InstantAction Blog

Tournaments - Galcon and Aces

In this post I'll be going over a tournament that has ended and a tournament that is starting up.  So if you want to earn yourself some tokens, then continue reading the entire post for the full scoop.

Aces Tourney

The Advanced Team Dogfight Tournament has come to a close and I'm here to announce the winners.  The S1 Squadron (comprised of Briandginther, dobbal, Zaynick, and cherokee) took first place earning each of their members 1000 ActionTokens. 

Coming in second is RFC team 1 (comprised of Badboy7889, Swindell, linas08, and jakewylie197) earning each member 300 ActionTokens. 

Congrats to the winners and thanks to everyone who participated.

GALCON Tourney

Chi-Ro is hosting a Galcon tournament on August 1st starting at 4 PM (Eastern Time).  Prizes will be attached to this tournament in the amounts of 1000 ActionTokens for first place, 500 ActionTokens for second place, and 300 ActionTokens for third place. 

For full rules and to sign yourself up to compete against the Galcon crew, head on over to the forum and sign yourself up to compete in the Community run Galcon Tournament forum thread.

Good luck to everyone who participates.

-Dr Wiley

Enlist in the Great Allied-Axis War

PorcoRosso is kicking off a huge campaign meta-game around Ace of Aces and needs you to pick a side.  This sounds extremely awesome and I could go on, but I'll leave you to what he's posted in the forums.

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Allied verus Axis. Two capitals. London and Berlin. Hundreds of pilots, a multitude of cities, airfields and squadrons. This is the Great War, across the whole of AoA. 

Berlin and London, both are calling all pilots to rally to their flags, for the Great War. Whether you are in a squadron, or not, whether you fly solo or with a band of friends, join up, take sides, the war's afoot! 

Airfields across Allied and Axis territories are being built in readiness. Fly from you own airfield, together with your squadron.

Enlist here on this thread, to either the Axis or the Allied side. If you have a preferred city/airfield state it in your post. If you are part of a squadron state it here too.

Example enlistment:

PorcoRosso - Allied - Dover airfield. Squadron One.
Fritz Neumann - Axis - Dortmund - seeking a squadron.
Maurice Martell - Allied - Calais - Firefly Squadron
etc.

For futher details, contact PorcoRosso, Nemetos or Briandginther.

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So head over to the forums here for more information as it's posted and get yourself signed up.

-Dr Wiley

Ace of Aces Tourney - Winner

The Ace of Aces tournament has come and gone, but we've got a winner from the competition.  briandginther has been awarded 1000 ActionTokens for his participation and championship. 

In addition to this bit of Aces news, there's been a new update to Ace of Aces which includes a new view, and many other improvements.  Check them out here.

Remember, if you see a tournament that's coming up, you should participate.  If you win, you get prizes.  If you lose, you had fun trying to win. 

We've got some more community run tournaments coming up soon, so keep your eyes out on all the games within the InstantAction forums. 

-Dr Wiley

Ace of Aces Updates

Back with more updates that rolled out with the latest IA update.  This time they come from Ace of Aces developers.  Here we go!

Ace of Aces

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• The repair balloon goes away when someone uses it, but then returns after 30 seconds.
• We improved the re-spawn locations. Team Dogfight should work better now.
• We adjusted the score values of the aircraft: Spad 7 and Albatros D.III: 15 points each. Albatros D.Va, Camel, and SE5a: 20 points each. Fokker Triplane, and Spad 13: 23 points each. Fokker D.VII: 25 points.
• We improved lag-handling for some players.
• Fixed a bug in which sometimes you'd fly through the Spy, but the game wasn't recognizing this. Now when you fly through the Spy, you should always successfully pick her up.
• We fixed some scoring bugs.

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So jump into a game and check out the updates.

-Dr Wiley

Ace of Aces Updates

We had a few bug fixes during this release, including fixing the borked up shazbot server, but along with the update we receieved a new Ace of Aces build.  Below you can view some of the goods.

New Match Types

      "Rescue the Spy" -- Each side has a spy at the other base.  Fly over the spy to pick her up, and return her to your base to score one point -- provided the other team's spy isn't in play.  Of course this is just capture-the-flag in the language of our game.

     "Fox and Hounds" -- This is a free-for-all match type in which one person is the fox, and all the other players (the "hounds") are trying to shoot the fox down.  Grab the parachute the spawns from the destroyed fox to become the fox.  Whoever is the fox for the most time wins.  Of course this is just a "rabbit" type of match.  It adds more variety to free-for-all style play (currently there's "Furball" -- a very basic type of free-for-all).

Match and Map Types are now separate choices

It used to be that the map implied the match type.  Now you can play any match on any map.  So if you want to do Dogfight or Fox and Hounds on the "Alpine Alley" map, you can.

New Features

• The host can choose the level of the base defenses
• Players now spawn at a higher altitude (a big request from the players)
• The hangar starts open so a player can fly through it to respawn in a new plane (if selected) with a new ammo load, and fully repaired.
• The center of the map has a repair balloon.
• Players can choose their ammo load (incendiary or standard) for their next respawn, or when flying over the ammo station.
• Voice messages can be issued from the player to his team mates, or to both teams.  Messages including things like "Brilliant!", "Clear my tail", "Tally ho!", "Right-o!", "Protect our base!", etc. 

Lots of Bug Fixes and Improvements

    Many players were requesting higher spawn points to start further off the ground.  We did this.

    Better joystick support (for certain joysticks)

    Some (not all) "510 errors" and "Direct X 9 / Pixel Shader 1.1" fatal bugs

    Gameplay tuning for Base War -- point values were adjusted

**Note** If you logged in just after the site came back up today, you may need to clear your browser cache to see the new menu options for Mission Type and Base Defense Level.

Akamai was cleared a bit after the site came up, so those that log in for the first time after 10 AM PDT should see the new menus immediately.

-Dr Wiley

Ace of Aces Trailer

Some people just jump past the InstantAction login page and they don't get to see all the updates.  This most recent update has brought our Ace of Aces trailer to the front page.  In case you haven't pushed that button to watch the video, I present it to you here.

You can also check out the latest blogs easily by heading to the IA homepage.  There's good stuff in there so pause for a moment and take it all in.

-Dr Wiley

Ace of Aces Tournament + Gift

HighwayStar has proposed the idea of an Ace of Aces tournament and he wants you to sign up.  He's called the developers out on this one too, so expect the challenge to be great.  If this is something that you might be interested head to the forum discussion on the Aces Tournament and give your input.

To get you excited, I found some Aces wallpapers that have been tucked away on my computer. Go ahead and grab them while you prep yourself for the unfriendly skies.

Download wallpaper_01.jpg

Download wallpaper_02.jpg

Download wallpaper_03.jpg

Ace of Aces Fan Vid

InstantAction flight champion, HighwayStar, has posted this Ace of Aces video on YouTube for all to see.  I know post it here for those that may have missed it.

I also hear he's pretty darn good at the game, so I'd love to see a fight between him and some of the Mad Otter developers, in video form.  Yup, I just called you out on that. 

Next video please.

-Dr Wiley

InstantAction Advent Calendar: Ace of Aces

Day 7

Ace of Aces is now open beta!  Free for everyone to play!  So start a game of Aces or jump into an already active game.  Remember, this game is in live development so head to the Ace of Aces forums to get in touch with the developers.

See you in the skies!

-Dr Wiley