Hello guys, I come to you today with no good news, I'm afraid...

As I said in some previous announcements, I wished to continu the development of H2o as long as I had the money to do it, and I am sorry to say that this day has came... I have no longer the means to ensure a full time work on the game.

I have been forced to shut down some servers recently but I did what I could to keep the softwares that let me develop the game.

This is most likely my fault because I could have acted earlier, when the game was about to be released, I could have contacted a game publisher to be sure to have all that I needed to have a team to work with me as it should be, but I was sure at this time that I was able to do it myself without having somebody above me, who could have forced me to do things I don't wanted. But today I think that I was wrong and that's a shame...

Well, that's a bad news but I don't want to end the development of H2o like this, this is a bad time but everything is not over yet.
Some friends of mine and I will continu to work on the game when we have the time, and maybe someday I will have the opportunity to either make a big update and make H2o take off again, or maybe I will be able to make a true remake of H2o, maybe with another engine, with more experience and wisdom.

But I cannot hide this fact to you, I really tried my best as long as I could.
Today I don't recommand to anybody to buy the game til this situation has improved.

I'm being clear with you all because you deserve it, my dream almost came true thanks to you and I owe you all for this.

And again, I am deeply sorry...


To be continued.

Here is the list of the notable modifications that come with the version 0.10.10!

• BATTLE MODE !
  
• The ships now stop by themselves if there is nobody on board.
  
• The rotation speed of the turrets (mouse sensitivity) is now centralized for all the turrets and is linked to the mouse sensitivity setting in the option menu.
  
• The mouse sensitivity of the turrets is reduced when the player is aiming. To enhance the precision.
  
• The turrets with a delayed aim have now two aiming sights: the common one (the dot in the middle of the screen) and a new one that indicates where the cannon of the turret is currently aiming. (which tends to follow the middle of the screen of course)
  
• The use of a first aid kit takes time before it heals the player. Moving, switching of tool, taking damage and some other actions interrupt the process.
  
• The player is aligned with the vehicle he leaves it.
  
• The resolution of the shadows has been improved (no performance cost).
  
• The bridge of the Gunboat Erebos has bullet proof windows, to protect the driver from snipers. The driver is still vulnerable if the attack comes from behind.
  
• The game shows a proper error screen if the game is started when Steam isn't running at the same time.
  
• A new command line / server config has been added: "game_mode=[1-2]". It allows the server owner to decide if the server will start in survival mode (1) or in battle mode (2).
  
• A new command line / server config has been added: "score_to_win=[1000-100000]". It allows the server owner to decide of the score that a team must reach to win a game in battle mode. As a reference, a value of 5000 should lead to a game not longer than an hour.

• FIXED: Fixed a huge performance issue related to the particle system in the client. (more details on trello)
  
• FIXED: Reduce or remove the spikes caused by the culling system of the vehicles and ships.
  
• FIXED: An item duplication exploit has been fixed.
  
• FIXED: if the player dies in a vehicle when you can't leave it, the player will still be using the vehicle after his respawn and he will be able to rotate the vehicle, and so, rotate his character around the map (arount the position of the vehicle) but will still not be able to leave the vehicle if it is totally stuck.
  
• FIXED: The building preview wasn't always colliding with the right element, for example: when trying to place a raft on the water, if there was the sea floor one or two meters below the sea level, the preview of the raft was appearing on the sand, and ignored the water plan.
  
• FIXED: The console was having an error when trying to use the history when no command had been written yet.
  
  
• BALANCE: The raft is easier to craft.
  
• BALANCE: The metal spots give more iron and less aluminum.
  
• BALANCE: The speed of the raft has been slightly increased in order to be faster than a player swimming with diving fins.

• Interact with objects from a ship at "high" speed is still hard, the player must aim at the position where the object will be in the next frames according to the ship speed and direction to trigger the interaction. This issue will be fixed in a coming patch.
  
• The loading time of the survival mode is longer than before, this will be fixed ASAP.

The servers have to be updated as well!

Remember you can follow the development and take part of it on the Trello[trello.com] and Debug Trello[trello.com] pages.

Hello everybody.

Concidering the very low amount of players connected during the last few days we decided to wipe all the official servers to have better performances, and we started only one server per continent to regroup the player base into less servers.

We are sorry for those who don't like to start over again, but many players were also asking for it and I personally think that it is a good idea.

We are working hard on the next update that should bring back the Battle Mode in order to have at least one mode that is running well while we fix the issues of the Survival Mode.

