Update 114 - The Night Vision Update - is now Live!

HOWDY FOLKS!

At long last (and a day later than planned), we have for you, the full release of Update 114 - The Night Vision Update. This... was not originally going to be this large in scope or long in development of a feature update, but as with many things H3, we got very lost in the weeds of simulatory bliss, and ended up improving many sides of the games that Night Vision intersected along the way.

For that reason and more, we have a just BANANAS sized changelog below, covering everything that's gone into the game in the past 3ish months and is now on Main Branch. I wanted to take a moment to highlight a few of them, in case you haven't been following along as we've been working. I've linked the relevant devlogs below that focus on each feature the most closely:

Night Vision & Thermals

The core focus of this Update cycle, and the lion's share of the work, went towards Night Vision and Thermal Scope systems. This has been long requested, and long placed in the 'that would be cool, but it isn't feasible/time efficient to implement'. Well... time efficient it was not LOL. It took some significantly changes to the game, visual effects, a little love to most scenes to make this feature set happen, and most centrally the studious patient obsessive research by our collaborator and Night Vision expert Ole. There are now 4 sets of Night Vision Goggles in Game, 1 set of Thermals, and about half a dozen Night Vision and Thermal Scopes. The system has been architected with our mod community in mind as well with some incredible tooling designed and built by Ole, so those of you who load a hundred-bajillion mods into the game will likely be seeing new NV options coming to your modlists.

Sosig AI Improvments

The funny thing about making scenes in the dark, is that your game AI need to be able to tell they're IN the dark for that to really work. You would have thought I would have realized this like... right at the beginning.. but nope. Got like weeks and weeks into this update before I went "Oh crap I need to make the Sosigs see light and dark. It.... was not fun. BUT IT WORKS. So now Sosigs, in all scenes, have their vision attenuated by darkness. Sosig NVG equipment (or being a monstrous Zosig) grants them night sight (but a greater sensitivity to blinding events). We're still tuning the exact balance of this, just FYI, but it is mostly working as intended now.

Ammo Boxes

Another feature request from loooooooooooong ago, that has finally been fulfilled, that actually existed in the EARLY days of H3 and was abandoned for a host of perf and work reasons, is Ammo Boxes. These semi-procedural containers work for all ammo types, and have a bunch of sweet features. This system isn't 100% done yet, and it still has a few limitations I'd like to clear, related to capacity, but they have already radically changed the Take & Hold Limited Ammo experience, and I want to sprinkle them into some of the other existing structured play contexts of the game.

Lasers & Flashlights

While working on darkness, and night vision, it didn't make sense to pass up an opportunity to refactor illumination tools in the game. So flashlights got a ground-up rebuild, including features for IR illuminators you can only see through Night Vision. The game's Laser systems were also wholesale replaced and now have visible beams (where appropriate) and IR-visible options. The lasers ALSO zero-to target distance, allowing them to be significantly more useful tools at range. Do note that lasers integrated into existing guns haven't been migrated to these systems juuuuuuust yet.

Meat Fortress

And lastly, the Meat Fortress update we've been promising all year has arrived. 4 new Player Guns. The arsenal the Meat Fortress Sosigs have access to has more than doubled in size, and they've been given some behavior updates to make them play at a faster pace. Along with this, SNACKSTON HALE! has arrived, the Meat Fortress themed Take & Hold character. He's a vicious challenge (we recommend turning your health up when playing him to start for sure) and the perfect fusion of TF2 and H3VR wackiness.

In Conclusion

SO that about does it! This has been a truly exhausting Update cycle to get out to you folks. It wasn't the road we were originally planning to follow through the summer and fall (when is it?) but I'm overjoyed at the result. As always we'll be watching the bug reports sections of the Steam Forum here, and our Community's Discord to see where we've inevitably messed up, and patch as necessary over the rest of the month.

We hope you have as WONDERFUL of a time playing Update 114 as we've all had making it. Have a great of your weekend folks!

Peace,
Anton

IMPORTANT REMINDER FOR MOD-USERS

This update cycle introduced some MAJOR changes. You WILL need to update your mods. Some will NOT be ready for you today (H3MP I believe is waiting for full release to do the work their need due to how intensive that often is). PLEASE be patient with mod-makers. Run unmodded for now, OR you can switch back to Update 113 under the beta branches tab in Steam.

