New UNLOCKABLE Character: Introducing POLARIS

This is POLARIS, she enjoys meditating under the stars, drinking green tea, and beating the seven shades out of anything that moves!

POLARIS is the second unlockable character, and can be unlocked by the player getting the achievement known as; THE AMBASSADORS BY HOLBIEN.

POLARIS is a close range, melee based playable character with a trio of hand-to-hand standard attacks, featuring very high health regeneration, alongside high mobility, and high strength for knocking monsters out of the way. Her Special Attack is FURIOUS FISTS, were she pummels everything in front of her with super-fast blows, whilst being invulnerable to damage herself. Her Special Evade is RUGBY RUN, a short range speed burst with very high damage to anything she collides with, ending in a small area stun.

FURIOUS FISTS in action! (You can make your own Waaaa-ATATATATATATATA sound effect if you like)

Besides this new unlockable character, there has also been a host of bug fixes, tweaks and changes, which bring the game build up to version 1.8.4.9. Most of the fixes are regarding updating the engine from the older, and now retired build, and stabilizing the BETA build.

1. Update 27: updated to v.1.8.4.9, BETA build merge 1.2.2.8.
2. New: Unlockable player cosplay character "Polaris" is now available and requires Achievement "THE AMBASSADORS BY HOLBIEN" to unlock.
3. New: Multiple fist strikes special weapon for player melee combat datablock.
4. New: Rugby Run special FX and audio for Polaris special evade.
5. Change: Unlockable characters are now initialized directly via the test for unlocked steam achievements.
6. Fix: Removed zone volumes which were causing an assert on disconnect server / quitting level in BETA version.
7. Fix: Wrongly named arrayObject was attempting to cleanup the nodes list on level initialization.
8. Change: Added Follower mesh to preloading objects.
9. Change: Removed out of date font references.
10. Fix: Streamlined fonts and constrained sizes.
11. Change: Re-fonted all GUIs.
12. Change: Increased Elafi The Athelete Level 4 Boss melee attack range from 3.5 to 6.5.
13. New: Added multiple strikes FX for Elafi The Athelete Level 4 Boss melee attack.
14. Change: Decreased Elafi The Athelete Level 4 Boss melee attack knockback so that the player is not automatically knocked to safety after being hit and thus is more likely to receive multiple kicks.
15. Change: Moved the miss radius particle effect for Elafi The Athelete Level 4 Boss melee attack to spawn at 75% of range. Previously it made the player looked like they were in range of the attack which missed.
16. Fix: Multiplayer was showing engine versioning and not game versioning.
17. Fix: Level End GUI input control was not getting the call for set first responder due to misnaming.
18. Change: Amalgamated level end client calls to standardized function.
19. Fix: Removed redundant client call at level end.
20. Fix: Monster Boss charge FX array had been disabled in Default build, Beta build not affected.
21. Fix: Level End Menu buttons were throwing an assert whilst being parented to a gui when not visible. Parenting now delayed until button status check is activated.
22. Fix: Level End Menu buttons are now cleaned up onSleep.
23. Fix: Multiplayer mission recycling and level advancement was broken due to recent changes to engine build. Fixed and reported to engine development team. Changes merged into devhead on github.
24. Fix: Multiplayer advance level schedule calls were not referencing the new naming convention for game modes.
25. Fix: Multiplayer disconnect was calling an obsolete function, now calls disconnection directly.
26. Change: Removed all references to redundant server exit pause timings.
27. Change: Removed all references to obsolete cycling of missions on the server.
28. Fix: SpawnFX arrays with sfxPlaylist workarounds for some monsters on Default build were missing. Beta uses the correct system due to sfxPlayLists being fixed to work with networkable explosions.
29. Fix: Numerous weapon audio fx not referencing the correct module in BETA build.
30. Change: Player attributes for Light and Heavy Attack Damage no longer scale together. Heavy Attack Damage is now the maximum damage that can strike a single target and is out of 350. Light Attack Damage remains out of 150.
31. Fix: Explosion 72 particle was not correctly referencing the bitmap.
32. Fix: Machine-gun burst audio special attack was wrongly named in the Beta.
33. Fix: Level 1 Boss attack audio was changed but reference not updated.
34. Fix: swordFlashHighAudio was trying to reference a defunct playList in Beta.
35. Change: Updated autogenConditioners header file and will probably flush the shader cache on update.