Development update - July 10, 2024

More work on re-implementing existing features from Plazma Burst 2, but in a better way, hopefully. Not too sure about Destruction and Rage effects, they probably will be kept for custom maps only, at least in this cartoonish form.

Today's video should showcase most of the new changes (recorded on my melting PC. Will give a try to thermal paste renewal, maybe it will help).

These are not all PB2 features I want to re-add, there are still fanart update stuff to do.

Multiplayer

- Fixed a bug causing floating overheads to stay whenever client-side version of a player gets switched off;

- Standardized way of synchronizing options which clients always send to the server they've been connected to;

- Made it so server can move player's camera instantly to the new position (in case of player respawn, for example);

- Made "input send rate" setting work, implemented logic to send data less frequently;

- Made it so camera speed is sent to server and handled separately for each character;

- Added synchronization and support for "world state receive rate", "gore & violence", "show damage numbers", "replay my deaths" options;

- Fixed a bug that would break match disconnection logic if user opens Settings screen mid-game;

- Made it so connection pop-up isn't shown while user has opened Settings screen mid-game;

- Implemented synchronization of damage and elimination counters;

- Fixed an issue causing damage and elimination counters to be counted incorrectly when replay was started;

- Fixed a spectating crash due to a new model of synchronization delay compensation. Also fixed the issue causing spectators to not hear any sounds;

- Fixed a bug causing spectated player to not appear without railgun trails whenever they shoot;

- Fixed railgun trail visibility of other player's railguns whenever current player lost head;

- Made it so time nudge is disabled whenever player is spectating another player;

- Fixed an issue causing client's camera to inherit velocity of server-sided character rather than velocity of speculative client-sided one;

- Fixed an issue causing skin style altering server-side level logic to not change skin on client-side;

- Fixed a bug causing accessories to be incorrectly teleported during player's teleportation in cases when interpolation is enabled, when it is disabled, and when speculative version of a player is enabled.

- Fixed a bug causing eliminated players to have accessories pulled from wrong position whenever they were seen for the first time, especially noticeable in line-of-sight vision modes.

- Fixed a synchronization bug that was causing fire that existed both before and after replay to be not shown and cause memory leaks;

- Fixed an issue causing C-weapon to play sounds twice on client-side;

- Made it so fire types removal due to lack of synchronized fires does not happen instantly (which was causing last fire of certain types to disappear instantly);

- Projectile synchronization optimizations;

- Improved visuals for fire and cold projectiles;

- Fixed an issue causing lack of trail at the beginning of fire projectiles for non-speculative character;

- Fixed a bug causing plasma gun projectiles to disappear the moment it goes from speculative to synchronized, then teleport a frame backwards and then jump forward on next frame (especially weird with trail that is drawn for plasma projectiles now);

- Added position obfuscation for synced offscreen damage numbers;

- Made it so position-obfuscated floating numbers are allowed to fall like they normally do;

- Made it so performance graph isn't calculated in UI-less server (since it can be a source of performance degradation due to bitmap generations);

- Added synchronization of enemy entity/gadget damage and enemy entity/gadget elimination counters;

- Fixed a bug causing damage numbers from fire to constantly float upwards due to lack of position updates and grouping causing velocity resets to slightly upwards;

- Made it so map host can't see overheads of Ghosting players;

- Fixed a bug causing damage number position obfuscation to work based on host's camera position rather than client's simulated camera position;

- Fixed an issue causing host to see invisible players when they started to have connection issues (due to connection issue icon over them). This and any other icons are no longer shown for fully hidden players;

- Implemented character effect synchronization;

- Fixed a bug causing Rage/Destruction effects to not play loop sound effects on client-side if host doesn't see players that have this effect;

- Fixed an incorrect coordinates conversion that caused offscreen floating damage numbers to be shown in wrong places;

- Made it so Time Warp + Ghosting effect players are synchronized earlier;

- Made it so Ghosting players are synchronized whenever client's player collides with them in various ways (they are still invisible, but this way they will be able to properly collide with client-side version of a player);

- Fixed a grappling hook crash on client-side whenever grappling hook owner moves offscreen and gets locally removed.