Full Changelog - Update 114

Major Updates:

• Added Device Support: Quest 3s (should now correctly be detected)
• Added Ammo Box System: All cartridges can now be spawned in Ammo boxes (which are modified Magazines under the hood).
• Added New System Set: Night Vision & Thermal Rendering
• Added New System Set: Accurate Lasers & IR-visible lasers and illuminators

Additions - Firearms, Tools & Toys:

• Added New Firearm: BARbine [.3006 Springfield]
• Added New Firearm: Mosin M38 Cursed Left-handed Version (Blame Zan)
• Added New Firearm: Lee-Enfield Ruined (This one is RedSamus6’s fault)
• Added New Firearm: Wasp Shotgun [12 gauge short] (fictional)
• Added New Weapon: M3 Carbine with Integrated Early NightVision Scope
• Added New Weapon: G17 Switch
• Added New Firearm: M231 Firing Port Weapon
• Added New Firearm: Big Franking Fifty (.50 BMG)
• Added New Attachment: AGRattle19 Thermal Scope
• Added New Attachment: PVS7 Scope
• Added New Attachment: PVS30 Scope
• Added New Attachment: Hunt35 Scope
• Added New Attachment: SKT-IR Scope
• Added New Attachment: T12 “”“Scope”””
• Added New Night Vision / Thermal Goggles: PVS-7, PVS-14, PVS-31, GPNVG, T7 Thermal Goggles
• Added New Utility Object: Handheld Thermal Camera
• Added New Weapon: 6 Pounder Field Cannon
• Added New Melee Weapons: Cannon Spongeram & Scraper

Additions - Scenes & Gameplay:

• Added New Scene: Spooky 45
• Added New Scene: Dark Duney Range
• Added New Scene: Grillhouse At Night
• Added New Utility Item: Scene Fight Panel (Replaces panel in Grillhouse. This panel will eventually support more Sandbox scenes) This panel has dramatically more options, but interfaces with authored areas and points in a scene to allow for structured play. It is saved like any other item in a Scenario.

Additions - Sosigs:

• Added new Sosig Costumes to Sosig Spawner Panel
• Added New Sosigguns: USP Tactical, Survival Rifle, Murican180, APC9k, SW500, Bulldog, DoubleDownDerringer, R700, Singleshotgun, Colt Monitor, Dillinger .38, Thompson 1928, Auto5 Shotgun, DVL-10, U50, Vector45
• Added New Sosig Shirts: Bowling Shirts, Tanktop, Tubetop, FrillShoulderBlouse, LooseVBlouse, Dress Shirts, TONS of graphic TShirts
• Added New Sosig Hats: Derby, Floppy Hat, Headband, Headwrap, HuntingHat, SkullCap, SummerHat
• Added New Sosig Pants: Hotpants, Yoga Pants, Pleated Dress Pant
• Added New Sosig Outfits: Pajamas, 90s workout outfit, BlazerSkirtCombo, Sales Uniform, Fast Food Uniform
• Added a bunch of Other Sosig Outfit pieces and didn’t keep track of it because THERE ARE SO MANY THIS IS RIDICULOUS
• Added New Sosig Head Icon State: Fleeing
• Added New AI System: Perceptibility from Luminance (Distance visibility limited by darkness)
• Added New AI System: Night Vision. Sosigs wearing Night Vision granting gear can see in darkness. Some ‘monstrous’ Sosigs (Zosigs) also see in the dark
• Added New AI System: Blinding: Sosigs can be blinded by (properly registered) spot lights, such as from Flashlights with their brightness turned up at close range. Sosigs with Nightvision are more prone to this effect. PLEASE NOTE THAT BLINDING FROM FLASHLIGHTS DOES NOT STACK. IF YOU AFFIX MULTIPLE FLASHLIGHTS TO YOUR GUN THE ONLY THING YOU WILL DO IS NUKE PERFORMANCE AND GLITCH THE RENDERING OUT. PLEASE ONLY USE ONE FLASHLIGHT AT A TIME.

Additions - Systems & Rendering

• Added New Functionality to Flashlights, including Intensity Cycling, and a seperate interaction for Light Width.
• Head Mounted Night Vision goggles now have interactive setting menu that can be used to change their profile and color options
• Added photocathode parameter to night vision definitions to approximate spectral response of various devices
• Added phosphor type list to night vision definitions to specify night vision colors per tube/generation
• Added resolution parameter to night vision definitions to simulate devices with lacking resolution by adding a slight blur
• Added subpixel rendering for thermal displays when viewed close enough
• Added Functionality to Ammo Panel to spawn Ammo boxes
• Added Functionality to Take & Hold Ammo Spawning Panel to spawn Ammo Boxes
• Added systems for streaking and burn-in for night vision devices
• Added systems for edge blur and high-light blur for night vision devices
• Added New Options Page: Scope & Night Vision Settings
• Added Light Switch to Indoor Range, allowing Light toggling
• Added System for NightVision Rendering Material Overrides (so certain components don’t blow out auto-gain)
• Added System for NightVision Sky Override to model how visible the Stars can be under NV even when not apparent at visible light levels.
• Added a bunch of Thermal Tagging to tons and tons and tons and tons of prefabs.
• Added New Option: Tracer Color Override with 16 presets

