I'm very happy to announce that leaderboards are officially live! There are a few other QOL changes worked in there, but the majority of the new stuff is leaderboards-related.
1.0.4 Changes:
- Leaderboards for workshop scenarios! Clicking the podium button will now bring up the leaderboards for a scenario on the workshop (not for local files). The scoreboard also shows up when you complete a challenge.
- When updating a scenario on the workshop, authors are given the option to "Invalidate Old Scores". When this is checked, old scores will still be on the leaderboard server, but they are either hidden or show up with an asterisk (*) depending on your preference under Game Options -> LBs. When someone plays the challenge and has a previously invalidated score, his first new score will overwrite the old one, even if the score wasn't higher (just to get a valid score on the scoreboard).
- Clicking a user's name on the leaderboard takes you to their Steam profile.
- Added option to show only friends on leaderboard (Game Options -> LBs tab)
- Added choice to opt out of individual leaderboards when you go to play a scenario as a challenge.
- Added choice to opt out of all leaderboards on Game Options -> LBs.
- Updated UE from 4.18 to 4.19. Supposedly this comes with reduced input lag.
- Made Sprint Ability's speed multiplier minimum 0 (was 1).
- Modified upload/download buttons - Icon for Upload new or Download new is the old icon of a circle with a hollowed out arrow. Icon for Update or Download new version is a smaller arrow, no circle.
- Added note on Bot Weapons tab that the weapons are pulled from the chosen Character profile.
- Changed "ADS" hotbar text to "ADS/Zoom"
- Forced UE4 to do Garbage Collection when you pause and just before a challenge starts. Hopefully this helps get rid of mid-challenge stutters. The previous engine timer for automatic Garbage Collection was 60 seconds, it is now 600 seconds.
- Reworked some logic for selecting spawn spots to cause less framerate drops.
- Fixed bug of Escape->Spacebar causing the Scenario Editor to Scenario Browser transition to occur repeatedly.
- Changed default key bindings for weapons, abilities, and zoom to make a little more sense. (1-8 for weapons, Shift, E, Q, V for abilities, and Mouse2 for zoom).
- Added "Reset Session" bind, default set to F3. If you are in a challenge, it restarts the challenge. If you aren't, it just resets stats/accuracy. The key shows up in the Game Options -> Key Binds menu as well. (Removed "Reset Stats" key and replaced it with this)
As I've said on the Discord Server a few times, I'm about to go into a period of overtime at my day job. I'll be working 60 hours a week for a month, followed by a week of training out of state. My development time for the game is coming to a temporary halt, but my support for it is far from over. I'll still be in the Discord server answering questions on how to make profiles/edit things and hopefully help you guys make awesome scenarios that are fun to play and great practice.
Shortly before the game launched on Steam, I sent out Steam keys to all of the pre-purchasers in emails (by the way - to newcomers wondering why so many reviews were from gifted Steam keys, this is why. There were about 380 pre-purchases from people who followed the paypal link that was on my Youtube channel). Included in the email was a survey asking what people wanted to see sooner rather than later. The top six requests were:
- Advanced FPS Movement Options (strafe jumping/bunnyhopping)
- Graph/histograph to look at your scores on challenges for trending
- New bot-type of recorded path (player runs along route, saves input to file, bot plays it back. Can loop or shuffle)
- Leaderboards for all scenarios
- Fake network lag
- FOV Scaling options
So, I've got 2/6 of those top requests implemented (FOV scaling was done in the whirlwind of programming before release, and leaderboards are live today), and the remaining 4 would also be great to have in. I'm really looking forward to having time to add those improvements!
Outside of those, I intend on continuing to add more profile customization options to make it possible to emulate more and more games. And hopefully the existing options will continue to be flexible enough to let you guys make the training scenarios that you want.
As always, thank you for your support of this project. I'm very glad it came this far, and it has been great fun making it and playing it :).