May 26, 2022

BattleBit Remastered Playtest - See12RunTTV

Hey there everyone!

It's been a month since we had our last chat here. While we don't have an exact schedule or cadence for releasing these blogs, I know this may have been later than many of you expected and I'd like to offer my apologies for that. We opted to deliver this community update in one posting due to the nature of development and the steps we're taking in regards to certain issues, such as the previously mentioned DDoS protection.

Sometimes it is difficult to pin things down and share them as "news", because much changes from day to day. So when I come to you with a giant wall of text, accuracy is a very big concern of mine. I'd like to offer as much info as needed, but also be sure that it's up to date and reliable. With that said, the best way to get those quicker, incremental updates is to check out the #live-developer-updates channel on our Discord.

You can view the LENGTHY changelog for the month at the bottom of this post, so feel free to dig deeper if you'd like.

As usual, if you want the key info at a quick glance, here's what you need to know.

TL;DR.

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No new ETA for full scale tests
Extremely frequent testing continues utilizing our Discord community
Servers properly cap at shown match sizes.
New Server Deployment system in progress to facilitate proper availability of 64, 128, 254 player servers.
Large amount of major and minor bug fixes
DDoS issue remains but being worked out with third parties / server providers

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And if you'd like to read my latest short novel, here's all the details.

Full

[expand type=showmore]Throughout the month, testing has continued very frequently, almost daily. Development progress has been substantial on the side of internal technical issues, refinement of gameplay systems, and as always knocking out a ton of bugs. Including a few that have been quite difficult to identify and properly replicate. Oki is also working on a new server deployer and scaling system to ensure that the demand for specific match sizes are met per region. With the help of our Discord community, we're continuing to hammer away at and polish a multitude of aspects within the game.

If you are interested in daily development updates, sneak peeks, and the chance to partake in our community tests, please join us over on Discord.

We had hoped to open servers for full scale testing this month, but for the sake of attempting to ensure a stable experience, we will hold off until we have proper measures in place to mitigate the effect of DDoS attacks, should they happen. Of course, we're doing as much as we can on our end, but some of this work involves third parties so we don't have full control of the timelines as we are still looking into the best solutions.

Rest assured we want to get the game back into your hands, just as much as you do. Not only so players both returning and new can experience the game, but because full scale testing is absolutely critical in our ability to prepare for Early Access. That is why we are dedicated to getting the game into the most stable state as possible before launching, as it will be our largest, most difficult challenge. That is the goal of all the different types of testing we conduct. We must be able to reach a point where the game can be out in the wild for days at a time without significant issues or downtime.[/expand]

As stated in the previous Community Update, the plan is to test openly at a large scale more frequently, but we'll do it the right way for the benefit of all involved. There are many things we didn't expect, or weren't properly prepared for, and some issues we didn't consider simply due to inexperience. We totally understand the frustration that can come with waiting, especially when you are excited for something. Your patience and understanding is always greatly appreciated, as we could not do this without you!

That's all for now, thank you for your time!
- BattleBit Remastered Team

Stay up-to-date and in touch with us on Discord and Twitter. If you're interested in watching live development, check out TheLiquidHorse on Twitch. If you'd like to further support the development of the game, check us out on Patreon!

