Awesome APB 3.3.0.0 Changelog

[Pushwall]

2 hours ago, des1206 said:

Can we make the Mig missiles disappear after it fires them?

Yes but if we do then any unfired missiles will continue to float in midair when the mig dies. Still hasn't been fixed.

[VERTi60]

I just noticed we don't have a dedicated SS thread for APB, while

So many Intern Apes screenshots are posted, yet not a single one from the brand new A Pushwall's Behind... Let's post screens of the new b0tes. Cruiser is my favorite:

[des1206]

- For the APC availability, just let it replace the medium tank or supply truck after War Factory is dead. Allies with full bar and forced to use APC will come up with some pretty interesting teamwork that make the gameplay more fun.

- Does burn damage still mess up your aim? Also is there a way we can let flamer's naplam stick to the ground and burn for a few more seconds?

- Did Hind's gatling gun used to rotate? It's a really nice animation.

[Raap]

5 hours ago, VERTi60 said:

Even though the current model still looks miles advanced than the old one, I kinda agree it could look a bit better.

Destroyer could use a bit more texture detail work too, some of the parts seem to not have any texture on it, all the parts seem to have plastic look as you've put it. Middle deck could use wooden floor for example, the hull could be darker. Maybe adding some animations on radars or light work.

 

Yeah the Destroyer was not made with the same standards. The art for the naval units was out-sourced, both visually and technically the Destroyer is a mess and I believe a few people are already looking into updating it substantially (for starters the whole thing needs to be re-unwrapped). I don't know the specifics of the deal but I'd probably not go into business with that individual again, personally, given the fact he delivered half a ship here.

At least the Gunboat and Cruiser came out okay, especially the Gunboat.

Edited November 6, 2018 by Raap

[Pushwall]

2 hours ago, des1206 said:

- Does burn damage still mess up your aim? Also is there a way we can let flamer's naplam stick to the ground and burn for a few more seconds?

Again, no, I'm not willing to step into whatever hax would be needed for "persistent" splash damage. Unless you mean making the visual effect last longer.

2 hours ago, des1206 said:

- Did Hind's gatling gun used to rotate? It's a really nice animation.

Yeah, I added the rotation some point in mid-Delta (probably a year and a half ago), it just wasn't very noticeable until the addition of the turret camera.

[des1206]

If I can be frank, I also don't like the Cruiser model. The details and models are good, don't get me wrong. But the problem is the model is essentially a shrunk down version of a real life old battleship, with tiny doors and tiny windows on there as well. I know APB isn't going for 100% realism, but a Ralistic cruiser model with an alternative look that doesn't look like it shrunk on-purpose would have been better. All this is not to say I don't appreicate the work that's been done by the dev team. Thank you so much for making the cruiser happen.

I also noticed one cruiser turret equals the DPS of an artillery. Having a fully-manned cruiser is essentially equivalent of having 2 artillery attacking you from the ocean. 

Lastly, on Mig targeting issues. Has the dev team considered slowing down the Mig (50m/s -> 45m/s) and the Yak (40m/s -> 35m/s) a bit? I feel the slower speeds will help players to aim better while still making them the fastest units in the game.

Edited November 7, 2018 by des1206

[Raptor29aa]

18 minutes ago, des1206 said:

I also noticed one cruiser turret equals the DPS of an artillery. Having a fully-manned cruiser is essentially equivalent of having 2 artillery attacking you from the ocean. 

Lastly, on Mig targeting issues. Has the dev team considered slowing down the Mig (50m/s -> 45m/s) and the Yak (40m/s -> 35m/s) a bit? I feel the slower speeds will help players to aim better while still making them the fastest units in the game.

First off a double floating, huge, slow artillery is a great idea for V2 fodder. Its’ Inability to dodge and not small enough to hide or ambush... perfect.

