The menu that no longer drops

You die in Anarchy — and along with the items in your pockets, the door to the menu falls out too. On October 15 we moved the menu from the first slot to the M key, made a loading screen that's nice to look at, and tidied up how a player gets into a mode.

The button that dropped

The server menu used to be opened by a compass in the first slot. In Anarchy your items drop when you die — and the compass dropped with them, exactly when a player needs the way back the most. The conclusion came at once: “we need to take the menu out of the slot and make it so the menu just opens with the letter M.”

Now on computers the M key opens and closes the server menu — the same key on the Russian layout too — and there's a hint about it at the bottom of the screen. On phones there are now four buttons on the right edge: the old “MENU” became “PAUSE”, and the new “MENU” opens the server menu; next to them are “CHAT” and “MIC”. The first hotbar slot is free, and you can't drop the menu anymore.

A screen that waits with you

You press “Play” — and see a bare sky, a crosshair, an empty hotbar and a tiny “connecting...” label. That's how it used to look, and we agreed ourselves: “We need to make some kind of proper animation.”

Now, while the world loads, the screen is covered by glass. Four cubes come together into the Mypex logo and hop one after another, and below them it says what's happening right now: “Connecting to the server…”, “Signing in…”, “Loading the world…”. A bar of twenty-two cubes fills up only when there's something to count — honestly, with no made-up percentages. At the bottom, control tips rotate. And if loading drags on for more than twenty seconds, the screen says so — and tells you how to get out.

Choice first

The same day a mode selection window appeared: “let it say we're entering Anarchy, but then this little window has to open… and there's a choice.” On joining, a player saw two cards — “Survival” and “Anarchy” — picked one and got the “Entering…” screen. Islands and Zombie Rush are waiting their turn and don't show up in the window.

Ten days later, on October 25, we went back to the old order: right now a player lands straight in Anarchy on joining.

Ten seconds before a teleport

The countdown before a teleport in Anarchy used to be zero to seven seconds — almost instant for the higher ranks. That was enough to slip out of a fight. The decision: “let the limit be not 3 seconds but at least 10 seconds.” Now the countdown is ten to seventeen seconds: higher ranks are still faster, but nobody gets less than ten. Two days later we'll refine where this countdown is needed at all.

Pets — one at a time

We removed pets from the game completely: “we'll roll them out gradually.” The “Pets” tab in the “Cosmetics” window stayed and says honestly: “Pets are coming soon. New ones will arrive with every update.” Nothing was erased: every player's choice is saved and will return to them along with the pet.

Six enemies with a new look

And one decision that players saw first. For the zombie, the sandshifter, the drowned, the skeleton, the stray and the bogged there were two options for new models. To the question of which one to take, the answer was a single word: “Ours.” These models reached players the very next morning.