Additions - Meat Fortress:

• Added New Take & Hold Character: SNACKSTON HALE!!!
• Added New Firearm: Stonethrower [9x45mm Classic]
• Added New Firearm: Noisemaker [12x22mm MC]
• Added New Firearm: Vulture [10.1mm SHhhhhhh]
• Added New Firearm: PasDeDeux [.58 UltraLongRifle]
• Added New Sosig Weapons: Pistol, SMG, StickyLauncher
• Added New Sosig Melee Weapons: Saw, Balisong, Pan, Bat, Wrench, Bottle, Kukri, Shovel, Axe
• Added New System: Kill Scoring - All Sosigs (and the player) accrue tracked kills over the course of a round, and the round now ends when one team reaches the kill limit.
• Added New System - Sosigs Playing Meat Fortress on Smeme: Each ‘player’ in Meat Fortress now has a randomly generated account name (from 1500+ names submitted by our WONDERFUL community).
• Added New System - Game Chat Simulation: While playing, a goofy simulation of chat plays out between the Sosig players, shown in a chat window in the Spawn Room, and floating in front of the player (you can disable this if you find it annoying).
• Added New Sosig Enemy Template Sets in the Meat Fortress Theme: Secondary (uses secondary weapon instead), Melee (uses melee weapon), Bot (Tougher Junkbot Enemy), Bot Melee (Junkbot with Melee Weapon)

Changes:

• Top-break Derringers that flip upwards to open are now flicked shut by angular velocity in the correct direction
• Changed Meat Grinder’s Illumination to be VERY VERY VERY dark instead of pitch black. This allows Nightvision to actually function.
• Changed how AI Entities perceive each other when guns are being fired (including the player). Muzzle flashes now render a target fully visible momentarily. Suppressed shots accrue a -small- amount of visibility that can build up if sustained full auto fire is done.
• Altered Grillhouse Scenes Sosig Spawning to Randomize placement in a more satisfying way
• Grillhouse scene now Supports the Toolbox and Scene Saving
• [TnH] Rebuilt Weapon Selection Tables for many Sosig Enemy Templates used in this mode so that a wider selection of Sosigguns now shows up. Relative difficulty should be largely the same, just more variety :-)
• [TnH] Made Take & Hold Wrist menu dim while viewed through nightvision
• [TnH] Scope Attachment Object tables now contain Nightvision scopes. Eventually a dedicated table will be added
• Night Vision scopes can switch their actual profiles (physical parameters, capability, available colors, etc.)
• Added correct display names to Sosig Enemy Templates that were missing them (these names will be used by various systems later)
• Added Violet and Amber Color Lasers to Laser Attachment 1-5
• Made Locomotion interface elements dim when viewed through Nightvision
• Updated Proving Ground components to be properly visible under Thermal Vision
• Adjusted the Order that Scope Options are displayed to prioritize more commonly used settings
• Old-Timey Spectacles from Wurstwurld now work again!!!
• Laser Attachment 1-5 now use latest systems
• Compact Flashlight 1&2, Kleshflashlight, Scout Flashlight, Sureglow Flashlight & Tactical Flashlight now use latest systems.
• Changed LaserLight Attachment System Controls. Short press now cycles mode. Long press toggles the menu.
• Changed LaserLight Menu structure to be square format, to accommodate rotation.
• Changed LaserLight Menu to auto-orient when enabled
• Changed Standalone Flashlight Controls. Short Press Toggles it on and off. Long Press cycles intensity.
• Friendly45 and Spooky45 scenes now have Navmesh and an AI Manager
• Updated Glowstick to use slightly more modern coding, and be ‘AI perceptible’
• Player’s Visibility in darkness is impacted by whether they have an active flashlight in their hand, or an activated flashlight on a gun.
• Rebuilt Laser Attachments 1-5 to use new system
• Rebuilt Tactical Flashlight
• Rebuilt Standalone Flashlight
• Muzzle Smoke Particles are now once again lit by flashlights, but correctly now.
• Controller Models & Quickbelt Slots given alternate Night Vision materials (so they aren’t super bright)
• Quickbelt Slots now no longer render under thermal vision
• Replaced Materials on Many Impact and Smoke Particle Systems for better lit behavior
• Changed a bunch of internal stuff with FVRFirearm rounds to enable cannon Hijinks.
• Made Arizona at Night Scene SIGNIFICANTLY darker
• Rewrote (made an unholy mess) a bunch of the impact fx system to allow synced override of impact spark effect to a custom color, to enable Tracer color overriding. Apologies to any modders who were calling this method directly from anything as the method signature has been changed. To get ‘default’ behavior simply append ‘false’ and ‘Color.white’ to your method call and behavior should return to what you expect.
• Adjusted 30 carbine ballistics to make default scope zeroing more accurate
• Altered Center of Mass of Comp Barrier Set to make them harder to accidentally knock over
• Tractor Pistool now only regards static environment objects when doing placement casting. This allows for clipping physics-locked objects into each other more easily.
• Refactored mag ejection on Bolt Action weapons to prevent errant magazine drops when laser grabbing them.

