Updated: 2021-06-16 for 115711 updates
Hello Commanders,
Your eyes do not deceive you, this creature of majesty above is both half-Commander and half-unicorn. Touch its horn if you will, but the only wish it grants is the pillaging of the galaxy’s resources to ensure the demise of your enemies. Friendship is temporary, but a well-placed ubercannon blast is forever.
The Unicorn Commander is available to all players during the Steam Summer Sale, after which it can be purchased through the Armory. It also comes with its own strategic icon so that everyone else knows that you’re better than them, both as a player and a person.
Lobbies now have the option to shuffle player starting locations. No longer can you know who is where without any scouting in FFA and team games. Live the mystery.
The AI has had an easy difficulty added to skirmish and normal in Galactic War as part of some more extensive changes. We hear your eyebrow lift (just one, you’re classy like that) at the addition of an easier difficulty, but once improvements land and it’s kicking your hiney, you’ll be sorry you got all sniffy about an easy difficulty.
Translations have been updated and expanded to include community mods like Legion Expansion and Queller AI.
Previous update series: https://planetaryannihilation.com/news/stay-safe-updates/
Technical Notes
Client Improvements
Local client improvements:
- Updated translations
- Added connect timeouts to download manager to avoid long launch stalls
- Added initial support for full offline / disconnected mode via --offline (work in progress)
- Improved game password dialog with focus and default button
- Added shuffle landing zones to new game lobby for large FFA and teams games using maps with custom landing zones
- Improved discord user handling (114673)
- Improved commander spawn zoom (114673)
- Added spacebar to exit video (114673)
- Improved locale error logging (114673)
- Improved fatal error logging (114673)
- Added audio device routing (114716)
- Added default audio device setting with list refreshing every 5 seconds 114716)
- Added default audio device selection during startup (114716)
- Reduced unnecessary locks and allocations during material creation (114862)
- Added automatic open of players list for 1v1 ranked games (114750)
- Added --enable-detailed-minidump command line parameter as an alternative to setting the MINIDUMP_DIRECTORY environment variable (114750)
- Added skybox graphics setting (114776)
- Removed outdated sRGB restrictions for AMD / Intel GPUs (114880)
- Added --gl-disable-srgb / --gl-disable-mrt-srgb command line options to restore previous behaviour if needed (114880)
- Added --hardware-hdr command line option to enable experimental HDR10 support on latest Windows 10 for modern 10 series or newer Nvidia GPUs (114880) Note: macOS HDR10 support is automatic https://planetaryannihilation.com/support/troubleshooting/#HDR10
- Added support for 128 bit UNITTYPE flags and masks expanding max types from 63 to 127 (114980)
- Added SIMD optimisations for 128 bit flags (114980)
- Added legacy CPU check with error message to try legacy build (114980)
- Added events to ui/main/game/live_game/js/constants.js (114980)
- Updated strategic icons for water hover units (115050)
- Updated water shader to show different depths (115280)
- Added SELECTED OR ALL to order and build previews (115711)
Client Fixes
- Fixed SDL2 full screen toggle / resize issue on Windows (114628)
- Fixed intro video loss of focus (114673)
- Fixed tutorial commander specs (114716)
- Fixed custom line formations crashes (114726 / 114823)
- Fixed settings mod compatibility issue (114726)
- Fixed join modded game crash from modded new game lobby or live game (114726)
- Fixed landing crash on slower systems (114726)
- Fixed setCommandMode crash (114759)
- Fixed line command crash (114759)
- Fixed API data access (114880)
- Fixed get units crash (114880)
- Fixed icons not showing with one or more unit server mods (115280)
- Fixed handling of Unicode surrogates eg 🔥 (115447)
- Fixed ALWAYS order and build previews ignoring SELECTED (115678)
AI Improvements
Local server and public server improvements:
- Added easy difficulty for AI skirmish to match galactic war (work in progress)
- Improved AI start location selection (114716)
- AI landing policies now avoid planets with others AIs so they spread across planets (115050)
Galactic War Improvements
Local server and public server improvements:
