Once again, this update is considerably later than I'd have liked (an emerging pattern), but you can expect less frequent and, hopefully, larger updates between now and launch now anyway.
On the subject of the final launch, I'm yet to set a firm release date yet, but I'm currently aiming for around July this year. My next priorities for ZGA will be fixing the worst of the remaining bugs/issues and then hopefully at least having a go at AI. We'll have to wait and see on the AI front though, as it could be considerably more complicated for ZGA than a typical shooter.
In other news, since the last update and this one, I think I've passed the 3 year anniversary of me starting work on what would become ZGA, although when I started on ZGA specifically is a bit fuzzy, as I was initially trying out the rough beginnings of another idea. Anyway, how time flies...
Lastly, I've got a feeling I haven't been as diligent as usual in putting changes in the patch notes this time, so there may be some surprises, but hopefully they're all nice ones.
-Jon
P.S: Do make sure you've got the latest update before trying to join the server, or something strange might happen. I don't think it'll prevent you from joining if there's a version mismatch, so that's probably something I should have a look at in future.
COMMUNITY MADE MAPS:
- ”Market” by Max Graw (Ex3mx). This latest map from Max has a kind of cyberpunk aesthetic, and it's just unbelievably well pulled off, and has some really clever little details. All I can say is that I think this map is his best one so far, by a considerable margin, which is really saying something.
CHANGES:
FUNCTIONAL:
- There is a new Stats screen accessible from the main menu, displaying both your personal stats, and also the global total stats, which may prove interesting.
- The server should now restart automatically within 10 seconds if it crashes or otherwise stops for some reason. After this update, there will be no known crashes, although I have found that the server process seems to quit after running for a week or so, seemingly by the design of something or other. What's imposing that restriction I don't know, and it probably isn't worth the time to find out now. Just be aware that if the server goes down while you're playing on it, it should be back up within 10 seconds.
- In King of the Hill game modes, you now get 1 point per kill, as well as for occupying the KOTH zone. This also increments your totalkills stat, where I don't think it did before, as well as showing the +1 symbol. I originally intended just to make the last of those 2 changes, but it was easier to add the first as well. We'll see how it plays.
- There's a brand new (albeit fairly similar to the old one) edit controls menu. It's main feature is that it now permits multiple keybinds per action, which was mainly for the purpose of better supporting gamepad controllers.
- Speaking of gamepad controllers, I've had multiple requests for gamepad support since ZGA's early access launch, and I've finally been persuaded to give it more time. I'm generally a big fan of gamepad controls over mouse + keyboard, but I suspect ZGA will be comparatively unsuitable for gamepads. Nonetheless, with this update, I've added partial gamepad support. You should now be able to set full gamepad control schemes from the controls menu, which you couldn't before. I've set some gamepad default controls, but I'd love to hear from you if you set some alternative controls that you prefer. I haven't spent very long with the gamepad controls yet, so I hope the community will be able to help in arriving at a good set of defaults. Anyway, like I say, I'd call this partial gamepad support, rather than full, as, as it stands, the menus won't work fully with a gamepad, so you won't be able to play entirely from your sofa (couch) yet.
- The framerate and frametime breakdown displays now close when exiting to the main menu.
- Not unrelated to the previous items, the various performance stat utilities that were assigned to H, J and K are now rebind-able and show up in the menu.
Achievements:
- There are 3 new achievements unlocked by landing 5, 25 and 100 kicks on an official server. Note that this is just landing the kick, rather than necessarily scoring a kill with one, which I find to be a considerably rarer occurrence.
UI:
- HUD redesign. Most of the HUD elements have been visually redesigned by Max Graw. We might refine the HUD further, but I think it's looking much better now already. On notable addition is an indicator for whether your magnets are on as part of the HUD. I'm not sure if we'll keep this as there are already lights on the avatars, and I like to minimize the HUD's use of screen space. Nonetheless, I don't think it was always clear when your magnets were on or not, so let me know what you think of this particular change.
- Max has also redesigned most of the menus visually, which I think are definitely looking a lot neater now.
- Team scores now no longer have “Red team score” and “Blue team score” text, as I think this should be apparent from the context and color of the text.
- Some menu text is now using a lighter version of the same font (Bank Gothic)
ART:
- Avatar cosmetic options:
- There are now 3 new footwear options which can be unlocked with a mixture of speed and kicking based achievements. I made the “Industrial” one and the other two were made by Max.
- Minor changes to base character model
- You may have noticed in various places a new logo, which was made from the superimposition of a Z And G (which may not be immediately obvious). Thanks to Max for the help in making this. It's designed to be an in-universe logo, as well as for use outside of the game.
- All official maps now make use of the new logo as part of the visual design, which I think looks very good in some contexts, but I will probably have to rethink others.
SOUND:
- You'll notice there are a bunch of cool new UI sounds in the menus. You probably won't be surprised to hear that these were made by Deika. As usual, they're just really pleasing to listen too, and I think fit really well into the menus.
- Also made by Deika is a new ambient sound which you can here in the menu and all official maps. This makes the maps seem a lot more “alive” to me, or something like that.
BUGFIXES:
- Removed one potential cause of server crashing. (I believe this was an extremely rare case scenario relating to grappling other players).
- There was an issue where the “Octangle” helmet would always appear red (irrespective of your colour scheme). This should be fixed now.
- TheSodaCow discovered that if you leave a server in the prematch phase, and then rejoin once the match has started, your points from the prematch phase are retained. This should be fixed now, well spotted SodaCow!
- Removed the debugging messages that appear on screen when map voting starts. Not really a bug, but shouldn't be there anymore anyway.