Development update - June 9, 2024

Installed Ubuntu, did a lot of bug fixes and important improvements. I can say that Plazma Burst 3 does work in Ubuntu now.

Configured Ubuntu development environment for tests, been also testing camera that inherits player velocity, essentially creating an in-between variant of "fast" and "slow" camera from Plazma Burst 2. Implemented thrown status for guns and grenades instead of all guns being deadly by default even towards teammates.

More in a video and even more below ~

Interfaces

- Fixed an issue causing Alt key ot be held after user Alt-Tab-ed out of Level Editor;

- Fixed an issue causing main menu to blink with click animation in top-left corner on start;

- Made it so overheads of low hitpoint capacity characters do not have health bar uncentered and black background being resized to be smaller than health bar;

- Fixed an issue causing tooltips to overflow right edge of the screen whenever they appear near it;

- Loading screen image corrections;

- Fixed a case where editing a temporary group and deleting it without saving changes will prompt to save changes but will delete it anyway;

- Fixed an issue causing whole screen to blink whenever user clicks onto drop-down list and then clicks away from it without picking an option;

- Implemented logging out buttons in Settings, added icons for different kinds of account management buttons;

- Added sound effect for first-time welcoming screens, updated some visuals there;

- Fixed an issue causing reset default values button to be unclickable at the right side in some cases;

- Fixed a bug preventing users from entering their accounts;

- Added fallback for missing fonts with similar alternatives for Ubuntu on website;

- Added driver crashing handling in main menu (for some reason it was quite common in Ubuntu);

- Fixed an issue causing some outlines to be less than 1 pixel on some game window sizes/resolutions;

- Fixed a crash that would happen in case if click effect was played before it was initialized;

- Fixed a bug causing text optimization to reuse polygonal texts of different sizes without updating them if text stays the same after reuse;

- Made it so in-game hints do not appear when menu or settings overlay is shown;

- Linked fullscreen entering on startup if enabled;

- Made it so unsaved changes aren't recognized if user click on already active button in Settings;

- Fixed an issues causing raw mouse input setting to hide in-game cursor if static system cursor was selected and not dynamic one;

- Changed color of pressed buttons from dark yellow to dark blue for non-black buttons;

- Made it so starting up Level Editor/Skin Editor disables cursor locking;

- Made it so Alt+Enter temporarily changes fullscreen mode;

- Fixed an issue causing in-game hints to appear whenever player hovers over antigravity field and not the physical entity itself;

- Moved main menu notifications so they do not cover menu buttons.

Gameplay

- Fixed a bug causing 2D/3D mode setting on server instance causing server to send different amount of entities due to assumption that players see more/less area;

- Fixed an issue causing particles in 2D mode appear larger than in 3D mode;

- Fixed an issue causing flares to be not drawn for 1 frame whenever they are made;

- Decreased resolution of lens flare sprites since they were down-scaled on game startup anyway;

- Made it so lens flares have their colors multiplied with colors of liquids whenever they pass through them;

- Fixed an issue causing wall switches to appear with z-fighting in water reflections;

- Increased size of water reflection texture so water distortions would not cause texture clamping near edges of screen;

- Installed and configured Ubuntu just to see if there are any issues with game running there, turns out there are some serious visual bugs, possibly related to different implementations of video drivers;

- Reworked snow generation on top of platforms logic since it did not take arbitrary shapes into account;

- Got rid of glPolygonOffset (used for shadows and hit marks) because it resulted into disappointingly different results depending whether Windows/Linux is running. New implementation is shader-based and offsets vertices by certain amounts in-world units;

- Fixed a bug causing underbarrel grenade launcher grenades to not interact with antigravity fields;

- Made it so sorting influence near transparent walls that go very close to camera isn't limited (preventing an issue causing character to appear in front of them if it is far from them in 2D space but actually needs to be drawn behind);

- Added sorting optimization near transparent walls in case of 2D mode;

- Fixed a distortion issue that would happen if camera was too close to glPolygonOffset rework alternative method geometry (usually just in Level Editor, but still could appear creepy);

- Implemented framerate capping and linked it to previously made Settings screen slider;

- Fixed lamp occlusion with water objects due to liquid class/surface type offsets standartisations;

- Fixed an issue causing entity-attached lamps to appear delayed by 1 frame;

- Fixed a bug causing underbarrel grenade launcher grenades to just disappear when hitting metal surfaces due to substep collision accuracy improvement changes;

- Added dynamic light draw request grouping whenever it is sent to a parallel thread;

