Fan Art!

It's been a while since we've touched this site, as twitter is a far better format for getting news about Hex out. However there is no better way to present the prizes for our first fan-art competition than this.

A few words

Before I start, I'd like to thank everyone for their entries. We had far more than we expected and they were of a far higher quality. You guys definitively rock. We may not be the biggest shooter on Roblox, but we damn sure have the best community and player-base!

We are so impressed with the quality of entries that we've decided to completely restructure how we'll be awarding people.

Artist Nameplate

Everyone who submitted an entry before the deadline will be receiving the 'Artist' nameplate in Hex. This is an exclusive item that only a handful of you will hold and I hope it serves well as a thank you for everyone who entered.

Credit Prizes

In addition to the nameplate we have selected a handful of our favourites. This is entirely subjective and if we had our way we would have picked far more than this! However we feel these pieces are really special. If we didn't pick yours, don't worry! There wasn't a single art entry in this competition that we didn't find amazing to look at.

We are giving out credit prizes to six individuals listed in the 'Our Picks' section of this post.

When are we getting these prizes?!

We plan to release the prizes alongside the Ultimate Competition update Monday 11th. There may be a slight delay in getting prizes out however. We know it's super annoying but we have so much work on at the moment. Rest assured that everyone will receive their prizes!

Our Picks

All of the art was amazing, but we had to pick some winners. The following our our favourite entries.

Junnxiang 10,000 credits

Phenomenal entry, adds a distinctive twist whilst still remaining distinctly Hex. Other entries by Junnxian are phenomenal too.

FloodSlayer20 8,000 credits

May not be the most original idea but it was the best of its kind. Extra props for getting the lobby and armour just right!

Loldude120000 8,000 credits

A superb recreation of Hex's weapons and armour.

Fastdog003 8,000 credits

We love the art style here! Would have received extra props for having a Hex backdrop though.

Alcry 5,000 credits

Alcry sent over some wonderful entries, but these two are our favourite.

Thatgamer17 5,000 credits
One of our first entries, and still one of our favourites.

I want to see more art!
And who could blame you? We will be tweeting an album of every entry we received in the next week along with usernames. Then you can judge for yourselves whose art was best!

Any more competitions? 
We will definitely be doing another one of these competitions as the Hex one was an enormous success. Expect a video montage/trailer competition coming up very soon!

It's going to get beta

Beta!

Thank you everyone who signed up for the Hex Beta and we hope that you forgive us for its general buginess and lack of polish! The feedback we've got so far has been really positive which is a great feeling for us as we've worked very hard on Hex! So thank you, you guys rock.

The Road Ahead

The path from Beta to the full public release has three elements. 

Firstly we need to polish and refine everything in the Beta and eliminate the bugs. This will be done in incremental updates to the live Hex place that will be made available for new servers.

Secondly we are going to implement a series of 'big picture' components to the game. The most significant of these features are:

• In-game menu, allow you to do everything but customise your armour in-game. This also means we can reduce the intermission time allowing for less down time!
• From-scratch Spawn engine, everyone who has played the FFA game-modes in Hex beta realises the spawns absolutely ruin them. Hex is more suited to team gameplay but it's still fun to have a FFA mode as a bit of an oddity. We're going to work to dramatically include how spawning works in free for all modes. This may, worst case, involve us making maps specific for free for all.
• Stats tracking, The game already has stat tracking but it's all under the hood. For this we need to design a UI system for visualising it. You'll be able to see your lifetime statistics along with that of any other Hex player. We also plan on including competitive leaderboards etc.

Thirdly we plan to significantly expand the existing catalogue of shop items. Far more guns (that are far more balanced), far more armour pieces, cool level unlocks, new nameplates etc etc.

Timeline?

We're taking a day off today because we've worked flat out since mid-December now and have really burnt ourselves out a little. Tomorrow we will get straight back to it and do everything we can.

We aren't going to give a definitive release date. It will be in the very near future as the game is essentially already 'done' and these are just finishing touches to add.

