Huge improvements to bot behavior and performance have been made. Higher numbers of bots in the dozens and, on the most powerful computers, even in the low hundreds are possible now!
Bots will try to not fire arrows at their allies if they're in their way, and, oh, bots can kick now ;)
Overall, this update does not add new content, but aims to improve the cpu performance of the game as well as Bot behavior and intelligence.
The next update, Alpha 6, will focus on graphics and gpu performance.
The update after that, Alpha 7, will be the biggest update yet, but more on that in the future!
Thanks to everyone that has wishlisted the game and left their feedback so far, there are more free updates coming!
Check the bottom of this page for details!
~Vincent~
Bots
- Updated ai decision making during combat, they will now more intelligently decide when to attack
- A target hitting an enemy with an attack after the target has been defeated (like an arrow still flying) will no longer make the enemy consider attacking that target lol
- Bots will now notice you if you hit their shield with an arrow for example and consider attacking you if they arent already fighting
- Archers standing higher than their enemies can now attack them from a longer distance
- Some miscellaneous fixes and improvements to bot ladder climbing behavior
- Bots will now react to being attacked by their allies :(
- Bots will now navigate around each other if needed
- Bots will now no longer fire at allies if theyre in front of their target
- Knockback effects are now properly applied to bots at the start of the game before youre charging forward/the game has fully begun
- Bots can now kick!
- Bots can now be pushed by the player, will no longer push him away, and avoid running into him
- Bots can now switch their target and attack behavior based on the situation and react more intelligently
UI
- Overhauled the main menus look and layout
- Changed base point spawn selection visuals
- The respawn countdown is now more visible thanks to a darkened background
- Updated ui visuals very slightly once again
- The scoreboard will now scale consistently with different screen resolutions
- Fixed item description not being displayed correctly in loadout selection anymore
Graphics
- Fixed small smoke clouds staying behind after a fireballs impact
- Reverted previous change to arrow visuals
- Increased rock visual detail
- The third person camera will no longer go inside objects for a short time after getting defeated
Gameplay
- It is now easier to kick over enemies from behind
- Fixed spear stabs, kicks and some other attacks not being able to hit ladders
- Decreased camera movement when getting hit
- Increased camera shake when blocking as it was too low after last updates scaling change
Audio
- Kicking now makes a sound
Maps
- Smoothed out pathway terrain up the hills on the map Shorebreak
- Slightly modified spawn point positions and capture areas on all maps
Technical stuff
- Updated from Unity 2021.3.11 to 2021.3.15 with potentially big performance improvements
- Decreased overall bot weight
- Increased horse weight and made individual limb weight more physically accurate
- Fixed crouching and uncrouching not returning height to the exact original position which was the most noticeable at very low framerates
- Made minor optimizations regarding checking the distance from the player
- Made an optimization by moving OnGUI code (And removing the OnGUI call) to a normal Update that caused 368 bytes to be allocated every frame which improves performance very slightly
- Miscellaneous smaller optimizations to bot behavior and physics code performance. If youre also a Unity developer, as a PRO tip: Dont use Physics.Raycast, use Physics.defaultPhysicsScene.Raycast/Spherecast/etc. it is the exact same but has no function call overhead, as physics.raycast just calls that function https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/UnityCsReference/blob/master/Modules/Physics/ScriptBindings/Dynamics.bindings.cs Also cache physics.defaultphysicsscene as it constantly does calculations to get it otherwise in a static class and call that one instead, there is no downside to doing so lol
- Shaders are now pre-loaded using Shader.WarmupAllShaders() when the game starts to prevent small stutters when they are first loaded during the game
- A new spawning system is now in place in the background that performs faster and will make it super easy for modders to create spawn points/objectives
- Hopefully fixed a bug with ladders that caused bots to climb them incorrectly, thanks for reporting it!
Alpha 6 is coming soon and will focus on audiovisually enhancing the game and at the same time increasing graphics performance!
Come and join the Dragonfield Discord server, everyone is welcome!