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Planned release day for this is either tomorrow or hopefully before gamenight. [blurb]Water focused, new vehicles, events, bug fixes, stability improvements, and more![/blurb]The original goal of this release was to address a lot of water related issues, things that just looked ugly or needed polish; although still highly water focused, this update has added some new jobs, vehicles, disaster events, pets, and some terrain rework. It also makes the usual attempts to increase server performance and address crashes. New Stuff A new shipping lane system that lets the AI know what safe paths around the main land masses are. The ocean is now populated with cruise ships and cargo ships, these happy fellows just put around the ocean on their way to deliver their people or cargo. The San Casina Police Department shelled out a ton of money and purchased an old destroyer, expect to see this show up if people with a wanted level of 5 are in the area. The ugly old fishing buoys have been replaced with actual fish, birds, and other sea life. A new daycare has moved into San Casina, feel free to visit or call the Quality Learing Center for any childcare related needs! Fishing Boats now show the 5 nearest fishing spots - Also added two new perks for the Fishing Boat, one will make it so you see the 10 nearest spots, the other will make the markers on the radar show up colored (Blue = Normal, Better = Orange, Best = Light Green, Trash = Black). Added 3 new events, one is completely water based, one is mostly water based and one only starts and ends in the water. Enabled an old event from 2020 that was disabled due to how unstable the Pathfind was (it would often crash the server within 5 minutes of starting). Also touched up the effects of this mystery event. Added 3 new sea-based houses (they’re ex-military bases floating on ice bergs). Each house can have a favorite ship and helicopter. These houses also serve as docks for fishing and show up as closest locations when boating about. A new store has moved into San Casina that sells Ogels! Minifigs & Bricks has opened its doors and will pay good money for Ogel sets! Sure there might have been some rumors of them not paying, but everyone the owner knows has got payouts. Added 5 new player controlled boats! Speed Boat 1 (yeah, I don’t have a creative name here) Speed Boat 2 (same as above) Yacht Mark V Special Operations Craft Hamina Class Missile Boat A new city beautification project has been put underway; this project aims to revitalize some parts of town and make it look lusher and greener (and totally wasn’t done to simplify terrain/pathfind to increase stability). Added two new pets - Giant Spider and the Rabbit. Added some more Easter Eggs to the map. Added 23 new high scores for the player to master. Added a new system for the perks system that will notify players if a perk requires more than one use. Perks like Sniper now require at least 2 uses to have any effect, same for Master of Disguise. A system has been added to make holiday events happen automatically. New Years, Valentines, April First, Easter, Fourth Of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas should now automatically trigger without having me to remember to update the server files. Tweaks/Improvements Shrank the size of the circle marker on the radar, it was far too big. Increased the size of the ocean by 1000 meters to the South (And then even more after that, I’m guessing I added 1000 more to the East, forgot to put it in my notes of how much). Fixed some alignment issues with the ocean water. There used to be some visible gaps. Increased the polycount of the ocean so when the fog rolls in the player is no longer trapped in a sea of gray. This also has the benefit of casting slightly better shadows. Nullwave Repeater now carries less ammo and is now more expensive. Several building LODs have had their distance increased to make the pop-in less painfully obvious: Gas Station, Westwood Warehouse, Limmers. Bushes, Ferns, and other plants now have a slightly farther LOD distance, so they don’t pop in all of 5 meters away from the player. Increased the suspension of the Fiat Tipo so it gets hung up on curbs a bit less. A bunch of news updates now come from “SCPR” Made the Message In A Bottle’s LOD less awful to look at. It’s a little harder to spot now but it also doesn’t look like complete ass when you drive 5 meters away from it. Shooting AI Jets down now increases your wanted level even if the cops don’t see you do it, FBI