The Verdict on the SMG.

   In my opinion Ben pulled off the Sub Machine Gun or SMG pretty well. When the idea of more weapons was tossed around many feared it would unbalance the gameplay, people liked how trenches and cover were often built instead of the generic run and gun gameplay we often see in games today. Now I find myself using the SMG quite often, it could only be becuase it still has that new gun smell, or just becuase of how different the game plays for me when I use it. Instead of focusing my attack on players far off in the distance entrenched, I switch my focus to trying to destroy the enemies cover and at time going over the top and getting some kills. With the SMG you are able to quickly decimate enemy structures from a good distance leaving the opposing team bare and defenseless. I also...

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Ace of Spades Beta 0.53 on the horizon

   According to Ben a new update will be available sometime today even containing a new weapon! Ace of Spades Beta 0.53-new weapon – sub-machine gun-new votekick system-frame limiter bumped to 60fps-much higher raycasting precision (no more radar rings)-ironsight recoil implemented-server-side physics and hit verification-greater memory allocation for larger maps-reduced CPU usage with the Sleep command    Its gonna be sweet...

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Are Custom Maps Any Good?

   This is the question I asked my self when I started Ace of Spades the other day, so I figured I might as well find out. I joined and tried out a few servers running custom maps. First off something I already disliked is how the server browser does not tell you if maps are running a custom map or not. So I had to just try joining servers until one had a custom map. Once I was in, it was great! The Urban Map    The first custom map I tried was the Urban Map. This map takes place in a large city like area. It gets it's point across with a quite a few detail less buildings that are mostly different size rectangular prisms with holes blown into corners and sides of walls. In between the building was just a relatively flat...

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This Poll in Review (What you would like to see)

   I created this poll with the original intentions of showing Ben what his community would like to see added to the game. In the end I was surprised by the outcome of the votes. I expected most to be relatively even, nothing too far ahead. Boy was I wrong. Weapons dwarfed all others coming in at first place with 236 votes. Thats more than 3 times the amount of votes for maps. Now, In my own opinion I must say.... I am worried about the implementation of new guns. The smallest mistake can unbalance the entire gmae and ruin the experience.Maps 76 (14%)Gamemodes 73 (13%)Blocks 25 (4%)Weapons 236 (44%)Classes 70 (13%)Mod Support 42 (7%)Nothing 7 (1%)     What kind of weapon would you want to see added first...

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I'm back! Updates 0.45, 0.46, and 0.47

  While I was busy I missed out on some awesome Ace of Spades info like the minimap and the higher resolution player weapons. This may mean the current weapon mods on the blog may no longer work, however most likely they are still compatible.  Nope, the update broke old model compatibility, looks like all the of the mods section needs to be redone! Along with 0.45 comes rifle block damage again. It was interesting playing with it off though, it seemed like bunkers and forts were more useful when someone couldn't just shoot a hole in it with ease. Although 0.45 was riddled with fixes and a little content 0.46 and 0.47 bring little to the table besides a few albeit important bug fixes. Ace of Spades Beta 0.47-floating block fix-unexposed map edge fix Ace of Spades Beta 0.46-fixed...

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Faster than the speed of light! Beta 0.42

   This is great! Sure, having to to update your game multiple times for bug fixes might seem like a bad thing but it isn't! This shows Ben is able to quickly respond to bugs and tackle them efficiently! Within an hour the game went from 0.36 to 0.4 to 0.41 and now 0.42. Ace of Spades Beta 0.42-fixed map radar bug-fixed image tearing on fast rotation (may fix potential crash)So, not too many fixes and no new features but still a worthy update. In other news, people have already started working on maps! Here is a WIP image showing the map grid and a small custom map! By Tark Version 0.42 is available from the official website and our F.A.Q...

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Quick update Beta 0.41

After Ben made a mistake of not including a folder with the install called vxl he has quickly released another update. Ace of Spades Beta 0.41 -vxl folder added to installer -version fix test Also wanted to mention a few more new things. Maps should now have a useful grid on them for cooridnstio with team mates. Also map editing is supposed to be relativley complex. Not as simple as Weapon and player editing anyway. Do you think you are going to try and create maps for AoS? I know I wi...

