HUGE Bedrock Update! - Knockback, Platforms & Entities!

[SupremeMortal]

Hey Bedrock CubeCrafters!

Today is the day where our Bedrock platform gets improved drastically! We've gathered so much feedback over the last month regarding our new knockback and platform-specific games, and are finally unveiling it all today! Read on to find out more...

New Knockback!

After a month of testing our new knockback with two different versions, we feel like it's ready for global release. With this release, we've opted for a marginally different configuration - mixing the first and second version. So, you may feel a slightly different knockback from how it was before:
- Increased vertical knockback very slightly.
- Decreased horizontal knockback very slightly.

Before:


Is he stuck on the ground?

After:


Silky smooth combos. Sorry @Camezonda !​

We're super proud with how the knockback has turned out - from a small idea mentioned in our Bedrock community talk, to a fully-fledged test gamemode on our network, to now releasing on our network, it's been wonderful to gather all your feedback and make changes! We hope you enjoy the new knockback - we understand it may be different from our old knockback where it was relatively low, but we're definitely excited to unveil this to our entire network!

Platform-Specific Games!

Over the last couple of weeks, we silently rolled out platform-specific queues to our knockback testing mode, and the results have been quite interesting! We've seen a drastic increase in players in the mode, which we're suspecting to be because it's been a more enjoyable experience for all platforms. We're happy to announce that this dynamic system will be implemented on all of the modes!

I understand that there may be some concerns, most of which we have addressed in our feedback thread, but we shall reiterate this here:

• How does it work?

Our systems are able to know what input device you are using - which will assign you to three different queues: mobile, controller & keyboard/mouse, and put you to separate games.

• Doesn't this make queue times really long?

We do expect queue times to be longer - this is expected when we split games based off of platforms. However, our system is able to monitor the number of players joining with a specific input device. If this gets too low, we begin to merge groups together with the controller queue. This allows for our queue times to be how they normally are - short and snappy!

• Am I still able to party and play games with my friends on different platforms?

Absolutely! We'll simply match you to the correct server based off of who is in the party with what input device is being used. We don't want to tell you much more than that to avoid exploiting.

• My games are more difficult now!

This is to be expected - we understand games will be more challenging as you're not going to be matched with players who are on a "worse" platform. However, if a mobile user were to join a game with any controller or keyboard/mouse player, they have a massively low chance on winning. We wanted to make the games more competitive and challenging for keyboard/mouse players, while making it a lot more enjoyable for controller and mobile players.

• This is going to kill the game - no one wanted this, and I really dislike it.

We've seen a massive increase in players when silently implementing the platform-specific games and new knockback configurations. From peaks of 450 consistently, to almost doubling it at 863 players, it's apparent that these features, together, are working very well. Especially since the knockback testing mode was just for testing, no statistics, no leaderboard, no real incentive to play more than 10 games, players kept playing. The red line is when we released platform-specific games.

• Why not make this a setting? So either I queue with my platform, or everyone.

Quoting a response from @Younisco responding to a community member who suggested something similar:

The reason why we're sceptical about adding a queue for people who wants to queue with everyone is that queue times will be long - to the point that it won't be enjoyable to even queue with every platform. With this queue option, we're assuming that:

- People know of its existence - unfortunately, at the moment, we haven't optimised things like game announcements for Bedrock. We simply cannot tell people about the existence of the queue effectively. Sure, we can tweet, we can put a forums / Discord announcement, but there are still hundreds of thousands of players who will not know of its existence.

- This has a knock-on effect on queue times. We're assuming that people will actually join this queue or enable this setting when the likelihood is that only a couple of thousand globally will. With a network with 40k~ players on at a time, a few thousand means that queue times will longer than we'd like it to be. Also, adding a new queue to the pools of queues means that the queue times for the platform-specific games will increase as well.

This is why we're suggesting only for it being available for the platforms above yours - you'll be put into the respective "higher" queues, which inflates the sizes of people joining the queues towards the top. It also benefits the fact that KBM players make up the minority of our playerbase, so their queue times would be shorter as well.

If there are any more concerns regarding platform-specific games, we'd love to address them. But these seem to be the major ones.

New Entity System!

Finally, we've optimised and revamped how entities are handled on our server! Though most of the optimisations may not be seen by a player, something that's guaranteed to be seen by a player is how smooth player movement is now!

Our previous movement was... not fun to look at. Staring at a player running around in a lobby would be visually unpleasant with how choppy it would be. This is now an issue in the past - players are as smooth as ever!

Before:

Quite choppy...

After:

IT'S SO SMOOTH​

This entire update has so many features that have been asked for for a long time from our Bedrock playerbase. Here's a few examples:

Spoiler: Who asked for this?

