We actually documented most of the changes for this one so here they are:
UPDATES
- MERCENARY LEADERBOARDS ARE RESET - A lot has changed since we started these leaderboards, so to make things fair and keep the boards competitive, we’re giving them a wipe. We may do this more regularly in the future as we keep refining and balancing.
- TUTORIAL MISSION FIXES - there were a lot of little ways to break the flow of the tutorial but I think we have most of the major offending issues pretty much resolved at this point. It should be much harder to unintentionally break.
- Created better boundaries around the perimeter of the level
- Better boundaries along fences so you shouldn't be able to squeeze or teleport through
- Disabled basically all the cases and items along the way until their tutorials start (so you cant spawn ammo in a case and consume it before the tutorial starts, for example)
- Made it nearly impossible to lose items now (tutorial only), if you drop something it should zip back into your hand.
- The knife we always either zip back to your hand or drop closer to you for the backpack tutorial, as it was possible to have tossed the knife away before the backpack tutorial and you'd be stuck.
- Added better collision to the Brontosaurus, at least now you can't teleport or trackpad through him (or get on top of him). I think you can still room-scale walk your way through him with Teleport or Sprint movement, so I need to check on that still, but it's better than it was.
- Hid compys and raptors until their objective starts so you can't accidentally kill them and get stuck.
- Added new landscape material to tutorial map
- Added new OPTIONS to the SETTINGS menu:
- HAND ORIENTATION SETTING - We’ve added an option to change the gun angle in your hand by using the “hand orientation” setting in the controls settings. It will rotate anything you pick up, not just guns. If you're not a fan of the default gun rotation, hopefully you can achieve something more comfortable for you now. I will warn it's not super intuitive - you’ll have to jump back and forth from the menu to check how the gun feels (assuming you're holding one).
- TURN RATE - you can now adjust how quickly you rotate using FREE TURN MODE. Again, free turn mode isn't great. It rotates from the center of your volume and not your HMD center. I don't know how to fix this off hand, and I don't know how many people actually use this, so probably won't dig too deep into changing how this works until/unless there's requests for it.
- DEMO MODE - added this to the GAME tab (replaced the Audio tab since there was only one option in there (Music Volume setting is still in the GAME tab)), but... DEMO MODE is for VR ARCADES or party events specifically. With this enabled, you will always start with the Tutorial mission, but that's the only difference for now. IMPORTANT: you may lose some saved inventory data with this mode. Since you're replaying the tutorial right away and can enter new missions from a contiguous tutorial play, it's possible that you may lose saved gear, including stored items AND your upgraded backpacks. Hopefully we can eliminate this risk in the future by utilizing profiles, but for now be warned that you could experience loss of inventory in this mode. Which again, shouldn't matter for Arcades, which is what it was added for.
- BIG HUNT UPDATES
- NEW BALANCE PASS - STEALTH is now the most valuable score you can aim for in Big Hunt. Collectibles and Dinos are now a solid 1000 credits each, then your difficulty level multiplier is applied, then your entire score is scaled by your stealth factor. If you stayed hidden, got a lot of stealth kills, and generally avoided detection, you’ll achieve a much higher score.
- DINO AI HEARING - Dinos can hear your guns now in Big Hunt. The impact is lessened in Loot Drops (b/c you actually WANT dinos running to you in that one) but now using guns in Bug Hunt at least creates some consequences in the form of more “nuisance dinos” bombarding you and damaging your Stealth Rating significantly.
- Disabled chopper returning until the mission is complete. It was possible to call the chopper back and board it and then get stuck (it wouldn't take off and you couldn't leave the chopper).
- Gave TRex more health
- Fixed materials on chopper glass that was making water look broken when inside chopper looking out.
- Fixed exploit with rare metal respawning
- Improved the water in the lakes/ocean. Teleport/Sprint should be blocked by the water so you can’t accidentally walk on water, but if you’re using Trackpad and find yourself in a lake or ocean, you can now “swim” (sorta), there’s proper visual and audio effects as well. It’s not amazing, but at least you shouldn’t get stuck anymore.
- Pushed a bunch of trees down into the ground that were floating
- Added some invisible wall boundaries to keep you crazy kids inside the map
- Added more dino spawners to Beach Loot Drops to make it more exciting.
- Disabled OSVR Plugin (wasn't actively being used anyway), seeing if that fixes the "the procedure entry point createdxgifactory2 could not be located in the dynamic link library dxgi.dll" error that some have experienced.
- Fixed the game icon that has apparently been broken for like 9 months lol.
- Gave more angular damping to doors. Basically the doors slow down now - there's some friction. Vehicle doors shouldn't clip through you as bad anymore.
- Better Head collision detection - it should be harder to stick your head through things in the world now.
- Fixed some text overlapping issues in the main menu and the weird text glitches with the lock icons in the Merc Store.
- It turns out you could store big explosive barrels and stuff in your backpack, disabled that
- Fixed a bunch of random interaction bugs, like the locker door handles highlighting weird, some changes to how bow/arrow/hands work, among other things
- You will now definitely lose all the contents in your hands and backpack when you die in Mercenary Mode, so you know... don't die
- Fixed some "Death Room" issues like menu height and orientation
- Fixed a bug with bump turns while dying that would cause you to not re-locate to the death room
- Spaced out cases on the loot drop crates to avoid case clipping
- More powerful guns are now more rare in loot drops, must get to higher levels to unlock.
Please let us know if you find any issues with the new Tutorial Mission - is it clear, is it fun, is anything broken? Let us know!