Hello friends,

We’re excited to bring you Update 10, our special Spring Cleaning edition. It’s the proverbial ‘tock’ to our tick-tock release strategy of delivering new gameplay one update and improving core systems the next. We did a lot under the hood and a lot in preparation for future updates (and new unannounced projects). Read on for more details.

Performance

We did a big pass on performance. As you know, we not only render in VR but also up to four separate views in splitscreen. This has a fairly big impact on performance and we keep a close eye on it. We did a major pass on performance (our third since we launched in Early Access) and made a lot of improvements. We shaved off roughly 3ms off an average frame. Considering we aim for 90fps, we only have ~11ms to play with, so we’re pretty happy with this improvement.

New Language Support

Thanks to the awesome @Mr.Stump we now have language support for Ukrainian and Russian. As a reminder, we are willing to add support for any language, if you’re willing to help us translate it. Find out how on this thread.

Gameplay Balancing

We took another run at the UFO mode in the forest. The map was way too big and open, making it super difficult for the VR player. Too much land to cover and fast moving UFOs makes for exhausted unhappy players. We’ve tweaked the AI as well as they were a bit to hardcore. We experimented with changing the number of lives but didn’t love any new values so left it as it is for now.

Let us know what you think!

Bug Fixes

We found and fixed a litany of bugs. The full list is available in the changelog below. We hope this new build feels a lot more stable.

What’s Next?

We’re slowly working towards a 1.0 release. We haven’t finalized what will be in it, but we’re working on that. We should have more news over the summer, stay tuned and let us know what you would like to see.

Please read on for the full changelog for this update. We hope you enjoy it!

Cheers, Salmi Games

Changelog - Build 443

Improvements

  • Language: added support for Russian and Ukrainian, a very big thank you to @Mr.Stump
  • Language: auto-sync on latest language file on start
  • Controls: Mouse Freelook when holding Alt key for UFO (vertical-only), Planes, Trucks
  • Controls: fix tank lock-on behavior and range-check
  • Controls: tweak tank gamepad aiming sensitivity, a bit more precision
  • Performance: smooth plane controls, less jitters
  • Performance: improved render batching
  • Performance: improved “Update Step” performance of various components, lots of cleanup of unnecessary updates.
  • Performance: eliminated multiple performance spikes
  • Performance: spread performance intensive queries (such as raycasts) over multiple update frames
  • UI: don’t show “Reset camera” message as agressively
  • Camera: refactored freelook camera system, with consistent controls everywhere
  • Camera: no longer visually cull garages when you drive in to them to hide
  • Camera: improved death camera behavior, disable control during vehicle switch so that you’re not flying around wildly as soon as you die.
  • Camera: broke then fixed UFO camera controls, added alt freelook support
  • Gameplay: balance the UFO game mode in the Forest map, group cows and humans more, block off an area to restrict playspace
  • Gameplay: in Hide ‘n Seek, tweak the gorilla health (120 base + 60 per opponent)
  • Visuals: improved models for power-ups (ammo and attack level up)
  • Controls: reworked right joystick camera-control. Now rotates in proportion to how far you push your stick left/right and snaps back on release
  • Physics: better collision shapes for the tanks and the power-ups
  • AI: improved cow AI
  • AI: improved UFO flee behavior, make less cautious
  • Internal: refactored camera and freelook system
  • Internal: refactored sound system
  • Internal: integrated Steam Audio, now used by default
  • Internal: refactored input system
  • Internal: refactored airplane control system, much smoother update loop
  • Internal: refactored GOAP AI system, with general AI improvements
  • Internal: add new system to support color palette switching
  • Internal: improve build process for some secret stuff
  • Internal: remove a build expiry that somehow slipped into last update
  • Internal: disable unity analytics and hardware reporting
  • Internal: improved log system

Fixes

  • UX: Height auto-readjust now works during intro screen using OculusVR
  • UX: MP deathmatch was playable with zero players, now show a helpful message
  • UX: Instant join broke, player wouldn’t spawn
  • UX: tank camera reset was broken during refactor, fixed
  • UI: intro text for Hide ‘n Seek mode on flat screen exceeded bounding box, looked bad
  • UI: Player icons (like AI1, AI2, etc) appeared before the player’s vehicle, now both appear together
  • UI: AI Bots setting was inconsistently saved between sessions
  • Controls: Plane acceleration was broken, A button works again.
  • Oops: for the last 10 months it’s been possible to adjust the gorilla’s health with the G and H keys on the keyboard
  • AI: cars not controlled by any player or AI bots (possible in hide n seek) would boost out of gorilla’s hand
  • Stability: fixed crash bug that randomly occured when using OculusVR
  • Stability: fixed a bunch of null exceptions that caused weirdness
  • AI: humans were not running around anymore, fixed
  • Tutorial: humans were running around, which makes it hard to see their instructions
  • City map: fixed broken textures on bottom of houses
  • Port map: fix missing graphics for some of the containers
  • Port map: had plane ammo power-ups on the ground, no longer
  • Port map: NPC car start positions were all broken, traffic is back
  • Gameplay: single player mission 2 matched against 4 bots instead of 2. 3rd mission wouldn’t unlock.
  • Tank: backwards driving and vehicle flipping was no longer working
  • Single player: in horde modes, flat players could no longer join, now works again
  • Single player: make sure target kill count is correctly scaled to the number of enemies
  • Physics: multiple bugs leading to tanks falling through the ground
  • Credits screen: improved the banner, humans were jumping around for no reason, had a weird hand grabbing animation issue