Hi all,
I've implemented the rest of the damage model in this one. There's still plenty of work and fine-tuning to do, but this gets it to its base functionality.
The main improvement in combat should be the predictability of what your shot will do depending on where you place it.
This is a dev view, but I'll be introducing something similar you can use to analyse your own vehicles (once 0.2 is stable).
This update is for the 0.2 alpha branch, so you'll need to opt-in to play it:
Also rewrote the mission system, AI detection and the way orders are delivered to AIs.
These rewrites work together to lift a lot of the restrictions on scenario design, so I'll be doing some reworks to scenarios when it's time to bring them back in.
Fundamental damage model fixes
- Projectile collisions are now significantly more accurate and shouldn't incorrectly hit your own vehicle. Sponson mounted cannons would often hit their own vehicle when firing, when nothing was visually in the way.
- Projectile ricochet angles are fixed. Projectiles tended to slide up plates, instead of bouncing off in the expected direction. This made shot traps trap more shots than expected. Expect more cases of mantlets bouncing the projectile down through the hull roof, instead of into the turret front below the mantlet.
Additions
- Laying drives can now be damaged and destroyed. Damaged laying drives will produce less torque.
Fixes
- Fixed cases of projectiles exploding immediately after firing.
- Fixed cannon rotation limits not being visualized after exiting and returning to the editor.
- Track wheel mounts no longer receive uniform dirt levels like wheels.
- Fixed blueprints sticking around after the objects using them have been destroyed.
- AIs no longer see turrets and hulls of the same vehicle as two separate entities. They're now seen as connected and wont focus fire on whichever one they see first or is closest.
- Bullets now drop at the correct rate again.
- Fixed shell impact visual effects. These looked off with a rotation applied.
- Fixed paint jobs failing to load when loading designs.
- Fixed AIs not receiving orders on scenario start, causing them to sit idly.
- Missions can no longer be lost after success is achieved.
Changes
- Shell overpenetration now let the projectile continue on its journey, passing straight through the vehicle.
- The angle in which shells ricochet is now on a curve. Higher calibre shells now ricochet much less than lower calibres.
- Ricochets off of the ground now have microbumping (similar to the recent track microbumps). This results in less predictable ground ricochet directions.
- Aim lock no longer freezes cannon and turret rotation instantly. Instead, they'll brake to a stationary position at their maximum brake rate.
- Made maximum dirt levels more bumpy.
- Slightly increased how high dirt gets on to vehicles.
- Increased vehicle rolling resistance.
- Reduced recoil force.
- The last saved vehicle is now loaded on game start once again.
- Mission creation has been cleaned up and streamlined to allow for more complex scenarios and lower the chances of bugs.
- The orders used to control the enemies in scenarios can now be applied to certain groups of AIs or individuals.
Kill Confirms
I've not reimplemented the kill confirm notifications in this one as I'd like to experiment with a shift away from the arcade mechanic. In short, making enemies more into something that stands between you and your objective, rather than the objective themselves. I'd like to embrace the ambiguity of whether an enemy is considered knocked out.
Only testing will tell but your thoughts/ideas on it would be welcome in the comments.
A few known issues
- Vehicles don't collide with each other.
- AIs don't stop shooting at vehicles once they're knocked out.
- Flameout VFXs don't decay.
- Engine fires can cause flameouts.
- Tracks, driveshafts, turret motors, turret rings, cannon breeches and cannon barrels cannot be damaged yet.
The next steps are iterating on the damage model, reintroducing the missing vehicle parts, as well as some fixes.
After that, work can begin on 0.127 to 0.2 design conversion, allowing you to bring your old tanks to the new update.
- Hamish