Today's update adds a basic & customizable Pet System that lets you turn any model into a pet that can follow you around, or you can become the pet & use it as your own avatar.
You can also create outfits for the pets by attaching models to them.
Play as 5 Classic Characters (at the same time)
You can play as the pets - so to start you off there are 5 default pets you can spawn & play as from the classic set of AArcade NPCs: Hacker Haley, Fit Frank, Timbo Tyson, Cowboy Carl, and Zombie Joe.
They each now have unique idle, walk, run, and fall animations. (Plus swimming, dancing, & a few more.) So they are well suited to show you how the pet system works. But the real fun comes when you setup your own custom models to be pets.
Pets can be any model in your library, but to look good they need idle & run animations. Some things (like floating droids) don't need any animations at all to look good. Toy cars & helicopters, birds & animals, lots of stuff makes sense.
Pets Tab
The F9 button is now the Pets Tab. It lets you switch between any pet you have living in your world wherever they are.
There is a ? help button there that has instructions on how to do various pet-related things.
You can have as many pets alive as you want, but keep in mind the entity limit per-world is 2048. (The status console command shows how many are used.)
Pet Object Attach
You can attach things to your pet. Everything you attach remembers its attachment point on that pet so you can quickly attach/detach it later with the Pet Attach Object command.
There is also a new Player Look-Spot Toggle command that shows an indicator in the world to help attaching things easier.
Pet Outfits
Go from basic bot to stylish gentlebot just by attaching props to your pet. And save as many different outfits as you want.
With Pet Persistence enabled (by default), it will remember which pets are alive in each world & the outfit they are wearing. And if you are playing as a pet, you take your pet & its saved outfit with you between worlds.
Pet Context Menu
If you press USE on a pet it brings up the Pet Context menu. This lets you quickly change the pet's behavior, animation, outfit, and a few other useful commands.
For more help w/ pets, check the help button in the Pets Tab. And feel free to jump into the Anarchy Arcade Discord or Twitch streams if you have questions.
That's about summarizes it for pets. Note that pets are singleplayer-only for now; however, they are likely to become our main avatars in MP also in the future.
Other Fixes
The NUMPAD on keyboards now auto-binds to the cinematic camera commands. CTRL + [0-9] sets a camera position, and just the number [0-9] itself cuts to that camera.
There's a "create_torch" command now that can be fun to use on dark maps. It attaches a dynamic light above your character's head - pointed down.
The Servers Menu has a searchable drop-down for universes now. And the bug that caused the infinite "Please Wait" screen when trying to host has been fixed.
(Note that everybody will be a default question mark avatar in multiplayer as part of the fix. This is another reason why pets are likely to become our main avatars in the future.)
Ladders are fixed. (Woohoo!) And there are several improvements related to people who create their own maps in Hammer & AArcade's ability to properly sync them. If you're interested in creating your own maps or just learning how to do advanced stuff in AArcade, you're invited to the Discord & Twitch streams as well. (The official website has the Discord invite.)
As always - the change log is below. And the GitHub repos have been updated w/ the newest versions of the code. Happy new year, and have a good time!
NOTE: At 3:42pm Pacific I pushed a hotfix that added in the "Player Look-Spot Toggle" model & material asset that I forgot to pack. And later this week I'll be fixing a bug that makes you turn into an existing pet before you can create new custom pets.
Full change log:
- Added Pet System that lets you spawn models that follow you around or you can play as.
- Added the Pets Tab (F9) to the Tab Menu.
- Added the following pet-related commands to the Commands Tab: cmd_pet_wear, cmd_pet_remove_all, cmd_pet_target, cmd_pet_next, cmd_pet_prev.
- Added the CONSOLE COMMAND of "petplayanimraw SEQUENCE_NAME_HERE" that can be used to bind buttons to play "sitfloor", "attack", or any other named sequence that a pet model has.
- Added Pet Persistence to the Settings Menu > General tab. Enabled by default, it causes pets & their outfits to be remembered per-map.
- Added 5 DEFAULT pets: Zombie Joe, Fit Frank, Hacker Haley, Timbo Tyson, Cowboy Carl. (You can also add as many custom pets of your own as you'd like.)
- Changed the list of universes on the Servers list to be a searchable drop-down list.
- Added "create_torch" and "destroy_torch" console commands that spawn a dynamic light of the provided color above the player.
- Fixed unable to host bug (by defining a default question mark avatar image for all users .)
- Fixed the NUMPAD button binds for cinematic camera. (CTRL + NUMPAD 0-9 to set a position, and just NUMPAD 0-9 to cut to that position.)
- Fixed bug of NPC model eyes looking in random directions.
- Fixed bug of props flashing bright/dark.
- Added new commands to the Commands Tab: cmd_cam_collision_toggle, cmd_lookspot_toggle
- Modified VBSP to allow for up to 65536* entities (instead of default 8192.)
- Added smoothing group fix on func_detail brushes in maps you are creating yourself.
- Added fix for CS:S-style ladders.
- Added fix for seamless cubemap generation with buildcubemaps command in maps you are creating yourself.
- Improved material adopt & sync to include the following material variables: basetexture2, bumpmap2, blendmodulatetexture, emissiveblendbasetexture, emissiveblendflowtexture, emissiveblendtexture, phongwarptexture
- Improved AArcade's point_viewcontrol class to be less broken to better support use in custom maps.
- Improved quest objects to use their current position rather than their object-defined position. (To allow for quest objects that are parented to moving objects.)