May 25, 2018

WEEKLY UPDATE 19 - Carriers & Livestreams!

Lazarus - MilkySmith

A strong week interrupted a bit by GDPR shenanigans means we're not quite as jam packed as we'd have liked, but the improvements we've made are definitely worth your time!

LIVESTREAM

We're livestreaming the update once more tomorrow at 6pm BST/10am PDT/1pm EDT over on www.twitch.tv/spiltmilkstudios - come and join us! It's the finale of season 1 of our devstreams, stay tuned for more info on our season 2 plans!

CLOSED WEEKEND

go and get your friends to play with you - they can download Lazarus for free this weekend on Steam!

CARRIER KILL REWARDS

are now a ton more generous. We give you 3 Loot Crates and all the MEV you could ever want for killing a Carrier now! It used to be just Void... sad times.

CARRIER HP BAR

we've doubled its size to help readability. It used to be the same size as all the other ships, but this would tend to get lost in the madness.

DUPLICATE LAZARENE

is now increased! If you get a duplicate Common skin you'll get 50 Lazarene. Rare gets you 100, Epic 300, and a Legendary duplicate gets you 500 Lazarene.

UN-CAPTURABLE TERRITORIES

are a thing of the past (we think!). There was a weird error that caused the territory manager to get confused, and while it's hard to reproduce we think we fixed the root cause. Now you should never come across a territory that's uncapturable.

PLAYER MARKER ICONS

on the map now only draw when there's another player there. Turrets do not count towards this any more, but we're still fixing it so that you don't, either :D

TUTORIAL BUG

We fixed a nasty bug that meant when brand new players booted into the game it would sometimes not trigger the tutorial. You'd be left able to fly around and dock, but nothing else at all. It was no fun, so we fixed it!

FLEET ROUTES

used to draw on the screen when you exited a Xenotaph. Now they don't :D They should only ever draw while you've got them toggled 'on', and only ever on the fullscreen map.

TUTORIAL FIX

we've done some significant work to ensure that, if players die more than once during the 'territory capture' part of the tutorial, things get easier for them. Basically, we do a more detailed survey of the gameworld and then spawn them close to a territory that contains less of a threat, and ideally next to one that is not already claimed by a Drone factions.

KNOWN ISSUES:

CARRIER SPAWNING CEREMONY

we tried to add a nice line between the Carrier and what it is spawning, but we broke the small warp-in effect in the process. We'll fix that asap!

As ever we're still smashing away at the Wipe. Hang in there! Next week should be good too, but Monday is a Bank holiday here in the UK so another slightly less-than-full week lies ahead. Tell us what you think about this week's update - and what you want to see in the next one - over on our Discord! (https://discord.gg/spiltmilk)

May 25, 2018

A new era begins: V15 is here

Homebrew - Patent Unknown - Phyzikov

https://youtu.be/sjcOpRIrc7I

From the team

We're extremely happy to announce that the biggest update we've had yet is ready for release!
There are a lot of changes, some of which we will not list because they're either internal, already shared with other news post, or fixes from the original systems we pushed out at the start of our private beta.

We've also decided to remove HB13 entirely, as it's been outdated for almost 3 years now, and our verification servers are down, so new players aren't able to launch it anyways.
We might go back to the old project and remove the verification process and re-bundle it back in Homebrew if the demand for it is high enough.

We've also made huge changes to the modding API, for most users, this isn't an important change. So we moved those changes to the bottom of the post.

The World of Homebrew

Our underlying world system has gotten a complete overhaul, allowing us to make worlds far larger than possible before.

This fixes the jittering you'd see when driving far away from the Valley, (or not so far away depending on your hardware..), and having insane amounts of space for future islands!

We also moved the islands around to better suit the new system, modified the existing islands, and inserted a new huge area to replace flat-lands.

To get a true feeling of scale, we suggest hopping into Homebrew Patent Unknown yourself, and fly around a bit.

Server Changes

The server has been rewritten to be more stable, and requiring less bandwidth per server instance.
We've run these servers since the start of our beta phase, and have had very little issues keeping them online!