It should be ready for the Steam summer sales that are comming shortly, so stay tuned! :)


Thanks to all of you who bought the game and to the old ones who came back, we simply understood that we needed to do better and more exciting content.
Be sure that we will do our best for the upcoming updates.

Remember you can follow the development and take part of it on the Trello[trello.com] and Debug Trello[trello.com] pages.

Here is the list of the notable modifications that come with the version 0.10.03!

• An icon is displayed near the inventory when the player is using the voice chat.

• FIXED: The doors of the players who don't have a clan were accessible to all the "clanless" players.
  
• FIXED: The PVP on/off setting of the servers were only preventing the damage done to the constructions, not the damage a player can deal to another one or to a vehicle.
  
• FIXED: The UI were sometimes disappearing behind the environment.
  
• FIXED: The distance culling system can sometimes fail and a player can appear invisible for another one.
  
• FIXED: The corpses can still appear invisible when players are killed, the body were there and the interaction were possible, but it were not visible. (round 3)
  
• FIXED: The movement of the other members of the clan are actualized periodically when they are far away.
  
• FIXED: The informative text when trying to place a new building element were not showing.
  
• FIXED: The logs in the console were appearing twice after a disconnection re-connection.
  
• FIXED: The distance shown when aiming at another member of the clan were not actualized.
  
  
• BALANCE: The harpoon is easier to craft.
  
• BALANCE: The ratio between wood and metal (on land) is now 5 metal for 1 wood. (was 1/1)
  
• BALANCE: Underwater the ratio between metal and sand is now 1/1. (was 1 sand for 3 metal)
  
• BALANCE: The ratio between the drifting garbage and the drift wood is now 1/1. (was 1 drifting garbage for 3 drift wood)

The servers have to be updated as well!

Remember you can follow the development and take part of it on the Trello[trello.com] and Debug Trello[trello.com] pages.

Here is the list of the notable modifications that come with the version 0.10.02 bis!

• FIXED: The Mac version is now working correctly.

If you're not a MAC user, you can ignore this announcement

We are really sorry for the wait!
And I can tell you that you don't even want to know why it wasn't working, because you could laugh too hard for your own good.

Of course, if it still doesn't work for you, please informe us here. :)

Thanks to Phoenix[D3G] and my brother Vixxi for their help on this matter.

Remember you can follow the development and take part of it on the Trello[trello.com] and Debug Trello[trello.com] pages.

Here is the list of the notable modifications that come with the version 0.10.02!

• EAC has been updated.
  
• A brightness setting has been added to the option menu.

• FIXED: The Linux build works but the player get kicked by EAC after joining any server.
  
• FIXED: Some players can be stuck between life and death, and impossible for them to trully die again or play as a living. If this problem isn't fixed for you please try to open the console with f9 and enter "die" then press enter.
  
• FIXED: Bodies were sometimes invisible when players got killed.
  
• FIXED: Diving mask effect was broken.
  
• FIXED: The ladders can stuck the player if he tries to use it while he's swimming.
  
• FIXED: The sharks were very hard to hit.
  
• FIXED: The "timestamp inconsistant" error has been fixed. This may improve the stability of the whole system.
  
• FIXED: The scavenging system of the vehicles wasn't working.
  
• FIXED: the hit box of the sharks isn't limited to its nose anymore.
  
• FIXED: The cursor should not be confined to the previous resolution when the game switch from windowed to full screen. Like when you first start the game.
  
• FIXED: Opening and closing the chat while inspecting a furnace or a container will not make the camera rotating anymore.
  
• FIXED: Double jump when the player has a high ping.
  
• FIXED: The environment particles (water bubble and dust clouds) were not working.
  
• FIXED: The icons on the map were bad oriented.
  
  
• BALANCE: The harpoon hits twice faster than before so it is a little bit easier to hit something with less delay before that the damage is dealt. But its damage value has been reduced as well: from 40 to 20.
  
• BALANCE: The bodies of the players can stay up to 30 minutes. (was set to 20 minutes)

• The Mac version still shouldn't be working after this patch but we are investigating in order to resolve this problem ASAP. We are really sorry for the wait. :'(
  
• The linux version may have some little issues since it's the first time we test it at large scale. Please report any strange behaviour of the game if you're using this OS.

The servers have to be updated as well!

Remember you can follow the development and take part of it on the Trello[trello.com] and Debug Trello[trello.com] pages.

Here is the list of the notable modifications that come with the version 0.10.01!

