Special thanks this week to Max Graw (Ex3mx), who you may remember from such community made maps as: Most Of Them; And also Deika, who you may also remember as having contributed various sounds before, and also the ERC 479 model.
Since I've been so impressed by the visual design in Max's maps, I commissioned a set of 3d models from him, to fill in some of the gaps still remaining from the visual overhaul. See below for a full list. I think you'll agree he's done a great job. My personal favorite is the pipe in Pipe, which really needed to be more fancy looking than it was before, considering the map's named after it.
Anyway, having also been really impressed with the sounds Deika made for ZGA before, I commissioned a set of them. A few of these have already been added to the game, although I may have failed to mention that there were more on the way. A couple more of these have made it in this update, and there are still some more to come. Once again, I think Deika's got a big talent for sound design, and the sounds he's made so far have really enhanced the game.
Anyway, my next number one priority for ZGA is doing what I can to ensure you can find an online game most of the time. The first thing I'm trying to do on this front is set up some dedicated servers. This was shaping up to be an insufferable hassle last time I looked into it (shortly before the Early Access launch), but I'm hoping with all I've learned in between it should go much smoother this time.
COMMUNITY MADE MAPS:
- DarkGuy1001 has updated his map “Prota”, and he's made some pretty major changes. The map's had a major visual overhaul, so now it's really looking great, but also it's now got a circular floating King of The Hill zone, projected between two huge electrified cylinders. It's a really cool idea, which I'm not sure I've described very well, so I encourage everyone to play it themselves.
- Ex3mx (Max Graw) has also updated his map “Inspiration”. Although update may not be the right word, since it's changed so much as to be almost unrecognizable, but the central area with the King of The Hill zone still reflects the old version. It's also undergone major visual changes, since it was one of Max's oldest maps, and therefore wasn't quite up to scratch with his newer ones. It certainly is now though, and it's got two crazy hologram things at either end, which I strongly suggest everyone has a look at!
CHANGES:
FUNCTIONAL:
- When a full-auto weapon becomes obstructed, it will now resume firing when it is unobstructed, if the button is still held down. Having done some testing, I was not entirely surprised to find that sometimes while firing full auto, my gun would unexpectedly stop firing during a particularly flamboyant stunt, due to it momentarily clipping the floor. Now the gun will only stop firing momentarily, which should be much less confusing and annoying.
- Changed FPS cap to 240 from 144. This is mainly to make it easier for me to measure performance changes, since the game was almost invariably maxed out at 144fps on my PC, even on max settings.
- The “news” section is temporarily removed from the main menu, since there isn't currently anything relevant to put there.
- Client side improvements:
- I've eliminated the delay in weapon switching caused by ping.
- I've also eliminated the delay in hit feedback
UI:
- I've added a message below the quit button discouraging people from leaving team games that are still in progress. Whether it will prove persuasive enough remains to be seen...
ART:
- By Max Graw:
- The pipe in Pipe
- The pillars in Temple and Inception
- Boxes in Pipe
- Circular, and oblong lights
- Health box and a spawn platform for the health box
- Pillars in CTS_One, and the beam structures near each goal
- The floating walls near the sphere spawn in CTS_One
- I've began the process of arting-up “Temple”. Like Inception, I haven't got around to making new versions of assets such as the circular floors yet, so it's not finished yet. I've actually got some pretty substantial visual changes in mind for Temple still, that I'm yet to make.
- Grapple beam weaponizer model is now red to match the colour of the weaponized beam itself.
SOUND:
- By Deika:
- Homer projectile sound
- Grapple engage sound
OTHER:
- In Inception, I've removed the health pickups from the two middle rooms. I have no idea what design philosophy I was adhering to that required a health pickup in every room...
BUGFIXES:
- There was an issue on Inception, whereby everyone would invariably spawn at the same spawnpoint. This is one of those bugs where it's just absolutely inconceivable that I could have failed to notice it for the year or so ZGA's been in early access, but nonetheless, it seems like it could only have been present the entire time. In this case, I'd forgotten to update the map Inception with a custom spawn point class that I made probably several months before the Early Access launch (the map Inception is actually over 2 years old now!). In any case, it's fixed now.
- The rocket launcher is supposed to do extra damage on a direct hit, in addition to the damage from the explosion. Either I forgot to apply this extra damage in the first place, or somewhere along the line I accidentally disabled it. In any case, it's working again now. Rockets still won't kill in one hit on a direct hit, but it'll get pretty close (and if the target's lost any significant amount of health they probably will kill in 1 hit).