A Path Beyond APB 3.1.4.0 Changelog

[Pushwall]

  Red Alert: A Path Beyond Update     

Hello everyone - apologies for being almost completely absent the past few months save for answering one or two forum/IRC queries, but I kind of needed a break. Have a Christmas present for your patience!

 

General

• Wrecked Medium Tank prop has been redone completely by @Ice using the Delta Medium Tank as a base.
• Fixed some unwrapping issues with the wrecked Light Tank prop. (again by Ice)
• Some minor improvements to the Wrecked Heavy Tank prop and texture. (again by Ice)
• Updated to a much newer scripts build; now we can debug crashdumps again.
• Bots driving vehicles on the server now actually show their turret rotation properly to clients, so they will no longer appear to fire a projectile in a completely different direction from you and still hit you. I only just learned about this script-fix less than a day before the patch was meant to go live so I haven't been able to do anything with it yet; for the time being it'll make Camos Canyon bot matches less awkward, but you can expect to see bot functionality added to a few more of the less-complicated maps in future.

 

Infantry

 Grenadier

• Projectile velocity up (50 -> 60m/s)

 Medic

• Self-healing now starts after 5 seconds instead of 1.
• Health down (100 -> 90)
• MP5 ROF down (12.5 -> 11.25)

 Captain/Kapitan

• M60/PKM damage to MCTless buildings down by 6.25% (0.2 -> 0.1875)
• M60/PKM damage to base defenses down by 16.67% (0.15 -> 0.125)

Portable Stinger (misc. event weapon)

• Range down (180 -> 135m)
• Reload time down (2.5 -> 2s)
• Projectile damage down (120 -> 70)
• Splash damage down (30 -> 25)
• Splash radius down (14 -> 12m)
• Projectile velocity down (200 -> 50m/s)

 Rifle Soldier

• M16/AK-47 damage to MCTless buildings down by 6.25% (0.16 -> 0.15)
• M16/AK-47 damage to base defenses down by 7.4% (0.135 -> 0.125)

 Spy

• Fixed oversight where he could establish radar relays while his own Radar Dome was still up, which caused his dome to stop working after the relay's timer expired.

 Sniper

• Fixed rendering issue with Allied Sniper where his bandolier glowed in the dark, so he should be harder to spot now.
• Added snow camo variant for both teams courtesy of Ice; click the gold arrow on the purchase icon to switch what camo you're buying.

 Volkov

• Anti-tank cannon range down (90 -> 85m)

 

Vehicles

 Ranger

• Damage to MCTless buildings and base defenses down by 6.25% (0.2 -> 0.1875)

 Tesla Tank

• Fixed alt camera being too high - it was sharing the Mammoth Tank's alt camera which got moved up when the Mammoth was resized.

 

Buildings

 Refinery

• Improved collision on the rails in the stairwell.

 War Factory

• Construction magnet doesn't block camera movement anymore.

 Missile Silo

• Launch animation is slightly redone to be less silly from the basement view; the missile smoke doesn't clip through the wall of the basement quite so much, and a new missile will not materialise right in front of onlookers' eyes.

 

Maps

RA_NorthByNorthwest

• Brought back from the dead!
• Map has been shrunk slightly.
• Bases are now backed up against the map borders.
• The spring on the central hill is now a much more defensible position to infantry, surrounded by rocks/vehicle wrecks/bunkers that prevent vehicle access. To compensate, the hill is not quite as heavily forested as before, so compared to Gamma it shouldn't be as painful to move vehicles around the edges if you control the area.
• The corner hills are now much steeper than before, and are only accessible from certain ramps.
• Added 3 neutral Supply Truck spawn points.
• Tech Level set to 2.
• New Delta jukebox: Depth Charge (initial track just like in Gamma), Creeping Upon, Re-Con, We Will Stop Them
• Added a Missile Silo, an Ore Silo (as usual), and an extra Service Depot. Less defenses in total, but since the bases are assailable from less angles than before and the walls are a little more helpful than before, bases are still pretty well defended.
• Somewhere there is a fidget spinner new neutral building to explore, courtesy of @CMDBob, with a randomly spawning crate that can be of great use to you. Whereas KOTG's crate focuses primarily on weapons, NBNW's crate focuses primarily on defense and reclassing - it's not recommended to pick one up if you're comfortable with your current class. It can even give you some infantry units from higher tech levels or from the other team, or maybe even something beyond all that!

RA_KeepOffTheGrass

• Crate now spawns every 90-150 seconds (like the new NBNW crate) instead of a fixed 120.
• Crate can no longer give radar invisibility or medic kits.
• Crate can now give limited M16s, AK-47s, Shock Rifles and Colt .45s.
• Crate now has a 1/4 chance of changing you to a Captain or Rocket Soldier (or the Soviet equivalent). This will reset your inventory, making it much less likely for crate abuse to turn a character into a walking arsenal, but at least you still have a useful field class.

