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[blurb]Oh deer. It looks like Romanov has been talking to Jerad2142 a bit too much lately. We have venison galore in this meaty update![/blurb] So, it's finally 2017 and it's time for our first blog this year! GI Update The Allied attack deer is a very versatile unit. It’s ability to sustain itself for long periods of time by eating grass from the environment makes it exceedingly useful for extended deployments. "Oh deer..." Allied Sniper The allied sniper is a great threat to any soviet infantry. Equipped with his trustworthy AWP, he is capable of decimating the enemy with his quickscoping and 1080noscope tactics, pwning every n00b that crosses his way. "Noot Noot" Soviet Doge The soviet doge is well suited for extended cold missions; in addition, by being a doge it is able to trick families into thinking it’s just a loving pet, when really it’s a super secret spy. "Many bites. Such hat. Very deadly. Wow!" Recruitment We are always hiring new team members to speed up AR's release! If you believe that you can help us out, you are more than welcome to help! The following positions are open: 2 Artists for modeling and texturing civilian buildings and props. 1 Artist for making nature assets (trees, bushes, etc.) 1 Character Artist 1 Texture Artist/Photoshop User (optionally Unwrapper) to help in texturing building interior objects If you wish to contribute to this project and believe you have the skills, give us a shout! If you would like to contribute to the game and believe you have the skills, don't hesitate to apply! If you don't know if you have the skills, send us a forum PM and we can chat. If you would like to help in areas not listed here, that is also more than welcome. To apply, just send @moonsense715 or @One Winged Angel a PM (Private Message) via the forums and let us know which position you wish to apply for. End Feel free to contact the team regarding testing applications for Apocalypse Rising and our other W3D projects and become an official W3D Hub Tester today!

Stay tuned, I'll be bugging moon to make them spout canned phrases like "pffff", "hax", "typical" or "BG" when they die. (not really) I think the deal with the APC bots is they expect only bots to ride in them, and so they're scripted to make sure their passengers can only stick in the vehicle when they NEED them to (i.e. they are in the process of transporting them around and not currently in combat). If a bot is attempting to ride the APC as a passenger, you should be fine to do so yourself.

Part of the "more player-like AI" initiative, the AI APC driver emulates the "asshole driver" portion of the player base.

SORRY! As for bots being smarter, smart enough to have attack plans (pre-designed I imagine), and smart enough to understand the concepts of credits and purchasing, I can safely say I didn't see that coming. If they are more developed beyond this point while also not being a huge performance drain, then tossing them into all existing maps alongside playercount scaling effects (more players = less bots) would start to make more sense (more sense, moon sense, SEE DAT?).

If the biggest problem with this game is "updates are too frequent," we'll take it.

[blurb]Join us for an extra special April Fools game night! Rangers will roll and Submarines will fly![/blurb] [thumb]thumb_apb.c.png[/thumb]I would like to first thank you all who attended the previous game night. As was mentioned in the announcement for that one, there is another coming right up this Saturday! I can promise you, this is one not to miss! April 1st, Saturday April Fools' Day Special! 7:00 PM GMT (EU) & 9:00 PM CST (US) Official APB Server

[thumb]thumb_apb.h.png[/thumb] Red Alert: A Path Beyond Update GENERAL Reverted some netcode changes that may have been responsible for all the recent crashes. Please let us know if they keep happening! Reenabled hitbeeps, and they no longer trigger on damage-over-time effects. INFANTRY Clearing Charge explosion no longer deals distance-based damage and no longer gets blocked by terrain - any mines in their 10m blast radius are dead, no questions asked. They are also more effective at clearing multiple hedgehogs as a result. VEHICLES Added zoom cameras for Tesla Tank and Phase Tank. Tesla Tanks now reveal Phase Tanks on radar within 75m (which is the max distance of the radar anyway). Like with the Engineer's mine detector, other Soviets can see the Phase's radar marker. AI Tesla Tanks also emulate this by being the only bot unit that can detect stealth. Demolition Truck explosion damage to infantry down from 160 to 105. Supply Trucks/LSTs now only take 5 seconds to refill occupants' ammo. AT Mine damage reduced from 356.25/475 (Ore Trucks/everything else) to 250/150/200 (Light vehicles/Ore Trucks/everything else). However, they now instantly deplete all armour of the affected vehicles, so the damage of the first mine you trigger is a lot higher than that if you're using a big tank - best to never get hit by a mine at all, especially if there are enemies nearby! AESTHETICS New Hind sounds by @OWA. Aircraft rotors should now spin down at a rate appropriate for their sound. Blood effects for rocket/shell direct hits on infantry are a little easier to notice. MAPS RA_CamosCanyon_Bots Bots are now using an experimental version of Moonsense's AI that attempts to mimic player behaviour more. Here's how they've changed They have names now! They get money from dumps/silos, and will use it to actually purchase units instead of spawning as those units for free. Sometimes they attempt to attack in groups, and won't all charge down the same attack route. They can attack buildings now. This was doable before but wasn't worth the effort of implementing before since with the old AI they rarely got close to those buildings anyway - now they do! RA_Siege Added VIS. Changed saturation of objective messages to be more readable. RA_StormyValley Partisans are now using the updated AI that was introduced to every other bot in 3.0.8.0. This isn't all though. There will be more coming on April 1st. But I won't say any more than that... [blurb]Some changes are reverted, and some added aesthetics. More to come on April 1st, but we can't say any more on that...[/blurb]

A year ago I would have told you to get fucked if you wanted me to add VIS, or told you that it's not worth sacrificing your own sanity for, but it's gotten a lot easier now due to both me figuring out that certain parts of the 15 year old tutorial are BS (particularly the bit where it tells you to place the VIS sectors below the ground - all that means is you need to spend more time on manual VIS points, especially if there are tunnels) as well as fixing a lot of building materials that the previous owner had set alpha rendering on despite them being opaque walls separating the player from blue hell - which often resulted in VIS gen basically throwing up its arms and saying "uh no, I can see forever in this area, so I'm not going to hide anything". You'd be surprised how much of a map's meshes are from buildings. Since this map has a lot of them and the VIS camera is so low-res that it has a lot of trouble detecting small objects from 200m+ distances to make them visible, a lot more stuff is hidden than you'd think even when looking from base to base. Of course, VIS camera being the way it is has its downsides and sometimes really obvious things get hidden, as you noticed. It depends. If you're just adding foliage and such it just means I'd have to re-generate the VIS. If you're adding new tunnels and such, that means having to carve out new VIS sectors too. If that new foliage is part of the same mesh as the old and around the same area (like extra grass around an existing grass mesh) it probably won't need any VIS change at all.

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Be sure to join in for some April Fools' fun this Saturday! Look for the party in the APB server!@

You look familiar.