Development update - September 10, 2024

More progress on reworked PB2/PB:FttP offroad vehicles (textured models are ready but not added to the game yet), mostly finished per-body part surface alternation together with visual and sound effects for them (damage, impacts, destruction), made multiple walk sound presets, added critical damage cues for entities and robotic characters.

Also added several useful features for Skin Editor to make it easier to adjust and test various potential new custom skins, including animation demos and possibility to alter some inverse kinematics (IK) logic such as inverting knees and readjusting logical length of arm/leg segments (this does not alter collision model and it will likely stay like this as it might be better for consistency between competitive and story-driven modes).

More progress on weapon casings and some CS weaponry firing sound effect reworks all of which can be heard in video. Was also finally able to fix a random ragdoll spin/flip bug that existed since very early versions of the game, made grappling hook ropes behave less like springs.

Gameplay

- Made UVs for PB2 off-road vehicle;

- Made texture for PB2 vehicle, added dirt, highlighted metal edges in some places, painted headlights, inner screens, seats etc;

- Pre-rendered multiple local lightmaps for PB2 vehicle;

- Fixed texture seams for PB2 vehicle;

- Finished PB2 vehicle model & texture (not added to the game engine yet);

- Made model for PB:FttP vehicle, made draft texture, UVs;

- Reworked minigun for PB:FttP vehicle (both 2D sprite and made 3D model of it);

- Made diffuse texture for PB:FttP vehicle, fixed window issues, pre-rendered multiple local lightmaps for PB:FttP vehicle;

- Finished PB:FttP vehicle model & texture (not added to the game engine yet);

- Made it so PB2 Corvettes break into few parts whenever destroyed;

- Fixed an issue causing Corvettes and turrets to play damage and destruction sounds whenever they are being destroyed in a certain way;

- Fixed a bug causing turrets to measure weapon range incorrectly, which was causing rocket launcher turrets to not fire at targets at medium distance;

- Added gravity compensation whenever turrets are firing at their targets (plasma, grenades and some other projectile types);

- Made it so "keep player on screen" logic is not applied whenever camera position is altered via level scripts;

- Reworked one of gadget icon because it looked too similar to another gadget icon;

- Made it so Hound Walker-CS actually spawns casings out of guns whenever it fires;

- Added support for more casings variations for different weapons;

- Made it so some particles (like casings and small wood shards) would eventually rotate to end up oriented parallel to the surface angle;

- Fixed a bug causing bullet-bullet collision to be handled for bullets that are destroyed as part of bullet-bullet collision for 1 extra game logic tick. It was occasionally resulting into single pistol bullet to be able to detonate rockets (normally it is 2 hits);

- Made it so entities might have distinctive sound effect as well as visual sparkling effect whenever they are hit at vulnerable areas. For example Corvettes under that cap, Hound Walker-CS when hit at internal electronics or under armor;

- Added metal material to be used by characters;

- Made it so metal-surfaces characters have entity-like critical damage effect on headshots. Fixed a bug causing last headshot to not play critical damage effect;

- Made limb break sound effects for wooden and concrete character body parts;

- Assigned limb break sounds for metallic character body parts, decreased amount of blood by about 10 times but it will still be kept;

- Made concrete and glass character body parts break effect;

- Added more metal-like character material presets;

- Fixes a bug that was causing glowing bullet holes to always use default hole type;

- Decreased amount of blood from explosions for non-organic character body parts;

- Fixed a bug causing admin hook to not be able to reattach to anything else after held body was destroyed;

- Added alienic shell as character body type;

- Made it so wet impact sounds for bodies with missing limbs aren't played for non-organic character body parts, made it so character body part surface-based sound is played on impacts;

- Added break particles for concrete character body parts;

- Made small wooden particle debris that are spawned whenever wooden character body parts as well as wooden crates are broken;

- Made it so repeated slug reloading for shotgun doesn't cause character to repeatedly look up and down;

- Made it so Corvette activation sound is attached to Corvette;

- Fixed a very old bug that would occasionally result into ragdolls that play death sequences to do up to 4 front/back flips (muscle forces were relying on outdated cached positions of limbs);

- Fixed a bug causing crouching players to have feet on leg at the back to follow surface even though it shouldn't;

- Fixed a performance degradation whenever game tried to simulate a volumetric explosion near wall with over 100 points. It was happening due to lack of caching by collision logic that volumetric explosions have;

- Fixed a bug that caused one type of S-entity to have incorrect shape;

- Made it so turrets and portable drones prioritize closest enemies rather than oldest ones;

- Added occlusion logic for usable switches and projectiles (render optimization);

- Decreased grappling hook bounciness by making character hard limit joints soften near limits as well as reworked grappling hook length change logic so it takes rope length into account rather than just a distance between character and hook;

- Fixed a bug causing feet to clip into some angled surfaces rather than follow them;

- Made it so entity hitpoints are no loner visible to enemies if entity's team has overheads visibility in TEAMMATES_ONLY mode;

- Fixed concave collision model inconsistencies of T-entity whenever it is flipped;

- Fixed a bug causing T-entity to miss one of parts whenever it is being flipped;

- Fixed a bug causing damage dealt by hostile entity to be registered as one that is dealt by the player who has touched this autonomous hostile entity.