May 2022 Changelog

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Master to game server communication improvements.
Master server bug fixes
Matchmaking now considers in queue players while deciding for server.
Added ability to sort servers by their map size on server browser.
When game loads, user will be asked for their preference of region to play in.
Added a 'Don't show again' tick to beta page on main menu.
Hiding UI button is no longer assigned to 'PageUp' by default.
Support class now builds sandboxes/hesco walls immediately and builds/unbuilds faster.
Game will remember which firemode you left on weapon so you don't have to change it every single spawn or game.
Added new server option to hide votes while voting for next round. The default is true which means from this point, while voting for next round, the votes will be hidden until just before server switches map.
When ESC is pressed while choosing for attachments, it will deselect instead of backing to deploy screen.
Tap reload delay added to settings.
Maximum squad count per team changed to 64 squads from 25 squads.
Now players can cut rope from any point to prevent people putting ropes front of doors and exploiting them.
Tree and bushes are always visible regardless LOD settings to prevent people abusing LOD settings.
Players are no longer allowed to spawn on the flag if the flag is under attack. This has been done to alleviate spawn camping or dying immediately upon respawning on a flag.
Bloom disabled for loadout scene.
Water now looks like more water.
Shadows will be forced at night maps. Low spec players will have FPS impact. Disabling shadows at night gives an extreme advantage over players who have shadows enabled.
Vehicle exiting collision checks improved.
Personal mines model height increased to prevent people hiding it on staircases.
Server will spawn player on top of friendly if there's no surface behind them to prevent players spawning mid-air.
Spawning on rallies no longer should move player above roof.
Player spawning outside of border when spawned on friend fixed.
Player stuck on some ladders while getting off should be fixed (needs testing)
Dx11 force.
Compensator is disabled for Sniper rifles and DMRs.
Player spawning inside obstacles when spawned on friend should be fixed (Needs testing.)
Magazines clip through floor when dropped while player is prone fixed.
Players falling under water fixed.
Bunker had a missing collider on window that it was letting people go through them.
Ragdolls clipping trough ground and falling under map fixed.
Shooting range Gadget RPCs not working fixed.
AK15 Extended Magazine B had same ammo count as regular magazine fixed.
Player ground detection improved.
Shadow bounding boxes are clamped to terrain instead of world XZ plane on center (0,0,0). (Will improve performance both CPU and GPU when shadows are enabled and should fix the shadow popings hopefully)
Out of terrain shadow bounds does not calculated properly fixed.
Player unable to stand up or automatically prone when character on slope collision with convex mesh fixed.
Players and vehicles does not render until player spawns if player suicides while using observer seat on tank fixed.
When a player pings you to revive/bandage/heal you and dies, the notification stays fixed.
Player animation loops proning if you move and prone while crouching fixed.
Thin, non convex roofs are not detected as solid object while grounding player on spawning fixed.
While placing air drone, ghost model scale does not match with actual drone scale fixed.
PP2000 bolt mesh was not using textures.
Fixed bug on some ladders that was not allowing you climb on them
When a language selected in main menu, the menu disappears immediately.
Center of tree colliders does not match with visual when baked fixed.
Signed Int64 was causing collision while hashing mesh generation for multithreaded rendering.
Game will remember last chosen class and will always select it as soon as user enters a squad until user selects another class.
Ability to build rally points on / in water disabled.
Spawning on rally teleports you under map should be fixed (Need to be tested)
Support class now builds sandboxes/hesco walls immediately and builds/unbuilds faster.
Clicking right click now disables building stuff.
Player holds the rope behind obstacles fixed.
Unable to hear other player's drone's engine sound fixed.
Players can be stunned by flashbang in deploy screen while observing fixed.
Depth buffer is now enabled in pipeline to support water and other shaders in future. (Sadly tiny GPU overhead for iGPUs)
Possible fix of unable to retrieve depth buffer for water shader on some weird iGPUs.
Update of water material on maps that used old water shader
Major bug fix: When a building is collapsing, rare cases client was sending packages like authoritative and getting network exceptions that was causing entire game loop to stop for 4-5 seconds (unable to kill, move, do something etc)
If player gets killed while reloading or playing an animation and gets revived, the animation freezes until user reloads/fires or plays a new animation fixed.
Blood overlay is shown while in drone screen fixed.
Sandbags, rally points, ropes no longer stays after building collapses or after a windmill falls. No more floating buildables!
When enemy re-captures a flag while your team is capturing it, the UI doesn't update and shows like your team is capturing it.
