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More Major AI, Performance & Game Improvements

Hi guys! We have spent the past week fixing a huge number of issues across the game, while also making improvements to bots, vehicles, animations, performance, audio, servers and more.

A lot of these changes might seem small on their own, but together they make Over the Top feel noticeably more polished. We have also made some big improvements to how bots behave, especially with objectives, vehicles, aircraft and forward spawns.

And yes, you can now piss on overheated machine guns to cool them down.

Read the full Changelog with over 130 changes:

Bots and AI

  • Fixed bots respawning on objectives their team had already lost. Defenders now fall back to their next held position while still reinforcing contested objectives.-

  • Improved bot pathing around doorways, tight corners, walls and bridges.

  • Bots now avoid walking directly into enemies at point-blank range and will shoot or use their bayonet instead.

  • Bots that keep aiming at enemies while moving toward another objective now eventually stop and continue their task.

  • Fixed bots spawning with incorrect navigation positions or being killed when no clear spawn point was available.

  • Attacking bots now favour forward and officer spawns based on their distance to contested objectives.

  • Bot engineers can now build forward spawns when no human engineer is available.

  • Added server settings for bot-built forward spawns, including maximum spawns per team and placement cooldown.

  • Bot-built barbed wire and sandbags now switch to the capturing team when an objective changes hands.

  • Fixed bot ammo crate cooldowns not counting down.

  • Bots on linear maps with paired objectives now split evenly between both points.

  • Attacking bots now hold and reinforce both objectives after capturing them.

  • Defending bots now stop launching counterattacks as the recapture timer progresses and fall back to reinforce the next line.

  • Defending bots now spread evenly across fallback objectives.

  • Bot tanks no longer attack locked objectives and now choose another objective, defend or hunt enemies instead.

  • Bot tanks react immediately when their target objective becomes locked.

  • Fixed bot tanks continuing toward old, incorrect, targets while hunting enemies.

  • Bot drivers now recover from getting stuck by backing up a short distance and trying again instead of reversing across the map.

  • Bot tanks no longer ram each other endlessly and will back off and drive around other vehicles.

  • Bot tanks stay out of enemy spawn protection and locked capture zones and back out if they enter one.

  • Bot tanks hunting enemy tanks now stop around 10 metres away instead of driving into them.

  • Bot tanks with unreachable targets now receive new orders instead of sitting at spawn, and drivers receive a destination immediately after taking a driver seat.

  • Bot gunners now respect weapon traverse limits and choose targets within their guns firing arc.

  • Fixed bot gunners in armored cars repeatedly leaving and re-entering their MG seats.

  • Bots now stop in front of downed players and face them while reviving also fixed revives in trenches, craters and on stairs.

  • Bots now dig with normal shovel strength instead of pickaxe strength.

  • Bots under fire no longer repeatedly dig in on pre-made trenches.

  • Engineer bots may now build sandbag cover between themselves and incoming fire.

  • Bot pilots no longer get stuck circling each other indefinitely and now break off and reset their attacks.

  • Bot pilots give up on targets they cannot get a shot on and search for another target.

  • Bot planes now bank properly through turns, use varied flight handling, and adjust their banking at low altitude to avoid terrain.

  • Bot planes now follow the terrain at varied cruising heights and detect cliffs, hills, buildings and terrain ahead of them.

  • Fixed bot planes flying into the ground, losing altitude when returning to waypoints, and getting stuck in endless dogfights.

  • Bot planes now perform proper attack runs with varied angles, heights and approach distances and attack closer to the ground during strafing and bombing runs.

  • Fixed multiple bot planes attacking the same target and colliding.

  • Fixed plane break-off detection becoming disabled for an entire flight.

  • Anti-air bots now lead aircraft properly when firing, while remaining intentionally inaccurate.

  • Bot pilots now react to nearby flak bursts by diving and banking away when cruising.

Gameplay and Controls

  • Added a Hold To Crouch option under Options > Controls, including support for secondary crouch bindings and automatic re-crouching after actions such as jumping, mounting or respawning.

  • Added a client-side suppression setting while still respecting the servers Hardcore suppression setting.

  • Being near friendly players now reduces suppression by up to 30%.

  • Added Hardcore Mode to the singleplayer settings UI.

  • Anti-air pom-pom shells now have a larger blast radius.