Notice that a new server as powerful as the official server "France 2" has been launched with this update for the USA and Canada players (it is located near Montreal).

• The system making the player sliding when he is standing on a slope too inclined is now much smoother and won't make the camera flicker like it did before.
  
• EAC has been updated.
  
• Some looting crates have been added in the cities but a bigger work has to be done conserning that.
  
• The green looting crates will spawn randomly among the normal crates.
  
• It is now a bit easier to interact with the dead bodies.
  
• Interacting with the helicopter is easier.

• FIXED: Falling from a high place for no reason shouldn't happen anymore.
  
• FIXED: The map was bad sized when using other resolutions than 1920x1080 and were eventually hiding the respawn buttons.
  
• FIXED: The dead bodies not appearing should be resolved, we haven't been able to test it in real situation so this bug may still happen sometimes.
  
• FIXED: It wasn't possible to select seeds to plant them in the cultivation devices.
  
• FIXED: The activation sound of the electrical nodes was't played.

• The Linux client seems to still not connect with EAC correctly.

The servers have to be updated as well!

Remember you can follow the development and take part of it on the Trello[trello.com] and Debug Trello[trello.com] pages.

Hello guys!
Finally, after many months of wait, the version 0.1 of H2o is up!!

First of all I have to tell you that a discount will come with this update (40% off) but 9 hours after the release because I messed up between Paris Time and US Pacific Time... So if you want to buy the game, you can wait for the discount.
That said, if you want to support H2o a bit more, you can buy it now.

You are all welcome anyway!

As I said in the previous announcement, many things have changed but not necessary "visible" things. I will not repeat myself too much here but I wanted to inform you about what is better and what might be problematic with this version.

Among the most important changes: the client/server communication code has been totally remade so that the server can have full control over the clients.

The primary objective of this modification is to put an end to the cheaters attacks.
Not all of them will be stopped but the most harmful cheats we have seen before will not be possible to reproduce. (eg. kill somebody by the press of a button, give yourself items, etc.)

As I said, many other things have changed but this is far the most tremendous modification of this update. But even if it can sound like a good thing (and it is), there are also downsides, and that's what I want to point out here.

To give you an idea, the client was controlling most of its own behavior in the previous version. Such as moving, dealing damages, interacting with objects, firing a gun, etc.
I guess you can imagine how this can be dangerous (because it is known that the client should never be trusted), but also, with this system, the lags had way less impact on the player's experience, it was less visible even if it was there.

Now, the Server is behind (almost) every actions of the clients, and gives its approval before letting the client do something. Some behaviors like the movement calculation are simulated on the client side and corrected by the server if the simulation went wrong (if the player went too fast or if he crossed a wall). So, if the communication between the client and the server takes too much time, the game will be less reactive for the player.

You will say that it's the definition of the "lag".
And you would be right, but that's a normal issue if I may say so.

The real problem we have now (at least, it freaks me out) is that the building system of H2o uses way too much of the CPU when the server becomes crowded with players constructions.
What could happen basically would be to have a server that reaches the limits of the CPU: the frame rate of the server would drop and this would prevent the server from sending enough packets through the network to maintain a good ping. And if this happens, no matter the speed of your connection, your client will lag as hell.

Sorry for this technical speech, but all that to explain that if this problem comes up too quickly, we will probably be forced to wipe the servers more often to maintain a playable experience on the official servers, at least up to we build up a solution to the CPU over-consuming building system.

We already have possible fixes for that, but we need a bit of time to implement it the best way.

Well, enough of downsides!
I'm pretty convinced that once this is solved the game will finally be Stable. And we cannot get around this, so.. better focus on this last big issue ASAP and jump onto the interesting stuff after that.


Here is the list of the notable modifications that come with the version 0.10.00!

• The client/server communication has been totally remade. Following the authoritative server logic.
  
• The game is compatible with Linux, server and client (the server only support x64 architectures).
  
• The user interface has been fully remade.
  
• Small visual improvement.
  
• The UI will now scale accordingly to the screen resolution (even to 4K).
  
• The jetski and the hovercraft have now Headlights. With 3 modes Auto/On/Off.
  
• The sea plane is equipped with machine guns.
  
• Opening the map doesn't lock the controls anymore, when the player moves with the map opened, the map will fade out to become barely visible, the opacity comes back when the player stops moving.
  
• The crafting menu shows how many items you are crafting and you can directly see if you can craft something without mouseover the item.
  