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Beta 0.4 Custom Maps!

   Within the last few minutes Ben has released a major update with multiple bug fixes and support for custom maps! Yes you read that right! The newest version will come with a "VOXED map editor". So far I don't know much about it but will report back when I do. So far we know maps are constrained to 512 x 512x 64 which is the current map dimensions.  Map Format Requirements     Also great news is rifle block destruction "should" be added back in in this version as with new fixes like live grenades dropped on death. As in if you have pulled the pin on a grenade but not thrown it and you die, a grenade will be dropped. Along with that some fixes in map loading and lag kills were implemented! Ace of Spades Beta 0.4 -added...

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Exclusive Interview with Ace of Spades Creator, Ben Aksoy.

We all know and love Ace of Spades but we are yet to hear about the future and even more so about Ben himself. Recently I contact Ben with a few question I knew and hoped the community were dieing to hear. So, without further ado. 1. What inspired you to make Ace of Spades? Is it designed after a specific war? I just wanted to make a game that I would want to play. I quit gaming a long time ago because I was sick of static environments and rinse and repeat gameplay. I wanted a game that rewarded creativity over reflexes so I developed Ace of Spades. It's not modelled after a specific war although there are some Vietnam influences (the namesake of the game). I'm keeping things a little abstract because it gives me more freedom when adding features, and gives players more freedom with their...

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This Poll in Review (Where did you hear about AoS)

So for this weekly poll I asked everyone, "Where did it hear about Ace of Spades?" I added the websites I heard most people were coming from and figured the poll would easily shift to them, but I was wrong! Although about a quarter of voter said they first heard about the game on 4chan, where Ben first pushed for the games fame. A good deal of people were also from the Facepunch forum which has an active megathread on the game. Only a few votes trickled through for Penny Arcade, Something Awful, and Facebook. With five percent stating they heard about it online. Close to 50 percent however heard about it from a different site! Facepunch 87 4Chan 105 Penny Arcade 3 Something Awful 8 Facebook 3 Not Online 23 Other Website 183 What is Ace of Spades? 8 So everyone that voted for another site,...

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Beta Testing Back Online! Beta 0.36

  Recently on Wednesday Ben made the choice to disable beta testing and take down the server list form the website. He stated he would use this time to reconfigure the netcode. Hey guys, beta testing is on hold while the netcode undergoes a rewrite. I hope to make a stronger release in the future, hopefully with nice new features, so I hope you guys stick around.   Now after two days of the servers offline they return stronger than ever with the brand new Beta 0.36. Which again sounds like it fixes quite a few hacking problems and can even perma-ban for certain exploits. Nice. One thing I am on the fence for is the disabled rifle block damage. This means no more sniping out the supports of bridges, this is most likely only temporarily. Ace of Spades Beta 0.36-fixed infinite...

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Official Site Up and More!

  As of about four hours ago Ben updated the website. It is now running on Wordpress and is much prettier than the simple white background and text due to the overloaded traffic before.The site could still use some work but it is a big improvement. It features an About page, a Gallery, News, the Server Browser (Play), Links, and an Official Forum. The news page functions as a blog for Ben and it talks about recent updates, the game and some of his plans. New and exciting content will still be published here despite his blog. He states he would like to implement support for custom maps, which might I add would be amazing! He also says he wants to add a reputation system to defame greifers and hackers to the point they can no longer enter some servers. All this sounds great and the future...

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Hackers Beware of Beta 0.35

  So, it almost seems like Ben read my last post and set out to fix it all! About five hours ago Beta 0.35 has been released on his website (a mirror is uploaded at the bottom of the FAQ here) Thankfully this update includes some more anti-cheat features but I am yet to test how effective they are. Another nice feature is an admin kick/temporary ban feature allowing admins to kick cheaters and hackers without requiring a server wide vote. Ace of Spades Beta 0.35-votekicks and admin kicks include a temporary ban-added more fun anti-cheat stuff-reduced some unnecessary memory allocation-jump doesn't repeat-reuse temorary memory locations   Hopefully you will notice a decrease in hackers  on your favorite servers and an overall much more enjoyable experien...