- Implemented camera position limiting so character can not move away from the screen bounds (mostly an anti-cheat measure for extremely slow camera movement setting);

- Added velocity inheritance option for camera (can be switched off). It kind of makes "slow" camera setting feel like a combination of PB2's "slow" and "fast". Basically it makes camera much more reliable on moving elevators and inertive jetpack combats (where relative velocities matter the most) by applying softened velocity of player but it also makes it quite uncanny for regular gameplay for someone who been playing PB2 big part of their lives with "slow" camera. Not yet sure if I want to make it default, but maybe I should since it functionally should be better. "Fast" camera movement players won't notice anything changing with or without this option enabled.

- Fixed a crash that would happen when frozen character with cloth physics gets teleported;

- Implemented "thrown" status for grenades and guns to minimize cases where player could self-boost into just dead character and get completely destroyed by impact of heavy weapons that aren't really moving fast enough yet relative velocity is high enough to trigger weapon impact damage for self-boosting player. Additionally made it so "thrown" weapon and grenades will only deal bonus damage to enemies and throwing player himself, leaving teammates to whom you try to give some of your heavy equipment unharmed. It also makes throwing grenades into heads of your enemies a legitimate option to deal about 30-80 damage depending on grenade type and relative velocity, though it might take a lot of skill to master;

- Linked camera speed and player velocity inheritance by camera options from Settings screen to gameplay;

- Implemented cursor sensitivity as well as OS-level mouse coordinates/raw delta coordinates support, linked to Settings screen;

- Implemented cursor locking if enabled (raw delta coordinates and sensitivity won't work without it);

- Fixed a bug causing rays of ray-based weapons to freeze mid-air under very rare conditions (holding player gets removed and gun enters sleep state due to lying on ground without velocity);

- Fixed a bug causing player velocity inheritance by camera being incorrectly scaled with the speed of the game;

- Implemented increased damage from "thrown" weapons and grenades to entities;

- Adjusted slowing down force applied to grenades and projectiles by impact-preventing antigravity fields so it is same for both;

- Added timer for "keep player in frame" logic ignorance whenever player loops between characters;

- Fixed a bug causing loop sounds to be replaced by physical floody sounds with lower priority;

- Fixed a bug from 3D physics engine migration which was causing collision model of movables to appear in incorrect positions;

- Made it so long-range teleportation does not have smoothed overhead position morphing when leaving vehicles;

- Fixed a bug that would cause quick sword attack to cancel sword activation sequence but not result into sword attack;

- Fixed a bug causing short sword attack attempt before weapon switch timer runs out to not result into sword attack. Removed weapon switch timer from delaying sword attacks whatsoever.

Multiplayer

- Implemented support for lamp attachment to entities sync;

- Fixed an issue causing dynamic lamps to stop being synchronized whenever they move too far from their original position;

- Fixed stuttering of slowly moving movables if interpolation was enabled on client-side;

- Fixed a bug that would cause collision models of movables to continue moving after movables have stopped moving on client-side;

- Reworked client-side movables so they have extra collision model that specifically interacts with client-side version of a player while server version of player interacts with another one - this helped to fix constant jumping/crouching of player due to client-side and server versions of player not representing same positions after network delay compensation time;

- Fixed a crash that would sometimes happen if player died from blinding laser;

- Fixed a bug causing lamps attached to movable to occasionally end up in the movable and not generate lens flares;

- Made it so low settings server doesn't try to generate lens flares and incoming damage geometries for controlled player;

- Made it so dynamic lamps inherit color in Multiplayer;

- Made it so static lamps inherit intensity in Multiplayer;

- Added limitation on how many sound effects server can send to client, sorted by priority (weapon firing sounds and voice lines have higher priority than physics sounds, for example);

- Started implementing speculative extrapolation for vision logic to compensate for network delay (player will receive information about objects that move towards him from behind the edge of screen earlier based on capped network delay and delta velocity between object and player himself). It should prevent cases where player will see objects appearing mid-air without really seeing where did they came from. These extrapolations are capped by walls and support up to 200 ms of network delay to prevent cheating;

- Fixed an issue causing railguns to lose trails due to speculative vision model rework;

- Fixed a crash happening whenever player would die from strong antigravity field while holding grenade in hand;

- Made it so speculative vision doesn't include camera velocity if camera is fixed with level logic;

- Implemented and tested the case of speculative vision whenever player flies on a jetpack fast enough;