Weapons and Animations

  • Fixed barbed wire cutter and wrench first-person animations not playing while crouched.

  • Fixed the barbed wire cutter third-person animation forcing crouched players to stand.

  • Fixed semi-auto rifles and SMGs using the wrong reload animations while crouched.

  • Fixed reload animations being cancelled or failing when changing crouch state during a reload.

  • Fixed the first-person camera going sideways and tilting 45 degrees when rapidly crouching while reloading.

  • Fixed bolt and lever rack animations, sounds, hammer cock sounds and poses appearing incorrectly after respawning or picking up weapons.

  • Picking up an empty bolt-open rifle now keeps the bolt open until it is refilled.

  • Fixed ammo clips remaining on the ground or being duplicated after picking up ammunition.

  • Fixed stone fences that could not be destroyed with pickaxes or other melee weapons.

  • Fixed several props not taking damage on parts of their models.

Cameras and Photo Mode

  • Fixed first-person cameras getting stuck in third person, including after respawning, placing sapper props, switching views, using scopes or rebuilding the character.

  • Removed the leftover Ctrl+Shift+O camera debug shortcut.

  • Planes are now exempt from the servers forced first-person setting, allowing pilots to use third person while flying.

  • Fixed the photo preview remaining stuck on screen or freezing while paused.

  • Fixed the photo preview colour toggle using the wrong camera viewpoint.

  • Failed photo saves no longer lock the photo UI.

Reviving, Ragdolls and Corpses

  • Players in first person can no longer freely spin around while reviving. In third person you can look around freely while your soldier stays facing the player being revived, while first person is limited to 30 degrees left and right. This now works consistently in singleplayer and multiplayer.

  • Fixed wounded players becoming stuck against steep slopes or lying upside down, they now slide to nearby level ground when possible.

  • Killed crouching players now properly topple over instead of collapsing straight down.

  • Corpses now fall correctly when terrain is dug out or destroyed beneath them and are cleaned up when there is nothing left to land on.

  • Improved ragdoll cleanup so distant or unseen bodies are removed before nearby corpses.

  • Fixed settled corpses twitching, being replaced by another body, or disappearing immediately after their death animation.

  • Dropped weapons and equipment now react correctly to changing terrain and no longer float above bodies or the ground.

  • Fixed weapons and ammo pouches from downed players dropping or appearing in the wrong position.

Audio

  • Fixed microphones that failed to start, the game now retries them using other sample rates.

  • The microphone icon now turns red when your microphone is not working, and the Audio settings now report when the selected device is not working.

  • Fixed broken microphones repeatedly resetting the audio system and interrupting incoming voice chat.

  • Fixed your own voice commands, shouts and cheers playing from the wrong position in first person.

  • Soldier voices, pain grunts, coughing, drowning sounds, calls for help and heavy breathing now originate from head height.

  • Fixed cheer sounds and effects disappearing while playing instruments.

  • Fixed end-of-round music overlapping, failing to return after a round or map change, or playing twice in singleplayer.

Maps, Terrain and Environment

  • Fixed multiplayer campaign maps losing trenches and terrain changes after map resets.

  • Fixed a bug causing players to bump up and down in trenches on replay of certain maps.

  • Shovel digging limits are now measured against the original map terrain to prevent trenches getting deeper each campaign rotation.

  • Fixed the loading screen sometimes showing a white background when returning to the main menu.

  • Winter maps that dont start snowed-in now use heavier cloud cover to increase the chance of snowfall.

  • The crosshair automatically turns orange once the ground is mostly snow-covered and returns to white when snow disappears, but only if crosshair is white.

  • Fixed players seeing a different season or cloud cover from the server.

  • Lowered snow intensity on wheat by 12%.

  • Changed normals on most flora and trees for improved lighting.

  • Recomputed ambient occlusion on trees and some flora.

  • Fixed a terrain hole on Blucher York Line.

  • Fixed bots walking on the bridge railing at Weris.

  • Added small Behemoth tanks to the defenders on Argonne Heights.

  • Updated Somme Breach and adjusted it for balance.

  • Destroyed forward spawns are now removed from the spawn menu immediately.

Vehicles

  • Fixed tanks and other vehicles randomly becoming fully or partially invisible after leaving their spawn.