Work on the server will continue after this update, where we'll optimize the internals, making it less resource-intensive, and allowing for more players online.

Other Changes

With the lua changes, we've rewritten our gadgets to have more features, more control, fewer bugs, etc.

The Settings also got an overhaul, all running in Lua!

There's also Discord Integration, a new Weather System, Tornados, Lightning, Blimps that populate the world, allowing server-client of variables (like time and weather), all moddable through Lua!
Feel free to play around with the default lua files (StreamingAssets/Lua/main/), and see what you can come up with!

We've spent a lot of time and effort making sure the Lua changes were stable and more complete, adding a couple houndred helper functions, to make everything easier for modders, and players.

Besides that, we've also implement a new audio-system in place, handling all the ambient sounds in the world.

In a future release, we'll be upgrading the audio for engines and the like to these new standards as well.

Main Changelog

Fixed Mouse not locking correctly when in-game
Fixed Game minimizing when alt-tabbing
Fixed glitch where water would bug at a certain depth (causing FPS drops)
Fixed Second Keybind not showing up correctly when bound to a new ID
Fixed issue with Equation Box where it would replace the incorrect token
Fixed wings not applying wind properly
Fixed wings not applying underwater drag properly
Fixed GPS boxes not displaying full world-position
Fixed Ramjets not working as expected
Fixed HBNoteBoxes not fading properly
Fixed Spectator not working as expected sometimes
Fixed in-game links that were no longer available
Fixed UI elements that shouldn't be blocking, blocking
Fixed Adjustment Tool (builder) slowing down the game immensely
Increased fog distance dramatically
Added "GameTime" to equation box ("time")
Reworked Wing mechanics to work with new World System
- This breaks Propellers made with wings and Rotator and Hemi Servo!
Reworked Gadgets
Reworked Buoyancy to be more accurate
Reworked most chat commands
Reworked Chat
Reworked Terrain Shaders
Reworked Steam Integration
Reworked Default Vehicle Installer
Reworked Settings
Added Y-Invert option in Settings
Added quick-switch between Qwerty and Azerty in Settings
Added Weather Controller (see "/weather" in chat)
Added Rain
Added Tornado
Added Vegetation and Vegetation Manager
Added new Builder Tutorial (text-based)
Added new Gameplay Tutorial (text-based)
Added new Terrain (Desert)
Added new Race Track in Desert
Added new Airstrip in Desert
Added new Airstrip in the main Valley
Added Arc in main Valley
Added Danny & Joe in the Airfield (Desert)
Added HB13 Valley rework
Added Discord Integration (lua based)
Added async Part/Vehicle Browser
Added Ambient Sound system
Added Hints in chat (toggleable with /togglehints)
Added new Shadow-System for vegetation
Added Steam Display-picture loading in servers/chat
Added Blimp AI
Added Runway lights in Valley and Desert
Replaced Default Vehicles with a new batch
Removed Wheel Collision on your own Vehicles
Removed multiple unused meshes and Materials
Removed HE rounds from Vulcan

And many more internal changes and speedups.

Lua and Console Changes

There've been huge lua changes in HB, most noticably Lua has been upgraded to 5.3 from 5.1, allowing us to use the full range of RAM available instead of the first 2GB of your RAM, a ton of helper functions, and a lot of speedups.
Another change to lua is how the lua files are formatted.

The old method required a main function, where you set some basic things like "self.gameObject", that is no longer required.

local mod = {} function main(go) myMod.gameObject = go return myMod end function mod:Start() -- triggers on start of script end function mod:Update() -- triggers every tick end

The new method doesn't need this anymore.

local mod={} function mod:Start() -- triggers on start of script end function mod:Update() -- triggers every tick end return mod;

As some of you might notice, at the end of the lua file, we now return the mod table.
The other change is that your lua table doesn't need to be the same as the filename. So you can create all your mods with

local mod = {}

Making everything far less prone to errors!

If you want to learn more about Lua, or if you're not sure where to get started, be sure to hit us up on our Discord server, and ask around in #Moddinghelp.
Needless to say, all our gadgets and world-mods have been updated to fully utilize these changes.

