Over the last few days the team has worked literally day and night to get update 0.9.0 out of the door! This milestone update is dedicated to our participation at CeBIT 2017 and introduces new content and features. Enjoy!

CHANGELIST

• Added Hannover environment
• Added HannoverTrack01
• Added HannoverRace01
• Added Liftoff Pro League (early release)
• Added CeBIT2017 tournament
• Added extra cheat prevention systems to the race time functionality
• Minor bug fixes

Don’t forget to check our changes to the flight behaviour on the Experimental Branch (EB). These changes are not yet part of the main 0.9.0 release, but will eventually be merged with our main branch developments.

HANNOVER ENVIRONMENT

We know you guys wanted some new environments and with the release of the Hannover environment we didn’t want to disappoint. This environment has been in the works for more than three months and is not like any other content addition to the game. It’s anything you could wish for in an environment, a huge map with open spaces, high buildings and lots of interesting freestyle opportunities. Moreover, like some other environments such as Minus Two and Dubai Legends, the Hannover environment is based on an existing location in Germany where the famous yearly CeBIT technology fair takes place. The whole Liftoff dev team will be present at CeBIT and it will be exciting for us to explore a place that’s also in the game. As with any update with Liftoff, especially big content updates, we expect some things to still to be rough around the edges. You can expect us to polish and optimize this level in the next updates. As always, feedback is much appreciated!

LIFTOFF AT CEBIT 2017

While not directly update news, it’s worth mentioning the complete development team will travel to Hannover (Germany) for a full week. With the help of our friends at Intel, we’ll be demoing the latest version of Liftoff at the CeBIT 2017 event from 20/03 to 24/03. We’ll make sure to share some pictures of the event on our Facebook page! If you are visiting the event, we’ll be glad to meet you at our booth in Hall 17.

LAUNCHING THE LIFTOFF PRO LEAGUE

We talked about it in a past blogpost, but with the launch of 0.9.0 i’ts finally here! Your chance to become a professional Liftoff pilot starts now. The Liftoff Pro League (LPL) service in Liftoff will allow you to participate in tournaments organised by the Liftoff team, by partners, and by the community. We have a complex and ever-expanding system running in the background, which offers us the opportunity to grow the Liftoff Pro League into something truly special. This initial release is all about testing out these systems. CeBIT 2017 tournament: With the launch of the LPL service, we are organising our first experimental tournament, taking place in the new Hannover environment and running at the same time as the CeBIT 2017 event. The goal of this first tournament is to give you a taste of what’s to come in the future while testing out the systems and features needed to support and grow the service in the future. This is just a first glimpse of the power of the service. Expect it to change the way you play competitive Liftoff games. So how does this new tournament work? When entering the CeBIT 2017 tournament section of the game, you’ll notice the tournament leaderboard that shows the current ranking. The way to win the tournament is to have the #1 spot by the end of the tournament. As a player you get two options:

• Practice: You can practice flying the race, following the tournament rules (defined on the tournament section) as many times as you want. Your results are not logged on the leaderboard.
• Participate: Your best result will be logged on the leaderboard. You only get a limited amount of participation runs. Once these are used up, your top time will be counted as your final result. Make sure to practice the track before you participate in the tournament. Good luck!

As this first tournament is considered a test, and things can go wrong (fingers crossed!), we are not announcing a big prize for this tournament yet. However the winner of the tournament will be send some fun Liftoff goodies! May the bets pilot win!

[ 2017-03-19 05:11:30 CET ] [ Original post ]