Developer Diaries

Update 26.02.2017 -> *EU* OFFICIAL HARDCORE Hi! Good news for players who are looking for more competitive gameplay. *EU* OFFICIAL COMPETITIVE server is back under new name - HARDCORE and few new rules. Since I have more time for MBII both development and fun with you guys on servers I decided to bring back competitive server and also host few PUGs from time to time. First PUG won't be announced here on forum but in game on our new server, if we gather enough willing to play players. As for rules, we will keep it simple: - Class limit 1 if team has 5 players, CL 2 if there is more than 5. - Obviously no teamkilling, no time wasting, no trolling AND no forcewhoring. - Remember to play as a team not as individuals! New players ->...

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...

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...

Years ago Frost created a Marvel map that was never finished but was really fun to play so rather than letting the idea stay unreleased I decided to make the map again from scratch and add in some more MCU elements. Map The map is split into seven different areas, the main area of the map (where both teams spawn) is a section of New York with Grand Central Terminal and the Avenger's Tower in the middle. In New York there are portals which lead to the six other areas of the map; Odin's Vault on Asgard, HYDRA Siberian Facility, X-Men Danger Room, The Red Room, Sanctuary and Oscorp Lab C35. New York Asgard - Odin's Vault HYDRA Siberian Facility X-Men Danger Room The Red Room Sanctuary Oscorp Lab C35 Objective The...

Enclave Layout Update Enclave is a level that has been overdue for changes for about a decade. The southern, or right side route (from Rebel perspective) has always been too long, too straight, and with too much of an uphill battle at the end. While the northern, or left side route (from Rebel perspective) had a large issue with getting past an easily camped elevator close to Imperial spawn. These two spots in Enclave are what this update attempts to do some things to address. The first and probably largest change is the complete removal and reworking of the elevator route as seen in the image above. The area is now much more wide open and has a more gradual slope to the upper landing pad area of the level. It also enters the upper...

Rend 2 - A More Modern Renderer Rend 2 is a more modern renderer being developed by SomaZ to add features such as: Physically Based Materials, HDR Rendering & HDR Lightmaps, Parallax Occlusion Mapping, and more. Starting next release Movie Battles II will begin to incorporate those modern features in new and old assets. With this new renderer and release, we will continue to upgrade bits and pieces of Movie Battles II to increase visual fidelity with each update going into the future. However, with an increase in visual fidelity comes an increase in cost. While Rend2 comes with a host of optimizations over the base renderer, definitely expect increased file sizes and increased memory usage when Rend 2 is active. In a coming update...

A new Death Star level is coming with the release of Capture the Flag. It is an entirely new level created specifically for the new game mode with 4 routes directly into each of the flag areas. The level is symmetrical and each route has way more interconnects than a typical Movie Battles map. Everything is spread across three separate vertical levels. Each team has their own set of three "sheltered" spawns. The enemy team cannot physically access these sheltered spawns but both teams can shoot into and out of them to help prevent both spawn camping and a little bit of flag camping. Below are the minimaps for the various levels so you can get a feel of the actual layout of everything as well as details about each one. There are two...

Hello, We've prepared a temporary fix for those who can't wait for the release of the new launcher. This fix is for the master server list in-game. Download here - (removed, use launcher instead) Put zzzzz_MBII.pk3 into your GameData/MBII folder In the meantime, server owners can set new master servers: master.moviebattles.org master2.moviebattles.org (This will be the heartbeat servers in the server configuration) To prevent situations like this in the future we have added additional backup solutions for the master server list, so 3 backup servers in totally different locations should do the job. Note: This is just a temporary solution, it may not work. Do not treat it as official full release.

Manaan: Ahto City Uprising Manaan is a new level based on the iconic location, 'Ahto City' from Knight of the Old Republic. The initial goal was to create a large map for a high population, with both teams having their own objectives. This would allow them to choose between attack or defense, making the gameplay more dynamic. The map was started almost two years ago and has undergone many changes along the way. The original layout closely resembled the version in KotOR, but this design posed serious challenges from a gameplay perspective. A few months later, @FrenzY joined the project and contributed new ideas to create a layout that would align with MB2 standards. The main change was the merging of the two parts of Ahto City into...

Hello, As you know, we have had been dealing with some internal development issues over the past few weeks. Almost all of the issues have been resolved, but there are still some remaining. Our goal is to release a fix for the launcher and master server as soon as possible, and after that is done, we will be continuing development, fixing bugs, implementing new features, etc. With these problems working on getting resolved, organization has changed to prevent anything like this from occurring again.In addition to the changes in organization we will be changing the way beta tests are handled. Our goal is to provide fixes and small updates as soon as you report an issue, and big changes as they accumulate. We are going to be...

I am happy to announce our updated website has gone live. The format has not changed significantly, but we wanted to add more information to give new players a better feel for what the game has to offer. The same type of stuff that the old website used to summarize. A big thank you to Viserys for spearheading the project and eXo for assisting.

Resupply Nodes In the next update to the Capture The Flag, Resupply Nodes are being added in order to give people opportunities to sustain the fight. These resupply nodes vary based on the needs of a given CTF level. In one map they may be situated near the flags or spawns and only the defending team may access them. On another level they may be more centralized requiring both teams to fight over access to them. The parameters that resupply nodes have will also vary based on level. Health resupply nodes may supply both health and armor, or just one of the two. The same with ammo resupply nodes. Ammo resupply nodes may supply both weapon ammo, and expendables such as grenades or fuel, or also just one of the two types. Each node will...

Forgotten JKHub bar is back again, you can find it on top of the forums. I hope it will be useful for you guys. Also we would like to invite you to Discord Chat - Discord

One of the goals for the team for the last two years has been to add some statistics collection into the mix to help us see things from a broader perspective than just the experiences of developers and players that shared their experiences with us. This has mostly been a side project for those working on it, as obviously working on the main parts of the game still take priority when we have a team a small as ours. However, over the last month or so I have made some large progress on the visual front-end using information from the master server with some additional help from Spaghetti. As of the moment of posting about a week of data has officially been gathered outside of the testing environment. Instead of going over the whole process...

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, We have updated master server, so please make sure you have sv_master1 set to master.moviebattles.org. Server should reappear on list within few minutes after restart.