The Console also got an overhaul, it's far more efficient, and no longer requires you to switch between lua and console shell.
You can simply type in any lua code and have it run, or trigger a console command!

EDIT:

We forgot to mention some additions to the equation box!

ifbigger(a, b, true, false) ifsmaller(a,b, true, false) ifinrange(a, min, max, true, false) ifnotinrange(a, min, max, true, false) ifequal(a, b, true, false) time()

DREAM - BUILD - ENJOY

And join us on DISCORD

May 25, 2018

May Development Update 4!

EDEN STAR - Kittiedragon

Greetings Pioneers!

This week more of the new assets and enemy spawners have been placed in the level and the AI are being polished across the board as we progress. New effects and icons make it easier to see and differentiate the items in the world that can be harvested for materials and the spear and grenade are being tested and are nearly ready for designers to start balancing them.

Here’s what we’ve been up to:

John - Lead Designer

Back into the rigmarole of production. Been pushing the guys to get aspects of the UI working and in place, with some impressive item location hints being visually implemented with a similar look to glinting objects in the Bioshock games. The main focus herein is quality in the individual locations and gameplay engagement in those areas, which all act as a benchmark to future points of interest.

We’ll be sharing a playthrough video next week which will be incredibly exciting to share with everyone and, you’ll be glad to know that Andy and I are now in the process of working through the full timeframe needed to solidify the date of the next release, which is currently slated for the end of July, we’ll get the actual date to you next week once we’ve bottomed it all out.

FYI - Core features still remaining to do;

- Fuel system (Now have it as part of the player’s suit, just requires hooking into a stat and also implementing into structures)
- Manual Power/Structure connection gameplay
- Character selection (Basic)
- Death gameplay loop/new saving and loading

If we find anything else to share i’ll let you know in the comments this weekend!

Thanks for all of you who have faith in us, can’t wait to get this release out to you :)

Matt - Art Director

With the grace of time to give some tlc to the interior of the drop pod, I’ve been embellishing the space with atmosphere and markings that have really brought it to life. Hopefully you get this sense from the footage we’ve included as well.

Moving on I’ve still got a bunch of signage to put in around the interactive panels that control the airlock doors, otherwise the rest of the game is starting to follow suit with the next level of quality we’re aiming for.

Lee - Technical Director

This week I have mainly been concentrating on some debug issues which I hope to finally put to rest in the next could of days to do with spawning issues around navmesh not being generated properly. I’ve also started expanding the hit reaction system for AI so that Lauren can put in different animation thresholds depending on the damage they take.

Tristan - Lead Developer

This week I have been helping look over some of the grenade projectile and spear work with Ricky. It is looking really good and is now ready for some stat tweaking and animation polish.

Ricky - Senior Developer

Grenades and Spears as inventory items are in the testing phase and almost in now so animations and dev can start making them work nicely in the game.

Marcin - Designer

I have finished the first pass of implementation for the objectives system, with support for creating various missions and controlling their flow via campaigns. That also includes the first version of a functional user interface. The majority of the work however was spent hooking the system to the saving and loading, because nobody likes their progress forgotten. I also had to make sure that objects that are no longer relevant, usually associated with a mission that has been completed are properly disposed of to prevent memory leaks.

Joe - Lead Artist

Tweaking and prodding of various UI bits this week, I finished off the UI for environmental effects (Low Oxygen environments!) and tidied up the HUD stats, making it more obvious when your stats are taking a hit. I’ve also been overseeing Sam’s crate designs, which will contain some rather nice loot. “Loot Crates” if you will.

Tom Whaley - Artist

It’s been an exciting week, finally seeing everything coming together from all the disciplines inside Flix! I’ve finished modelling/animating the camp’s transmitter/relay station, as well as implementing various blood and footprint decals around the camp-site, using the environment to give the players a bit of a murder mystery to solve.

On-top of that, various bug-fixing and material magic to make things all blend together nicely :)

Tom H - Designer

This week I have been venturing into the Dam area of the starting section. Here I have been making sure that the spawners for all our wonderful creepy crawlies are set up correctly and ensure a balanced but challenging experience. As well as this I am ensuring that they are varied in ways that will make combat more fluid and less repetitive.

