Hello squaddies,
Last week on Thursday, May 13th the team released v2.7, which among other changes, had a fix to reduce and remove the bug that was affecting players’ ability to load/unload supplies from logistics trucks and helicopters, and a BP player controller fix. The logistics bug was initially introduced in our v2.4.1 release, and since patching it in v2.7 we have seen a dramatic decrease in the frequency of reports regarding this issue. However, after the release of v2.7, we started receiving reports that vehicle armor meshes were not behaving correctly. Specifically, armor thickness values are not working as intended. All vehicles are affected.
After the initial reports of the issue on Thursday, we immediately started our investigation. Once we verified that there was indeed an issue, work was underway Thursday, Friday, and over the weekend to build and test a hotfix that could correct these armor mesh anomalies. While the team was able to correct the armor meshes, plus other crashes/bugs, this led to the discovery of a problem with the modding framework. If we were to apply the armor mesh fix, it would cause a crash if mods were installed on a player’s machine when trying to launch Squad. In light of the recent modding push, this would affect more players than ever before.
With this information at hand, we reviewed the options that were available to us including:
- Releasing a v2.8 hotfix update to fix the issue directly. This is what we were working on last week, and over the weekend. Unfortunately, the changes that we had to make to fix the armor bug introduced a Squad crash as soon as the game tries to load the main menu, for anyone who has mods installed. Unsubscribing to all mods would be required, and we are not very keen on that option.
- Preventing the v2.8 mod compatibility crash by redoing the armor mesh fix in a different way, or changing the way mods are loaded. This would probably take quite a lot of time, longer than we would like for pushing a hotfix for the armor issues.
- Rolling back to v2.6 plus the logistics UI supply mitigation fix and the BP player controller fix (making custom modded player controllers compatible with map switches) in v2.7. This will effectively restore the armor meshes to what they were before. This would give us more time to revisit our armor mesh changes and ensure they do not cause issues or crashes. Unfortunately, this would also come with all the changes in v2.7 being “rolled back”, which we would have to be patient with until the next update.
Of these options, we have decided to go with the last option. We are currently building v2.6.1 - once this has been built, tested, and verified by our QA team, it will be made public for download.
We will continue to keep you updated on this situation as more information becomes available.