- Added normal difficulty between easy and hard (work in progress)
Server / Sim Improvements
Local server and public server improvements:
- Improved attack (focus fire) task
- Added shuffle landing zones
- Added early exit for sim tasks that set failed during initialisation (114673)
- Added radar jamming (114862)
- Added support for 128 bit UNITTYPE flags and masks expanding max types from 63 to 127 (114980)
- Added SIMD optimisations for 128 bit flags (114980)
- Add new units types UNITTYPE_Vehicle (114980) UNITTYPE_Shield (114980) UNITTYPE_Amphibious (114980) UNITTYPE_WaterHover (114980) UNITTYPE_Interplanetary (115506) UNITTYPE_TacticalDefense (115506) UNITTYPE_Radar (115506) UNITTYPE_RadarJammer (115506)
- Changed amphibious units on sea floor to require underwater vision if below the water line (115693)
Server / Sim Fixes
Local server and public server fixes:
- Fixed AI server crash in evaluateBases
- Fixed Windows 4GB replay / saved game limit (114862)
- Fixed moving to target assist task crash (114862)
- Fixed auto repair / reclaim while transporting (114862)
- Fixed water-hover pathing around structures, walls, TITANS, etc (114980)
- Fixed handling of Unicode surrogates eg 🔥 (115447)
- Fixed beam weapon collisions with structures, terrain and water surface (115447)
Maps
Map improvements:
- Added shuffleLandingZones
Updated the following maps to use shuffleLandingZones: true
- Clutch
- Lock
- Crag
- Bedlam
- PAX
- Medea
- Roc
- Blitz
- Forge
- Berg
- Duat
- Pacific
- Styx
- Meso
- Amplus
Modding
Modding improvements:
- Exposed locTree for localislation parsing of modified DOM nodes avoiding the need for concatenated loc strings or data-binding locTree(document.getElementById('#nav-link'));
- Added gOffline and gModsOffline for offline mode (work in progress)
- Added api.audio.getDevices():[string]
- Added api.audio.setDevice(string)
- Reworked SettingItemModel to support
- options.function(currentValue)
- options.deferredFunction(currentValue) for async
- options.refresh: seconds
- option.empty: string
- Added support for JSON // single line comments
- Improved modding support for multiple selectable skybox mods in settings: (114776)
- model.skyBoxes.push({text: 'Test', value: '/pa/terrain/sky/textures/skybox_02.json'})
- api.ar_system.changeSkyBoxSpec(api.settings.getSynchronous('graphics', 'skybox'));
- New recon observer channel radar_jammer (114862)
AI Modding
AI modding improvements:
- Default personality tag is the placeholder for current base game functionality
- Added fall back to default netural_networks if not included under personality.ai_path which will be the case for most mods
- Added additional --ai-debug output (114673)
- Added enabled to build specs for AI debugging (114673)
- Added debug to build conditions for AI debugging (114673)
- Added IsMainBase build condition (114673)
- Added first pass of AI intel point threat status (114673)
- Added personality.starting_location_evaluation_radius (114673)
- Added gw mod support for bounty_mode, bounty_value, sudden_death_mode, shuffle_landing_zones and land_anywhere (114716)
AI mods can use personality.ai_path to specify their own complete set of templates, builds and unit maps as the default AI may be changing significantly.
Toolchain
Updated software development toolchain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toolchain
- C++17
- Visual Studio 2019 latest with 142 build tools / Windows 10 SDK latest (115050)
- Xcode 12.2 / macOS Big Sur 11 / 10.16 latest for macOS Mavericks 10.9+ with full notarisation using hardened runtime (115050)
- Steam Linux runtime with gcc-9 / LTO native (previously limited to gcc 6.2 and no LTO)
- Steamworks SDK 150 (115050)
- Windows libcurl 7.68.0 with nghttp2 1.40.0 for HTTP/2 and multiplexing (will upgrade to 7.70.0 and 1.41.0 soon)
- breakpad latest
- libpng 1.6.37 with SSE
- libsquish 1.15 with SSE
- stb_image 2.25
- stb_truetype 1.24
- lz4 1.9.2
- miniz 2.1
- zlib 1.2.11
- sdl 2.0.12
https://planetaryannihilation.com/guides/rainbows-unicorns-updates/
TITANS Balance Changes
https://planetaryannihilation.com/guides/titans-balance-changes/
Kickstarter Backers From September 2012
Founding Kickstarter backers from September 2012 were gifted TITANS for free.
All other owners of classic PA can upgrade to TITANS at a permanent discount of 90% off for ~$US2.99.
News: https://planetaryannihilation.com/news/
Development and Updates Timeline: https://planetaryannihilation.com/timeline/