Gameplay

- Made shaking from damage to be smaller for characters of high scale;

- Fixed an issue making it possible to grab body-broken players in between of two parts while both of them are far apart;

- Made "in-game brightness" option work;

- Made it so there is an option to disable in-game hovertips;

- Re-implemented screen flashes on damage inflicted;

- Added damage reports from radioactive areas;

- Added damage reports from fire;

- Made it so damage report sounds are getting quieter if they are played too frequently and for too long;

- Made it so entities remember who pushed, damaged, dragged or hooked them - if entities causes damage to other players, first player will get hit registration sounds;

- Made it so ragdoll deletion by other player triggers elimination report sound. Also made it for enemy entities and gadgets;

- Implemented detection of initial entity pusher that spreads through all entities that are pushing each other in chain reaction. This way game would know who did push a whole stack of barrels even if the first barrel will not do any damage in the end, for example;

- Made it so elimination reporting works when other player was pushed off the height and died to fall damage;

- Made it so thrown weapons are playing hit registration sounds whenever they hit other players;

- Re-added screen flashing on eliminations;

- Made settings "play death beep sound", "play damage report sound", "play low health beep sound" to affect which sounds are played;

- Made it so thrown weapons and gadgets also deal increased damage to teammates if "friendly fire" is enabled;

- Fixed a bug that was causing accessories to be thrown away on teleportation due to accessories state update recursion in single player mode;

- Accessories optimizations for cases when there is more than one of them on screen at the same time;

- Made it so line-of-sight vision works through transparent surfaces;

- Made it possible for weapons to play unique sound effect whenever they are fire for the 2nd time without cooldown (flamethrower);

- Reworked fire effect visuals, it is a volumetric shader rather than particles with fire texture now;

- Added intensity support for the new fire shader;

- Added gradual intensity changed for new fire shader on appearance/disappearance;

- Made it so fire shader isn't getting inverted when fire source is moving up;

- Fixed a bug causing bottom part of reworked fire effect to shake occasionally, better noticeable in slow-motion;

- Added fire trail splitting logic whenever fire source moves too fast or teleports;

- Reworked fire so it looks better when it is on a vertical wall;

- Added noise randomization for fire sources;

- Added support for colored fire sources for reworked fire effect;

- Made new fire effect volumetric;

- Masked seam at the bottom of reworked fire effect;

- Implemented 3 levels of fire quality, connected settings' radio buttons;

- Made it so players are not set on fire from fire sources that were not meant to spread (such as fire from lasers hitting wood, because these same lasers do not actually set players on fire);

- Made it so C-weapon takes character scale into account;

- Made it so C-weapon properly interacts with liquids;

- Made it so C-weapon properly interacts with other characters;

- Made it so new fire effect gets depth offset whenever some part of rotating vehicles is set on fire;

- Fixed a crash whenever player that holds specific new weapon type dies;

- Changed color of frozen spots a bit;

- Made it so fire effect is drawn on fire projectiles;

- Added flamethrower magazine impact sound;

- Made it so damage sounds can be played when hitting enemy entities (turrets) and gadgets (laser mines, viruses);

- Fixed a bug causing damage sounds to be played whenever player is hitting crate that has enemy player standing on it;

- Added separate damage and elimination counters for enemy entities/gadgets, with separate set of sounds;

- Made it so shield damage causes same kind of alternate hit registration sounds;

- Made it so damage numbers are drawn at the edge of the screen when they are happening offscreen. Only for current player;

- Added sprint start sound;

- Fixed an issue causing rigid body dragging key holding while switching to swords to cause swords to become instantly enabled. Left mouse click still activates them later on without any delay;

- Reworked Time Warp so it doesn't have an island of no slow-down effect near player, but operates on rigid body being part of player principle instead;

- Time Warp effect optimizations;

- Added screen flash at the start/end of slow-motion;

- Made it so Destruction effect draws fire on player. I actually don't think Destruction effect will be part of main gameplay, especially with fire effect, but it could be interesting in multiplayer and custom maps;

- Made it so Destruction effect repaints projectiles, lasers, fire and makes fire damage increased as well;

- Fixed fire effect artifacts due to high intensity;

- Fixed time grenades bug due to previous optimizations;

- Fixed a bug causing fire replacement with stronger one to work incorrectly and draw two types of fire on the same fire source while making them both animated twice as fast;

- Added Destruction/Rage sound effects, made loop sounds to start/stop slowly as well, added screen flashes on start/end;

- Made it so second player does not keep falling constantly when first player grabs second one. This should allow more casual interactions such as shaking/holding hands;

- Made Ghosting effect to have soft alpha change;

- Made Ghosting effect owners appear whenever they take damage;

- Fixed Ghosting effect issues related to seeing other non-allied players having it in signeplayer;

- Implemented weapon opacity change when weapons are held by Ghosting characters;

