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Season 4 is now over and we’re excited to announce the top 10 winners below. Also as announced in our 1.3.7 patch announcement that went live yesterday, we’ve also made some anticipated changes to our ranking system, so that you’ll be able to keep track of your lifetime ranking, as well as the current season ranking.
From many players, down to 10 wielders, 1 winner came out on top.
Hailing from United States, Crystal Commander is the champion of season 4.
Furthermore, our engineers and wizards in our top secret Wands Factory finally finished their work on the exclusive wand Invicta, awarded to all top ten players of season 4.
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Patch 1.3.7 is now live, and adds several new features and updates, including two new spells; Chilling Clutch and Skull Specter. Along with this we’re introducing an update to the ranking system. We’ve also spent some time on improving Wands for new players. For all the information, continue reading below.
Oculus Gear VR
New features
Daydream
New features
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The year is 1890.
Under assembly in our top secret Wands Factory, few know of its location, only that it’s somewhere in London. A wand unlike any other. This grand prize will only be awarded to the most skilled and dedicated Wielders across the realm of Wands. Season 4 ends on March 22nd. Will you be one of the few carrying this token of excellence?
Wand design and modelling by lead technical artist Petter Bergman. Petter has throughout his time at Cortopia been responsible for providing top notch visual content for Wands.
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Read more about Survival including information on The Hulk & The Arcer below!
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We’ve sat down with Tech Lead, Hannes Lidbeck from Cortopia Studios, to get a deeper insight and understanding of what it’s like working in the VR/AR industry! Enjoy this monthly Spotlight which will feature different roles, perspectives, tips & tricks and more!
Oh, hi Marc! To quote the 2014 motion picture ‘The Lego Movie’, everything is awesome.
I think we’d all be very interested to hear how you initially ended up at Cortopia and what you do?
I was hired as a software engineer at a company called Univrses, tasked with building a magic dueling game demo to show off their inside out positional tracking software. After a couple of months it became apparent that me and Petter (lead tech artist) was way ahead with the demo schedule wise, so a decision was made to turn the demo into a full game. Wands was then released under a newly formed company called NUX Studios, that later became Cortopia Studios and here I am. Oh, and I’m currently tech lead.
What drove you to become a programmer?
I’m still not comfortable calling myself a programmer since I basically only do scripting work, but my amazing coworkers at least allow me to proudly say I’m part of a programming team. Education wise I went to Futuregames in Stockholm which is a vocational school for Game Design and 3d Graphics. There were two basic directions for the design class, scripting or level design. I found the latter to be too damn hard, while scripting was super fun. So kind of coincidental I guess, but I have no regrets about my decision.
So tell us, how does a regular day in the life of a tech lead look like? Please start from the very first thing you do in the morning to the last in the evening!
Check email, scroll through discord, re-prioritize work if something critical has shown up at Jira, make sure everyone in the team has a task, review eventual pull requests on git, daily stand-up and then hopefully some hands on work. As tech lead I also attend a bunch of meetings and help remove impediments for my co-workers. Being situated in Sweden means when my work day ends, most of our partners are just arriving to work, so I usually end my day the same way I start it, by checking my email.
Diving a bit deeper into coding, can you tell us about some of the software you use and why?
We use Unity due to its accessibility and flexibility. Both me and Petter had experience working with it before so it was a natural decision. Ever since Unity added the option to download Visual Studio together with the engine, I’ve been using it as code editor.
What are some of the challenges you face on a day to day basis?
We have a lot of ambition which is great, but it also means we have to twist and turn time sometimes to make our schedule work. Unforeseen events such as disease or other types of absence of team members is always a bummer, since it might lead to a feature being delayed. Support is definitely a huge challenge as well, especially when we receive bug reports that we can’t reproduce. Luckily we get really good support from our Q&A team and our community.
What are you most and also least proud of having put into this world?
If we keep it to game development I think my least proud moment would have to be my first game project at Futuregames. My group made a game where you would take turns shooting endangered animals and watch out for cannibals, not sure how we ended up with that. I am of course most proud of Wands.
Speaking of Wands, how has the whole experience been, bringing a game from ground zero to now being one of the biggest competitive games on VR?
It has been a great experience overall but it hasn’t been problem free. The balance between supporting, porting and developing new content has been rough, especially when I was alone on the programming side. Looking back at my personal journey and what I have achieved though, it has definitely been worth it.
You mention porting Wands to different platforms, what has it been like working with this many partners?
Every partner we’ve worked with so far have been very supportive, which made our work a whole lot easier. The fact that they continue to support us even after the game has launched says a lot about their commitment as well.
Sounds great. What kind of projects or features are you working on right now, anything you can share?
Personally I’m doing the least sexy type of work right now which is maintenance, i.e. fixing bugs, balance work and doing general improvements to systems already in place. Basically filling in the cracks of our foundation to help my co-workers build new awesome features. I’m happy to say we’re finally at a point where we can develop Wands further and not just support it, so prepare yourself for a wondrous spring.
Thanks a lot, Hannes! Do you have any last advice to give for newcomers trying to break into this field?
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Tuesday, December 19th marks a big day for all Wands players! Not only is Wands from today available through Steam for both Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, but a major patch update brings forth big features long awaited by its dedicated community. The team at Cortopia Studios have been hard at work to make sure your Christmas holidays are packed with new content and a major update on balance issues and bugs. Enjoy patch 1.3.4 and all the new features it brings!
Wands is now available on Steam!!
New features
-Survival
Improved features
-Clearer info in the Workshop portal
-Major optimization pass on all levels
-Improved graphics for all HP bars
Game balancing
-Chaos Leap will no longer avoid compromised tiles and it will no longer show the purple trail
-Devil’s Spit now accelerates when airborne to double its original speed
-Reduced Lightning Strike’s charge time from 2 to 1.5 seconds
-Flaming Phoenix
–Reduced mana cost from 45 to 25
–Changed damage range from 16-60 to 10-25
-Dragon’s Breath
–Increased range from 15 to 25 meters
–Changed damage range from 8-22 to 10-20 per second
–Increased flame speed
–Improved hit detection
Bug fixes
-Lightning Strike now damages your opponent
-Fixed visual issue with Dragon’s Breath on Temple of Ophidian
-Fixed issue where Chaos Leap would stop working after trying to cast it without enough mana
-Match will now proceed properly to Lobby if match ends in draw
-The remaining player can now retrieve pickups as intended after two players tried to enter the same tile
-Exploration no longer counts as a match, you won’t take damage and it won’t end after 3.5 minutes
-Fixed issue where game would crash if trying to bring up menu in Lobby on Daydream
-Repaired sound effects for the trains on Ortus Station
-Improved recovery on connection failed in the Workshop
– Cortopia
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