New Knockback:
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/improved-knockback.267320/
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/upwards-knockback.268010/
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/weird-knockback-on-bedrock-cubecraft.270650/
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/knockback-test-server.269352/
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/fix-this-no-kb-bug-please-🙏😭.268458/
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/change-the-kb.269953/
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/fix-knockback.268088/
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/modify-player-knockback-to-be-nonrandomized.229961/
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/create-actual-knockback-instead-of-using-1-9-java.268732/
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/ways-i-think-cubecraft-could-improve.250628/
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/why-is-cubecraft-always-known-as-that-laggy-server.272285/ (also mentions our entity movement, which has been fixed!)
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/anticheat-staff-count-and-kb-physics.265434/
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/knockback-suggestion.216369/

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1349778854899032066

/

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1342168159982252033

- Lots of feedback on our tweets!

- A whole bunch of positive feedback from PotatoPie25's video, take a look at the comments!

We could also look at the number of complaints about our knockback on our Twitter and Instagram. Most of them contain profanities though, so we decided to keep them out.

Platform Specific Games:
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/place-mobile-players-with-other-mobile-players-touchscreen.260191/

https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/bedrock-community-feedback-platform-specific-games.273586/ Quite a lot of positive feedback on our feedback thread!

Thanks everyone for reading this thread! We hope you enjoy these massive Bedrock changes - they're definitely a step in the right direction for making our server as polished as possible!

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend, have fun, and stay safe

 

[Technosword]

Looks great! Awesome work devs :)

 

[Xvannossxx]

I have a question, im a mobile controller will i be with controller players?

 

[Younisco]

I have a question, im a mobile controller will i be with controller players?

Yes - we detect your input device, not your actual device.

 

[the1stllama]

I have a question, im a mobile controller will i be with controller players?

Yup because they are on Bedrock and so are you too

 

[Wave Master7S]

I like this besides input match making just make a setting.

 

[Younisco]

This was such a rewarding project to work on! I'm super proud at where it got, and proud of the team who worked on it

 

[Wave Master7S]

I like this besides input match making just make a setting.

Also why does my post keep getting quoted about my response?

 

[Awabbatt]

Is it just me or the lag got wayy worse? I had like 80 ping on average now 600 ping.

 

[Deleted member 486250]

@Younisco critics have been removed?

 

[____]

Promising update! Definitely trying this out later today. I'll edit this post as soon as I have more to add :)

 

[ProfParzival]

Well done on the rollout and all the hard work.

Some teething troubles though... people are invisible in duels, some are invisible in FFA. There seems to be a new eat bug in eggwars where on some occasions u can't eat steak. Am sure you already have plenty of reports about these

 

[Wave Master7S]

@Younisco critics have been removed?

They have I’m sad.

 

[Technosword]

They have I’m sad.

Likely just a bug

 

[CeleryAskin]

My respect for the devs is huge, but this kb really isn't what we asked for at all. I had absolutely no problem with the old knockback, other than the fact that it was a bit randomized at times. and before you quote this post, yes I know that the new kb is less randomized. but they added combos, removed sprint reset, and removed crits. You completely changed it.

If I wanted to play with combos, I could've gone to Hive or Nethergames or a number of other servers. But I chose Cubecraft because of its almost vanilla pvp. When I heard you were fixing the kb, I was really happy at first, until I learned that that meant you were completely redoing it.

I'd really appreciate it if you simply fixed the old kb, rather than making a brand new one.



edit: yay you added crits back! and after playing it a bit, I've noticed that most of the time it's just as inconsistent, but my ping/wifi is pretty bad so that could be a part of it. I have gotten used to this kb, but I think I'll always prefer the old one lol

 

[CallMeFortex]

Can I ask, if im playing in a party with a controller player and I'm on pc, will I get sent into games with controller players?

 

[Wave Master7S]

Can I ask, if im playing in a party with a controller player and I'm on pc, will I get sent into games with controller players?

It will be random

 

[Nxrn]

I think that this is a bit bad. I don’t like how each device is separated. The whole point of bedrock is for everyone to play together and have fun as a whole. But this just ruined that for us

 

[Saffyyyyy]

Hey Bedrock CubeCrafters!

Today is the day where our Bedrock platform gets improved drastically! We've gathered so much feedback over the last month regarding our new knockback and platform-specific games, and are finally unveiling it all today! Read on to find out more...

New Knockback!

After a month of testing our new knockback with two different versions, we feel like it's ready for global release. With this release, we've opted for a marginally different configuration - mixing the first and second version. So, you may feel a slightly different knockback from how it was before:
- Increased vertical knockback very slightly.
- Decreased horizontal knockback very slightly.

Before:


Is he stuck on the ground?