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Today's forecast is heavy hackers and a 50% chance of destroyed server.

Unfortunately as the game continues to gain popularity more and more people hear about how little anti-cheat protection there is. Besides from Ben making it harder to modify ironsights and adding kicking features little has truly been done to stop these pesky hackers from infesting your server. Here are some tips to help you spot cheaters. 1. Just look at the score board, does some Deuce have many more points then everyone else? 2. Check the map, are any huge chunks/all the mountains missing? sure it's possible for a team to dig out a mountain but only hacks can help you dig out the entire map. 3. Listen while you play, do you hear explosions in rapid succession? Do you hear someone shooting awfully fast? It's most likely a hacker. You should do all this when you enter a server to ensure...

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This Poll in Review (colors)

  So, as the weekly poll wrapped up yesterday it is time to take a step back and see what it tells us about the player's and the game. Well as we all should know there has been a running war between the two colors, in game and out. By this I mean people have obtained some kind of psychological disorder making them value one team/color more than the other. At times from reading various websites and playing the game it seems like one color may have many more "fans" than the other, I am guilty to thinking so too. Yet from the poll it reveals maybe not, maybe just maybe they both have an equal number of fans, and well some people just don't care. Results:  Blue 284Green 297Screw this, I'm red. 183 &nb...

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It's a bird! It's a plane! It's an update!

     These updates are coming wonderfully fast as Ben Aksoy has been able to tackle problems almost immediately after they arise in new betas. Recently Beta 0.32 and Beta 0.33 were released, still optional which is unfortunately still splitting the player base. These aren't quite as packed with new features and fixes like Beta 0.3 was but they will do. Ace of Spades Beta 0.32-added download progress bar-testing more dynamic bandwidth management-slight optimization to map icon drawing Ace of Spades Beta 0.33-fixed broken names    Surprisingly Beta 0.33 was released within half an hour after .32 launched! So, how are you guys fairing with the new updat...

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Beta 0.3 Available for Testing: UPDATE: Beta 0.31

  Overnight Ben released a optional Beta for testing version 0.3 which appears to have many new features which appear to from the change log stabilize the servers quite a bit. Ace of Spades Beta 0.3-using safer map memory allocation (should fix some server crashes)-admins can now kick players (more controls coming)-improved resolution and sight picture of ironsights-using better map compression-master server attempts to filter out misconfigured servers-using ironsights improves accuracy-only jumping will drop ironsights-updated game fonts-fixed bug in intel height determination-positioned intel correctly on player-modified HTTP IP request-allchat messages shown in lighter color-error message when trying to launch client without command args  I'm especially excited for  the...

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Editing the Game's KV6 Files

Hello! I am the blog's new coauthor, Mastermaul. I will pretty much be doing the same things as Tom. I have prepared a tutorial on editing the game's KV6 files so that you may create your own weapons and skins! Enjoy. Editing the game's base .kv6 (models and textures for things like the rifle and body parts) files is quite easy. One just needs to download the Slab6 program found below, navigate to the Ace_of_spades/kv6 folder, and open the file of your choice. For reference, the rifle is semi.kv6. The files marked "playertorsoc" and "playerlegc" correspond to the crouched versions of those files, which will have to be separately painted if you wish to make a torso or leg edit, or else a crouched player will display the default skin. "Tracer" is the 'bullet' that the rifle fires, which allows...

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Study on Color to Gameplay Style Correlation

   So, we can all agree that the so called "color war" adds a lot of intensity to the game, but is any of the propaganda true? Today I will try to determine fact from fiction and truth from lies. Currently I would say there is the stereo type that blue focuses more on tunnels and less on building while green will build monstrous forts. Now, this seems actually plausible based on the layouts of the maps, even though the maps are procedurally generated they tend to still be lopsided. If you use the river that is located in every map as the separator of each colors land blue dwarfs green almost every time. So based on the fact blue must cross long stretches of land it would make sense that they would create tunnels/trenches to get to...

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Update Beta 0.26... will hopefully last longer than 0.25.

