How Hell Week Works

[Phyrefli]

Hell Week is very different to anything we've released before, both in terms of what it is and how we've developed it.

What you're going to be playing is not a finished article, it's something which is still actively in development. We need you to try it, and tell us what works and what doesn't. There will be bugs, there will be difficulties, but we also hope there'll be far more fun and waaaay more excitement!

Below is a short description of Hell Week. This only scratches the surface of what we've built, and are continuing to build. We hope you enjoy it :)

There are 4 Hell Weeks. Every 4 hours each Hell Week starts afresh. The times are shown below, and they're UTC times:

EU - 02:00, 06:00, 10:00, 14:00, 18:00, 22:00
US East - 00:00, 04:00, 08:00, 12:00, 16:00, 20:00
US West - 03:00, 07:00, 11:00, 15:00, 19:00, 23:00
Australia - 02:00, 06:00, 10:00, 14:00, 18:00, 22:00

We will probably tweak those times.

If we find Hell Week is popular, we'll bring up more clusters :)

- When a game starts, you'll see the JOIN button go blue in the server browser (note, if you try to join just after it has opened and get an error saying it's closed, try again a few times, it's a known bug)

- If more than 32 people join within the first 2 minutes, the game will start at 2 minutes.

- If less than 32 join, there is a further wait time of 5 minutes for 32 players to connect. During this time you'll still be in the spawn elevator.

- When 32 have joined, the elevators will rise. You'll get some AI SARA messages, which I recommend you listen to :P After that, you're on your own!

- After the first 30 minutes the 4 players with the lowest number of combat points will be eliminated.

- Every 5 mins after that, another 4 will be eliminated until only 4 are left.

- If you are one of the last 4, then congratulations, you won a Hell Week! Take a screenie just for proof. Note: permanent recording of combat points isn't in yet, we're going to get that done ASAP.


Some little notes that might be useful:

There are 9 zones in total. Each zone is connected to 4 others.
There are 3 types of loot crates. Some have combat points, some ammo and some weapons. The weapons ones are hard to find and very rare.
If you kill another player, they will drop their back pack. If you collect it you'll get their combat points.
A Hell Week can hold a max of 64 players. When you spawn in when you join, it spawns in a max of 8 players per zone. The central zone, Hell, does not spawn anyone at the beginning.
The maximum number of people in a zone is 16, after that no more are allowed in via the tunnels.
Your weapons have limited ammo, so be careful ;)
Your health and exhaustion are now shown on the HUD

Changelog is here: http://media.interstellarmarines.com/media/interstellarmarines_changelog.html

[Phyrefli]

Forgot to mention, if you stream please let us know!

And also please report bugs....there will be some, so lets get them reported and fixed :)

[Zorro]

So Hellweek is going live soon-ish?

[Phyrefli]

Yup. Just waiting for the servers to finish installation, then a quick test, then live.

[The Preacher]

How long after the game starts can you still join? If you miss the start by a few seconds do you have to wait for 4 hours to play?

Also, since the game can take a maximum of 100 mins (if it starts with 64 players) tdoes this means no one can play for the other 140 mins?

If I haven't got my maths wrong I don't understand why you don't resart the game every 2 hours? (100 mins plus 20 minute toilet/food break.)

[fire☆star]

Dude this sounds awesome, I haven't been playing recently cause I have been waiting for hell week but with the news that it is coming out this weekend I am gonna play now, once i've finished going through the rest of the community stuff that is.

[Joestuk]

Damn gonna be out for most of the day :/

[Conjured]

Originally posted by ZPS.Phyrefli:

Yup. Just waiting for the servers to finish installation, then a quick test, then live.

Almost there Phyrefli?? We are all so anxious to see it! You guys need to sleep after this

[cx3907]

Originally posted by OSM | Joestuk:

Damn gonna be out for most of the day :/

Shut up.
You haven't been through what I had and having right now.

[Conjured]

Originally posted by cx3907:

Originally posted by OSM | Joestuk:

Damn gonna be out for most of the day :/

/ ghosting in

Shut up.

/ ghosting out

NO CX NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, SAY HI DAMN IT

[Keavon]

Edit: Oh, I see, there are different clusters in different regions that run at separate times. You may want to try wording that a little clearer. Ignore what I said below, then. Although you may want to change the time zone to be more local, like making US West show the time in Pacific, US East show it in Eastern time, etc.

Original message: The way you wrote the times are very confusing. US East and US West make sense, but it's unclear which time zone you're referring to with EU and Australia because those regions have multiple time zones. You also said "The times are shown below, and they're UTC times" which isn't correct. I think you mean that the EU times are UTC, so I would change Europe to Europe (UTC) or just UTC and then specify a city in Australia.

[Guy_From_Hell]

How long will the Hell Week be active?
Is UTC=GMT+0?
How many times are you able to play Hell Week?

[Keavon]

Originally posted by Guy_From_Hell:

How long will the Hell Week be active?

Until no more than four players remain in the game because they have been eliminated or killed.

Originally posted by Guy_From_Hell:

How many times are you able to play Hell Week?

You can try to join a game each time one goes live.

[Guy_From_Hell]

Originally posted by Keavon:

Originally posted by Guy_From_Hell:

How long will the Hell Week be active?

Until no more than four players remain in the game because they have been eliminated or killed.

Originally posted by Guy_From_Hell:

How many times are you able to play Hell Week?

You can try to join a game each time one goes live.

I meant, how long will the game mode be active?

[Phyrefli]

How do you mean?

[Conjured]

Originally posted by Guy_From_Hell:

Originally posted by Keavon:

Until no more than four players remain in the game because they have been eliminated or killed.

You can try to join a game each time one goes live.

I meant, how long the game mode will be active?

Eternity