With the number of testers growing we’ve decided it was time to begin posting patch notes so that our testers could more easily monitor the progress and changes of the game.
After using Discord for chat in the earlier sessions we have now integrated in-game voice chat. This chat is spatialized and as such you will only hear players who are nearby. At this point there is no push to talk option it is always on if your microphone is enabled.
A heavy focus of this patch has been on optimization. The last testing session allowed us to fill servers to over capacity and run some metrics and while the networking held up well, we noticed some reprojection when we disabled death and had a large combat scene in the center. We aimed to help address this by reducing some of the particle effects, applying heavier use of LOD, and adding additional occluding walls in the main area. We also introduced haptic feedback in this patch. Your controller should now vibrate when firing a weapon, hitting an enemy with a knife, and when releasing the grenade.
Energy shields and Focus Stims were also added to the game. Energy shields can be held in either hand and can be used to block incoming ranged attacks, but will not aid against explosions. They can absorb a limited amount of damage and will then dissipate. They are limited in size and as a result opposing players can pick around the shield, rewarding both players for their anticipation skills. Focus Stims are used similar to painkiller pills in that you can store them on your chest for later use. To use you hold them near your neck and press the grip button. This will will increase your damage output for 15 seconds.
Finally, a few under the hood changes took place to collect metrics from each match and to allow if needed banning of players. The metrics data will allow us to produce leaderboards and other information. We will be testing the collection of the data and should be using it in some useful way here soon.
These are just a few of the features. The complete build notes are listed below.
Audio
- Voice is now supported in game. It is spatialized and should only be heard if near other players. You can adjust the volume in the Sound options as well as an option in voice mode to enable/disable your voice from being sent. Voice is enabled by default and there is no push to talk options yet. This will change after a few patches, mostly for testing purposes.
- Other players footsteps can now be heard, as well as the footsteps of NPCs. Players previously only heard their own footsteps.
- Introduced new energy shield and focus stim sound effects.
- Improved footstep sound attenuation.
- Jet pack audio is now properly spatialized.
Graphics
- Increased lightmap size on some objects to improve the visual quality of static shadows.
- Improved the first aid kit and painkiller models.
- Tweaked some of the particle settings to improve rendering lag. This may result in less appealing visuals in some cases, but should aid in keeping a consistent frame rate. Once we have completed optimizing we may turn back on some of these effects.
- The sniper rifle muzzle flash now has a blueish-orange tint and improved the beam appearance.
- Added new particles and materials for energy shield absorbing effects.
- Fixed a bug which wasn’t displaying impact effects properly in all cases if the attacker was an NPC.
- Corrected some issues with some particle types appearing through walls.
- Fixed a bug which allowed the floor tile shards to fall through the floor and render through it.
Interactive Objects
- Energy shields have been introduced. These are active blocking shields which can be held in either hand. They have a limited amount of damage they can absorb and after that point they will dissipate. They can not be stowed and will dissipate if dropped. Energy shields are only effective against bullets they can not block knives or projectile weapons (Rockets/Grenades).
- Introduced Focus Stims. These Stims work similar to painkiller pills in that you can store them in chest inventory slots for later use or you can drag them to your chest or head area and press the secondary use/grip button to inject them into your bloodstream and consume the item. These stims will increase damage output for 15 seconds. There is an audio effect which will indicate when they are active or expired.
- Increased the damage per tick of damaged pods.
- Increased the damage and AoE radius of exploding canisters.
- Items which spawn inside of lockers will now spawn more frequently.
- Marked some objects to not be climbable which were previously climbable. This is mainly to avoid glitches on those objects.
- Added a small amount of new ammunition and medical kits to the center room.
- Lockers now render from a bit further distance, they were sometimes popping into view a bit later than intended.
Map
- The center room now has some extended walls on both sides, which feature a small standing platform. These can be used as sniping locations, and also help to occlude geometry behind them and increase performance in the main area.
- Added additional direction arrows to help guide players to the center part of the map.
- Energy shield spawners have been placed in locations which reward players for jetting or climbing. They are rare spawns and a maximum of four of them will spawn on any map, on average there will only be one or two.
- Added some additional props for cover in some of the hallways.
- Additional red lights were added to the center room.
- Covered up some cracks in the tutorial/training lobby.
- Fixed some floating shells in one of the long hallways before the center room.
- Fixed some weapons which were slightly into tables and making them hard to pick up or slightly floating.
- Fixed some cracks in geometry.
Metrics
- Some basic metrics are now being recorded to a database including matches, kills, and general information about how well players did in the matches. This will be exposed via some kind of leaderboard in the future. All data will be wiped at release.
Miscellaneous
- Players no longer receive damage or stun flashes or heartbeat sounds when they are already dead.
- Adjusted backend settings to allow for a beta branch with its own master server, DB, and dedicated server instances. This is mostly for development purposes, but will be used for beta testing once the game is released as well.
- Implemented ban system.
Optimization
- Adjusted the LOD groups which has boosted performance in many locations.
- The downstairs doorways are now hierarchical instanced meshes.
User Interface
- Player and NPC nameplates are now a bit closer to the head, to make it more difficult to spot them when hiding behind geometry.
- Options now has 3 tabs as it was starting to grow in size.
- Added a voice slider for those who don’t want to hear the voice chat.
- Added a voice mode to the audio tab to enable/disable your voice from being sent.
- Restore of health as the match starts will no longer send a banner message.
Weapons
- Added support for separating the auto grip distances for both grab and release so the grab distances can be reduced so you don’t accidentally grab it as often.
- Added Haptic Feedback (rumble) for weapons. The controllers should vibrate when firing a weapon, throwing a grenade, or successfully stabbing someone.