Patch APB 3.0.8.2 Changelog

[Pushwall]

[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]

[Willy]

Dem bots doe

[Pushwall]

2 hours ago, DoMiNaNt_HuNtEr said:

Put the Cameos Canyon Bots map into the rotation. The server has been dead for the past five days so we need bots.

Problem is bots contribute to stats. People can farm kd off them pretty easily. Also, there's a bit of an issue with how vehicle bots behave on the server currently - their turret rotation for the client does not match what it is on the server. So they may be appearing to shoot something like 90 degrees away from you but will still damage you. Fortunately the only vehicle bot in regular play is the non-turreted non-combatant OT so I let this slide for this release. If both of these issues are solved (particularly the latter) then yeah I'll do it.

Regardless, I will definitely switch to the bot map once or twice during the Game Night, unless it turns out that the server just can't handle all the bots.

Also you have an interesting definition of "dead" or "past five days"

[des1206]

3 hours ago, Pushwall said:

• Supply Trucks/LSTs now only take 5 seconds to refill occupants' ammo

 

Not worried about Tanya/Engin C4 chariot? 

[Pushwall]

5 minutes ago, des1206 said:

Not worried about Tanya/Engin C4 chariot? 

Nope, frankly I feel they needed more help. Is a supply truck really that hard to kill?  When you look at it this strategy is basically just an alternate demo truck for lower tech levels, and with all the "leaving the base" risk shifted over to "at the enemy base", and less damage but more focused.

[des1206]

3 hours ago, Pushwall said:

• 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.

 

Does this also apply to detecting GAP cloaked units?

Also some spawned infantry die right away on camos.

Lastly is there anyway to make the AI units a little less lethal? They aim too good.

 

Overall great patch. Loving the new Hind sound and AI logic. Clearing charges can now clear hedges effectively! TT zoom will help in sniping those pesky infantry and PTs.

[Pushwall]

6 hours ago, des1206 said:

Also some spawned infantry die right away on camos.

Well some people !killme to move to other spawns so this just makes them more human no?  This happens when they can't find a path out of their spawn area. They get refunded for whatever they bought so it's ok.

6 hours ago, des1206 said:

Does this also apply to detecting GAP cloaked units?

Yes and no. It doesn't put a radar marker on gap units but AI TTs will still shoot MGGs and the things sheltered in them with unerring accuracy because the stealth shooting code is a simple "is this thing stealthed, yes/no".

[delta]

Oh man, been busy and haven't even gotten around to playing the last patch...and already there's another update. The last one was a pain to install too, what with it continuously jamming up >_>

Edited March 31, 2017 by delta

[ChopBam]

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

[Willy]

10 hours ago, Pushwall said:

Also you have an interesting definition of "dead" or "past five days"

 

Alternative definition

[Raap]

19 hours ago, Pushwall said:

 

RA_Siege

• Added VIS.

 

 

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?).

[Pushwall]

3 minutes ago, Raap said:

SORRY!

Can you guess how long this took?

2 minutes ago, Raap said:

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?).

They are pretty draining on performance, but really only about as much as a normal player as far as I can tell.

Something else I forgot to point out in is that in vehicles, they will try to find another path if they stay "blocked" for too long. So they won't get permanently hung up blocking ore trucks - only temporarily.

They do scale by player count automatically - whenever a player joins, a bot leaves.

But yeah, they need quite a bit more development (and to be excluded from stats) before I'll consider making them a mainstream thing.

[Raap]

2 minutes ago, Pushwall said:

Can you guess how long this took?

 

Far too long and I do apologize for this. Must have been quite a challenge juggling the several terrain files that make up the map as well.

Edited March 31, 2017 by Raap

[Pushwall]

Just now, Raap said:

Far too long and I do apologize for this. Must have been quite a challenge juggling the several terrain files that map up the map as well.

4 hours of terrain splicing, ~6 hours having the VIS auto-generator on while I was asleep, 2 hours of manual VIS points. So really just 6 man-hours. It's really not that big of a deal  I didn't make air VIS sectors because they wouldn't affect much, but on the ground FPS is up by about 50% looking from base to base, and I assume it's worlds better inside the castle and the underground areas.

[Raap]

1 minute ago, Pushwall said:

4 hours of terrain splicing, ~6 hours having the VIS auto-generator on while I was asleep, 2 hours of manual VIS points. So really just 6 man-hours. It's really not that big of a deal  I didn't make air VIS sectors because they wouldn't affect much, but on the ground FPS is up by about 50% looking from base to base, and I assume it's worlds better inside the castle and the underground areas.

Much less time than I likely would have needed, due to my lack of experience with the culling system. Not doing air sectors was a good decision, as I was mostly stuck on theoretically dealing with that issue. I did notice one blind spot in the Soviet base tunnel near the War Factory, but that's it.