   Within the last few minutes Beta 0.26 has been released. This version is reiterating Beta 0.25 after the rollback. it features anti-cheat such as vote kick. The servers will now also be collecting data for a future master ban list. This alone is great news, hopefully say goodbye to most hackers. Another great update is that each server will now be tested before entering the server list. This should cut down on the time it takes to find a good server. Also it is supposed to make connection error handling better, Ben also removed the info on gray worlds from the website so maybe this implies they have been fixed, highly unlikely however. Hopefully those of you out there who have not been able to connect will be able to now! you can finally enjoy the beauty of, Ace of Spad...

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Mods Section

   As you may have noticed towards the top of the screen is a bar that says "Mods". Mousing over this will reveal a drop down menu for different categories of mod downloads. Currently the site is hosting eight weapon skins, with many more coming, and two player skins. In time the other categories will receive their respected mods. Feel free to email me at MadMonkey199@gmail.com if you have a mod you would like to see added or if you have any questions,comments,or concerns regarding the mods! Enj...

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UPDATE.... then reversion.

   So, Ben updated to Beta 0.25 about 3 hours ago which added:  Ace of Spades Beta 0.25-implemented votekicking (type /votekick id# in chat)-added anticheat-implemented data collection for future master ban list-tried to minimize view sway-added some connection tests before adding a server to list-added latency times to serverlist-server updates with master more frequently Sounds great right! Then in less than half an hour he reverted back to Beta 0.22, the older version.  As he stated on the website this is "To look into game server issues". From my research it appears many people had the "grey world" and more connection issues in Beta 0.25 then they had in Beta 0.22. Hopefully he gets this sorted out soon and we will see a Beta 0.26 release. &nb...

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Hack, hack, you're hard to beat.

What seems to currently be Ace of Spades biggest problem, besides connectivity, are the hackers. Throughout my tim in game I have only had a few experiences with hackers. For me it was the innocent grenade hacker that wanted to mind his own business and blow a whole in a mountain. I was lucky. Others say they have had to deal with players with infinite health and ammo, increased movement speed, and even infinite blocks. Unfortunately all the data is client-side. This means clients are able to use programs to manipulate values giving them the special "abilities". However the creator didn't leave us with no anti cheat at all. To try and stop cheating Ben (creator) has the game check to make sure the iron sight image and player models had not been edited. Also, I am yet to witness this but it...

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Creator's Thoughts on the Future

   Ben Aksoy the creator of Ace of Spades has had a hard time keeping up with the demands of fans and the constant barrage of questions he is facing. Yet luckily we managed to get a few of ours answered!  Me- " Just curious it doesn't seem like currently this game generates any revenue. What are your plans?" Ben - "None right now, maybe a donation account or ads in the site in the future but I' like to keep the game free."  Fan- "I'm not sure if you're well educated in warfare, but the main thing I can see happening that scares me is that this game's combat will become much too mobile in nature. This, of course, would be due to weapons that are naturally mobile in nature. For example, if you added things like submachine guns and sniper rifles, this game might become...

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They're just colors?

   That is exactly what they want you to think. Apparently after playing Ace of Spades people are mind washed into believing players that one color is better than other. Or they think that one team plays a completely different style than the other. Now, if you don't already know there are two separate teams or colors to play as, Green or Blue. Each team is identical except for the teams spawn point and player's "armor" color. Now some might think "Green blends into the surrounding landscape better!" well that's what I thought too. So, I did some digging and found that this point isn't commonly discussed instead it seems from my research that the no logical points are actually discussed at all. I'm calling conspiracy. The government is obviously testing brain control. There is no...

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What is Ace of Spades?

   You may be asking this same question now, so stay a while and listen. Ace of Spades is a Voxel powered Team-based Capture the Flag/Intel shooter with fully destructible/constructible procedurally generated terrain.That should sound fucking awesome enough to get you to play already. However, the voxel-ness of it does make the graphics a bit trippy (especially when looking at anything up close) so you might wanna take that into account if you get motion sick easily. As in its bad to the point where if you look down, you will have to take a break... to puke. Running in the same vein as Infiniminer and Minecraft the world/map is composed of cubes which can be destroyed and placed by every player.At the start of each match you are given three weapons. A shovel, prefect for digging...

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