As for the MiG... it just needs better camera angles so I can see if the missiles hit the target. (I feel accomplished when I see I landed a hit)

[Kicken]

1 hour ago, des1206 said:

 But the problem is the model is essentially a shrunk down version of a real life old battleship, with tiny doors and tiny windows on there as well. I know APB isn't going for 100% realism, but a Ralistic cruiser model with an alternative look that doesn't look like it shrunk on-purpose would have been better.

That is realistic to Red Alert, however. The cruiser's graphics were much smaller in scale than the gunboat, despite it having to be a much larger ship realistically.

[Pushwall]

7 hours ago, des1206 said:

Lastly, on Mig targeting issues. Has the dev team considered slowing down the Mig (50m/s -> 45m/s) and the Yak (40m/s -> 35m/s) a bit? I feel the slower speeds will help players to aim better while still making them the fastest units in the game.

Less speed just won't cut it unless the MiG is like half its original speed, it just needs to not require you to be able to fire at the same time as mousing over something for 0.05 of a second. Which will be the case next version.

[Coolrock]

8 hours ago, des1206 said:

We knew it was going to be an issue, but it came down to putting the Cruiser in the game now, or waiting months for the possibility of a 3D Artist joining the team again. I decided to act and get us the ship now. In the process, I also brought up getting replacements for the rest of the ships, since the Cruiser was crazy detailed compared to the Gunboat/Destroyer. We decided it was for the best to update everything for now, and always have the possibility to go back later. 

The team is very limited on what can be done. We don’t have the team size like we did 10+ years ago, and this was the best way I could find to get the ships to the players (especially the Cruiser). 

[Pushwall]

3.3.0.3

General

• Fix memory leaks during loading screen, alt+tab and chat history that would eventually crash the game.
• Fix particles being delayed or not appearing at all on the first few shots of any weapon.
• Shrunk HUD by 25%. Give it a try, and if it's still not the right size for you, head to the downloads section for a bigger or smaller one. Make sure to only install the small one if you actually have a small screen resolution, or else some weapon text may spill onto other HUD elements.
• Shortened some weapon names to accommodate new HUD sizes.
• AP Mines are now a little less performance-heavy.
• All rocket-launching weapons now have backblasts.
• Rockets have less gaps in their smoke trails.
• Rockets have thicker but shorter flame trails.
• Homing rocket-launching weapons have less ridiculous turn rates on their missiles (except the Redeye/Strela/SAM Site/Phase Tank which were already reasonable).

APC

• Max turret tilt down (60 -> 45 degrees)

Gunboat

• Moved cables to avoid clipping with barrel.

Tanya

• Damage back down to 25.

MiG

• Missiles now disappear from the model when fired.
• Alt camera is now underneath the middle.
• Overhauled missile behaviour:
  • They no longer have lock-on, so they will not follow moving targets, but they will still track to the position you're aiming at (just like the Missile Sub's ballistic missiles). So you are not required to mouse over the unit in order to hit it, but doing so is still helpful to confirm that you've entered firing range - you will have to lead against fast-moving vehicles though.
  • Velocity increased (50 -> 100m/s)
  • Turn rate increased 25%
  • Error ratio decreased (0.33 -> 0.2)
  • Range increased (100 -> 110m)
  • Hitbox size increased (0 -> 3m cube)
  • Damage to buildings decreased (50 -> 40) since they can now easily one-strafe and run whereas the slightly more damaging Yak needs two strafes and is slower
  • Missile damage to infantry down from 50% to 5% (since missiles with a large hitbox are much easier to hit infantry with, and coming from above they are basically guaranteed to be "headshots" - the original damage value would be able to one-shot any infantry with basically a 100% success rate)
  • Now fires 2 missiles at once with a 1.5 second cooldown between salvos, instead of 3 at once with a 6 second cooldown. So if used properly it can now use all 6 missiles in one strafe.

Under, KOTG

• Fixed floating trees.

[Maraneshi]

After this fix, performance should be universally better than before 3.0.

