Hey all! Miss us? We got a lot to discuss this run:

• Clan Wars
• Developer Updates
• Cybersecurity Awareness Month
• Shop Updates

Let’s get into it.

Events

Candy Corn Collection

Have you seen the latest collectible contest in your missions panel? Collect candy corn and climb to the top of the board for XP and cool Spooky-month prizes, no tricks.

CLAN WARS ARE RETURNING

But even bigger than that, clan war organization had kicked off back in September, is your clan ready to go? See your clan board for the official clan war interest form if you haven’t signed your clan up yet. It’s overdue but we may let you sneak an application in if you are still interested, though time’s ticking!

We also sent a follow-up broadcast on the clan boards of clans who previously expressed interest using that initial form. We’re now in Phase #2 of clan war organization and locking in times, dates, etc. based on clan member availability.

Clan members for interested clans have until October 12th to get their availability data in. We’ll select the best event times based on those results.

It doesn’t matter if your clan is big or small. Don’t delay, join the community in competing in this rare tournament to get XP just for participating, along with exclusive clan prizes.

Development

For an excellent segue, I got two pieces coded in. I built a way for developers to broadcast messages to each and every clan, or specific clans, and with custom visibility (e.g. for clan leads, for members, for public, etc.). Indeed, this was the very update that let us kick off clan war announcements and reach out to clans. I’ll talk about piece #2 in a later section, so stay posted.

With the introduction of new developers, our team’s been hard at work cutting down your highest voted priorities, security issues, and making general improvements to Blocktanks.

I would like to welcome UnknownUser to the scene as an official developer! Unknown has a lot of past experience working on custom JavaScript mods for Blocktanks, integrations with other platforms (such as Discord), and the like. For this update, Unknown smited Recaptcha for VIPs.

Yes you heard that right, VIP accounts who are not banned can enjoy a Captcha-less experience in Blocktanks, no more clicking on images swearing that’s part of the motorcycle or bus and still getting rejected. We’ve also been working on performance and stability updates, stay tuned for those. But that’s one of your highest-voted priority items knocked-out. Unknown is next looking to tackle our incentivized team-switching update.

I would equally like to welcome YT Yolo Animate to the Blocktanks developer scene! Yolo has a strong artist and developer hybrid background, has a passion for making games through various platforms (JS, Godot, etc.), and is a very well-respected BT veteran. Yolo finally added a credits section to https://blocktanks.net/supporters, which has been a point of tension for many folks among the years. It is also a prelude effort for giving artists the due credits they deserve. Yolo is also working on the automated mission rotation update next.

Ngara is also taking names, and has been steadily working on fixes for our various wall bugs. Right now, he’s polishing an update that auto-corrects the wall-sticking glitch (that used to mercilessly absorb players who got a little too close to wall edges).

And of course, I would be remiss not to mention that Kevdude himself has returned, and is now also refining Blocktanks once more. He has been collecting feedback, metrics, and added tooltips for new players to make starting off a bit more intuitive. He’s also looking at multiple payment options for players so that our Europe and Asia-region players aren’t prohibited option-wise from VIP or our shop.

More excitingly, Kevdude and I got the Beta server working once more, which means we may be organizing tests soon for key features, like ranked, power-ups, modes, perks, etc. Keep an eye out for such announcements!

Spooky Season News

Cybersecurity Awareness Month

Firstly, you should know that October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and thereby my job is to let you all know to be aware of scammers this season.

BT used to have quite a few scammer groups. The moderation team has spent a great deal attempting to crackdown on such groups, and we’re getting quite close to a breakthrough. For my development piece #2 (I did say I’d mention it again), I added a patch to stop scammers from stalking victims and moderators.

Our https://blocktanks.net/lobby page used to be used by your friend’s list to let you join your friends in their matches, public or private. Well, because of that, the lobby page also previously let you manually see the private matches on Blocktanks and who was in each match.

One of my key contributions for Cybersecurity Awareness Month specifically was the removal of private matches from this public lobby page, and also removed the details for who was in what match, while still making sure your friend’s list let you join your friends. The goal of this patch was to actively lower stalking and moderation evasion.

So, my second key contribution for Cybersecurity Awareness Month for Blocktanks? Besides other efforts we’re working on, I want to make you all aware of the threat of scammers.

Folks who ask for your password or personal information in-game or over Discord usually are malicious. I would STRONGLY advise against giving any personally identifiable details (e.g. address, email, name, phone #, etc.) or your password. In one of the most obvious cases where a scammer gets your password, they would takeover your account and lock you out, which is likely not desirable for you or the moderation team.

This year, you may have noticed we have added a shop-gifting update. This removes credibility scammers have to try to get your account from you, since you no longer need to provide them access to your account for shop items.

We also added clan roles, so you no longer need to share your account to keep your clans alive.

And now we have removed the ability for scammers to stalk you without friending you first. But you still need to take the correct steps yourself, DO NOT give your password out to folks, even if you have played with them before. There is no good reason another player needs your password, and staff would likewise never ask for your password. Please report any and all suspicious behaviors surrounding password-asking to our moderation team via the in-match Report options.

Shop Updates

Did you see September’s Autumn shop update? There’s some cool new arms you can nab, on top of many of this year’s skins, go grab them while you can!

But lo, in the distance, a thick fog eerily creeps towards the shop page… What horrors lie in wait?

Stay tuned for our next blog post!

Warm regards,

SirDrone
Blocktanks Developer