Development update - April 12, 2024
Added 2024-04-12 02:02:03 +0000 UTCBeen working on finalizing netcode for incoming damage indicators, mostly finished addition of in-game tooltips for hovered objects, fixed plenty of bugs. Today's videos shows some of previously not seen new game mechanics, some of which might be quite annoying too. But still, fun nonetheless. New visual/sound effect improvements too.
At the end of the video there is a map demo as requested by boom5, this is the same video that I posted in PBD Discord server recently.
Interface
- Fixed improper .auth file structure on .auth file export (for account migration to new device);
- Fixed an issue causing Settings screen to have no category open on new accounts;
- Fixed an issue causing two cursors (crosshair and spectator's default UI cursor) to appear at the same time when character dies;
- Added 2 incoming damage indicators opacity settings (one for arcs, another for gradients. Could probably add color configuration later);
- Fixed session error on request for unread messages counter due to account staying offline for too long;
- Added support for simple text hints under player's healthbar to be triggered by non-HUD related events;
- Made it so "Running out of air" hint does not disappear while player is still running out of air;
- Made design for in-game tooltips whenever player is hovering over various objects;
- Added lookup for objects under the cursor, added disappearance timers, entity type prioritization and conditions for tooltip appearance based on object types;
- Added in-game tooltip disappearance whenever player tries to do primary or secondary attack;
- Added in-game tooltips appearance and positioning logic while taking screen edges into account;
- Added in-game tooltips for liquids, grenades, guns, players;
- Made it so in-game tooltip's circle reacts to camera shake but the text itself does not;
- Made it so in-game tooltips are not shown for invisible weapons;
- Added entity descriptions for in-game tooltips;
- Added liquid titles and descriptions for in-game tooltips;
- Added in-game tooltips for in-world button/switches;
- Fixed an issue causing liquids to override players in in-game tooltip target lookups;
- Added even more information for in-game tooltips for weapons;
- Tried to calculate per-weapon rating score but many new weapons are too hard to reflect in this way, in most cases score is just not accurate or does not represent really anything;
- Fixed a bug that was causing leaderboard to appear for a single frame in top left corner of screen because newly made windows from render callback of their parent window would appear earlier in the update list than parent due to new modality sorting model;
- Fixed an issue causing lack of "Dying" prefix in multiplayer on client-side;
- Fixed an issue causing in-game tooltips to target client-side version of player in multiplayer on client-side (and label it as "Ally");
- Tried adding in-game tooltip's pointer positioning interpolation through segments of connected player joints, but it probably looks better if it doesn't slide as much, reverted;
- Fixed a bug that was causing weapons to teleport to cursor;
- Added sword information to player descriptions for in-game tooltips when it is known (teammates & enemies with visible swords);
- Added anti-gravity descriptions for in-game tooltips;
- Made so weapon description of weapon that is installed into entity is recolored into grey color for in-game tooltips;
- Implemented similarity caching for in-game tooltips, so they are instantly updated whenever hovered object changes some of its' states (dying, dead, frozen, poisoned etc);
- Fixed description for T-entity in disassembled state.
Gameplay
- Fixed a bug causing incoming damage indicators to stay in place when character was removed but camera continued to follow the remaining ragdoll;
- Fixed a visual bug causing liquids that do not deal structural damage to players to increase damage numbers post-death indefinitely;
- Made it so turret placement errors are reported under the HUD;
- Fixed an issue causing turret overheads to appear for a one frame even if they can not be placed somewhere;
- Fixed a crash that would happen if T-entity falls out of map bounds together with driver since T-entity's weapon was still relying on existence of driver;
- Fixed a bug causing white segment on health bar to instantly disappear whenever simple text hints under player's healthbar are appearing/disappearing;
- Fixed a bug causing cloth physics accessories to fly from zero coordinates to player they supposed to be attached to whenever this player appears on screen. Bug was due to hibernation happening before first mesh position update;
- Added a missing hint message during attempt to install turret without any weapon equipped;
- Added dithering for background image;
- Fixed a bug causing toxic clouds to deal increased damage within range of slow-motion areas;
- Fixed a bug causing radioactive clouds to deal increased damage within range of slow-motion areas;
- Added radioactive tics near radioactive clouds;
- Added radioactive tics near non-structural-damaging liquids;
- Made new A-weapon with, perhaps, interesting mechanics (more like an upgraded version of existing weapon);
- Fixed a bug causing zoomed-in camera to cause incoming damage indicators to have weird polygonal offsets;
- Fixed an issue causing "Can't vote when dead" text to be appended to count-down text and extend the size of poll window. Replaced full seconds with just number of seconds being shown;