- Fixed a bug causing impacts into the walls horizontally to be occasionally considered snow impacts;

- Made it so Ghosting players do not have footstep sounds, but they still will leave footprints on a snow, grass sounds will also play unless Ghosting player is crouching. Dust isn't spawned too;

- Made it so only synchronized 3D rigid bodies are pushed by Ghosting players (magazines);

- Fixed an issue causing background snow particles to pass through overlapped walls;

- Reworked pool search for 3D rigid bodies so it considers depth of water pools;

- Fixed an issue causing situation where jetpack using player tries to fly over the wall, but character's collision box keeps falling down while their ragdoll keeps visually going up over the ledge, resulting in player either taking damage or being eventually pulled down. With new changes - player just loses stability if it holds directional keys while colliding with a wall or entity;

- Implemented decreased impact damage on a snow (20% so far);

- Fixed issues causing incorrect snow detection on angled surfaces;

- Made it so Ghosting players appear whenever they fire non-sword weapons, when they throw weapons/gadgets, use self-boost/double-jump/jetpack, grappling hook or dragging other rigid bodies/stuck in a wall with climbing sword;

- Fixed admin hook bug causing admin to fly towards held object at high velocity occasionally;

- Fixed an issue causing admin to lose stability occasionally;

- Made admin hook longer;

- Fixed a new bug causing admins to be not able to crawl on wall using admin hook;

- Made it so overhead icons reappear when players become visible again;

- Fixed an issue making it possible to get hovertip on invisible player or their held weapon;

- Made it so Destruction/Rage effect fire intensities are multiplied by player's opacity. Fixed an issue making host see such players while they have Ghosting effect too;

- Made it so Time Warp + Ghosting effect makes players slightly visible;

- Made it so Poisoned effect (for PB2 fanart update guns that aren't re-implemented yet) knowns who initiated it and can properly cause hit registration sounds;

- Fixed foliage optimization bug;

- Fixed an issue causing dying Ghosting players to not have blinking visibility due to them still taking damage from dying state.

Level Editor

- Fixed a bug causing connection between objects if one of objects has ID of another object in a string such as title/name rather than as a pointer;

- Fixed a crash when exiting Skin Editor without saving but saving through confirmation pop-up;

- Fixed an issue which could cause fire sources to not be removed when entering blueprint mode in Level Editor;

- Added error reporting on attempt to install deleted weapons on entities instead of whole game crashes;

- Made it so effects such as Ghosting, Destruction, Rage, Time Warp can be assigned through level logic;

- Fixed an issue causing snow to not be spawned under the movable in some cases;

- Fixed a bug causing map data corruption on Undo after Cut operation on trigger;

- Made it so New button creates a new map that has action that enables automatic host/connected players assignment. It probably is only good for starting map designers so initial map making experience is more intuitive for them;

- Made it so instead of empty drop down lists to select object of matching type from it gives an option to create such object (you can create surface, teams, default skins this way);

- Fixed a crash that would happen if player was destroyed right after map testing ended;

- Fixed a bug causing effect pointers point to corrupted data if Level Editor or level logic attempted to access base class of effects.

Interfaces

- Fixed an issue causing "Edit in Skin Editor" and "Edit in Level Editor" to appear for all files in file viewer no matter what type of creation it has;

- Fixed text issues in leaderboard due to earlier optimizations;

- Made it so notifications are closed once user leaves Settings screen.

Sounds

- Reworked old hit registration sounds and added new ones for elimination and elimination counter (5 sounds);

- Made repeated flamethrower fire sound (1 sound);

- Made flamethrower reload sounds (2 sounds);

- Made a sound of flamethrower magazine canister drop (1 sound);

- Made elimination and elimination counter sounds for eliminating enemy entities and gadgets (2 sounds);

- Made 3 hit registration sounds of various strength for cases when player hits enemy entities or gadgets (3 sounds);

- Reworked Ray Rifle magazine insertion sound because I feel like it made it sound more powerful than it is (1 sound);

- Made sprint start sound (1 sound);

- Reworked fire sound of N-weapon to sounds stronger (1 sound);

- Reworked classic Time Warp start/end sound effects (2 sounds);

- Made a loop sound effect for Destruction effect when firing laser weapons (1 sound);

- Made start/stop/loop sound effects for Destruction effect (3 sounds);

- Made start/stop/loop sound effects for Rage effect (3 sounds);

- Made start/stop sound effects for Ghosting effect (2 sounds).