I have also been in the planning stages of the new art designs for the Bridge up to the Dam, meaning lots of documentation and meetings. Fun! But this will all come down to a highly polished section of gameplay that will provide players with a nice early section filled with exploration, combat and scavenging.

Sam - Concept Artist

Ahoy! For those of you who remember the rather underdeveloped crate image from last week, the first half of this week was allocated to getting that design to a better place. Since you last saw it, it has been through a few revisions and is now looking a lot more “smashable”, which of course is a large part of its in-game function.

Whereas other versions of the crate may have looked more functional and coherent, with handles and hinges, they were all in all coming up looking too robust and solid. Keeping the crate’s structure divided into thin-looking corrugated metal palettes remedied this issue, and so we have stuck with that option.

Most recently I’ve been working on some eye-catching new features for the UI, which will be replacing some of the notifications which are currently just plain text. Until next week!

Lauren - Lead Animator

A lot of smaller tasks this week and a fair few meetings to boot including reviewing the AI in general and helping design the new cumulative stability. I have been making various refinements to animations, namely the Stalker feeding animations and Charge attack.

I have made a start on the 3rd person animations for the new Spear and Shiv/Knife weapons, while fixing up the player animation blueprints to be easier to read and debug, and fixing a few miscellaneous bugs with the weapon anims.

Other than that I have been setting up more spawners, passing that over to the level designers and overseeing the placement of those spawners in the world, making sure they are set up how they should. I have to say they are working really well so far, we hope to get some footage to show for next week!

William – 3D Artist

Thanks to some material magic, many of the terrain rocks can be scaled to a large degree without losing detail, making them very reusable in a lot of areas. So, for the past couple of weeks, I have been giving these assets more accurate collision, in order to ensure that players don’t feel like they’re floating, particularly on rocks/cliffs that are scaled up a large amount.

Andy - Lead QA

The team and myself have been looking into the lots of smaller tweaks with animations, a in-depth review of the remaining AI tasks and getting my hand of the new destructible assets inside the lost colony bases.

See you in the fray!

-Team Flix

May 25, 2018

1.6.71 Update - French & Chinese localization, updates, and fixes!

Invisigun Reloaded - Sombr Studio

I'm happy to add French and Chinese to the supported languages (see your options screen), thanks to the excellent hard work and attention to detail from Jean Serfati and Kai Shao. That brings the supported languages up to 6 as these two new additions join English, Japanese, Spanish, and Italian. It's exciting to welcome in a new group of players. :)

To celebrate, enjoy the 35% off sale for a limited time!

While there are major things in the works for Invisigun, I still can't announce any details just yet. However this patch also brings a few more updates and bug fixes. Thanks to the Discord community (http://discord.gg/invisigun) for continuing to post suggestions and report any issues.

New

New localization: French
New localization: Chinese
UI: Language selector is presented on first launch
UI: Some title screen layout adjustments for localization (complete reskin later)

Updates

CRONUS: Finally has a unique victory pose (like the rest of the cast)

Fixes

GAME: GIF export files are properly closed when canceling
GAME: Fixed empty powerup crate falling once on clients if all powerups are disabled
GAME: Fixed not being able to split shots on clients if projectile is already destroyed on the host
GAME: Fixed possibility for two projectiles to create a blast barrier instead of hitting objects
GAME: Fixed missing left ember spawner on The Catacombs
GAME: Random map is refreshed when returning to the lobby from a match
GFX: Fixed the tint of Epi's ghost in his victory pose
UI: Fixed sorting of UI dialogs when in-match
UI: Fixed resolution "free" label value change when changing languages
UI: "Keyboard" is now properly localized on player selectors
UI: Fixed potential for game to stall if localized text parsing fails in some edge cases
UI: Better spacing in GIF end cards for multi-line Steam usernames
UI: Fixed Connect button being selected after removing IP digits using the GUI
UI: Various minor layout fixes for different locales
UI Fixed ready up indicator minor scaling issues
AUDIO: Fixed replays always playing SFX at max volume
EPI: Fixed ghost Epi getting hit instead of real Epi if standing in the same spot