or something. Weapons that have been favorited now will update their price the next time you purchase them if they’ve had increases or decreases over the years. Hovercraft that get EMP’d now fall into the water. This is an old system that I’m 90% sure was working at some point and just got broken. Made a simpler system for cleaning up data at the end of a game. This should help make game over and next map loading be more stable. Empty street sweepers now repair signs, making them less exploitable. The Mutant Takeover perk now unlocks by winning the Mutant Assault instead of losing (harder to unlock this way but doesn’t encourage the team to work against itself). Vehicles from a player’s garage are now only worth 1/10th their price, this is to reduce an exploit where players would sell them for full price instantly on spawn. Improved how exiting water with swimming works. There used to be some code that would block you from flying out of the water if you bounced on the surface, this is now handled by setting you Z velocity to 0. Added some new net code that will allow me to make certain objects only update if they are misaligned by a set amount client side. Bug Fixes A certain door in Renhalo has been fixed to work with the red keycard once more. Removed a delay from the Nullwave Repeater that made it silent for a split second when being fired. The simple fountain mesh now correctly lights with lightgen - no more glowing poles at night. Fixed some misaligned ID’s that caused doors not to open on certain buildings client side. Fixed 4 spots in the ocean where if you were swimming, you’d suddenly just fall. Fixed 4 high scores that have not been recording. The Killed messages would occasionally say killed instead of destroyed, this has been corrected. Fixed a bug with the Jackpot system that would cause the Jackpot to slowly decrease as the player gambled more. (already live on the server). Ambulance Job no longer pays money to the driver if the driver was the one hurting the person being healed. Fixed a bug that was causing trains to sometimes have odd collisions on create that would vanish after the player started moving. One of the basic hunting AI scripts wasn’t wandering around the map if it couldn’t find anything to hunt. Changed how my custom date time code works, broke more than it fixed at first. Pets no longer try to teleport to their owner repeatedly while the owner is swimming. Performance Reduced the number of draw calls on the graveyard Added a preset specifically for collision testing to reduce processing on the server. Added BillBoard textures to 3 of the common trees in San Casina to reduce impact on the client at range, managed to get the pop-in to not be completely horrible. Future Cop vehicles (APC and Enforcers) now have a final LOD that brings their poly count down to around 600. I’m noticing a pretty bad performance impact when the city is full of cops on the highest wanted level. Unfortunately, while this improved it, it didn’t completely fix it. Trains and Parachutes now use different objects to detect collisions; this reduces the number of script zone hits on the server. Simplified what types of objects are used for swimming to reduce the number of script zone thinks are needed. Fishing Schools now only scan the smart game objects list instead of the simple object list, which was resulting in 300 fishing spots checking roughly 5000 objects each 10 times a second, it got bad enough that I could start to “feel” the stutter when hosting locally. The change has made local hosting feel buttery smooth. This same update has been applied to things like EMP, Kezlarbo, chinook, and the vehicle transport. Increased the initial load speed of the game. Crash Fixes Ghost Strike Craft is no longer an instant crash (something caused its scripts to get blanked out). Player Controlled V22 Osprey will no longer crash the server when it’s destroyed. Fixed 10+ pathfind crashes, some in the industrial area, some by the gas station, a couple in parking garages, a few by the little park in the residential area. Original Release Specific Made the executable support up to 4GB of ram, which fixes 99% of the random crashing it was getting previously. Modern Client Specific Fixed some issues that could cause it to crash almost instantly on join. Fixed a bug with the object that created bubbles for people swimming, this was causing network issues with the modern client that would cause crashes, lockups, and disconnects. Massive UFO’s motion is now synchronized on 4.x if the player quits and rejoins.

