It's been quite a wait since the last update, but I think you'll find it was worth it, as this is easily ZGA's biggest update so far!
There will probably be one or two more updates before the main launch on 08/08/2018, mainly for fixes and perhaps minor improvements. I'll also be setting up a bunch more dedicated servers just before the launch, to accommodate the (I hope) large influx of new players.
See below for my best approximation of a full list of changes (this time in particular, I may not have been very diligent in recording every change).
-Jon
CHANGES:
FUNCTIONAL:
- AI added! I can't tell you how happy I am that I was able to add AI, as I really wasn't sure if it was going to be practical, or even possible, due to the unique challenges presented by ZGA. Indeed, this was an enormous feature to add, taking the majority of my time since the last update and now amounting to about a third of the overall size of the codebase. It might not be of near-human intelligence, but it's now at the point where I think it can provide a good challenge at multiple skill levels.
- The bots can have a variety of traits, to change their skill level and behaviour. A type of bot also has a “Level” to describe it's difficulty. Right now, I've just set 9 basic bots of increasing skill level, but more interesting variants could be added in future.
- It was important to me that the bots were sufficiently similar to humans in behaviour that the same tactics were effective against them. For example, no matter how high the bot's aiming traits are dodging will always be effective, and, like against humans, the more unpredictable the better.
- Bots will automatically spawn on a dedicated server if there are only one of 2 players.
- Listen server hosts can add bots at will.
- You may notice not every map and game mode is supported for AI yet. I'm hoping to add support for some if not all of these before launch, but can't make any promises due to time constraints. In general, there are various improvements that I'd like to make to the AI, time allowing, but I think it's in a good enough state to be a very important addition to the game still.
- Brand new gamemode, “Spaceball”! “Spaceball” was supposed to be a temporary name, but having built the update, I've just realised I forgot to rename it. Anyway, the game mode is a sort of sports-ball type, more like soccer than the existing “Capture the sphere” mode. It has it's own new map, made by Ex3m.
- Spawn points now prioritized first on team then on distance from other players
- For auto-managed (including dedicated) servers, instead of a 10 minute timed game, the automatic game type for kind of the hill modes will be first to 120 points (still sort of timed for king of the hill...).
- The dedicated server will eventually change back to Pipe and Free For All if left unoccupied for a certain period of time. This is to prevent it from being left on a map that's unsuitable for one or two players (so could discourage people from joining again).
- If there is only one player on a server, the map vote will end as soon as they cast their vote. Also, if there is only one player and bots are unsupported for the current map or game mode, the map vote will begin instantly.
- Servers now have an optional skill level setting. This can be set by listen server hosts as an option when hosting. It is not enforced in any way, but rather just a label to help people find a game against players of a similar skill level to them. I plan to set up dedicated servers with different skill levels for the main launch so that newbies aren't destroyed by you veterans.
BALANCE:
- Changed ERC rate of fire from 5 rounds per second to 4.5. Not a big change, but I think if it was overpowered before then there wasn't much in it. This is really just to make it a bit harder to get close ranged spamming kills.
MAP LAYOUTS:
- Huge changes to the layout of Temple.
- Boxes in the railgun room in Pipe are now less densely arranged.
- I finally put something in that big flat floor in Factory. I've been meaning to do this pretty much since I added Factory to the game nearly 2 years ago.
ART:
For those that haven't seen the dev-vlog videos, you may not know that our most prolific community map maker, Max Graw (Ex3m), has been helping a lot with ZGA's art over the last few months. Indeed almost all of ZGA's visual changes since the last update are his work.
- New decals on all official maps. These include fictional logos (the closest thing you'll find in ZGA to lore), warning signs and the like.
- Max has done a major overhaul of the graphics on “Temple”, turning it from one of the more outdated official maps into the fanciest visually.
- New weapon models
- New weapon visual effects
- Main menu scene changes
- New Boxes on Pipe
- New model to represent spawn point of CTS sphere
- New weapon spawn location model
- New splash screen
- New models in Inception.
