If you weren’t able to attend Halo Outpost Discovery it was a really memorable experience for Halo fans. Tech blog, Engadget, described it as “a 300,000 square foot, traveling amusement park packed with experiences from Xbox’s pivotal sci-fi series [Halo]”. One of the featured attractions at this event was – The Combat Deck – a big team battle, red vs blue laser tag experience with the look and feel of the Halo universe. Who better than Battle Company to take an iconic brand like Halo and bring it to life with our powerful hardware and EDGE Game Engine. No other provider in the industry is able to seamlessly blend video games and live action gaming like Battle Company. As the event traveled nationwide the Combat Deck quickly became a fan favorite, receiving raving reviews. Our staff’s hands-on participation in this high throughput attraction will benefit all of our customers as it inspired some of the new features in EDGE 4.3.

EDGE Terminal: Full control on the go!

For this release, EDGE Terminal reaches a major milestone in its development cycle. In past versions, Terminal allowed players to login while an active game was in session. However, you weren’t able to assign guns to those players until the active session was over…we changed that. With the new Terminal, you have the ability to assign available guns to on-deck players whether signed in as guests or with CallSigns. Using this feature ensures your operation will be ahead of schedule by having your next group logged in, briefed, and geared up with their tagger, all before the active game ends. As one group exits your arena, the next group is ready to go. This feature can improve your bottom line by decreasing down time and increasing throughput, especially during your busiest hours.

Other updates to EDGE Terminal include an improvement to its leaderboard function which gives you the ability to scroll player scores. For player login, you can now use both the front or rear camera of your tablet to scan QR codes from your customers’ CallSigns on their phones.

Battle Coin Revamp 

In our last update we introduced Battle Coins. The Battle Coin system enables your business to create upsells that you can offer to customers at the register. Based on feedback from our business owners, we modified the system to make this even more profitable for you. If you want to know more about how Battle Coin worked on release, you can read about it here. The current system allows you to add up to 3 items to an upsells, each item using one coin. However, instead of charging a coin per item we decided to implement a more favorable flat rate for our operators. Whether you are selling a simple weapon upgrade for $3, or go bigger and charge more for a custom character class that includes a voice profile, unique weapon, and bonus XP, your rate doesn’t change. Want to turn off upsells for a specific game in your session? Don’t worry, EDGE has you covered. Upsells can be activated per game type, saving you coins when you don’t need them and allowing you to maintain control over your experiences. You’ll find a special icon in both EDGE and EDGE Terminal on the games where upsells are active so you’ll know which games Battle Coins are enabled.

EDGE 4.3 minor updates include accessibility to the lighting tab even if the game engine is locked. If you are a mobile operator or often switch from light to dark environments, your staff will now be able to adjust the lighting without needing the password to your game engine. Some UI adjustments and bug fixes are also part of this update. EDGE 4.3 will be available tomorrow!

Behind the scenes, we’ve been working on some new products that are on the horizon as we make a push towards IAAPA 2019. Expect more news and exciting updates from Battle Company in the coming weeks.

“My plan for the BRX was to create the biggest, baddest, coolest home laser tag system money can buy.”

Aaron Fischer, Founder

THE BRX – THE BEST HOME LASER TAG GUN!

Home laser tag products have existed since the late eighties. The first notable laser tag system was created and released by World of Wonders in 1986. Some of you may remember the little black pistol that came with a sensor you could wear on a strap around your body. Since then multiple home options have come and gone all having this in common – cheesy sound effects and a basic game play experience. We wanted to make something different…something better for the home user…so we made the BRX!

I played a good amount of laser tag as a kid. As a manufacturer it has always been a desire of mine to make a premium home laser tag system. This video tells a little bit of the story behind the BRX and why it is the best home laser tag gun money can buy. Watch the video below!

Interested in purchasing the BRX? Click Here!

Advanced Weapon Creation Tool for Laser Tag

Out of the gate we gave our Weapon Creation Tool a major overhaul. You now have a ridiculous amount of customization options under the weapons menu. Want to create a weapon that does ice damage, slowing down your enemy’s ability to fight back? You can! How about adding an attachment that allows players to cast shields onto their teammates? It’s now possible! Sticky grenade launcher? Check! How about a weapon that heals your team members while at the same time poisons your enemies? The weapons tool in EDGE 3.0 gives you the power to make these unique armaments part of your arsenal!

Laser Tag Attachments and Abilities

Two significant weapon enhancements made their way into EDGE 3.0. The first is attachments. Attachments are like special abilities you can bind to the left, right, and mode keys on your guns. Players simply press the button to deploy the ability. Some abilities can be broadcast over a distance while others work in close proximity to other players. Like always, EDGE gives you options. Giving health or ammunition has been around for years but what about new abilities like – Adrenaline. Adrenaline boosts friendly players’ rate-of-fire making them more deadly for a short duration. This encourages teamwork…a teamwork that is just not possible on other systems. New attachments like Pepper Spray or Taser will stun enemies. These are perfect for tactical training simulation games and extremely useful for police and military training exercises.