  • Fixed players being killed by walking into the rear of the G-9 Caterpillar.

  • Fixed incorrect seat numbers in the G-9 Caterpillar UI.

  • Fixed incorrect Char 2-C seat numbers and highlighted MGs.

  • Fixed Ford 3 Ton tank track animation speed.

  • Fixed soldiers standing upright in vehicle gunner seats or gun emplacements instead of properly manning them.

Machine Guns

  • Overheated stationary machine guns can now be cooled by pissing on the barrel. Cooling an overheated MG produces a steam puff and hiss when the stream hits the barrel.

  • Players must now be much closer to the machine gun, and moving away, entering melee, climbing, swimming or mounting cancels the cooling.

  • Friendly bots can now cool nearby overheated stationary MGs and will walk close before starting to piss.

  • Heavy machine guns now continue cooling while being carried.

  • Fixed the cooling hiss remaining silent for extended periods after a map change.

Campaign, Voting and Server

  • Fixed campaign info showing Your Team and Enemy Team incorrectly after loading an ongoing campaign, including inverted Victory/Defeat results.

  • Fixed end-of-round and campaign map voting showing incorrect or different map names to players.

  • Fixed map polls loading a different map from the one selected.

  • Maps unavailable on the server no longer appear as poll options.

  • Fixed admin map rotation displaying incorrect map names, and reordering a row no longer resets it to Random.

  • Adding an unavailable map to the rotation is now ignored.

  • Fixed the team selection screen sometimes becoming unresponsive when rejoining the same team.

  • Improved team selection logging to help diagnose remaining joining issues.

  • Quick Match now prefers the players home region instead of sending them to another continent when local servers are full.

  • Quick Match no longer skips nearby community servers simply because a full official server is closer.

  • Joining a server now times out after 15 seconds while connecting or 20 seconds during the handshake.

  • Failed or rejected server joins now properly disconnect instead of leaving a stale connection.

Map Editor

  • Fixed the Map Editor sometimes opening without an interface and trapping the player in edit mode.

  • Escape now reliably returns from the Map Editor to the game, and failed launches now log the reason.

  • Fixed a crash that could prevent the Map Editor from opening.

  • Fixed the prop browser sometimes opening empty after loading the prop list.

  • Fixed error spam and possible crashes when browsing saved prop groups.

Performance and Stability

  • Fixed several memory leaks involving weapon skins, destroyed props, occlusion materials, vehicles, flamethrower effects, map editor textures, server ban/mute files and Steam authentication tickets.

  • Reduced memory usage by sharing player animation tables, only keeping movement history for the local soldier, and reducing preloaded ragdolls and gibs.

  • Removed per-frame garbage from cannon limbering, interaction prompts and supply extraction checks.

  • Reduced memory usage on servers and clients by correctly sizing player and bot bookkeeping arrays.

  • Reduced server CPU usage when bots select targets.

  • Improved weapon fire, hit and equip handling by reading weapon stats from a table instead of the prefab.

  • Fixed a client crash caused by malformed bot spawn packets.

  • Voice lines are now released from memory when the map changes, reducing memory usage during long sessions.

  • Fixed a rare soldier mesh merge failure that could remove the base head or body model.

  • Fixed old soldier meshes being cleaned up too quickly after ragdolls despawn.

  • Fixed engineer-built props remaining solid on the client after being destroyed by the server.

  • Fixed invisible walls and rubber-banding caused by stale engineer-built props after joining mid-round or restarting a round.

  • Fixed a rare crash while loading maps with saved destruction.

  • Fixed several issues with forward spawns flickering or repeatedly reappearing.

American Forces

  • Updated multiple American character uniforms for better performance and fixed various skinning issues.

  • Added 3 new helmets to the American Armored class.

  • Added 1 new uniform to the American Rifleman class.

  • Fixed the US faction accent selector incorrectly selecting both General American accents without showing which one was active.

UI and Other

  • Discord Rich Presence now correctly shows Main Menu, Profile, Loadouts and Gear instead of placeholder text.

  • Discord game icon tooltip now displays the game name.

  • Fixed various loading screen issues when returning to the main menu.

Build and release context

Steam update times within 24 hours of this post. Matching dates do not confirm which build it describes.

  • Build 25123103 · public branch

    Steam updated · First observed