- Fixed an issue allowing in-world poll objects to be visually clickable by spectators that don't have any player;
- Added red laser sound to laser trap gadgets;
- Fixed an issue causing slow-motion areas to influence grouped sound sources that are placed outside of slow-motion areas yet their grouped center is in it (for example when two laser mines were placed on left and on right from slow-motion area);
- Added laser damage sound to laser trap gadgets and other laser weaponry;
- Fixed a bug causing slow-motion grenades to not have darkening around them, fixed crash when slow-motion grenade was broken in slow-motion;
- Made it so global slow-motion affects laser sounds, laser sound attacks and anti-gravity sounds. Made a separate sound classification for these;
- Made it so wooden entities are set on fire when damaged by strong enough lasers (this fire deals small damage and is kind of aesthetic);
- Fixed a bug causing barrel debris to have incorrect offset because they were colliding with initial barrel that was being destroyed;
- Fixed a bug causing placeable turret to be unable to fire laser weapons at certain angles due to logic that attempted to prevent guns from being fired through walls, but the turret itself was placing logical centers weapons into the walls if weapons are long enough;
- Fixed a bug causing dynamic lights to completely stop working if camera was zoomed out, due to incorrect rounding in blur algorithm;
- Fixed a bug causing alien shotgun to spawn projectiles somewhere in the sky due to incorrect offset management after laser weapon on turrets fix;
- Fixed a bug in screen bounds calculating where vertical camera shake amplitude was used;
- Made it so players can walk around while controlling the turret manually;
- Fixed a bug that was causing players to swing and play sword attack sounds while controlling the turret manually;
- Increased maximum range of vehicle entry for big players (there is still line-of-sight tests so they won't enter anything through walls);
- Fixed an issue causing weak floor friction for big players;
- Made it so 50% sized players do not fall randomly while sprinting with swords;
- Fixed an issue causing some entity to reset overall dimming on part loss;
- Fixed an issue causing structural damage liquids deal damage to parts of entities that are supposed to redirect incoming damage to other parts;
- Made it so that on-wall hot-spot from swords is wider than one from bullets;
- Renamed sword names into more meaningful, especially since some of new swords suit names of previously added swords more;
- Fixed a bug that was preventing controllable characters looping whenever controlled player died from impact damage;
- Re-tested eye hit registration by lasers and turns out game was assuming eyes were on the forehead, fixed and added proper repositioning for scaled characters as well.
Multiplayer
- Implemented synchronization for incoming damage indicators as well as screen fill amount;
- Fixed an issue causing reported total damage from liquids to not increase over time for clients;
- Fixed an issue causing damage indicators to disappear on character's death due to damage indicator change counter staying the same on a different character controller;
- Made it so replay speed is taken into account for damage indicators whenever replays are played;
- Fixed an issue causing T-entity to have incorrect offsets of some of its' parts during rotation desync, because client was thinking that T-entity was destroyed, likely due to dynamic assembly. Implemented resurrection for entities and support for disableable joints;
- Fixed a bug causing player's death callback to be called about 8 times whenever player falls out of the map bounds (resulting into 8 respawns of a same player in some cases);
- Implemented synchronization of simple text hints that are used under player's healthbar, for example for cases when player tries to install turrets but can't. Fixed an issue causing grenade name & count info to override these warnings;
- Fixed a crash that would happen when client sees activation of admin grappling hook initiated by other player;
- Fixed an issue causing client disconnection to not trigger disconnection event listeners due to character controller dispose happening before callback was fired;
- Added delay for space key to be considered as intended replay skip attempt;
- Fixed a bug in incorrect lookup for attachment ragdoll in client-side logic of hint-like objects;
- Fixed an issue causing in-world polls to require Ctrl key being held if someone else already casted their vote earlier;
- Fixed an issue causing grenade scroll sound to be played every time replay starts;
- Implemented synchronization of custom-made slow-motion areas;
- Made it so required properties of liquids to make them sound correctly are synced;
- Fixed a bug that was causing radioactive tic sounds to occasionally inherit playback effects of other sounds;
- Added synchronization of intensity of radioactive clouds so tic sound can be properly played on client-side;
- Implemented obfuscation of boost style (self-boost, jetpack or double-jump) until it was activated by players for the first time for non-teammates;
- Implemented obfuscation of sword style if swords aren't visible;
- Fixed a bug causing camera being pulled near zero coordinates when player was losing pelvis due to impact on death;
- Fixed a crash when client would press Tab key due to outdated UI captions synchronization;
- Fixed a bug causing other players to visually shake when they standing on idling movables on client-side, due to incorrect idling state detection when position prediction was enabled.
