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

Some great new updates to Auto Fire this month.  The UI got another level up with some improved screens and a more lived-in look.  You can now go to the citadel and help those people out, building renown with that city.  Citadels are a little more solid in their representation also, with one of only a few corporations keeping control of the populace across the country.  Finally, the visuals took an uptick with better lighting, new desert terrain visuals and cleaned up foliage.  The time to check it out is now!

Content:

• Sectors now have a renown level that gates new sector quests.
• Tutorial also now uses renown sector quests.
• Cleared up the skull rating and show it on the challenge tablet app.
• Cleaned up factions signficantly.  At campaign generation there  are only four corporate factions, two military factions, one citizen and one duellist faction.
• Set up each sector now with a consistent resident and enemy faction.
• Changed enemy and sector definitions to be able to be controlled on a per sector basis, allowing for better channeling of content across the overworld maps.
• Quests now have a clearer faction reward and renown award for sectors
• Fixed up sector leader quest arcs.  The player can eliminate an enemy entirely from the overworld of a sector.
• Quests now have a goto step or a load cargo step.

Citadels:

• Each citadel is run by one of the 4 corporations.
• The mayor or citadel leader will dole out a quest for you, which gives you an opportunity to increase your sector renown
• The player can now abandon cargo in a citadel and it will be returned to the quest list
• The player can even abandon sector quest cargo and it is returned to the sector quest list.
• Cargo cannot be returned for salvage profit unless it doesn’t have a quest attached.
• The player cannot accept a cargo quest unless they have room to haul it.

HUD:

• Dashboard elements now have schmutz on their frames as well as the glass
• Sped up zooms and added functionality to make any panel zoom, plus zooming recenters the view based on the visible portion of the screen.
• Improved the Travel and reward tablet app visuals
• New Challenge popup when entering a combat area
• Fixed up the quote panel in the upper right.
• Quest steps now read out as crossed out if completed in quest list

Menu:

• Mayor feed in the citadel ticks out like the quest panels do.
• Revised automap and travel panels to use the same look
• Menus and screens also have some schmutz added for a bit more lived-in look
• Added macros for if the player chooses the gender “they”, so we can say “who [is] [he]?” as “who are they?”
• Added a feed to the loading screen so we can have a colorful quote from the populace on the current situation.

Visuals/VFX:

• Fixed up quality settings in the settings panel, as well as setting the default quality to high.
• Revised all desert terrain textures to something a bit more stylized and cleaner (Deep Desert Pack asset)
• Fixed up all terrains to properly display grass again (broken links abound)
• Adjusted lighting to not overbright, and made sure all views use deferred lighting so that VFX lighting shows up more effectively.
• Put dirt decals under shacks so as to make them a bit clearer as obstacles.
• Zoom makes a whoosh sound

Bugs:

• Fixed improperly LOD’ing models by a windmill
• A courier quest to a combat area now can complete and the combat quest continues properly.
• Fixed bug that if I killed the sector boss, the game would eventually crash
• Boss camera on encounters now zoom into the proper target again.
• Fixed several bad citizen tweets, some of which sounded extra dumb and others crashed the game(!)
• Fixed crashes based on occasionally building battlegrounds.

Tech:

• Adjusted night lighting settings (to be used in the future) for some experiements.
• Updated to Unity 2020.3.33f