Changes - Meat Fortress:

• Difficulty and reaction time of Meat Fortress Sosigs has been made more reasonable, while remaining fast
• Rebuilt Item Spawner Entires for all Meat Fortress Weapons that use Magazines to give Magazines an explicit page, similar to how things work with ‘regular’ guns
• Rebuilt entire team-handing system for Meat Fortress using more modern IFF code
• Tuned, fixed and added OffMesh Links for Meat Fortress Scene using modern systems. WAY more jumps for the Sosigs to path on.
• Changed MANY parameters for Sosig Enemy Templates for Meat Fortress characters to make them move and fight more dynamically.
• Changed Meat Fortress pistol to being Semi-Auto
• Buffed the Medical 180 and Rosie

Fixes:

• Fixed incorrect parameters in many laser attachments
• Fixed incorrectly categorized Sosig Clothing in their metadata
• Made Sosig weapons properly register ‘visibility events’ to the player’s AI entity
• PVS7 now correctly cleaned up
• Added baked lighting to thermal rendering systems
• Fixed incorrect rendering of thermal subpixel displays when rotated
• Tweaked thermal refresh rate behavior to be less smeary at higher refresh rates
• Fixed a TON of ammo box scaling and cartridge presentation issues
• Snag Sanger now has magazine insertion sound
• TnH auto-cleanup should no longer delete case contents
• Fixed muzzle attach point on Wasp Shotgun
• Light Switch in Indoor range now SHOULD swap scene low light flag fully
• Fixed a bunch of visibility issues related to Thermals seeing objects, like smoke volumes
• Fixed a bunch of Meat Fortress team and IFF bugs
• Fixed a number of Itemspawner metadata bugs
• Fixed a number of Ammo Metadata bugs
• Fixed a bunch of Sosig Wearables missing a critical component
• Fixed issue where Sosigs wouldn’t pick weapons up off the ground
• Fixed LAM not affixing to Mk23
• Fixed Ammo not being show in the correct order in Cartridge Boxes
• ACTUALLY made Sosig NVG goggles impact night vision to them (whoops)
• Various fixes to thermal overlay rendering for night vision/thermal fusion devices
• Fixed resolution loss when looking at a low FOV optic through a high FOV optic
• Fixed missing serialization code in Derringer Class
• Made it so that stacks of rounds in quickbelt slots now properly serialize and deserialize
• Fixed Makarov Sosiggun scale (being too big)
• Fixed incorrect cartridge type on Makarov Sosiggun
• Fixed NVscope visibility in spectator cam (i think)
• Fixed various things being incorrectly visible in the NV scopes
• Fixed sights not spawning in T&H with DMR15
• Fixed broken 2x50mm projectile (for Hiro-Enki Railgun)
• Fixed incorrect shader on Flashlight
• Fixed W330 physical scope manipulation being broken
• Sosigs missing their head link can no longer be blinded
• Fixed detached Night Vision headsets spawning at scene origin before moving to hand (sometimes getting stuck along the way)
• Fixed close frustum culling in Scope Cameras
• Fixed Having a scope visible in one eye and a NV monocular in the other
• Fixed missing Reverb Zones spamming errors in some scenes
• Fixed Bubble Level Shader being broken
• Fixed Spotlight Rendering and light falloff on some shaders
• Fixed missing ‘Beep’ Sound when spawning Ammo Panel from Item Spawner
• Fixed placeable Barriers that have an environment-layer subpiece permanently losing that layer association upon moving them with your hand.
• Fixed clipping on Charcoal bag
• Fixed issue where laser-grabbing Comp Barrier Objects would permanently make them no longer block player navigation
• Fixed Carl Gustaf being able to be operated and fired by its fore handle
• Fixed Bubble Level Shader lighting and normals
• Fixed Bolt Action weapon chambered round catching grabbing empties
• Fixed issue where the incorrect shatter geo was used for Meat Fortress turrets of some teams
• Fixed some null ref issues related to MF teams
• Fixed some bugs relating to the MF Medic
• Fixed issues with Stonethrower’s ejection port