- Improved reflections in all maps.
SOUND:
- I've put together and integrated the beginnings of a soundtrack. Right now there are just 4 pieces, which are selected from randomly when a match starts. I'll most likely do some more work on these pieces, and I plan to add some more pieces to the soundtrack. There are some quite different styles among those 4 tracks, so feel free to let me know which one you like best (the track name appears in the HUD when it starts playing) and I can take that into account making future tracks.
- Here are a bunch of great new sound effects from Deika:
- New rocket fire sound
- New weapon switching sound
- New SMG impact sound
- New rocket explosion sound
- New sound on picking up weapons
- There is now a feedback sound when you get a kill
- CTS goal and sphere respawn sounds.
- The weapon noises now have a low-pass filter (less treble) applied that increases in intensity with range.
- The volume of the grapple sounds now drop off in volume faster with range.
UI:
- There is an addition to the Server tab in the in-game menu (accessible to listen server hosts) which enables kicking players and removing bots (through the same menu).
- The chat box now ignores capital letters. To my mind, the communicative facilities afforded by capital letters were far outweighed by having to constantly type “excuse caps” to avoid appearing ANGERY if capslock was on without your knowledge.
- Added individual SFX, Music and UI volume settings to the audio settings menu.
- After much deliberation about what to do with Cityscape, I've just decided to move it to the community made maps section.
- Also removed the creator field from the official map list, as now that Max Graw has contributed to all of the official maps in some way (most notably Temple), it would now be an oversimplification to specify a single creator, or both of us as creators. Max's contributions to the game are, of course, credited in the credits screen.
- Server browser rearranged slightly. Dedicated servers are now above listen servers. Also removed quite a lot of not-so-important text.
- New HUD weapon icons to match the new weapon models
- The HUD menu now adheres to the same layout as the other sub-menus.
- Added “Disable HUD” option to HUD menu
- Also added an option to disable just the magnet indicator in the HUD.
- The map info that shows on loading a new map now has a grey background.
- Moved the map vote screen so that it no longer obscures the chat box.
BUGFIXES:
I went on a bit of a bug-killing spree not long after the last update, but given the amount of development that's take place since then, I imagine a few more have sneaked in (some of which I'm aware of already [see below]). Do please continue to report any bugs you find as I'd like to release ZGA in as un-buggy a state as possible.
- Hopefully your feet/legs should no longer get stuck in the floors/walls. Unfortunately this is one of those things that's not really a “bug” that I can locate and remove so much as a limitation of various systems that requires some inelegant fix to be slapped on top of. With that in mind, I'm not sure yet if we've truly seen the last of this issue or if it's just less likely to occur now. Let me know if it happens to you again.
- Previously, only your personal total kills showed for the global total kills stat. This should be fixed now.
- Fixed audio control not working in main menu.
- Fixed grapple beam failing to de-weaponize after warmup
- Fixed blue team score indicator obscured for timed team gamemodes
- Fixed player icons persisting in the TAB menu after the player leaves (I'm pretty sure, but needs testing online).
- Made detection of when weapon is obstructed more accurate and less glitchy (it was the cause of various jittering bugs [jitterbugs, if you will...])
- I think the weapon obstruction code also failed to detect when a weapon was obstructed by the floor below (when pointing downwards). This is fixed now.
- Fixed bug where timed match would sometimes go into overtime even when there is not a draw.
NEW ISSUES:
These are issues that I've found just before releasing the update that probably aren't worth delaying it over. Hopefully there will be a hotfix in the next few days anyway though.
- In a last minute attempt to fix a layout issue in the server list I somehow managed to produce another layout issue that's considerably more ridiculous. The original issue was actually fixed, but some text may be pretty much illegible in some cases.
- The static bots from the tutorial have vanished. There will be a revamped tutorial soon anyway.
- The global stats suddenly all list as 0.
- I think the bots might be having some trouble in the round room in Inception. I'm pretty sure I just forgot to rebuild the navigation data after some changes to the map.