• A "P" icon shows if your vehicle is currently parked in a shipyard or not.
  
• Some improvements regarding the vegetation around the map, but still a work in progress. See the known issues for more details.
  
• It is now possible to zoom in with the turrets by holding the aiming button.
  
• Automatic reload for turrets.
  
• The console has a history: you can press up or down to retrieve your last commands.
  
• A message has been added when a player tries to destroy his territory center, informing the player that destroying it will destroy his whole base.
  
• The in game voice chat has been fully remade and improved.
  
• The third person camera of the vehicles collide with the environment and the players constructions. To prevent the raiders from inspecting a base by looking through the walls before attacking.
  
• A black reflection cube has been added to the shipyards in order to hide the reflection of the vehicles and ships parked inside it. (the content of shipyards is still visible from below though).
  
• The sight of the sniper rifle oscillates slightly so it is more difficult to use. Possibility to hold his breath by holding the sprint button, consuming his stamina quickly.
  
• Small villages in ruin have been added around the map in shallow areas, these villages contain much more looting crates than anywhere else.
  
• The equipment of a dead player (jacket, helmet, etc) will now appear in his loot so the other players can take it.
  
• An announce command has been added, used like the chat command by an admin. It will display the message just above the middle of the screen (in big, red, flashy characters) in addition to the chat message.
  
• The fishing process is synchronized with the other players.
  
• Automatic server message. This can be defined in the announcement.cfg file, in the server folder.
  
• The production offices (shipyards and turret supports) now take account of the items that will be consumed in the player's current crafting list in the calculation of the amount of items that are required to start a production.
  
• It is now possible to rotate the camera around an aircraft by holding the aiming button in third-person view.
  
• Footstep sounds have been added when walking on shallow water.
  
• The dry shot sound when trying to fire an empty weapon is now synchronized with the other players. (And it is now played only once, not repeating if the player holds the fire button)
  
• Unity engine has been updated from version 5.4.3 to 5.6.
  
• The steam SDK used in the game has been updated from v1.34 to v1.39.
  
• Many other little things that are too numerous to be listed here.

• FIXED: Starting the production of a vehicle or a turret only consumed 6 of the 9 different items required to craft it.
  
• FIXED: Entering a vehicle when the player stands aboard a ship doesn't make the vehicle uncontrollable anymore.
  
• FIXED: The vehicles that have just been created appear sometimes frozen and cannot be moved. (still some cases of this bug, but it should happen less than before)
  
• FIXED: The vehicles were sometimes starting with a little movement forth.
  
• FIXED: When a player entered or left a vehicle. Some kind of annoying "teleportation" was happening during less than a second. Now the vehicle smoothly keeps its velocity when the driver jump off the craft, with no teleportation effect.
  
• FIXED: When a player was trying to start the production of a vehicle or a turret, if the production was aborted by the system because he had finally not enough resources or because of an obstacle in the production yard, the resources of the player were consumed for nothing. (even if it wasn't enough to start the production).
  
• FIXED: Sometimes when a player leaves a turret or jetski an error occurs, and the body of the player remains in the turret or the vehicle, for the other clients, but not for the player himself. this means that he can be somewhere else. (cf. when you see a player swimming above a jetski)
  
• FIXED: Repairing a oil barrel now stops the flames if it was on fire.
  
• FIXED: It was possible to swap the fuel contained in a oil barrel with another item, so that the item was placed in the barrel. Anyway the wrong object in the oil barrel was deleted once the barrel was closed.
  
• BALANCE: The percentage of apparition of the resources has been increased by 100% (twice more resources spots will repop every 40 minutes).
  
• BALANCE: The opacity of the water (outside and under water) has been slightly reduced.
  
• BALANCE: The movement speed has been reduced when walking in shallow water.
  
• BALANCE: The jumping range has been modified to exceed less the movement speed of the player when he triggered the jump.

(To be fixed in upcoming patches)

• The Building system consumes way too much CPU when the server get full of player constructions. (1st priority)
  
• The helping text when placing structures (telling if you are inside of your territory or too close to another one) has gone missing.
  
• The underwater vision improvement granted by the diving mask is currently broken.
  
• The map is bad sized in lower resolution that the screen maximum resolution.
  
• Some of the new trees don't have any colliders.
  
• The icons on the map are badly oriented, but at least the upper side of the map is the north x).
  
• The position of the other clan members and territories is still half functional.
  
• The selected server in the list (Play menu) isn't highlighted.
  
• The ping displayed in the server list isn't accurate (a new master server system will come shortly).