Removed:

• Stripped a WHOLE BUNCH of old scripts due to a horrible Unity Editor bug that limits the total number of unique monobehaviors that can exist in the entire project (in this old version of Unity). I had to tear out a bunch of stuff. Hopefully uuhhhhhh.. Nothing broke.

API Notes:

• A major internal type/class safety check relating to ammo has been removed from the Vault System. This allows modded objects that alter ammo type to save/load correctly. HOWEVER, this means that the Vault will now attempt to spawn ‘broken’ ammo data. Meaning if you install a mod with a custom ammo type, save a gun/scene with it, remove said mod, and then attempt to load it, the Vault system will no longer attempt to error gracefully, as so unpredictable things may happen.
• System for holding an interaction to auto-toggle a laser/light added. This is requires manual connection to the dependant interaction. A system for ‘switch’ attachments will be added soon.
• Added ‘Item Box Override’ field to FVRObject.
• CreditCost field in FVRObjects can be used to set an overridden base price for Contract Griller prototype. I will publish a list of example prices in the future for reference if you prefer to set one manually for a mod item, instead of have my auto-generation system do so (it does a good job for ~95% of things, and a terrible job on ~5%)
• GM.CurrentSceneSettings.OnPerceivableSound now has an AIEntity variable at the end of its call.
• Added recognition distances for Sosigs being threatened by allied IFFs,
• Renamed internal sosig parameters (alertness level, etc.) to AggroLevel (for clarity)
• Altered how Sosig AggroLevel occurs. Internal damage messages now spike alertness.
• Added AggroSensitivityMultiplier to Sosigs. Raising this above 1.0 in a Config Template changes the speed that a Sosig begins Investigating (out of its base state) when AI events are processed.
• Added EntityRecognitionMultiplier to Sosigs. Raising this above 1.0 in a Config Template changes the speed that a Sosig can go from any state (including Investigation) to a Skirmish state.
• Added CombatTargetIdentificationSpeedMultiplier to Sosigs. Raising this above 1.0 in a Config Template changes the speed that a Sosig goes from perceiving a target, to
• Made sosigs slightly more likely to clutch-panic fire.
• Added a system for AIEntities to be in Auto-Threating, and Threat Suppressing zones. When set to utilize these, Sosigs in Auto-Threating zones will threaten sosigs that see them regardless of how threatening they ‘look’. This is still clamped by the threat perception range of the sosig. Additionally, sosigs in Threat-suppressing volumes will not be threatened by seeing or hearing threatening entities, or gun shots. Note that damage events can still aggro them.
• Loaded held weapons can threaten aligned Sosigs. Quickbelt carried Large weapons can as well.
• Added ‘Requires Top Cover Up’ option to Closed Bolt Mag Ejection Trigger
• Item Box system is in the game, but not functionally accessible yet. IT IS NOT DONE DO NOT BUILD ON TOP OF IT
• Ammo Box system is still a first-pass implementation. I need to redo it in the next week or two to make it more sanely extensible.
• Added functionality for Open Bolt Dust Cover to play audio events
• Added color filter for NVGs (to simulate wavelength filters on aviation NVGs)
• Added feature to have renderers only show in thermal
• Added camera relative rendering support to thermal shader
• Fixed scaling/aspect ratio for thermals (I hope)
• Fixed instancing for lit particle shader (maybe)
• Might have fixed spectator camera issues for camera relative scopes?

Notes And Warnings:

• CARTRIDGE BOXES DO NOT SAVE AND LOAD PROPERLY YET. DO NOT SAVE THEM IN SCENARIOS
• Resetting Windows and Doors is temporarily unavailable from the Scene Fight panel (you will need to reload the scene). This will be migrating to a new place.
• Lasers that are integrated into guns (2019 detective special, etc.) have not yet been migrated to modern laser systems. They will be at a later date

Notes To Modders:

• Ammo/Cartridge Box system is NOT done yet. Do not begin any work related to it yet please. There are some major structural flaws to it I need to fix and didn’t have time to get to this week.