Hey there AFF Community!
We would like to wish you all a Very Merry Christmas and for any Holidays you're celebrating to be the happiest ones yet! And of course we wish you a lot of awesome games in the upcoming year!
Meanwhile we've prepared a patch that takes care of some of the annoying issues that resurfaced after the last update. Mostly graphical and collision-related glitches, but we've also addressed the concerns people had about the turret AI and anti-vehicle weapons locking on through walls.
We'll put this patch on the test branch for now and push it to public after Christmas most likely, unless there's a big demand on Discord to do otherwise. You can opt into the test branch by right-clicking on AFF in your Steam Library, opening Properties, going to Betas and selecting "test" from the dropdown there. We'll set up a test-branch-compatible server shortly as well.
The reason for the patch going on test branch for now is mostly that we don't want to force all the players into downloading a gigabyte-heavy update now. People might've just bought the game and the Steam pipes are already under a heavy strain and not necessarily working full-speed. Speaking of patch size - this one might seem unusually big but that's because we're experimenting with how the game is packaged. Changing this makes you download a different structure of files this time so the update is big, but hopefully will help minimizing the size of subsequent updates.
Alongside the ongoing work on the new UI we've also implemented a system that will help us skin characters, weapons and vehicles in an easy way, so that we can provide the players with more customization options in the future. The game might decide to test this feature in an appropriately Holiday-themed fashion at one point, watch out;)
Update 13 changelog (on the test branch for now) :
- Weapons with multilock and fire-on-release mechanisms will no longer lose their clientside firing sequence (no more silent swarms and AFX)
- Fixed looped FX from ship component damage persisting past ship's death and floating in space
- Collision fixes to ramps in Yin Tao Shan and Irega, fixed missing floor boards in Yin Tao Shan
- Rebalanced damage by range for the fighter guns (TT4, TT18, flechette)
- Fixed AI pathing on multiple staircases in Errah Territories
- Wobbly vehicle camera should now be much less noticable online
- Heavy caliber bullets now deal slightly more damage to vehicles and buckshot does less
- Fixed some interactions for launching fighters incorrectly persisting past carrier's destruction
- Adjustments to the routes into the final Igneous objective
- Slightly rebalanced perforation values, mostly downwards
- Ixion station has less missiles now
- Fixed an issue where the AI would get hellbent on shooting at one target until they go down
- Bots and turrets should no longer indiscriminately lock on through geometry
- Added a quick intro sequence to Ossidiace
- The terrain will no longer turn super low-res on the lowest graphical settings
- Fixed a few collision holes inside the Anubis
- Fixed a collision hole in Dragoon interior and a few more inside the station in Meudeverre
- Fixed certain weapon mods (targetting, reload) incorrectly stacking for an over-exaggerated effect
- Fixed chargeable weapons getting stuck in their firing state
- Minor tidy up of the briefingroom whiteboards
- Fixed a rare case of infantry weapons playing their muzzleflash after reload when you hit ironsights instead of the trigger
- Optimized internal damage effects in the Huginn
- Fixed EVR turret holding offset as seen by other players
- Fixed lighting settings of the weapons found in the shooting range
- Turned one of the cafeterias inside the Huginn into an armoury room with repair tools that can be picked up
- Turrets will no longer track their targets through walls till it's dead - instead they will do a short "blind lead" sequence where they fire along the path the target was moving on before hiding
- MLI and RID now require a line of sight to lock on, although MLI has a fair bit of leniency before it un-locks so you can still use it as a barrage weapon from behind an obstacle after initially locking on
- RID now deals a bit of area-of-effect damage but impairs the shooter's aiming speed while charging. Also it's fairly inaccurate unless aiming down sights
- Slightly decreased the damage debuff the suppressor mod was giving to weapons
- Added a tower on the left-side final objective of Irega
- Shifted some rocks in Fortress to fix collision issues and break the line-of-sight between objectives
- Rebalanced EMP-based damage (EMP rounds, mines and grenades) so that they're really effective against shields as intented (a single grenade configured with a double-EMP payload will collapse a deployable shield)
- New miscellanous glass breaking sounds
- Improved AI pathing around several objectives in Errah and Fortress
- Added more "waiting for launch" camera variants in Anubis and Huginn
- Changed how textures are packaged in the release build, should decrease the size of subsequent patches if no relevant textures are touched
- Lots of minor adjustments to the bay in Lacroix
- Added a warning message appearing when Huginn is destroyed at Ixion (before the warning about no more modules left as spawning points kicks in)
- Implemented a backend for swapping camo textures on infantry, weapons, vehicles and ships for future use
- It's Christmas!
Onwards and upwards!