A new Trello page has been created to sort bugs: Trello[trello.com] You can leave comments there if you wish to help.

Please keep in mind that we never tested this version of the game during a long time with many players connected, some issues might show up and we will do all we can to fixe every blocking error as fast as we can.

We will update the game at the end of each month form now, without considering hotfixes.


Thanks again to my well known moderation team and to Metos and Crysis who actively and happily helped me to develop H2o during the past two months. This update wouldn't be what it is now without them.

And thank YOU, who support H2o since the beginning without loosing faith.

Thank you guys! With all my heart...


I still feel deep inside like it's only the begining and I trully wish this will mark the starting point of a bright future for H2o and its development team.

The servers have to be updated as well!
The official servers will wipe with this update.

Remember you can follow the development and take part of it on Trello[trello.com]

Hi guys!

It has been a while since my last post here, and I wanted to reassure you. I have seen lots of people throwing "dead game" or stuff like that on the forum, and I wanted to ensure you that it's not the case at all.

So, I'm here to tell you what I think, what I'm doing, and what I expect from the next few months.

At the moment of course, the servers are empty and I am not very talkative by nature about what I'm doing (even if you can follow a bit on Trello) but this situation doesn't scare me. I prefer the game to be at low speed while it is not really functionnal, than spending time trying to bring people in knowing that they will probably be disappointed by the current issues and the lack of updates.

I have been working hard on H2o during the past six months even if I didn't release any update during this time, and, to be honest, even if I had some motivation failings sometimes, for personal matters. These are sorted now but I cannot hide it to you either, it happens I guess, but that's not the point of what I want to say here.
Actually, I figured out that, as I'm working alone, making small updates every month wasn't the good way for me to work efficiently on the game. I did that way during the first months that followed the release of the early access and it only allowed me to fix some little bugs and to add only a few gameplay oriented features.

To be more precise, I have spent a long time re-writing a huge part of the code.
Some of you had suggested it, the network communication I used was really messy and, let's say it, pretty bad. The hackers had open doors to go through and some network calls were even lost, constant spikes, lags...
I chose to spend the time it would take to switch for an autoritative server pattern, and I am at this moment very close to have a version ready for testing.

Well, that's something.
But with this update, I want to create something more, something worth the time it took, and I perfectly understand that it is very annoying to wait this long with almost no news or no thrilling pictures to turn the frustration into exaltation. But my position on this is that, it doesn't really matter how long it takes to have something good.
I think that if an update comes (even lately) and brings the whole game to the next level, everybody will be happy to enjoy a new experience, stabler and more fun.

Working on the code is pretty boring, even for me, because it doesn't make the game look very different, so far. But it was a necessary step if I wanted to really handle the current issues of the game.
Once this is completed and tested, I think I will spend some more time upgrading the gameplay itself and with this I can hope to show you real and exciting changes in the game.
As usual you can take a look at the trello page to know precisely what I can be talking about.

It is clear to me that H2o is, at this moment, very under-exploited.
So many amazing things could be done, and I want to bring it much more further than it is. It only takes time. Actually, I think you will agree with me if I say that... it takes too much time. And you're totally right to think so.

My current plan concerning the future of H2o is to be able to hire a team to work with me. I'm very confident that if we were something like 5 guys working actively on it (code, 3D modeling, level design and so on), this game could become a real blast, but at the moment I cannot afford it.
My goal is to reach this stage with the next few updates, and to achieve that, I needed to change my strategy, as I just told you, taking the time to make real changes.

Finally, I wanted to say that I am sorry for those who lost faith in the game, and therefore me. But the main point of this message is to say that.. I did not give up.
And I hope I will be able to make you enjoy H2o again in the near future.

Also, a big thank you to all the people that sent me encouraging messages during the past months, you were so many telling me to keep going, that you were waiting for me, that you loved the game and hoped to see it shining bright again, that I could take my time and make something good... And it really helped me to keep faith myself, and it kicked my ass up to work hard again. Everybody pushed me forward, motivated me, and I think it's for a good reason.
A last thank you to my four admins who never failed me, even during my lost times.

Love you guys.

I will be back for another news with more precise and exciting stuff to show you as soon as it is technically possible. During this time, just stay patient, I'm doing my best on this. The game has been good for many people once, there is no reason I could not do it again.
It's only a matter of time.

Take care guys, don't give up just like I do, and have a great day! :)


Remember you can follow the development and take part of it on Trello[trello.com]