A Path Beyond APB 3.0.8.7 Changelog

[Pushwall]

[blurb]Be sure to check out the latest development update for Red Alert: A Path Beyond. Featuring many changes to infantry, vehicles, aesthetics and maps![/blurb]

[thumb]thumb_apb.7.png[/thumb]  Red Alert: A Path Beyond Update     

INFANTRY

• TOZ secondary fire spray angle down from 7.5 to 6.
• RPG-7 damage up to 90 again, reload time up from 2.5 to 2.8 (DPS change is negligible, but the extra damage means it kills LTs in one less shot from the side, so it's a little more viable against early LT rush)
• Grenade damage to all buildings up ~4% (0.3375 -> 0.35)

VEHICLES

• Light Tank reload time up from 1.1666 to 1.2 seconds (DPS down ~3%)
• Light Tank max speed down from 14.17 to 13.99m/s (-1.3%)
• Medium/Mammoth Tank muzzle velocity down from 250 to 200m/s (same as Light/Heavy)
• Artillery projectile damage down from 240 to 225.
• Artillery reload time down from 5.25 to 4.875 seconds (DPS change negligible for direct hits, up ~7.5% when only splashing)
• Artillery turret can no longer pivot 1 degree to either side, as this feature complicated aiming without a way to fix the pivot in place.
• Artillery barrel tilts 50% faster.
• V2 projectile extension adjusted from 3m long and 0.25m wide/tall, to just 0.01m long but 0.5m wide/tall. While this makes less sense for the big long rocket that it is, this should solve the issue where it sometimes falls through the ground, but the extra width/height should still keep it competitive when it comes to directly hitting things.
• V2 launch platform tilts 50% slower.
• Hind "tight" fire (primary) spray angle reduced from 1.25 to 1; should be more reliable against Longbows or other fast small-profile vehicles.
• Longbow and Hind have their side cameras replaced with an underside camera. Should be particularly helpful for helping the Hind hit ground units.
• Gunboat depth charge splash radius up from 22.5 to 30.
• Gunboat/Attack Sub damage to all buildings up by ~4% (0.12 -> 0.125)
• Mobile AA Gun splash damage down from 37.5 to 30.

AESTHETICS

• Shock Trooper and Tesla Tank have updated reload sounds which are a combination of the previous RA/Gamma "charge" sound and the Beta "electric" sound. These updated reload sounds have exactly the same duration as the reload time so they should help with attack timing.
• Ditched a stock Ren death sound that sounded more like someone having a stomach upset, and replaced it with Tiberian Dawn's fire-death sound.
• Raap's new crate has better shading.
• Stuttering when loading should be reduced.
• Hind uses a smaller tracer.
• Hind no longer "lies" about its ammo capacity; it's now halved to 50/350 and so is its ammo consumption (1 ammo per shot instead of 2). This has absolutely no effect on its gameplay; it only *looks* different, and the purpose of it is to fix an issue the old system caused with a damage calculator.
• Artillery smoke trail is thicker.
• Fixed missing "Building..." EVA voice when purchasing vehicles.

MAPS

RA_RiverRaid

• Filled in a hole in the blockers for the blocked route behind the Allied WF.

RA_Siege

• The secret has been removed. THIS MAY NOT BE PERMANENT - this is a test of whether the secret's script-zone overload is responsible for a lot of the slowdown or not! If the map's still unplayable near the end of a match, the secret may return.
• Adjusted fog thickness from 200/600 to 300/450; fog being less gradual may help as well.
• Removed the map-wide "anti sight-cheesing" meshes that no longer serve any purpose with the secret gone; this should also help?
• Like in most other maps, the trees on the map boundaries have been reduced in quality and merged into a smaller group of meshes, which should also help with performance.

RA_LunarParadox

• Boss infantry now have Engineer resistances (splash damage halved, including from suicide units, and can't be burned).
• Very Panicked Technician health up from 10 to 25.
• Very Panicked Technician can now drive vehicles and collect crates.
• Uber Technician is no longer squishable.
• Airsub reload time down from 2 to 1.5 seconds.
• Lunar Longbow fire rate up from 0.5 to 0.8 per second.
• Tesla Glober reload time down from 2 to 1.5 seconds.
• Brain Jammer reload time down from 5 to 3 seconds.
• Brain Jammer/Tesla Glober should be much harder to flip.
• Brain Jammer's turret rotates 200% faster.
• Ransikmobile was not lulzy enough so it is replaced with the Flour Tank. What does it do? Well, it fills the same role as before, but there's another effect it has that I'll let you discover for yourself. If you were part of the testing team for Delta back when we were under BHP, you may remember it as a secondary fire that was under consideration for the Artillery.
• VTOL Yak no longer uses mouse steering.
• VTOL Yak health up from 300 to 350.
• Mine Bomber health/armour up from 400 to 500.
• Guided V2 health up from 75 to 150.
• Guided V2 charge time up from 0.5 to 1 second.
• Guided V2 price up from 350 to 700.
• Guided V2/Suicide Medic explosion damage down from 1250 to 1000.
• Added shifted sound for the Chrono Dust Blower. This only has a 12.5m radius, so only you will be able to hear it unless you opt to drive directly through an enemy.
• Added start/stop sounds for Yak.
• Fixed missing killstrings for Guided V2 and infantry bosses.