Laser Tag and Melee Weapons

The second enhancement to the weapons tool is the ability to create melee weapons. You can now create swords, knives, axes, hammers, and even handcuffs that players can safely use in game! When creating a new melee weapon you can choose the direction of attack, damage, rate-of-fire, range, and a sound from our extensive selection of sound effects. Once created the melee weapons can be bound to the mode button in the games of your choosing. To keep things simple for our operators, we have preloaded over 90 primary weapons, 15 attachments, and 9 melee weapons that you can modify and customize to fit your business. We can’t wait to hear about how you use these tools to enhance the gameplay experience for your customers.

Default Laser Tag Ranking Presets Added

Have you been interested in taking advantage of Ranking Settings but didn’t know where to start? No worries…we’ve loaded out the entire section with default unlocks and rewards. Like always these settings are fully customizable by you – the business owner – so you can tweak them exactly to your needs. The defaults give you a jumping off point to launch this powerful tool into your business. Give your players the ability to level up and unlock fun weapons and rewards, it’s sure to keep them coming back for more!

Arcade Mode Opens Up New Streams of Revenue

Have you ever wished there was a good way to send players into the game in waves or maximize throughput by starting and ending players individually? This is what our new arcade mode is all about. You can now add players into a live game by simply sending them past a U-Box broadcasting a Start Game command. The new player will enter the roster and can battle it out with existing players in the game. When a player’s game is over (e.g. out of lives, time expires, or they have reach the end of your experience) they will see their score on the gun as well as our new leaderboard. The equipment can then be passed to the next player in line and you can continue this cycle perpetually. Oh, and the good news is this feature works with CallSign. Players simply login on terminal and are queued to play. When a gun becomes free, their CallSign is automatically assigned to their gun by EDGE. Simply let your customers gear up and join the battle!

Laser Tag Guns with Kill Streaks? Boooom!

Now this one is special. The CEO of Battle Company has wanted to create this next feature since his first webinar and has dreamed about it since the very beginnings of the company. We are proud to announce the first and only, fully loaded, kill streak system in live action gaming! We have created over 15 unique killstreaks that you can add to any game. Want to give away the enemy’s position? Call in a UAV! Want to revive your fallen teammates? Use the Medivac! Rain terror from the sky with a chopper or devastate the entire enemy team with a Nuclear Strike. Kill streaks can be turned on or off and players can even activate kill streaks they’ve earned right from their phones with CallSign!

Scoreboard Addition: Medals

Every game now ends with a medals screen that highlights individual player achievements. Medals provide opportunities for greater social interaction between players. It’s great to know who had the highest score in a game but wouldn’t it be better if you could also highlight other types of player contributions and achievements? Now you can. For example, the most accurate shooter gets the Sharp Shooter medal. The Survivalist medal goes to the player who died the least. The player who scores the first kill gets the First Blood medal. There are even some humorous medals like Trigger Happy (the person who unloads the most rounds in a game) and the Grave Lover (most deaths). In addition to seeing medals on the scoreboard, players can achieve personal medals for double and triple kill, or the Ninja Medal which requires a player to get 3 melee kills in a single game. Every medal is tracked in CallSign so players can see their achievements and have a goal for the next time they play at your business.

Utility Box: Bomb Defusal and Order Activation

We gave the Utility Box some love as well with this update. Bomb Defusal now has configurable options in EDGE. Check out Order Activation, a new feature that enables a U-Box when an action is taken on a different U-Box. The new programming allows you to create some interesting games where players work their way across the battlefield by capturing control points. To use this feature, you’ll need to setup special rules for your U-Boxes, check out the new default game “TEAM-Assault” to see an example.

Other Notable Changes:

• Game Stats screen allows you to see the history of previous games.
• Players can be made a “member,” which will show on their CallSign profile for verification.
• Reset rank and stat settings for individual CallSigns under the Users screen.
• Add Guest button allows people using EDGE offline the ability to create guest usernames for their equipment (for business owners who choose not to use CallSign). NO ACTIVE INTERNET CONNECTION IS REQUIRED!
• New sorting options are available in many of the menus for quickly finding the information you want.
• Lighting tab allows you to set defaults like the reticle and color on your scopes.
• Target box can now shoot back.
• Click Here to see the full changelog including upgrades for CallSign and EDGE Terminal.

Best Laser Tag System on the Market

The release of EDGE 3.0 crowns Battle Company as the top innovator in live action gaming with the most advanced laser tag software in the world. No other system on the planet has the rich feature sets you will find in our platform. We challenge you to find a system that can do more…oh and if you can we will humbly pass the crown. Until then, know that when you have Battle Company gear and software you have the best system on the market. Don’t be persuaded by manufacturers that say you don’t need all these great features. That is just plain silly. The truth is we all want our technology to do more. It’s why we have smartphones and why an app exists for almost every imaginable purpose. At Battle Company, we’ll do our part to push the bounds of what is possible in laser tag to keep you ahead of your competition. An authentic live action gaming experience is what your customers are looking for and as your manufacturing partner we’ll do all we can to help you create it!

Click Here to head over to the Customer Portal and get the latest version!