Anyhow, I'm not sure if giving the map another visuals pass is the right thing for me to consider, since it would counter your VIS efforts.

[Pushwall]

9 minutes ago, Raap said:

Much less time than I likely would have needed, due to my lack of experience with the culling system

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.

9 minutes ago, Raap said:

Anyhow, I'm not sure if giving the map another visuals pass is the right thing for me to consider, since it would counter your VIS efforts.

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.

[Raap]

Food for thought I suppose. I'll see what options are available to me when I get more time for such things. I also haven't "officially" cancelled a 3rd map yet, but a while ago I've really started to second-guess if another map is in the best interest of the project, and whether or not I should contribute something else instead, such as fixing/brushing up Siege and HW, or contributing some "generic assets".

[des1206]

- Another "bug"(?). You can get into AI APCs, but they almost always kick you out right away. There was a few times I was able to hitch a ride for some reason. 

[Raap]

17 minutes ago, des1206 said:

- Another "bug"(?). You can get into AI APCs, but they almost always kick you out right away. There was a few times I was able to hitch a ride for some reason. 

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

[Pushwall]

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.

[des1206]

One more thing, can we give empty clicks to weapons that have run out of ammo? (Hind autocannon/Longbow rockets).

[KevinLancaster]

There's a Soviet Ranger on the bot map, is that intentional?

[Pushwall]

5 hours ago, KevinLancaster said:

There's a Soviet Ranger on the bot map, is that intentional?

Yes, this is to give more variety to the stuff bots get to balance them against the Allies who randomly buy rangers/APCs. If the Soviet bots all got heavies/mammoths/TTs they would just stomp.

[OrangeP47]

So I downloaded the latest patch.... that Medic...

[Pushwall]

1 hour ago, OrangeP47 said:

So I downloaded the latest patch.... that Medic...

Have I screwed something up somewhere? 

[Pushwall]

The issue that caused the bot map to crash from your double-demo shenanigans should be gone as well.

[OrangeP47]

7 hours ago, Pushwall said:

Have I screwed something up somewhere? 

No... it's the special patch, I was being a bit obtuse

[Pushwall]

Okay so we went through quite a bit of minipatches here from .3 to .5.

The rundown of them is as follows:

• Added RA_LunarParadox, a spiritual successor to an ancient fan map known as either the "LOLmap" or "SovietsAlliesLOL". Much like those maps, as well as Red Alert's very own Lunar Battlefield multiplayer map and Paradox Equation mission (from which this map is named), you will face a lot of unconventional weaponry, and that's about all I can say without spoiling too much. There's a minor issue with the points distribution right now, as well as a Soviet unit that had to be edited out due to causing server crashes, but when this is all fixed, it might become a part of the main server rotation. Until then, ask a moderator to enable it, or open up single-player LAN mode and check things out.
• Added RA_RidgeRacer, a spiritual successor to another ancient fan map, Ranger Raceway. This one is RidgeWar modified into a race track, complete with turbo-charged drifting rangers. It's not entirely scripted right now; the countdown is broken and the map needs a moderator around to spot winners and hand out point rewards, and since it departs from standard AOW gameplay even further than Lunar Paradox does (the only form of attack involved is spinning other drivers out), it may be relegated to just being an event map that people can ask for when they feel like something to cool down between battles.
• Unit/weapon icons for kill messages have returned, and have been updated for most of the new units/weapons and things that lacked them before (like the non-lethal tools)! The font needed some extra spacing to make this work so it may not look the same as before, and there are still a few things that need adding.
• RA_CamosCanyon_Bots should no longer crash if too many explosions happen around the Allied WF.

[Raap]

I still broke the game with Siege somehow, VIS doesn't seem to help it out that much. Unfortunately the only option left is to severely cut down the number of trees, assuming of course, that the scripts aren't causing the performance issues.

Also, Danpaul's teleport script has a problem in live play (non-LAN), if two or more people use the same teleporter and block the 'exit point', they become stuck. In Siege's case, adding rotating spawns is not an option. The map challenge may have to be removed entirely as a last resort for Pushwall to decide on.

Edited April 2, 2017 by Raap

[OrangeP47]

Considering how much I was crashing, Seige performed perfectly for me and I was really enjoying everyone else having a bad time with it instead of me for a change

That said, while I don't want to unduely annoy the devs and stuff, in a few days I might have kind of a long help forum post about my crashes. There's a few things on my end I'm going to do to see if that fixes it, including a total reinstall of the game, as I have a suspicion the fact that I had to try to download the last big patch multiple times might have something to do with my issues, considering I had a map mismatch error at one point.