[SarahNautili]

1 hour ago, Pushwall said:

 

• Uber Technician is no longer squishable.

All the yes!!

[Raap]

1 hour ago, Pushwall said:

 

RA_Siege

• Removed the map-wide "anti sight-cheesing" meshes that no longer serve any purpose with the secret gone; this should also help?

 

They also served to protect against "wall glitching" which plagues infantry cameras in APB. With them gone, people will now be able to view what is behind the castle walls and also beyond the map itself.

As for the map secret, it is a complex mess of scripting logic. If it turns out this was the reason for performance issues, then it seems I've stumbled upon a script issue first of all, but secondly it also means I won't work on such side-features in the future.

Edited April 11, 2017 by Raap

[Pushwall]

26 minutes ago, Raap said:

As for the map secret, it is a complex mess of scripting logic. If it turns out this was the reason for performance issues, then it seems I've stumbled upon a script issue first of all, but secondly it also means I won't work on such side-features in the future.

Surely you can do that and have the secrets be something other than Script Zone Hell. 

I think the only other map with nearly that many script zones is Forest of Illusion, and that not only has no buildings and 3 separate gameplay areas all out of draw-distance of each other (so not too much visual overload - it just LOOKS like it because there's a lot crammed into 3 separate 100-square-metre spaces instead of even more spread out over a 1000-square-metre space) but only lasts 5 minutes so the crawl they may be responsible for never actually happens. And if teleporters were just able to pick a random destination or temporarily enable ghost soldier collision so people don't get stuck in each other, that map would be using about 80% less script zones anyway.

[Raap]

You might want to re-enable the dirt filler mesh anyhow, since it also covered a lot of terrain issues that cannot be resolved from 3DS Max (places where to meshes meet leaving a 'seam' that cannot be closed despite all vertices of both meshes being in the exact same location).

[Alstar]

Lul, an "Everyone can see where i am because i fire a shell that leaves big goddamn green trail" is back.

[Pushwall]

24 minutes ago, Alstar said:

Lul, an "Everyone can see where i am because i fire a shell that leaves big goddamn green trail" is back.

Nowhere near that bad.

It's just less "dotted" than the old trail.

[Einstein]

On 4/12/2017 at 5:26 PM, Alstar said:

Lul, an "Everyone can see where i am because i fire a shell that leaves big goddamn green trail" is back.

Hide better.

 

[NodGuy]

On 4/11/2017 at 8:13 AM, Pushwall said:

 

VEHICLES

• Artillery turret can no longer pivot 1 degree to either side, as this feature complicated aiming without a way to fix the pivot in place.

This is the only change I'm no fan of, because being able to pivot it side to side really helped me when trying to hit Soviet defenses. It was a lot easier to pivot the turret than move the vehicle left or right.

[FRAYDO]

I'm actually glad the pivot was removed. I had felt my aim was off, and I completely forgot the pivot was a thing. While it's but a slight detail, this change oughta improve my aim as it was in Gamma.

[OrangeP47]

I never learned how to use the artillery in any version

[NodGuy]

Is there a way to make it so if we press a button we can enable to pivot? I feel that it made the vehicle a lot better, and I actually started to be good with it.

Edited April 15, 2017 by NodGuy

[FRAYDO]

Press Q to enable pivot? Or maybe P for pivot?

[Einstein]

On 4/14/2017 at 8:53 PM, NodGuy said:

Is there a way to make it so if we press a button we can enable to pivot? I feel that it made the vehicle a lot better, and I actually started to be good with it.

 

On 4/15/2017 at 0:31 AM, FRAYDO said:

Press Q to enable pivot? Or maybe P for pivot?

You boys totally said what I was about to say I agree! It makes normal aiming ever so slightly more difficult when you need it to be exactly straight, however the slight tilt can be of use in other situations. Adding a Q-toggle for this would be amazing.