Auto Fire v0.6.26: Talkin’ about my Generation

Another update is inbound!  This one is focused on revising the world generation methods for more interesting and playable maps.  This lay the system foundation for new types of biomes and better overall map layouts moving forward.  You’ll see the biggest example of this with the walled outpost maps, which are entirely revised and much more look the part.

There were also a lot of stability and quality of life improvements along the way…  You can shoot mines!  Car control and skidding interact a bit better, armor repairs cost less parts.  There was a bug with missions that people who liked to haul cargo ran into.  For keyboard and gamepad players, the dialogues should not lose their selection (which required you to touch the mouse if it happened)

Gameplay:

  • You can now shoot mines!
  • Cars no longer get to move immediately upon being knocked to the side…  It looked strange and could cause some popping.
  • Tuned an issue where sometimes the car would not be able to regain their grip by accelerating out of a skid without easing off the gas pedal.  You can power through these now.
  • Repairs at station now cost 2 parts per 5 armor

Bugs:

  • Fixed a big issue with quests…  it turns out that if you filled up your car with cargo, the game would reject kill quests such as the basic ones when you encounter a gang in the overworld.  This should improve quest stablity a bunch.
  • Ramming a high cliff should damage the correct side of the vehicle.
  • Ramming backwards should not heal the vehicle anymore.
    The interactive location now spans the entire width of 2-lane highway exits, so the player can exit via either lane.
  • Fixed an exception that occurred if the player completed a quest and returned to the quest panel.
  • Fixed a couple of dialogue typos in toots and encounters.
  • Fixed an issue with rigidbodies generated on destruction, sometimes they would not work properly or even cause exceptions (which could result in cascading gameplay issues).

Environment:

  • Completely revised the desert buildings and shacks to use a double-size scale to better match the car’s scale.
  • Added wires to a telephone pole asset and for hanging.  Only used in specific biome patches.
  • Added real cargo containers to walls, which looks far better.
  • Wrecked car piles are now scaled up to be more in proportion with real gameplay cars.  Doesn’t look as weird.
  • Spindly shrub now doesn’t block line of sight.
  • Revised dirtroad decals to use more alphaed components… the tire ruts look a bit better.

Map Generation:

  • Completely revised how outposts are created.  They now use a combination of terrain and the city blocks biome (with a block size of 4).  Looks so good!
  • Revised the patchgenerator to also support terrain use, which makes the above possible.
  • A crapton of new clusters and crafted blocks for the new desert set were created.  Focused on single-lane alleys for that meandering dirt road look.
  • Revised desert ground to be more rolling.
  • Added in a smoothing function to make desert ground not roll too violently, as well as not allow roads to move diagonally along cliffs.
  • Fixed an old-old-old swapping bug with collision upon rotating certain long vehicles and buildings. DAMN that was written two presidencies ago(!!)
  • Added trash sockets to patches so that refuse can accumulate in logical places, with more accumulating within the walls.
  • Added deadend detection to avoid having a map seal itself off too easily before the road tree really flourishes.
  • On the same note, added intersection detection to encourage a map to branch out early for a good target number of roads
  • Mountainous borders now coexist with exits better.

VFX:

  • Revised Break parts VFX (which is on boxes, lamp posts and a bunch of stuff) to not be a giant obscuring cloud.
  • Fifle and machinegun muzzle flashes were teeny-tiny and not really visible.  It felt like something was missing there, got those fixed!
  • Improved bullet projectile trails.
  • Pumped up the visibility of location labels.

UI:

  • Fixed multiple issues where buttons would get deselected and the player had to mouse-click rather than navigate using mouse and keyboard.  It was really annoying because some basic dialogs like leveling up had this going on.  Should feel a whole lot better now.
  • Default buttons (such as in conversations and popups) should now consistently light up rather than be “invisibly highlighted”.
  • Damage numbers don’t appear on harmless or fluff hits (like loot crates).
  • Fixed flying resource icons to go to the right spot in both the game and the garage.
  • Resource icons fly back to the vehicle if spent.
  • Better icon/delta feedback on money/parts spent even in cities/garages
  • When missions are completed, the objective says head to the exit.
  • Picking up Health (which fixes chassis health) says “Repair” now.
  • Target kill feed is verbed by entity type (killed, wrecked, destroyed)
  • Fixed prestige display in main game screen, which just had a default of 11.
  • Added a Vertigames logo to bootup

Audio:

  • Garage reload ordnance and repair sounds are not scaled by timescale anymore (which sounded terrible).

Tech:

  • Upgraded to 2020.2.4f
Click here to find it on Itch.io!

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