Here in Massachusetts, the days are getting shorter and our thoughts turn to mortality. What will be our regrets on our waning hours? Who can say, but it ain’t gonna be this weeks update, featuring a new physics engine and some tweaks to help you find less laggy games.

CHANGES

*Improved matchmaking to make it more likely that you’ll get into less laggy matches. We search for hosts close to you for 90 seconds, then, if you haven’t found a game yet, give you the option of searching wider or continuing to search nearby.
* Fixed a bug where the end-of-match results would sometimes not appear.
* Challenge progress is saved more reliably if a match ends prematurely.
* Cleaned up sound during end-of-match sequence.
* Swapped out our old physics engine for a snazzy new one, called Bullet.
* Secret bonus for those of you who read these change notes: we left in a physics debugging tool that I think looks pretty cool. If you start the game with the “-enable_ship_cheats” command line argument, F4 will show you some of what’s happening behind the scenes.

Do you like pooping? Well then, our ninth update is for you. It includes a new achievement, speedier matches, and a bit of help for new players.

(It really has nothing to do with pooping. I just like talking about pooping. Poop poop poop. (If this is too lowbrow for you, you can skip ahead to the Elizabeth Cady Stanton joke.))

Let us know your thoughts on the forums (http://demiurgestudios.com/community/), and if you run into any problems, let us know at support.arenakings@demiurgestudios.com.

WHAT'S NEW

Arena Kings is updated weekly based on the feedback we get from you. You can check out the full list of updates on our forums, but here's some of the major stuff:

* Noob Aid: To make things a bit fairer, new players get a health bonus which phases out over the course of the first four levels.
* A new Steam achievement for finishing a match during the beta
* Faster Matches: Sped up games by reducing 3-player and 4-player victory conditions.
* A bunch of bug fixes and improvements, particularly related to scoreboards and the challenges introduced last update.

COMING SOON

Five words: Freeze Ray. (I am now encased in a block of ice and can't say the other three words until I am unthawed generations from now in my country's darkest hour.)

YOUR FEEDBACK

Okay, I'm not going to pretend to be frozen anymore. Here's some of what you've been saying:

"Pretty hard to play with lag."

Addressing lag is one of the two most important things we're working on, along with giving people that don't use Facebook the ability to sign up for an Arena Kings account. In the previous release, we added a warning when we can tell that you're about to join a high-ping game, but we're not getting reliable results from that check. We're working on improving that, as well as a bunch of other changes to networking.

We expect that in the long run, we may need to change the game so that it's hosted by dedicated servers. Lots of folks have asked for that. That's a very large engineering task, though, and in the near term we think it's better for the game to spend those hours adding features and fixing bugs.

While we're working on improving things, the number of people playing the game at any one time has a big impact on whether you can find a nearby, low-ping host, so keep on inviting your friends to play.

"Had to leave because the game was way too long."

We've reduced the 3- and 4-player score limits to help with this. Let us know what you think of the new game lengths!

"What's the 19th Achievement?"

It's the one that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony made, but were never allowed to unlock. Not really. It's a little thank-you achievement for you (valiant beta testers all) enabled in this latest release.

"<3 <3 <3"

Y'all also said lots of nice things about the game (shucks, thanks!), but those aren't as interesting to talk about.

Arena Kings' 8th beta update is rumbling in like a bull about to break a REALLY BIG PLATE. You should be thinking of the world's biggest souvenir travel plate in Lucas, Kansas right now. Just like Lucas made itself better by accomplishing a tremendous feat of dinnerware, you can now make your guns better by completing challenges.

We'd love to hear what you think about the update on the forums (http://demiurgestudios.com/community/), and if you run into any problems, let us know at support.arenakings@demiurgestudios.com.

CHANGES

- All six primary weapons now come with challenges attached. Get kill streaks to unlock damage, bullet speed, accuracy, and refire rate bonuses.
- Completing a weapon challenge gets you one of 18 new Steam achievements.
- Added a new display in the upper-left during a match that shows the score target, the score of the current leader, and either your score (if you're not in the lead) or the runner-up's score (if you are).
- When new players join a game, the score needed to win goes up to match. (So that a player quitting doesn't prematurely end a game, the score target doesn't, however, decrease when players leave.)
- When we can tell that you're about to join a server with a high ping time, we show you a warning and ask if you'd like to join the match or wait for one with less lag.
- Plugged some memory leaks. Kapowza! (That's the sound a bug makes when we fix it.)

COMING SOON
We're working on ways to ease new players into the game, including a health and damage bonus for low-level folks.

And a reminder that many head, legs, and back items will be revised soon. The only way to get "legacy" versions of these items is to own them when the changeover happens.

You used to be able to get to level 3 in Arena Kings... now, with our 7th update, "It Goes To Ten." (Eleven's scheduled for a future update.) Seriously, this update is huge.

CHANGES

- Two new weapons! Just in time for the 4th of July, the All-American is a medium-range machine gun that's the fastest-firing weapon in the game. The Scorcher is a rocket launcher that's does a bit less damage per rocket than the Ol' Smokey... but it carries twice the ammo and has twice the explosion radius.
- 7 new levels. We've raised the level cap to 10. We've made the early levels a bit speedier, as well.
- We've made low-level weapons a bunch cheaper.
- We increased the rate at which you earn nuts by 20%.
- The old version of a bunch of weapons has been retired. If you used to own a Grenade Launcher, High-Powered Revolver, Lou the Sawed-Off Shotgun, Lulu the Shotgun, Woodpecker SMG, Smokey with More Ammo, Sticky Grenade Launcher, or Sticky Launcher with More Ammo, you are now one of the few people in the world with a legacy version of these weapons. Some of these weapons have been replaced with new versions; others are on indefinite hiatus from the store.
- Lots of balance changes for weapons:
Woodpecker range increased from 1250 to 1500.
Changed starter weapons to the No Bull and Ol' Smokey.
Grenade Launcher ammo reduced from 4 to 3.
Increased Sniper refire rate from 1.25s to 1.4s.
Increased Lou the Sawed-Off Shotgun refire rate from 1.25s to 1.5s
Reduced the Better Woodpecker damage bonus from 10% to 3%.
Reduced No Bull damage from 30 to 25.
Reduced No Bull projectile speed from 4000 to 3600.
Increased No Bull refire rate from .4s to .5s.
Changed High-Powered No Bull bonus from a 10% damage bonus to a 10% projectile speed bonus.

BUG FIXES & MISC. IMPROVEMENTS
- Fixed a bug where, if you joined a game in progress, the toilet would be invisible until it moved.
- If you try to start the game and there's already a copy running, you'll get a prompt asking you if you want to close the old copy or the new one.
- Reworked the "Crowns: X" and "Flush them for Y points!" pop-ups so that they show up on widescreen, stay on screen for longer, and don't get in the way of play so much.
- Fixed a bug where the scoreboard screen would get stuck if you had it up in the RV.
- Fixed a bug that made lower-level players do less damage against higher-level players.
- Your Facebook friends playing Arena Kings show up in the right spot in the Friends Online list now.
- Fixed a bug where you could click on a greyed-out Invite button.

Some folks on Sunday were experiencing a crash on the main menu, right after the "Press space to continue" screen. We've released a fix. Let us know if you run into any further problems, and sorry for the outage.

The database that held the average wait times for matchmaking was corrupted. We’ve patched it up and are making sure that, in the future, the game will be accessible even if there are problems with this data.

Enjoy,
Will Jennings
Designer, Shoot Many Robots: Arena Kings
Demiurge Studios