Project Duck News
Happy 5 year anniversary to Project Duck! And happy lunar new year, Valentines Day, and my god why does it all happen in the span of a week.
We hope everyone is having a good year so far and that your health and fortune is good this year. And for those of you lucky enough to be in love, we hope you had a good Valentines and best wishes going forward with your special other.
Anyway, its crazy that we've hit the 5 year mark. Lots of challenges, good times, bad times, hard work, and lots of really cool awesome people. We're grateful for your continued support, and for those of you that aren't currently playing or have moved on (we know how life can be), we love you still and miss you too. Drop by Discord and say hi (or maybe even dip your toes back in...? Catchup is coming with EXP5).
Here's hoping we continue strong and keep delivering bangers and that y'all continue enjoying Project Duck. We're pulling off a lot of crazy things with fundamental fixes and improvements to the game and have lots of cool stuff coming.
We're working very hard on Expansion 5, early game rework, and defense rework! Please look forward to these in the very near future.
For those of you who missed the Anniversary livestream, you can watch the VOD here. We go over the upcoming Expansion 5 as well as other work in progress and future plans.
Anniversary/Lunar New Year Event
Dragon Hunting Event
Fitting for the Year of the Dragon, we've added a new event nest that pits you against random dragon fights!
Enter the lobby via Garden of Solace > Event Nest > Dragon Hunting. After entering the lobby, you'll proceed through a portal and then fight 4 randomly selected dragons:
- Sea Dragon
- Green Dragon
- Desert Dragon
- Black Dragon
- Red Dragon
- Ice Dragon
- Rune Dragon
After each dragon you clear, your party will fully revive and receive rewards. Each dragon that you clear will give more rewards! You also get free-use 2 revives total.
Drops
| Item | Gate 1 | Gate 2 | Gate 3 | Gate 4 (Clear) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gold | 2000 | 2000 | 2000 | 3000 |
| Godly Ordinance | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Dragon Taming Gold (bound) | 30 | 40 | 60 | 100 |
| Dragon Taming Gold (rollable) | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Shattered Glacies | 10 | 15 | 20 | 20 |
| Mirage Mirror | 0 | 10 | 15 | 20 |
| Eternal Timepiece | 0 | 0 | 10 | 20 |
| Zephyr | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 |
This is an 8-man equalized nest, all you need are skill crests, conversion gems (if your class uses them), and wellspring. Autobuffer and autodebuffer are active, so run whatever wacky composition your heart desires!
Event Rewards
Again, as it is the Year of the Dragon, we've put all the dragon-related mounts that aren't already available via Lindsay as event rewards! Exchange your (token item name I forgot) at Mei's Event Shop and get some sick rides.
Solace of Oblivion Duo Event
Since it's also Valentines Day, what a perfect time to spend some quality time with your partner. Clearing floor 8 as a duo will give you both a token to buy the Stone Bench mount!
This mount allows you to sit with a friend (or lover) anywhere you want - no need to use those filthy public benches.
Additionally, players that clear floor 16 as a duo will give you both a token to buy the Lover's Bench mount! For those that are extra special to you, yknow?
Once you've acquired the token(s), you can buy them from Mei's event shop as well, under the Stone Bench tab (see above)
These are limited to the event duration and will be exclusive for a set duration (we may introduce the Stone Bench as a regular acquired item (e.g. cash shop, legacy shop, future event reward) later; the Lover's Bench will likely only return for future Valentines)
NetworkV2
We'll be rolling out the NetworkV2 option to more players this patch. Big thanks to our testers and early access testers for ironing out lots of bugs!
What is NetworkV2?
NetworkV2 is a new networking stack that uses Valve's RUDP implementation instead of Eyedentity's TCP + RUDP implementation. This change unifies the networking used across login, town, and field onto a single networking implementation.
The original networking implementation suffered from several bugs and performance issues that drastically exacerbated minor network variances and latency. Namely:
- Dropped packet recovery was buggy and often didn't work, resulting in players being stuck in "burst packet" mode where the game would try to wait for a retransmite of a packet that never comes, only for the ACK number to overflow and then all the packets that were pending are suddenly processed (causing things like damage numbers happening in bursts at regular intervals)
- Delayed packet processing - in many cases, simply reading and processing packets on the client and server resulted in packet handling being delayed for up to 100ms, on top of the server's 20 tick per second delay (up to 50ms if your packet arrives just after the tick is run)
- Poor packet coalescing logic results in a high number of small packets being exchanged, which some networks (and ISPs) are very bad at handling
- Dual TCP and UDP connection while in field meant that if either one had issues, you'd disconnect. The TCP connection stays mostly idle (while UDP carries most of the combat packets) and sometimes waking up that connection caused disconnects (e.g. disconnecting right when the stage is cleared, since the stage clear data came over TCP). Dual connection is highly discourged these days for several reasons (quick Google search).
- Dual TCP and UDP connections had to synchronize with each other, losing synchronization causes several issues including disconnecting
NetworkV2 addresses these issues and also gives us more tools we can use to fine tune our networking:
- Properly implemented packet recovery and reordering
- Sub 5ms packet processing delay and up to 10ms packet queueing delay, so your only delay is if you miss the server tick (again, up to 50ms delay there, on average 25ms)
- Packet coalescing reduces the number of actual packets sent over the network significantly
- Single protocol connection avoids the previously mentioned issues and synchronization complexity
- More statistics are available to judge the network quality and made available to the player
- Support for multiple "channels" of packets, including prioritization support. We currently run everything over a single channel, but will be splitting things into multiple channels so that we can prioritize important packets from less important ones, as well as reducing out-of-order packets causing delays on realtime packets (e.g. a chat message packet being dropped should not hold up a movement packet)
How much does NetworkV2 help?