- Implemented and tested the case of speculative vision whenever movable moves towards player;

- Implemented and tested the case of speculative vision whenever player has "fast" camera setting and looks around fast enough;

- Fixed directed raycast vision not working with speculative vision due to lack of view angle sync;

- Implemented caching for speculative vision offset calculations;

- Implemented speculative vision for entities, ragdolls, projectiles, guns;

- Fixed an issue causing directed trace to often fail to see movables due to them blocking themselves from being seen;

- Updated movable & liquids visibility tests for synchronization to work properly when low update rate is configured on server;

- Made it so grenades (such as throwable lamps) have similar synchronization logic to dynamic lamps made in Level Editor (so they are seen long before grenade itself is visible, as long as they illuminate strong light);

- Made it so water reflection property is synced for liquid kinds;

- Made it so hints under crosshair do not appear in replay mode;

- Implemented smoothed overhead transition whenever player is leaving vehicle;

- Fixed a bug causing "show overheads" property of teams to be incorrectly synced.

Level Editor

- Made it so camera position is properly saved/restore before/after playtest started;

- Added information about camera position, camera zoom and pointer position;

- Added context menu for camera position information that includes zoom reset, position reset, camera rotation reset and move camera to selected objects (while taking into account side/top panels being shown) options;

- Made it so mouse wheel zoom tries to snap to zoom value of 100% whenever it jumps over it;

- Made it so left arrow key in structure view list makes selection jump to the parent group;

- Added context options for global folding/unfolding of trigger groups;

- Added live update whenever "Disallow opacity altering skin features" property is changed for characters;

- Made it so in-world hints aren't shown in Level Editor under cursor;

- Fixed an issue causing Esc key to not close drop-down lists if user started dragging camera;

- Made it so live update happens whenever color and attachment properties are changed for light objects;

- Implemented support for liquids to be extendable towards camera;

- Fixed an issue causing liquids to not generate proper reflections if "don't move near walls" is turned off and reflections are enabled (by removing bottom & side edges since they were counted for flat reflection position);

- Implemented PB2's Old Level Editor-style switch buttons whenever drop-down lists have few enough options that can be fit into parameters panel (such as direction, yes/no properties and few more). In some cases it will also try to shorten options if they have share same prefixes, while automatically adjusting to fit parameters panel while it is being resized, eventually falling back to drop-down lists;

- Fixed an issue causing parameters panel to be not redrawn whenever Revert button is pressed and there were some objects selected;

- Added button to reset values to automatic value for some properties (like current and handicapped health of characters, position of front/back of surfaces and liquid kinds);

- Optimized property search for PB2's Old Level Editor-style switches to make them being rendered faster;

- Implemented caching for faster text drawing in parameters panel;

- Added correct error reporting whenever switch-like properties have unacceptable value;

- Made it so performance graph is shown in Level Editor whenever it is turned on;

- Fixed an issue causing parts of skins to be visually cropped incorrectly when used as decorations;

- Made it so start of Quick Pick resets tool to FreeEdit (otherwise it looked confusing to have object creation cursor when trying to pick team for character, for example);

- Fixed an issue causing search & replace as well as context menu to not work in Code Editors.

Skin Editor

- Fixed a crash as a result of editing an empty file made via file manager;

- Made it so "Disallow opacity altering skin features" property of ragdolls in Level Editor generates a notification in Skin Editor whenever there is an attempt to alter opacity of skin parts, with detailed report of operations in case edited skin was made earlier;

- Fixed click sound being played twice in Skin Editor whenever preview quality is changed;

- Added draw in-front/in-back operations that specifically do not alter skin transparency (previously "Disallow opacity altering skin features" would just cancel any draw operations that can in theory alter transparency).

- Added PB2's Old Level Editor-style switches for some of properties in Skin Editor.

Server

- Did some changes for server logic to make it work with updated versions of server software;

- Fixed an account creation bug that started to happen after server software update;

- Made it so auto ID naming for new settings properties ignores single quotes;

- Implemented missing implementation for profile cache update in chat service whenever player saves settings mid-game.

Sounds

- Reworked double-jump sound;

- Made sound effect for first-time welcoming screen;

- Reworked compilation, saving, error message and clicks sounds for Level Editor;

- Updated sound of main menu item click;

- Reworked sound of swords hitting flesh (less hiss, more bass now);

- Made magazine in/out sound effects for Ray Rifle TCoRR;

- Made a new sound that alters beeping whenever character is dying;

- Reworked sound that is played whenever player is healed.