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Bugfix & minor update notes for Spring 2023

August 26, 2023by Games For May

GamePatchNote Digest

A tractor Patch Notes — August 26, 2023

Aggregated from Steam, cross-tracked with Battle.net coverage on GamePatchNote.

Here's an initial list of some of the minor fixes and updates that have been added to the game over the past few months..

New stuff

Loads of World Editor improvements : New Screens: GamePlay -> Player Start controls and Global Weapons Settings, Vehicle Setup, Weapons Setup. New layout to make it easier and clearer when you're assigning and uploading models & textures to a world. Lots of work on the asset browser and asset upload screens, including the asset scale and orientation control which means you can adjust per-instance model sizes without having to change the model file - very useful!. Eraser options for removing walls, bg models etc (which now are reflected immediately on client), landscape editing - you can now paint terrain and have it uploaded to the server -, better drag and drop controls for buildings, etc, etc. The World Editor is getting really quite useful now.
New Weapon Systems : Lots of rearranging weapon settings - tieing in new per-vehicle weapon slots and making global settings like 'energy-damage-link' mode configurable, etc, etc
Linux World Servers & cloud hosting - World servers now running on Linux again, along with new options to allow automated cloud hosting at the click of a button.
Lots of Space Stuff - New galaxy map, tactical map, Orbit cam, Mining systems, Drives, Trade, tracking of star systems visited - all that kinda stuff. Also a whole new backend. Not finished, not particularly playable, but it exists again.
Collision & Replication - The player replication and collision systems got a lot of attention which should make remote player positioning more accurate and reliable.
Script improvements & trace functions - New scripted hiscores system, *scripttrace commands let you dig into what the serverside script is doing, and a whole pile of general script-language additions, some of which are listed below.
Controller/SteamDeck Support - WIP but various parts of the game should now be playable with a controller. (needs a bit of effort on the controller configs)
Various world limits increased - 60 vehicles instead of 24, 16 robocrow types instead of 8, 24 tiled surfaces instead of 12, 64 texmaps instead of 32, etc. etc.
Model Converter updates - Better FBX support, thumbnail export, animation fixes, turret controls, ability to drag & drop atm and image files into the MC.

BugFixes

Fixed pickup buildings
Fix for spaceship textures not always appearing if ships were loaded before the DLC archive was mounted
Fix for occasional crash if rapidly downloading and removing lots of assets
Fix for not being able to lay new surfaces and texmaps in the world ed
Debug tracking of render targets so we can easily track down a rogue one, Fixed some device reset issues that would cause errors when resizing (etc)
Some fixes for reliability of the network connection.
Fix for remote model selector screen just being a feckwit sometimes
Vehicle setup screen shows that vehicle 1 graphic can not be added (and shows the correct texture in the preview window)
Fix for asteroid graphics not loading if they appear in view before the DLC pack has been mounted
Fix for weapon sys not being initialised on the client when theres no weapons.txt on the server
Fix for shadows sometimes not displaying when in spec or RC
Fix for profiler not always showing everything that was going on. (And related FPS improvements once we found out what was going on)
Fixed an annoying little graphical flicker that sometimes happened when particles were about to expire
Some fixes to the replication of turreted vehicles and weapons
Fix for certain PC setups not being able to access secure URLs
Fix for the static flags not showing blue when they're controlled by the opposing team
Fix for *settings keyboard controls not working when in world editor

Minor Changes

Changed the 'you can't go home when in a vehicle' logic to work off an Extras flag rather than being determined by the vehicle type
Made the big yellow arrow above buildings respect the building's 'Dont show targeting popup' flag
*savemap with no name now just triggers a save of the main map
Moved the sun slightly to the south
Added *buildingspecialevent mode 9 to temporarily hide a building (e.g. *buildingspecialevent 9 )
Added the movie camera on to the main/escape menu (Esc -> M) fix for weapons UI not being hidden when movie camera turns off the UI
Added close 'x' button to top right of all world ed dialogs
Improved dust effects and added settings controls for various colour and dust speed options
When sea level is set to 0, dont draw the sea at all. (rather than pointlessly watching it z-fighting with the ground)
You can now copy & paste text into the chat window & edit boxes! COPY AND PASTE! Whatever will they think of next :).
Added osd text types for gold, silver and bronze text
Added an optional extra parameter to *onscreentimer to include a text message that is displayed above the timer (i.e. *onscreentimer ,,, )
Spec Mode Limits = 1 means a player cannot access spectator mode unless they're in a safe zone
Result of *renamebuilding command is now immediately reflected client-side
Added *resetallstaticflags command to, um, reset all the static flag
Safe zones are now recognised on the server so that the script 'am I in safe zone?' and delete safe zones commands can work
Delete Building, Rename and Edit Message buttons in world ed now working
Added mouseover tooltip showing current value for world-editor sliders
Increased the amount of dynamic objects / particles that can be onscreen at any one time
Improved the bullet <-> wall collision positioning
Fairly major rewrite of the main server download system that should allow faster downloads, better compression and (hopefully) be more reliable and less likely to affect the behaviour of the rest of the game.
Graphics -> Robocrow effects = 2 adds the mode 1 trails and thrust indicators to vehicles
Unified the lighting calculations for the standard landscape and ground shaders

World updates

Iridis : As well as making use of the new hiscore system and scripting up a fun little single-player challenge there (a proper challenge which is well worth a go if you've got any old-school gaming skills), I've added new features for controlling spectator mode and safe zones, new static flag graphics, a new energy bar display (incl. some programmer-pixel-art I'm quite pleased with :] ), improved particle effects, improved wall collisions and a bunch of stuff to improve the 'subspace' control mode that's used there.
Lovelace : Have done a bit of rebalancing on this world, reducing a bit of the early stage grind and removing any remnants of the stuff that was pay-for (e.g. fishing is now an in-game-currency item). Still has its worth, but needs some more work to make it better balanced and improve the tail.
Mechzone : Mechzone got a complete rebuild with new effects, new collision systems (mechs standing on buildings, you'd be amazed how much work is involved in doing that 'properly', probably worth it :] ), and a new design for a 'board-game' style mini-econ using an auction mechanic. Also needs finishing tho :)