In the last couple of months we’ve made a number of changes to UI, the combat experience, and those you meet at citadels.  It’s a beefy update but more to come.  Download the new build, and while you’re waiting check out the new teaser!

Release Notes

Advanced Sector Preview

• There is a temporary button in the Campaign Start dialog called ADVANCED SECTOR PREVIEW
• This will advance you to a sector slightly deeper into the game.
• This is recommended for experienced drivers only!

Combat/Driving

• Made hits impact the exposed side of the target rather than randomly within their square
• Fire gang implemented for region
• Gave fire gang bosses rocket salvos that drop flaming oil
• Enemy vehicles can now use dropped weapons.
• Fixed a number of reverse control issues
• Towers fire double rockets again
• Entrances to roadways and garages are no longer barriers to be collided with, you can drive through them if you want.
• The Camera now now holds on your target until the projectile hits, so you can better see the results of your shot

Balancing

• A lot of difficulty tuning.  Damage ramping isn’t nearly so crazy.f
• Adjusted enemy aggro down a little so we didn’t get mobbed from everywhere
• Reduced the population of most maps, the player could easily get swamped if they covered a lot of ground
• Fixed burning damage to not apply the weapon’s base damage, which was causing massively OP damage when you or enemies are on fire.

Citadels

• Added a progression of mayor quotes in the citadel.  It increases as you get better renown or accept new sector quests.
• Mayor feed in the citadel ticks out like the quest panels do.
• Changed the faction readout to show the relevant factions in the current sector, and have room to show their full name.
• The citadel screen shows sector stars in a cleaner fashion.
• Removed skills entirely.  Perhaps they could return later, but right now they are not sighted to add value to the game.

Social Feed

• Added a feed to the loading screen so we can have a colorful quote from the populace as well.
• Improved some of the macros to better support “they” pronouns.
• Cleaned up some bad citizen tweets.
• The leader of a citadel waits for the player to get done loading before teletyping.

Content/Generation

• Massively improved and refined the city ruins block set
• Added randomness to a lot of rubble prefabs in the cities
• Reduced the ruincity population
• Overworld roads are more diagonal and less derpy looking
• The highway map doesn’t have a missing tile at the exit
• The highway map has additional patches and population
• Less damn trash bags all around, none in the desert

Gangs/Organizations

• Updated the bandit naming setup for better results.
• Corporate agents and duellists now named better.
• Wrote some minor encounters for fuel and towers
• Reduced base quests from 4 to 3 fuel dumps and watchtowers

User Interface

• Added a pointer that indicates the next objective if radar is pressed.
• The player is prompted to press radar when the encounter is completed.
• Added visual quality settings to  the in-game popup.
• Some visual improvements to tablet displays such as challenge and mission completion
• The in-game settings menu has a visual update.
• Gender selector is now He She They
• A lot of gamepay fixes and support.
• Added gamepad control to Gear usage menu
• Revised the social feed phone mask
• The social tablet fades out after a set amount of time, but fades in for key messaging

Environment/Visuals

• Created a full set of cars with color variants red, blue, yellow, black, and apply them to gang types
• Replaced some of the old awful rocks with more stylized desert-worthy obstructions
• Added VFX, sound and hitstop to crit hits
• Fog of War should be steadier and not have a weird lag.
• Terrain visuals are adjusted and scaled between tactical desert and overworld
• Revised VFX for scattergun (not great, but better)
• Smokescreens are now effected by the force of the vehicles moving between them.
• Smokescreens and fire oil now decays out properly rather than pop
• Smokescreens have an intro that plays in unscaled time so that it doesn’t look weird when the game is paused.
• Mines and oil barrels now blink in unscaled time so they stand out to the user.
• Flamer doesn’t attach to the muzzle anymore, should look better
• Speed lines are more prominent with when the player is boosted
• Dust motes are now in the world and affected by vehicle speed.
• Fixed long wires appearing as short wires.
• Adjusted the bloom of oil splats and removed oil hit VFX because it was causing a weird square bloom thingy
• Adjusted some sparks to use a brighter and more efficient VFX.
• Water tower no longer peeks through the fog layer
• Emplacements do not disappear when obscured

Audio

• Hitting a soft thing like a body plays a different ram sound than a heavy vehicle thing
• AL now has his own message sound

Bugs/Optimization

• Upgraded to Unity 2020.3.40f
• Quality Settings adjusted to default to High rather than V High or Ultra.
• Fixed bug where scattergun could target itself(!)
• Automap cleans up better and avoids memory wastage.
• Fixed an issue with defining battlegrounds, we risked a crash when getting into a combat encounter.
• Fixed camera view for vehicle in stable or character view.
• Fixed an issue with the car stable sometimes showing improper buttons.
• Deferred lighting is being used
• Optimized some materials for draw efficiency and hitches
• Cleaned up issues that occurred if the campaign is repeated multiple times in a single session
• Hopefully fixed tires that could sometimes get out of sync and pop out of their wheelhubs