RA_Metro

• More destructible hedgehogs have been added, this time to the bridges. Now you need to clear them if you want vehicles to attack at all.
• Added concrete walls to the east of the north Soviet silo to make assaulting it from the bridge more difficult initially.
• Soviet WF construction death zone no longer pokes slightly out of one of the sides of the construction pad.
• Bots can't buy vehicles anymore - they wouldn't know how to handle the hedgehog blockades anyway.
• Bots can't buy Tanya or Volkov anymore - they shouldn't be available to them due to tech level.
• Moved the silos around:
  • Soviet north silo is now moved outside the map border fence. You can still repair it from this position, but it's harder to do so while under attack as the area from which your tool can reach it is fairly limited. Most importantly it is now much more protected from almost-b2b arty fire.
  • Soviet south silo is now slightly further from the WF, on the other side of the drainage grate. Some cones have been removed to make it still feasible to mine.
  • Allied south silo is moved all the way back to the war factory, so it can't be attacked from behind the bridge anymore.
  • Allied north silo is moved back slightly, giving attackers from the hospital/restaurant side a better angle of attack against it.

RA_Pipeline

• Removed a barrel that was clipping through a concrete wall.
• Sandstorm particles no longer move in the opposite direction of the Barracks flags.

RA_RiverRaid

• Added a vehicle blocker to the upper tunnel so Rangers can't get in.

RA_Siege

• Fixed a bit of the castle wall filler mesh that was poking out into the real world.

RA_Zama

• The lower-elevated parts of the map have been heavily deforested; the large forest between the Allied base and the river has been turned into more water (bringing it a bit closer to the actual Red Alert version of Zama), and the large forest between the Soviet base and the village has been turned into a rocky valley.

[OrangeP47]

Epic update.

Question though, on the thing about new scripts and crashdumps:  Does this mean I should go generate new crash dumps for my problems and resubmit?  If I can, I mean, new scripts might have fixed it.

[Mojoman]

Yay! New update means new interest!

[Pushwall]

3.1.4.1 minipatch:

General

• Server no longer crashes if a C4 or clearing charge gets attached to terrain.

 

Buildings

Neutral Technology Centre

• Fixed floating snow on top of the rooftop entrance.
• Added vehicle blockers to the exterior walls, to stop vehicles from getting flipped over by them since they're slanted.

 

Maps

RA_Metro

• The waypoint system has been implemented to allow bots to attack the enemy base from up to 5 different directions, since the removal of vehicles means we don't have to worry about them trying to go down the infantry-only routes.

RA_Zama

• Fixed a very obviously floating rock.

[Raap]

Nice to see another update!

Any plans to tie a capture logic to the tech center? Not that I'd know what it would unlock right at this very moment, but I'm sure conjuring something up wouldn't be too hard!

But anyhow, I really should finish that map I was supposed to finish a decade ago...

[Pushwall]

1 hour ago, Raap said:

Any plans to tie a capture logic to the tech center? Not that I'd know what it would unlock right at this very moment, but I'm sure conjuring something up wouldn't be too hard!

I originally wanted to do that, having the tech centre be capturable and possibly enable the purchase of higher-tech units, but when I decided to start working again after my break it was only a few weeks back and I felt didn't have the time to figure out how to make it work - and in the end I only just barely got this stuff out for Christmas day anyway. So I decided to do a variation on the KOTG crate thing instead, which is probably more balanced anyway because it means one team isn't going to immediately have a full regiment of mechanics ready to go right after they get their first "capture" in. Some time in the future I may give a try at making it capturable though.  

[GaryOak]

It wouldn't be a proper patch if the medic didn't get nerfed 

 

Good patch though, it was very nice to see NBNW again!

[Raap]

10 hours ago, Pushwall said:

I originally wanted to do that, having the tech centre be capturable and possibly enable the purchase of higher-tech units, but when I decided to start working again after my break it was only a few weeks back and I felt didn't have the time to figure out how to make it work - and in the end I only just barely got this stuff out for Christmas day anyway. So I decided to do a variation on the KOTG crate thing instead, which is probably more balanced anyway because it means one team isn't going to immediately have a full regiment of mechanics ready to go right after they get their first "capture" in. Some time in the future I may give a try at making it capturable though.  

Maybe tie some stationary defenses to it, or an area-effect buff that remains in a controlled area.

Siege's cannons were an attempt capturable defenses, but truthfully the lack of 'killing the visible passenger/driver' engine support is a bit of a downer on the gameplay, but I'm sure via capture logic more sensible things could be done, like ejecting all drivers upon an ownership change. But then there is that little matter of creating a new type of player-controllable defensive structure without visible passenger slots...

 

Edit: Imagine Siege's cannons but ownership changing via a central control hub captured via a king of the hill progress trigger, this would solve a lot of shortcomings, and more importantly, it would make more sense for a 'tech lab'.

Edited December 27, 2017 by Raap

[Raptor29aa]

@Raap are you saying that once captured a turret comes online for that side?

Or are  Oh saying that a controllable stationary turret comes online.

I do see the advantage to the first option more than the second option. A player controlled turret (unless up high) would simply take a man out of the field. The first option an AI turret would add a tactical advantage of shutting down an attack route to an opponent. Yet the turret would not impede the ability for a techie to capture the building.