Depth News — November 2, 2014
Aggregated from Steam, cross-tracked with Battle.net coverage on GamePatchNote.
A big thank-you to everybody who has played Depth during the beta period. We've received a lot of useful feedback, and have been able to make a number of improvements based on it. Our focus in this patch has been performance and polish.
Performance
We've made numerous optimizations to Depth since the last update. Some small, some quite large. Their impact on your experience will vary a lot, but we're confident that everybody should get at least a 10% boost in framerate. Some hardware configurations will get much larger (even as much as 100%) boosts.
Map Balance
We've been watching carefully how the maps have been playing out in beta, and have made a lot of small tweaks based on both metrics that we record, and feedback from the community.
Some breakables have been added to areas in some maps to slow things down, giving divers a bit more time to set up around safes. We've also done a lot of work on treasure in the maps, with some maps seeing re-distribution to smooth out bumps in diver economy, and all maps getting tweaks to stop unreachable treasure.
Changelog:
This includes the major changes since the last update (minor bugfixes and changes are not included)
Mechanics
- Beached as divers now die when they land
Balance
- Diver spawn protection time increased to 6s from 3s
- S.T.E.V.E now drops a max of 3 treasure per ram
- S.T.E.V.E now takes stacking damage from sharks
- S.T.E.V.E now keeps moving without divers
- Increased DPV speed and acceleration by about 20%
- Increased APS Damage to 34 from 30
- Increased ADS Damage to 29 from 25
- Easy diver bots shoot slower
UI
- Friend requests now show at the bottom of the friends list rather than the top
- Now showing a hint to players when they can throw treasure at STEVE
- Fix for crosshair appearing on non-crosshair weapons if they were your first weapon
- HUD Info text shows again (appears with in-game scoreboard)
- MVP award no longer given out to bots
- Multi-kills fixed
- Stopped rare bug where spawn menus would re-select previous game items even when you couldn't afford them
Maps
- Fixes to Fractured to stop players from being able to exit the map
- Lots of collision work to help map-falling, snagging, and getting stuck
- Fixed pump god-spot in Crude
- Treasure pass on all maps to ensure all treasure can be grabbed
- Breakables added to 1st safe room in Crude and Fractured
- Breakables added to 1st and 3rd safe rooms in Cove and Antiguo
Matchmaking
- Improved reliability of lobby match joining
Content
- Fixed the orientation of the trail on spear projectiles
- Added a minor parallax effect to the diver's first person weapons (noticeable when the camera turns)
- Added animations for deploying and idling with Sonar Buoys and Sea Mines
- Falling players will cause a splash effect when they hit water
- Added chain dropping and idle animations to Sonar Buoys and Sea Mines
- Sonar Buoys now expire and shutdown when the battery runs out rather than just disappear
- Sonar Buoys and Sea Mines now respond to being touched by pawns
Sound
- Third-person sound added for the sensor
- Fixed light and heavy weapon impact sounds being the wrong way around
- Shutdown/destruction sounds added to Sonar Buoy
Steam
- Leaderboards will now write in a 6-player game even if somebody disconnects part-way through
- Achievements can't be gained against passive/easy bots anymore
- Rich presence queuing and connecting should now work for lobby members
Other
- Translations brought up-to-date
- Players that leave a game are now replaced with a bot, so the game can continue
- Game pausing disabled