Sounds
- Made a sound to be played on turret installation failure;
- Reworked sound of energy projectiles hitting walls (like C-01r). I feel like old sound was too low quality;
- Made a sound for radioactive tics;
- Made sound effects for new A-weapon;
- Made acid hissing sound effect for liquids that deal structural damage;
- Made sound for red lasers;
- Made sound that is played when lasers damage anything;
- Made a virus gadget sound effect when grenades are scrolled, though I already don't like it now.
Comments
I can agree ^ It is interesting that limb restoration suggestion is being reliably suggested through existence of PB2.
UnrealCrash
2024-05-02 16:19:37 +0000 UTCi think it should be a rare occurence if added. you could be in the middle of a big firefight, and suddenly, if a grenade goes off too close to you but not close enough to kill you, then an arm is blown off or a leg is left heavily injured. you then have to limp and/or use one-handed weapons (such as pistols) until you reach a healthpack or a medic comes up to you, where you/the medic then attatch the robotic limb. would force you to be way more mindful of heavy-damage outputters, such as snipers, grenades, etc. a sprinkle of realism in the midst of arcade often makes a fun combo ^_^
forge
2024-05-01 20:32:35 +0000 UTCIt could be fun. It might be possible to implement this in custom maps at some point, maybe in some cases in ranked multiplayer too at some point, perhaps with significant recovery duration penalty.
UnrealCrash
2024-04-30 09:22:23 +0000 UTCi think it'd be cool if high damage/explosives could dismember you in combat, forcing you to use "field prosthetics" where a person with a medkit would come up to you, and attach a terminator-like exoskeleton prosthetic limb in the place of the one that got severed. the war rp guys would love that
forge
2024-04-29 18:20:55 +0000 UTCThank you ^^ It is a good question. I think I don't really know why players do see similarities with Halo most of the time. I probably could point out any feature PB series games have to some other games, usually older ones. Energy swords were really inspired by StarCraft's Zealots, for example. It is kind of an intrusive thought while I play strategy games to think "wouldn't it be kind of more fun to play as a single unit?" in general. I first seen ragdoll physics in Hitman series, much better ones in Half-Life 2. Though I believe I was wondering why games don't have them long before when there were racing games. I remember having these thoughts while playing early versions of Rainbow Six, giving a try to some MMORPG like Lineage 2. Me being familiar with Counter-Strike and Quake series did also affect my pace expectations from games. I like the style and pace of games like Homeworld too though. Besides just games I did enjoy most of old sci-fi movies and books. It just what makes sense for me - I think people need to aim towards the future instead of being obsessed with history. -- I did try Halo: Combat Evolved singleplayer eventually. There wasn't energy swords, though there were some alien guns that looked very round (at least I believe someone once mentioned C-01r rifle being similar to some of Halo guns? I couldn't really see any resemblance though). I did replace PB2's alien pistol post-release to basically prevent players thinking PB2 was trying to be more Halo than they already seen it. Halo wasn't too popular in my location back in the days, probably because Xbox wasn't popular either. Most of people been playing on PC & Windows, some were often playing old PlayStation games too. To this day, I don't own Xbox or PlayStation actually. But Halo is a cool game, probably what I'd expect classic game like Quake to become if it had a proper cinematic story mode oriented campaign and have much less violence. Instead, I believe id software did dedicate more time pushing the technology and then eventually got locked in direction of multiplayer games. Flood part in Halo was a cool experience. I also liked the intro tutorial - it was done in a pretty smart way. Multiplayer probably could have been fun to see, though most recent Halo game doesn't start on my PC. From the gameplay point of view (from what I've seen on streams) I could have changed pretty much a lot about Halo game to be more like PB3 including removing of shields mechanic (somehow, I can't stop but see StarCraft Zealots influence here), removing trails from throwable grenades and making damage system more graphic. But I really wouldn't know if all this would even work for console gameplay and console audiences. I think it points out that both games were meant to be targeted towards quite different audiences. According to Wikipedia, it looks like Halo was inspired by Quake and earlier game of bungie.