Thanks!

An Update

The last two weeks have been pretty hectic for Hex.

For those of you who aren't familiar with our development plan we have spent a formidable amount of time over the last couple of weeks merging the game engine with the menu system. It was quite a tricky task.

What have you been doing?

So far we have succeeded in finalising the lobby system (with map and mode selection, vetoing, mid-game joining and round introductions) and got the customise system fully working. (See image)

On the topic of customisation, for those of you who are interested in the customising options the game offers I'm happy to tell you they are fairly extensive. We have a wide range of armour's available in which individual components can be mixed and matched (Helmet, Visor, Torso, Shoulder+Arm pieces and legs). Individual colours can also be changed however in team game-modes armour colours will of course be overwritten.

The system extends beyond the realm of cosmetic armour changes however and into loadout customisation. The store is packed with assorted guns of numerous types (assault rifles, laser cannons, electric crossbows etc etc). These all behave uniquely and can radically alter your game style. They also are all fully skin-able.

Equipments can also be selected and customised. I plan on making the next blog post detailing each individual equipment made so far (there is about 8) but rest assured they are useful, exciting and have the capacity to significantly alter your play style. Think jetpacks, evades, frag grenades, tracking beacons, denial of effect pulse grenades and a bunch more!

Something we're very pleased to announce is that all of these options will be made available to non paying players (ie you can unlock everything through earning credits through normal game-play). Of course if you fork out the Robux to buy extra credits your going to have some pretty rad looking gear a lot faster than everyone else.

What comes next?

The last key area that needs tying up is post-match stats-tracking. We have the server infrastructure and UI already made to handle all of this but we are still finalising how best to present this data and how much depth we want to give it in (we've got the capacity to track some pretty advanced stuff but how much of it players actually care about is another matter).

Audio development is also another area that we're planning on putting some more effort into. We're gradually working on diversifying our sound effects (although the ones we have already are pretty neat. We do have a very talented voice actor who is working on lines for the announcer voice but progress is a little slow on that front. Anyone who feels up to rallying to the cause of Hex tell BoostPowah to get busy!

Word on Alpha, Beta?

Hex has been in a semi-closed Alpha state for quite some time now. A number of very helpful users have been playing Hex rounds with me and Silent for months now to help us test new features and fix bugs (and also because it's damn fun!). There hasn't really been an Alpha test for the last couple of weeks however as me and Silent have been doing some pretty hardcore behind the scenes coding that we'd rather separate from mainstream testing.

For those of you who Alpha test with us (of which there are a fair few, essentially friends and friends of friends on xfire) rest assured that Alpha will re-open in the near future. Once we get stats-tracking ticked off the list we're planning on getting right back into the motions of testing.

For those of you who want to know more about the Beta I won't divulge too many details now. However I will tell you that it will almost certainly come mid-January (our original plan was before the end of 2014 but we got sidetracked by a lot of work commitments). Beta will be, to all intents and purposes, the full game minus several unreleased superfluous features and some assets. During the Beta period it is likely (though not a final decision) that we will implement some form of pay-wall (it will be cheap) to limit attendance whilst we are ensuring all bugs are ironed out. I highly encourage anyone who isn't super keen to play the Beta to wait for the full release and save some money!

You done?

Yeah. Sorry for the slow blog progress and I'm very excited to do another feature similar to the map one from a couple of weeks back (most likely on equipment). Until then, thanks for reading.

Dev Update 1: Maps and Filtering

Today was a pretty long day for Hex development. Yesterday we had an exploited test server so decided to make the long overdue leap to activating FilterEnabled, after a hell of a lot of work today I'm proud to say the transition is almost done!

We've just launched a twitter page which is your ideal route for getting in touch with us for questions about the game. We will also post screenshots and other tidbits up there along with each new blog-post. Be sure to follow!


In other less dull news I'm delighted to reveal six of our launch maps!