Client bugging out between server position and client position and rubberbanding causes player to teleport back and forth for couple of seconds should be fixed (needs testing)
Game server debug logging on db.
Game server will start voting if fails to start a gamemode.
If 'You have been kicked' package drops, server sends again if client continues sending packages to notify user that user was kicked, not timed out.
Some spawn points would spawn you under map should be improved/fixed. (Needs testing)
Players will no longer able to spawn if there are no room to spawn on rally points.
Bug fixes on maps
Reworked Sandy Sunset now support Frontline gamemode
Salhan, Frontline, 16p/32p RU side unable to leave the base fixed
Spawns deep check on all maps
C4 can be thrown as soon as it's switched to.
C4 network movement improvement.
Sniper glints no longer visible at night
Destroying friendly rally points will no longer give points/hit marker.
Spawning on rallies no longer should spawn player under map.
Tank spotter, unable to ping fixed.
Player will be revived at their ragdoll point unless there is an obstacle between.
Player border, position clamping was causing player to stuck or teleport under map sometimes fixed.
When player has high latency and when player uses ropes or ladders, sometimes rubberbands and teleports back/stuck on ladder fixed.
Grappling hook does not attach into radio tower fixed.
Party invite / join game keybinding (PageDown) was not working fixed.
Ability to build HESCO/sandbags while standing on top of it is now blocked to prevent people clipping through map/hesco wall.
Wind Turbine blades not causing damage to player when falling fixed.
Gun game UI does not show up until user opens the scoreboard fixed.
Render queues for bullet impact particles fixed.
Player armors does not sync with player body after player revived until player plays an animation (walk, stand up etc) fixed.
Player model's heads does not reset rotation when revived fixed.
Player cap should actually cap the player size now properly.
Sandbag collider misalignment fixed.
Air drone volume reduced.
User no longer loses their reserved slot if they load wrong map.
In case player unable to spawn and stuck on black screen, user returns to deploy screen in 5 seconds and it is reported to me so I can ask the person for further details.
Pipe & Building LODs fixed.
Terrain LOD adjustments.
The gadget (tool) that player uses sometimes desyncs fixed.
When player vaults, sometimes becoming stuck on objects should be fixed (Needs testing)
Climbing ladders should no longer makes you stuck around.
Voice chat is now decoded outside game thread.
Leaving vehicle, reviving, spawning, collision checks for moving player to safe point now considers destroyed vehicle's colliders.
Border meshes are facing wrong direction + borders might get players stuck fixed.
Shadows AABB are recalculated when sun's direction changes (When night map is being played, the shadow's AABBs were outdated).
Compensator accuracy fixed.
Spawn protection UI will be disabled even if player loses connection for awhile and does not receive new packages from server about if player lost their spawn protection or not.
If player gives up at same time as game ends, the screen stays black during voting screen fixed.
High latency players getting stuck on objects or inside walls while vaulting due to rubberbanding should be fixed (needs testing)
Game server can not pull Steam names after failing to verify certificate of 1 web request, which results in no one can join server. This has been fixed.
Swimming bug fixed.
While server is counting down to start the game, players will spawn on top of them to prevent players spawning outside of countdown borders.
When player spawns on friend, server will check the colliders between player's behind vs player it self according to it's standing state instead of checking always for standing up state.
If server can't find room to spawn the player on friend, will spawn on top of friend instead of saying "can't spawn".
Game server demand API for client / master server.
Server deployer update + master server scaling update.
Game server would send a lot of requests if it would lose connection to master server and reconnect fixed.
Critical networking stability improvement. The timeout logic had a bug where even user did not timed out, at rare cases and huge latency cases, server would assume user as timed out.
Critical network bug fix.
Some ISPs or routers or one of hops between client and game server does not allow multiple NAT port to communicate between due to ISP restrictions (Sharing same IPv4 per multiple customer so reserved port per customer) or some kind of DDOS protection flags client as hostiles due to multiple different NAT ports in short time.
Client now allocates 1 NAT port and uses for entire game, never allocates more than one anymore.
This should fix;
- Unable to see some game servers on server browser when refreshed.
- Unable to connect server while server switching map (Getting no response error)
- Unable to connect server after joining via server browser (Getting no response error)
Thanks to Maquia for being an experiment subject and helping me debugging this issue.
First prototype of server scaling finished. (Needs extreme testing)

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