After:


Silky smooth combos. Sorry @Camezonda !​

We're super proud with how the knockback has turned out - from a small idea mentioned in our Bedrock community talk, to a fully-fledged test gamemode on our network, to now releasing on our network, it's been wonderful to gather all your feedback and make changes! We hope you enjoy the new knockback - we understand it may be different from our old knockback where it was relatively low, but we're definitely excited to unveil this to our entire network!

Platform-Specific Games!

Over the last couple of weeks, we silently rolled out platform-specific queues to our knockback testing mode, and the results have been quite interesting! We've seen a drastic increase in players in the mode, which we're suspecting to be because it's been a more enjoyable experience for all platforms. We're happy to announce that this dynamic system will be implemented on all of the modes!

I understand that there may be some concerns, most of which we have addressed in our feedback thread, but we shall reiterate this here:

• How does it work?

Our systems are able to know what input device you are using - which will assign you to three different queues: mobile, controller & keyboard/mouse, and put you to separate games.

• Doesn't this make queue times really long?

We do expect queue times to be longer - this is expected when we split games based off of platforms. However, our system is able to monitor the number of players joining with a specific input device. If this gets too low, we begin to merge groups together with the controller queue. This allows for our queue times to be how they normally are - short and snappy!

• Am I still able to party and play games with my friends on different platforms?

Absolutely! We'll simply match you to the correct server based off of who is in the party with what input device is being used. We don't want to tell you much more than that to avoid exploiting.

• My games are more difficult now!

This is to be expected - we understand games will be more challenging as you're not going to be matched with players who are on a "worse" platform. However, if a mobile user were to join a game with any controller or keyboard/mouse player, they have a massively low chance on winning. We wanted to make the games more competitive and challenging for keyboard/mouse players, while making it a lot more enjoyable for controller and mobile players.

• This is going to kill the game - no one wanted this, and I really dislike it.

We've seen a massive increase in players when silently implementing the platform-specific games and new knockback configurations. From peaks of 450 consistently, to almost doubling it at 863 players, it's apparent that these features, together, are working very well. Especially since the knockback testing mode was just for testing, no statistics, no leaderboard, no real incentive to play more than 10 games, players kept playing. The red line is when we released platform-specific games.

View attachment 184720

• Why not make this a setting? So either I queue with my platform, or everyone.

Quoting a response from @Younisco responding to a community member who suggested something similar:


If there are any more concerns regarding platform-specific games, we'd love to address them. But these seem to be the major ones.

New Entity System!

Finally, we've optimised and revamped how entities are handled on our server! Though most of the optimisations may not be seen by a player, something that's guaranteed to be seen by a player is how smooth player movement is now!

Our previous movement was... not fun to look at. Staring at a player running around in a lobby would be visually unpleasant with how choppy it would be. This is now an issue in the past - players are as smooth as ever!

Before:

Quite choppy...

After:

IT'S SO SMOOTH​

This entire update has so many features that have been asked for for a long time from our Bedrock playerbase. Here's a few examples:

Spoiler: Who asked for this?

New Knockback:
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/improved-knockback.267320/
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/upwards-knockback.268010/
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/weird-knockback-on-bedrock-cubecraft.270650/
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/knockback-test-server.269352/
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/fix-this-no-kb-bug-please-🙏😭.268458/
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/change-the-kb.269953/
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/fix-knockback.268088/
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/modify-player-knockback-to-be-nonrandomized.229961/
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/create-actual-knockback-instead-of-using-1-9-java.268732/
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/ways-i-think-cubecraft-could-improve.250628/
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/why-is-cubecraft-always-known-as-that-laggy-server.272285/ (also mentions our entity movement, which has been fixed!)
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/anticheat-staff-count-and-kb-physics.265434/
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/knockback-suggestion.216369/

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1349778854899032066

/

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1342168159982252033

- Lots of feedback on our tweets!

- A whole bunch of positive feedback from PotatoPie25's video, take a look at the comments!

We could also look at the number of complaints about our knockback on our Twitter and Instagram. Most of them contain profanities though, so we decided to keep them out.

Platform Specific Games:
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/place-mobile-players-with-other-mobile-players-touchscreen.260191/
View attachment 184722
View attachment 184723
https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/bedrock-community-feedback-platform-specific-games.273586/ Quite a lot of positive feedback on our feedback thread!

Thanks everyone for reading this thread! We hope you enjoy these massive Bedrock changes - they're definitely a step in the right direction for making our server as polished as possible!

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend, have fun, and stay safe

I personally think the kb could use a little bit of tweaking, but it's still pretty decent

 

[Wave Master7S]

I think that this is a bit bad. I don’t like how each device is separated. The whole point of bedrock is for everyone to play together and have fun as a whole. But this just ruined that for us

QuietMuerte wanted to do a stream snipe me video but she changed it to a free party invite video.