Bricktops:

For those of you who aren't familiar with Bricktops it was an enormously popular RCL map made several years ago. There are dozens and dozens of streams online of Roblox clans battling it out in the small symmetrical map. We decided that it was only right that we brought this map, with some design changes and a considerable facelift, into Hex.

Pitgrounds:

Another blast from the past. The layout is inspired by 'The Pit' from the Halo series however it has been transformed from its previous Roblox incarnations (see here and here) for Hex. Pitgrounds is based inside the hanger of a spaceship (I'm sure Silent will correct me on the lore) and has a beautiful, savagely industrial, aesthetic feel.

Pagoda:

In a departure from the previous two maps Pagoda is a brand new design for Hex. It is based in the penthouse apartment in a futuristic metropolis in the clouds. There is a huge element of verticality in this map and a lot of tight corners which will undoubtedly make it popular with players who prefer to use the jetpack or evade equipment. 

Heatcliff: 

A brand new design for Hex. Set on a volcanic planet where lava is harvested to be used to induce nuclear fission, or something like that. A small map with a good blend of indoor and outdoor areas. Just be sure not to get caught exposed in the middle!

Digsite:

The smallest and most hectic map in the game. Think of it as our shipment or nuketown. Two opposing fortresses face off over some peculiar temple. This map is at its best when played on a wacky game-mode like King of the Hill or Artifact. As I'm sure you can imagine, CTF rounds on this don't last very long!

Sandpit: 

By far the largest map in the game. A bunch of unexplained alien like structures protruding from the desert. This map combines verticality, open fields, tight indoor spaces and even a tunnel network. Perfect for more drawn out tactical rounds.

Concluding remarks:

That's all we've got to show you today! Today was mostly taken up by the long drawn out process of sanitising our client/server links, but it was worth it. At the end of the day we want this to be a game you can pick up and drop in any time and enjoy without having to worry with nonsense like script kiddies.

Until the next time!

Announcement

We are very excited to announce our upcoming project: HEX. The Premier Arena Shooter.

What is HEX?

HEX is a fast paced arena shooter developed by ROBLOX veterans SilentSwords and owen0202. It is inspired heavily by games such as Halo, Unreal Tournament and Quake. The game is enormously customizable with a huge range of weapons, equipment and armour parts. We’re hoping to have it ready around the New Year.

Give us a little history?

We have been making Roblox shooters since, quite literally, the dawn of time. After working on countless iterations of WIJ technology and starting the RCL sensation (or plague) we decided to go ahead with a long term dream of our seven years on Roblox to build the definitive shooter. Work officially started around this time last year with the game going through some radical design changes.

Back to the game!

We have six complete maps that we are ready to launch with, and more underway. These maps include Roblox classics many of you will be familiar with such as Bricktops and Pitgrounds but also plenty of surprises. Hex also has an array of gamemodes (7) ranging from the standard deathmatch style skirmish to more quirky ones such as King of the Hill and Artifact (Think Halo’s odball). Of course more will come post-launch in the future updates we have planned.

The shooting and gunplay in the game is as fast paced as it is strategic, your style of gameplay depends entirely on the loadout you have chosen. Will you be getting up close and personal with a Xenox blaster and a jetpack or will you be picking off your foes from the back with a SG-22 sniper rifle and tracker beacon? We have a diverse range of fully skinable primary weapons, secondary weapons, equipments and an enormous amount of armour customization. These can all be purchased from the shop with the points you earn in battle or, if you want to speed things up a little, your hard earned Robux. HEX is all about customising your experience.


We will be updating HEX all the time, with new maps, gamemodes (zombie event anyone?), guns, and so on. We will also be taking into account the views of the players. In-game you can vote in polls asking what you, the player, want us to work on next.

Wrap it up!

There’s so many features in HEX that a small post such as this can’t possibly do justice to. We have in depth global stats tracking, customizable nameplates, universal weapon skins, a medal system (think multikills and streaks) and so much more. HEX truly is the definitive ROBLOX shooter and we are very excited to let you all have a go.