The Heist 2: Unlockable Vehicle
You know that we're ramping up for The Heist 2 release, so we thought we'd let you try and guess what the final vehicle is.
It's pictured, under those fancy velvet sheets.
HighScores Are Fixed
We followed the score bugs back to the config files that I have been playing with recently, I set the maximum scores to 5 for some reason but now it's back to 100.
JTV is working fine!
The Heist 2: Shortcuts
The Heist 2 has a lot more menus that the original game, that's why we thought it would be a good idea to put menu shortcuts into the game.
For example: You just finished organising your gang members, instead of going back to the main menu you can just hit the mission shortcut and jump right to the game.
The Heist 2: Final Weapon Loadout
This is the final weapon loadout for The Heist 2. All the weapons can be equipped to your specialists during the game by visiting the gang management screen.
The Heist 2: Vehicles
The Iconic Heist van is really cool, but since you manage your gang in The Heist 2, there wouldn't be enough room for all your specialists when you get a bigger gang. So we had to think about how we could fix this problem without losing the iconic van, what we came up with is a series of vehicles you can buy in the game that fit with the feeling of The Heist. So, The Heist 2 has 5 vehicles to choose from each with their own pros and cons and each with their own upgrade levels.
If you remember, you could upgrade your van to have all sorts of extra features. In The Heist we thought that was a really fun part of the game, so we built on this in The Heist 2. Instead of 6 choices of upgrades, there are now up to 10 choices depending on which vehicle you're using, some vehicles cannot do all the upgrades because they’re made differently.
The weapons are varied but are grouped into 4 types:
- Boost, 3 Levels
- Mines, 3 Levels
- Slammer, 2 Levels
- Turret, 2 Levels
You'll have to wait and see what all the weapons do in the final game, I'll give you a little hint: at least one involves FLAMES!
The Heist 2: Robberies
The last time we posted updates to the robbery gameplay we showed a couple of videos and it was very early in development. Now we're at a stage that we can talk about exactly what role the robbery section plays to the overall gameplay.
We love the original game, but we thought it needed some clarity between choosing your mission and playing the game, that's what the robbery section is for. It ties the selected mission to the thrill of The Heist. It's not superfluous either, the people who are fighting for your side are actually your chosen specialists — if you hire a specialist with and afro and equip him with a shotgun, in the robbery you'll notice a guy with an afro shooting a shotgun. Depending on his weapon skill level will determine the chances of him landing a shot but the more he plays in your active gang, the better that character will get. You can have up to 6 specialists fighting side-by-side.
In the previous post, The Heist 2: Specialists, I noted that it's possible for your active specialists to get killed in action. For the robbery section this can happen is if you spend too long robbing the bank your gang will come up against unbalanced police resistance; Depending on the type of place being robbed. Essentially being greedy won't help your gang, if your specialists aren't up to the job of fighting the growing number of police enforcements outside, you will find yourself with at least a few dead specialists on your hands. Timing your exit is an important strategy as well, it actually sets the difficulty for the mission itself.
You'll also be making key decisions such as deciding not to kill a cashier to reduce the potential police resistance. Having supporting specialists available, such as a hacker for the diamond robberies will speed up your robbery and potentially save specialists from getting killed; You can get out with more credits in less time.
Tomorrow I'll continue these The Heist 2 feature posts by talking about the vehicle and weapon choices available in the game.
The Heist 2: Specialists
The first thing I want to talk about is the specialists, in The Heist 2 they’re such a core part of the game. In the original you could only hire from a certain set of pre-defined specialists and it was the same for everyone who played, it also had little no real affect on how missions worked out.
In The Heist 2 it’s very different, specialists are dynamically generated and actually make a difference to how robberies progress and how much money you can make from each mission. Every specialist in your gang has level progression, that means the more missions they play, the more they experience they get and the better they get at what they do.
There is a real catch though, because specialists can be killed in action. If a specialist is killed, you can hire someone else to fill their role. This really gives you an attachment to specialists in your gang, sometimes it’s really sad is a favourite specialist gets killed.
Each specialist can be of the following skill sets:
Safe Cracker
Muscle
Planner
Con Artist
Hacker
Tomorrow I will post information about what you can expect from the new section of gameplay, Robberies. Stay tuned.
Forum Voting Tiers
If you've been visiting the forums recently to discuss with us The Heist 2, Banana Dash World 4 or Attak 2 then you'll probably already know that we've already upgraded the way forum voting works.
Since we introduced forum voting we've noticed a number of things, including post quality rising, forum activity rising and also spam rising!
Why has spam been rising? People have been creating multiple accounts to vote themselves up in the forums. It's pretty obvious when this happens, but with the introduction of voting tiers it should be less of a problem.
Here's how it works — earning JTS points by playing games on the site will let you vote a certain number of times every 12 hours:
- 1,000 Points — 5 Votes
- 2,000 Points — 10 Votes
- 4,000 Points — 15 Votes
- 6,000 Points — 20 Votes
- 8,000 Points — 25 Votes
- 10,000 Points — 30 Votes
Forum Ratings
The forum now has ratings, this means every post, every user can be rated by other users based on the quality of their posts. There are some basic features to how it works.
- You can rate 10 times every 12 hours
- Every time you're rated positive, you gain a JTS point
- You're personal rating is show next to posts in the forum (this will be rolling out across the site)
- Negative ratings only affect your rating, they don't remove your JTS points.
The Great Sperm Race Goes Live!
The product of our latest efforts with Channel 4 are now available for you all to play!
We built this game on the Banana Dash 4 engine, and we did it in around 10 days. The final product is very playable and quite short but it's meant to be fun and educational.
Because we already had the game engine under our belt we were able to put time into things like dynamic animation (the tail is actually a physics object, created by Josh, not on any third party library) and illustration style.
Of course, this game was built for education, but we wanted to do it casually, not to force feed facts. Just by playing the game you'll be learning about the way the body works and we really hope you enjoy it.
If you live in the UK you can watch the TV show associated with this game that goes by the same name, although is more detailed in terms of content. It airs on Channel 4 at 9pm on Monday, 23rd March.
Play The Great Sperm Race Now!