On August 22nd at 7 PM GMT

On August 15th at 7 PM GMT

[blurb]On August 8th at 7 PM GMT[/blurb]

Sorry for the double post, but when I reflect back I realized I grew up in a fortunate time in gaming. The PS2 game ICO was art and it sold, maybe not the best but it paid for itself. Or morrowind, or GTA vice city, Or shaddow of the colossus. The worlds weren't 1,000s of km big, but they were dense with things to see and do. No map markers, just exploration and around every hill or building was a new adventure. Buildings had interiors and everything was placed by human hands not AI generated. In those games you were allowed to fail and learn from it. There was no paid shortcut. The objective wasn't endless clearing of quest markers. My little brother never even finished the main questline of Morrowind or Oblivion. The thrill was in the experience. (By the way- My little brother messed up his morrowind game by killing off too many main quest NPCs, lol. Talk about learning experience). I posted this to end on a high note of what I think makes a good open world game.

A little backstory; I told told a friend of mine, I tested games for fun as a hobby. He told me he knew a guy involved in accounting for a game developer. It sounded cool, and I inquired to get a small meet up. I had a few questions, and spoiler I left feeling depressed. I started off with how I gave feedback into how the experience could be enjoyable, and often checked for bugs or glitches things like that. He told me that the big money maker in games were open world games because they generated live services. I asked what are live services he said you know RCS? I shrugged, he said you know PRI? I asked what PRI was. PRI stand for Player Recurring Investment. I said micro-transactions? He laughed. He told me games are measured in Sell-through, Engagement Time, and Yes in-game store transactions. I asked why open world was so lucrative? He painted a picture... A game is a virtual world, a box, and a while ago was asked the question, "what if the box was a disguised store?" Like what if world of warcraft allowed purchases at any time? You'd never have to go to the store, you'd be in it all the time. Like Disneyland where every 200m is a shop. The more customers in the door aka game sales and the longer browsing time aka Engagement through quests, maximizes the potential for in-game purchases. I was stunned. So the quests are there for Engagement time? He said yes. The quests keep you playing and logged-in, that why we measure potential play-time in hours. We are measuring a metric of potential store transactions. You know cosmetics, DLCs, currency packs, exclusive perks, etc. Exclusive perks? He said, well the enemy of play-time is when the player feel discouraged, so we offer perks to maker their shopping or playing experience better. Is that what people call play to win I asked. He told me no it makes accomplishing time fillers are tasks easier. (I call it grinding but whatever.) He told me difficult and repetitive tasks often drive the sales for these perks. It's a feature, like icons on a map. I asked what he meant by map icons. He told me game metrics requires a certain amount of icon density to give players time consuming tasks to keep him busy. Like Disneyland's rides. So success is measured by square km, icon density, and potential hours of engagement. He told me optimizing these three lead to potential additional transactions. Then he got real excited. AI is making it so we can generate thousands of km, icons/quests, and thousands of hours of potential live service sales. He told me players want more to do, more see, and more hours of game-play. He couldn't share any of his company's formulas (for obvious reasons). I said, that's a lot of AI work how do you quality test it? He said, the elements individually tested, then simply randomized. Like testing the cookie shapes, not the cookies. He told me not all assets need interaction, some are just ascetic. It's expensive to detail buildings and interiors, while it's easier to generate square exteriors, but change color or positioning. He let me know they are saving money by limiting total designers and focusing on modulating unit for projects. The idea is reusable assets with minimal bugs or errors. I asked about how that might effect aesthetic. And he told me that's what the graphic design departement solves. You know lighting, shading, and etc. So game design is making stores with the interior as theme parks with facade castles and quest distractions all for the purpose of the gift shop? He said, games are expensive and don't pop out of thin air. There are shareholders to please and quarterly earnings to account for. He told me if the model wasn't profitable it's wouldn't be used. After about an hour or two I thanked him for his time, and did my best not to feel depressed. So I did what any angry millennial does and write an angry blog. Thank you for your time.

Changelog For 3.8.0.2 ReleaseGeneral Fixed a crash. Fixed an issue with bots purchasing vehicles on non-forest maps. Increased LowPowerDamageScale, rounding from 16.67% extra to 20% extra, matching what the encyclopedia states. Added information about this damage scale to the "low power, defenses inoperable" message to players. This is the feature that makes buildings take more damage when a base's power is low. Updated and clarified the ingame encyclopedia (F1 screen). Upscaled TT logo for splash screen. Nerfed Tesla Coil jolt damage Chain damage: 30 to 20 Chain fragment damage: 20 to 10 Explosion damage: 180 to 90. Fragment explosion damage: 100 to 80. Radio Commands Lowered sound volume from 2.0 to 1.0. Adjusted "building needs repairs" Soviet string. Thief Increased Crowbar Damage Penalty Cooldown from 0.35 > 1 Decreased Crowbar Damage Penalty Fraction from 0.15 > 0.08 Maps Removed visible boundary stripes on a few maps. This is planned for the remaining maps soon. Fixed missing tree stumps on a few maps. Replaced the copied assets with instances on a few maps. This affects the backend work more than anything. RA_GuardDuty Brightened overhead map. RA_KeepOffTheGrass Increased mine limit from 40 to 50. Fixed collision on a tree by the civilian rar house. RA_LunarParadox Fixed mine bomber being too shiny. Fixed weapon scopes. Sorted air units into the air tab. Kovtillery projectiles are visible again. Yaktillery uses the urban texture instead of forest. Set correct rotation on Angry Tank's emitter. RA_Metro Set Floating as the primary Jukebox track. RA_PacificThreat Fixed bigcrate nullgons. This would cause camera jittering in third person view. RA_RidgeWar Fixed a vehicle wedge spot behind the Allied WF, Added Hedgehogs to mark vehicle boundary at the infantry path north of the Allied base. RA_ShallowGrave Made an adjustment to the terrain that should fix an issue with stealth shaders appearing where they shouldn't. Fixed some floating rocks and grass. RA_StormyValley The environment is now brighter. Front Soviet Service Depot is now more flush with the ground. RA_TheWoodsToday Made an adjustment to the terrain that should fix an issue with stealth shaders appearing where they shouldn't. Removed Soviet Guard Shack near Allied base. RA_ToTheCore Unfloated a tree by the church. RA_Volcano Blocked off southwest naval route completely. Moved the Sub Pen and Naval Yard to face the single naval route better. Fixed/cleaned up lava heat damage zone. Slightly narrowed so more of the outer walkway is safe. Covers middle walkway now too.

Hi everyone, it's been a while! We've been on a nice long break, but has returned with a small patch to add some QoL and improve the balance a little bit. Take a read below to check out what we've been up to! Update 0.9.0.13 The changelog for update 0.9.0.13 is below: That's all folks! Head over to the discord for all of out latest updates. Please leave your feedback on Discord and we'll look at a larger balance patch for next time! Stay tuned for that! - @ OWA, @ moonsense715 and the AR Dev Team

[blurb]On July 12th at 7 PM GMT[/blurb]

[blurb]On June 27th at 7 PM GMT[/blurb]

[blurb]On June 20th at 7 PM GMT[/blurb]