Hear it from our testers themselves:
SEA/CN Tester Feedback
Generally these are SEA/CN players playing in NA and EU
Iframing on high ping is much more consistent, skills such as gladiator instants activate sooner than they did before, ally movement is less jerky
In town: Feels so smooth now like I am actually playing at my own server (at least for me who has 200 ping in town) when interacting with NPC, equipping and unequipping things, storing items in storage (withdraw and deposit, wow bank account xd), ppl in town and NPC loads faster (idk if this makes sense or it's just me)
In content: Talking here as a tank perspective, parrying and dodging stuff in NA (haven't tried in EU yet) feel so good I can do it on time like yes I am actually playing at CN/SEA server tho sometimes I just forgot and still dodging in NA way ( 200 ping wherein you need to dodge early or in advance ) dont mind it, just me problem xd
Experience with networkv2 so far has been good. Dodging stomps or mechs feel smoother. Before maybe we have to tumble 0.8-1s earlier, now I can consistently feel its 0.3-0.5s reaction time which I thought it was revolutionary. Ghosting happens less and skill flow/cd redund feels better.
I had to try EU West [yesterday] because it has the highest ping for me. Playing on EUW now feels like playing in NA previously
Dodging in the EU server is a lot better. Some of the attacks that I would've fked before dodging late became more forgiving, f.e golem stomp, I used to tumble earlier but even with 300 ping I managed to tumble it.
Regarding dodging, its perfect. I usually play on Sea/CN, but NA feels good to dodge in now. The timing to parry, iframe, jump is almost identical. The one thing that still seem to persist is the hit lag. For me hit lag is still too common. But at least it doesn’t pause and come in chunks like it did before (which I hated). Now it just lags behind a bit, but it still feels kinda fluid.
town feels very responsive no delay at all when equipping & unequip armor
playing feels very smooth, almost the same as playing in CN but with occasional hiccup
ive been trying it out and yes the game feels really smooth even with high ping. I can jump stomps really well and not doing it in advance like i normally would in red ping. Dodging things is pretty awesome, i can do things i cant do with normal red ping.
What i like about RUDP is the instants [e.g. Line Drive, CM3 Coup] is working perfectly for me
NA Tester Feedback
Generally these are NA players playing on EU/SEA/CN
I had the pleasure of playing on SEA server with 400ms ping and besides the fact that you cant really hide 400ms (dmg numbers, I was playing MK...) it wasn't nearly as bad
As AW in SEA with around 250ms, it's pretty fine for the least, my only slight issue is the ult not casting properly (or in other words, just doesn't want to cast at all sometimes)
I tried RUDN yesterday on both CN and SEA ping with 200 ish ping on CN and 230 ish on SEA, and honestly, it felt like playing in NA for me, i kept on saying it over and over again throughout the runs.
Tried on CN, SEA, and EU. The only noticeable difference for me was numbers being more delayed. I still needed to dodge a little bit earlier than normal although it was easier.
Playing EU with around 100-130ms felt a lot closer to NA than before
feel like it significantly reduced the number of ghosting projectiles on valk
EU Tester Feedback
Generally these are EU players playing on NA/SEA/CN
Tried CN ping with Ava and phys, got 290 - 300 ping. I already know how menacing it would be because I tried it before without rudp and there's a delay for 1 - 2 sec. With rudp its better but still hard to play.
Rudp with NA Central and Sea, it's really gud. unequiping is much faster. I can greed more since I'm comfortable and confident that I can dodge right before the boss move hits me. With sea its just a watered down version of NA for me.
Used the unequip armor etc.. - it's much faster just wow
I can finally dodge the swords after rune dog, god bless xd
the game has gotten a lot faster, like I'm fully in the eu region. Very unusual and smooth
playing on 120 NA Central feels like 30 EU, can iframe mechs properly even with short iframes, player movement is smoother, skill rejection by getting hit window is much tighter now (aka you can now reactively dodge)
Unequipping Armor / Jades /Crest or Talismans is insanely fast tho thats pretty cool.
How do I use NetworkV2?
Accounts that have been onboarded to NetworkV2 will see a setting on their launcher if they're logged in:
Make sure you're logged in on the launcher to see when you've been enrolled!
Giving Feedback
Please let us know your experience using NetworkV2 using the #feedback-discussion channel in Discord
Rendering
- Character model textures are now rendered in original quality (the same quality you see in the cash shop preview)
- Updated character lighting/shading to be more stylized
- Minor rendering-related performance improvements
Misc
- Added energy bar for Ice Witch's bubbles
- Added energy bar for Chaos Mage's bubbles
- Reduced the amount of snapback teleporting when you take a hit on higher ping (applies to both NetworkV1 and V2)
- Myla Laurel has been decorated for the Lunar New Year!
Bugfixes
Classes
- Fixed Abyss Walker's [Abyss Claw] losing all super armor partway through the cast
- Fixed Grand Master's [Windbreaker] sometimes failing to deal damage on its first hit
General
- Fixed Lencea's [Offhand Mastery] granting the wrong CRITDMG amount
- Fixed [Dark Avenger Hair] (all variants) not using the correct hair shader
- Fixed Vandar's [Ardent Dawn] and [Midnight Frost] equipment causing some body parts to go invisible when worn in specific combinations
- Fixed an issue where Black Dragon would just suddenly appear (angrily) after 50% mech in BDNTA