Order Office being added to the Commander roles. Initially I was going to have both a male and female version of the character, however due to time constraints, and the mere fact I didn't want to homogenise so many different First Order officers (since Hux was being added) I ended up...
Thanks for your patience everyone. I know most have been/are eager to see where Saber vs Saber is heading in the future of MB2. I also know that not everyone has agreed nor will agree with all of the changes but consideration for all perspectives, opinions, and aspects of gameplay has been taken, I assure you. This thread isn't going to concern/go into plans for changes to Force powers. After the polished saber changes are released, that's when all of that stuff is going to start getting worked on/tuned up (and I'm very much looking forward to it). Starting out, I'd like to convey my personal thought process behind changing mechanics/features of the saber system. When I think back through the various systems I've played through, the...
Hey everyone! Sno here with a new level to share with you all that will be coming to MB2 in the next few weeks! First off, a little history. Dxun began development by a team member named Droidee roughly 7 years ago. Droidee managed to complete most of the map from the beginning. The framework and terrain were all setup and Mace had started working on the vis a bit. Though when I joined the team I ended up picking up this project mid-way, which was about 5-6 years ago. Something had come up and Droidee was unable to continue development. Credit goes to him for a large portion of this project. Anyhow, I started working on Dxun and over the course of a year I managed to add in the objective, add in the East Side Route and the underground...
A few people have shown some interest in some upcoming enhancements to the launcher. The launcher serves as both as a tool for updates and information and as the first impression new players get to MB2 it is therefore important that the launcher gives a clean and seamless experience. In its current state, the launcher is not fulfilling our needs or the needs of you guys as our player base. So today I am going to show you some of the improvements and bug fixes which will be coming soon, as well as some longer ambitions and new features that we hope will appear in the not too distant future. This is mostly centred around the installation and patching part of the launcher rather than new features. The aim was to first fix the major...
Developer Diary - New Launcher and Open Beta For some time it has been our ambition as a team to be able to be more open with the whole community with in progress development and testing. Those of you who view and follow the Development Roadmap will have not only been able to see the first glimpses of that philosophy but also what is coming down the pipeline to aid that. The cornerstone of all this is the Launcher - so today I am glad to announce the Open Beta of the new launcher ... which will enable Open Betas for MBII! Where we've come from Today's launcher has been end of life for some time. Work was started on it more than 11 years ago and the landscape of computing has changed immensely in that period. The approach to a cross...
Before we begin, we would like to note that a lot of what you are about to see is a work in progress and the final product(s) may change from what you see here. Tutorial Over the past few months we have slowly progressed towards the first release of the tutorials. The first thing you will notice when starting up the game after the initial release is a new popup that asks you whether or not you would like to play the tutorial. If you click yes it will take you into the first tutorial. If no it will take you to the main menu, and remember your choice for the next time you launch. If you decide not to do the tutorial right away you can then hit the graduation cap icon to access the list of tutorials, their requirements, and completion...
Good evening! So, as a break from working on launcher i decided to make a drink and watch some movie finish Steam Integration :) If you have forum's account already you can still link it with Steam Account, just relog and use steam integration. Enjoy :)
Developer Diary - Game Stats In the next release we will be adding the capacity for game servers to send back statistics for analysis by the development team. This is one of the most important features that we have ever added to MBII. Up until now all design decisions and feedback we have had has come from anecdotal evidence and different people often disagree wildly. Gathering statistics will allow these discussions to be data informed rather than relying on different people's often irreconcilable points of view. To that end, with the next release of MBII libcurl will be a required component for server hosts. For windows users this library will be supplied, pre-packaged in the usual way either via launcher or the manual...
For over a decade, the destroyer droid class has been the source of great gameplay in Star Wars Movie Battles II, but what makes the Deka class so special is that unlike any other class, it is actually a vehicle. Yes, every time you select a Deka, you are actually spawning a vehicle in the game. This enables us to have a non-human model that has abilities and movements that would otherwise not be easily achievable. But if the Deka class is a vehicle and all Jedi Academy vehicles need a driver, then who is that driver? This question has troubled the entire community for a long time. Back in the early builds when a Deka was killed it was possible for other players to enter the body (since it's just a vehicle) and use/drive it - Leading...
Lunarbase is a level we all know and love. It was one of the teams first levels released back in Build 16 created by Chairwalker. Chairwalker also created our SBD model, Korriban, Yavin Assault, as well as weapons such as the A280, Projectile Rifle, and PLX-1. For the most part, Lunarbase hasn't been updated anywhere near as much as some of our other popular levels like DOTF have been over the years. Only fairly recently was an additional route from tunnel to the main doorway of side was added. Years ago Shadriss started work on a visual only update to Lunarbase. Sadly real life had its priorities and he needed to leave the team before he could finish it and some other projects he was working on. I have been sitting on an outdated...
A Beta and a Mandalorian A Beta Twenty years ago today was the first official beta release of the original Movie Battles by RenegadeOfPhunk. Back then there was just four classes with simple loadouts, a round system to facilitate the last man standing gamemode alterations, and a few tweaks to the original Jedi Outcast combat. Some of those tweaks drastically change the arena style combat of Jedi Outcast by making blaster projectiles faster, adding a reloading system, removing pickups from the world, giving lightsabers more stance variations and new defensive capabilities. For those last twenty years we have continued to expand upon the initial idea. Adding more features, models, maps, and various balance changes to get to the point we...
Top