Level Editor

- Added object lock/unlock/hide/unhide and group roll/unroll sound effects just to let map designers know if they have clicked something they did not intended to by accident as well as to make it more clear what these small icons actually do.

Interfaces

- Fixed a bug causing parameters panel to appear with darkened out background behind values column due to lack of dynamic buttons information initially.

Skin Editor

- Made it so closing Skin Editor resets zoom to a new default zoom value;

- Added support for automatic addition of new properties in Skin Editor - this way old skins should be automatically updated if any new properties are introduced to Skin Editor;

- Added "Play idle animation" and "Play idle crouch animation" demo modes;

- Added option to show IK lines + joints view;

- Added option to show collision circles;

- Added support for altering per-body-part surface types of a skin;

- Added support for altering walking sound presets;

- Merged "mute" and "none" into single voice preset option;

- Added support for altering pitch of current voice preset;

- Added support for altering pitch of current walking sound preset;

- Fixed a bug causing corrupted hash error due to empty field save attempt;

- Added "Play walk animation" demo mode that makes player walk in place (or more like teleports player while keeping all the velocities that would normally happen during real walk);

- Added "Play death sequence" demo mode;

- Added "Random voice sounds" demo mode;

- Fixed crashes related to death of edited character while Skin Editor was open;

- Fixed crash related to attempt to speak missing sound file by character;

- Fixed a bug causing previously selected demo mode to not be highlighted in a drop-down list;

- Fixed a bug that could cause multiple skins to have same rasterization cache hash and thus first skin to occasionally override 2nd one from players point of view;

- Fixed a crash due to lack of opacity cache if character happened to take projectile damage during demo mode;

- Fixed a "Play death sequence" demo mode bug that would cause ragdolls to explode if they happened to end up behind a solid wall before teleporting back to initial position;

- Added "Showcase damage impacts" demo mode that fires bullets at player while healing and occasionally removing bullet holes and decals;

- Added "Attack with swords" demo mode;

- Made it so "Play walk animation" demo mode teleports guns properly;

- Made it so damage numbers aren't shown when Skin Editor is open;

- Made it so ragdoll overhead is hidden;

- Added "Play sprint animation" demo mode;

- Added "Play crouch walk animation" demo mode;

- Fixed a bug causing sprint key to remain being held after Skin Editor is closed, essentially preventing jetpack deactivation with X key later on;

- Fixed a bug causing "Showcase damage impacts" demo mode to occasionally fire at non-yet-existing spine break bones that usually stay at initial position of a character;

- Added support for arm/leg segment logical length altering that is later used in IK. Added automatic sprite position update if game world is paused so these changes can be seen in Skin Editor;

- Fixed a bug causing demo mode drop-down list to not be initially scrolled to a selected demo mode;

- Added support for non-existing weapon hold/fire previews via demo modes (pistol, rifle, minigun, shotgun). Previously held weapons are returned back to character once Skin Editor has been closed.

Multiplayer

- Fixed multiple bugs that would occasionally cause entities to not play destruction sequence on client-side and thus crates could not spawn any particle effects on destruction sometimes;

- Fixed an overhead permission bug for connected spectating players that was using server's host character as a reference to decide whether overheads need to be visible (synced) or not;

- Fixed a sound sync position bugs related to newly created entities not have updated transform matrices for a in-game logic frame, resulting into some entities to be heard at zero coordinates for a brief moment;

- Fixed a bug causing disabled entity joints to be threated as enabled in multiplayer position compensation logic;

- Fixed a bug letting server host to see direction towards offscreen enemy players who are having connection issues, browsing menu or typing in the chat.

Sounds

- Reworked main menu button click sound slightly to be less repetitive and made it sound more clean (1);

- Made sound effect for shotgun casings bouncing off the ground (1);

- Reworked firing sounds for CS-RC/CS-Pistol/OICW (3);

- Reworked firing and cocking sounds for CS-DAZ (2);

- Made entity critical damage sound (1);

- Metal & wooden limb break sounds (2);

- Made alienic shell damage/break sounds (2);

- Made walking sound presets (21 including variations);

- Reworked Noir Lime's minigun firing sound (1);

- Level Editor lock/unlock/hide/unhide and group roll/unroll sound effects (6).