UnrealCrash
2024-04-28 11:48:14 +0000 UTCVery cool!!!!!! This really reminds me of Halo. Was it an inspiration?
zooi
2024-04-27 15:37:52 +0000 UTCHappy birthday to you! I wish you to always get a lot of support from the most important people around ^^ > One question I have is will the AI be able to actively deploy these gadgets during gameplay. The person above asked if they can be controlled by AI which I believe you answered but I'm curious if the AI can deploy it during a fight or to defend an area. So far AI can't do it, though they can throw regular grenades. I'm kind of not sure how players themselves would have used these devices, especially since these laser mines and turrets can pretty much friendly fire occasionally the AI and their teammates if not careful enough. > Watching the map showcase near the end made me wonder how customizable the background will be for people using the editor. Would we not only be able to change the weather but also change what is displayed in the background and even potentially build our own background? There are some constants that can be changed in order to get new unique backgrounds. So far terrain is generated using these constants, trees aren't alterable except for their colors though. Later I probably will add possibility to disable foliage, addition of decorations there (though it is already possible, but decorations may float mid-air if environment is disabled in player's settings). Terrain is random seed based, can be made to be random though too. I have suspicion that terrain can end up looking differently on CPUs that are calculating some math with different accuracy but maybe it won't be an issue. > I've asked this question before but I feel like it may be a good idea to ask again now that you recreated a PB2 level. Do you still think porting PB2 Maps over to PB2.5/3 will still be possible at this stage of development? Level geometry and materials should be quite portable. Logic - probably will take effort to rewrite or re-make PB2's styled trigger actions. I'm pretty sure that many of Lin's additions to PB2 won't be doable in PB3 Level Editor though for a while as they often rely on client-side nature of logic, where PB3 is strictly server-sided. > I also have to point out a small nitpick of how the 2d characters stick out a little compared to the slightly 3d background. But I believe I'll likely get used to that once I start playing. I might have messed up the lightning, making world geometry darker than it should have been when I was trying to make it so sky isn't completely white. It is quite confusing to configure colors while everything affects everything so far, though maybe I'm just not skilled in Level Editor I have made myself. Or there needs to be sky color multiplier that is independent from sky and sun color which are basically multiplying all colors on screen. > That's all I got for you this time Eric. Keep up the great work. Excited to see what you have in store for the campaign. Thank you and I hope you've had a nice birthday party ^^
UnrealCrash
2024-04-16 11:05:49 +0000 UTCHey Eric! Sorry for the late post. Been quite busy these last few days. Trying to get as much work done as possible before my birthday today. Love the Portable laser gadget. Haven't mentioned this but really like the cool new gadgets you have added and I can't wait to see what other gadgets you may not have shown us yet. One question I have is will the AI be able to actively deploy these gadgets during gameplay. The person above asked if they can be controlled by AI which I believe you answered but I'm curious if the AI can deploy it during a fight or to defend an area. Watching the map showcase near the end made me wonder how customizable the background will be for people using the editor. Would we not only be able to change the weather but also change what is displayed in the background and even potentially build our own background? I've asked this question before but I feel like it may be a good idea to ask again now that you recreated a PB2 level. Do you still think porting PB2 Maps over to PB2.5/3 will still be possible at this stage of development? I also have to point out a small nitpick of how the 2d characters stick out a little compared to the slightly 3d background. But I believe I'll likely get used to that once I start playing. That's all I got for you this time Eric. Keep up the great work. Excited to see what you have in store for the campaign.
Patty
2024-04-15 00:03:20 +0000 UTCDamage output is proportional to velocity now, meaning it will actually decay with range due to air friction. It is somewhere of 5-10 damage decrease for most weapons when comparing point blank shots to hitting target at the edge of a screen. There is an additional 5-10 damage increase/decrease depending if target is moving towards bullet or away from the bullet. Basically jumping onto a bullet is more lethal. Bullets also inherit velocity of a shooter, meaning it is possible to deal extra damage if player is running towards target while shooting. Though all this is just a plenty of small bonuses, not certain yet whether it will affect gameplay much. It should at least make cases where one player is retreating and another player is following the retreating one to be more fair and not give advantage to retreating player (since in PB2 projectiles of retreating player would take much less time to reach following player, making dodge time for following player also shorter). To turn weapon into a turret players select the weapon, then select the turret gadget and then they can place it almost anywhere. There are no real limitation so far as to which weapon can be used as turret, turrets currently don't have many hitpoints though. Gun drops out of destroyed turret too. Turrets usually are a limited use just like grenades. Turrets are automatic by default but can be controlled by pressing E near them. Killing manually controlling player only resets turret back to automatic mode.
UnrealCrash
2024-04-13 14:13:18 +0000 UTCReally love this post, and thanks again for showing off that map. The plasma gun projectiles are now affected by gravity which I find very interesting. Hopefully, the damage output isn't altered. It's super. The shield grenade doesn't seem to protect from radiation which is a bummer. Also looking at some of the turret fixes in the description, how will a gun be able to become a turret? Is there something you have to set in the level editor for that specific weapon or do all weapons do that with a keybind by default? Are ai able to use these and control them manually as well? Killing one will disable the turret?
AnarchE
2024-04-13 01:30:04 +0000 UTC