If your performance is worse than expected, check whether you have Anti-Aliasing on, particularly if you're on an integrated GPU ("MSAA Mode" in the launcher game settings or  Options -> Configuration -> Performance -> Expert  in the ingame menu). That option did nothing before 3.0, so you might have enabled it at some point without noticing.

[Mihaita12004]

Update failed to download, i forgot the solution guys! 

[KevinLancaster]

Is it possible to remove the grating in the Sub Pen? It prevents submarines from surfacing fully affecting your ability to board and exit depending on the direction you're facing, and due to this can lead to an issue where you get stuck on the moving sub in a continuous falling state you can't escape from.

[Pushwall]

1 hour ago, KevinLancaster said:

Is it possible to remove the grating in the Sub Pen? It prevents submarines from surfacing fully affecting your ability to board and exit depending on the direction you're facing, and due to this can lead to an issue where you get stuck on the moving sub in a continuous falling state you can't escape from.

No, because you shouldn't be exiting in the spawn area anyway, unless you like teammates yelling at you for making it impossible to buy more subs. Also, it's not affecting your ability to board and exit at all. If it was moved up it would have the exact same amount of continuous falling state problems.

[OWA]

21 hours ago, des1206 said:

If I can be frank, I also don't like the Cruiser model. The details and models are good, don't get me wrong. But the problem is the model is essentially a shrunk down version of a real life old battleship, with tiny doors and tiny windows on there as well. I know APB isn't going for 100% realism, but a Ralistic cruiser model with an alternative look that doesn't look like it shrunk on-purpose would have been better. All this is not to say I don't appreicate the work that's been done by the dev team. Thank you so much for making the cruiser happen.

The Cruiser in the cut-scenes of Red Alert is the very same Iowa-Class Battleship, so the RA-lism is spot on in this case.

I tried testing out a 1:1 scale Cruiser last month. Let's just say that it would have required a lot of map changes to accommodate it.  

[FRAYDO]

On 11/6/2018 at 3:10 PM, VERTi60 said:

I just noticed we don't have a dedicated SS thread for APB

It's there. You're just not looking hard enough.

 

 

[KevinLancaster]

When trying to run Metro in Single Player, the game freezes and crashes after the team selection screen.

[Raap]

How is this new HostileWaters playing for people?

I admit I'm still missing the work I put into the icebergs, and LST/infantry gameplay seems non-existent in the current version. All fun and games while the units are fresh and new but I fear people will be back to hating the lack of diversity that initially made me add so much infantry focused content in the first place, and we'd be back to start again.

That said, I do think the game needs more T5 naval and air-enabled maps. I think we need a HostileWaters with land based gameplay on the map pool.

I do find it highly amusing that Siege seems to be the most popular map now, up from being the least popular. It's funny to me because I always designed that map (back in 2008 when Chronojam was literally pushing me for an open space map) to be a map where airplanes would play a role. That the map sucked until said airplanes got added should not have been a surprise. And the Chrono Tank also plays very nicely with the terrain in general, doing what it does best; Utilize shortcuts.

If I had the time - and confidence - I'd look into a T5 naval/air map. Maybe someone else can do a map for once and not just Pushwall, Chop or myself. 

Edit: Perhaps a short term solution could be to refit some of the existing maps with naval and air gameplay. Pipeline seems like a good candidate for naval, although for air gameplay we'd need another airfield paint job (not to mention a greatly expanded map backdrop)...

Edited November 8, 2018 by Raap

[VERTi60]

3 hours ago, FRAYDO said:

It's there. You're just not looking hard enough.

 

 

Maybe move it under APB forum?

[Maraneshi]

14 hours ago, KevinLancaster said:

When trying to run Metro in Single Player, the game freezes and crashes after the team selection screen.

Could you upload the crash dump? You can find it by clicking on "User Data Folder" in the APB tab on the launcher, inside there should be a "debug" folder. Upload the newest file only.

14 hours ago, Raap said:

stuff

New HW seems decent so far, but we'll have to wait for more games with higher player counts. Low player counts make it very difficult to judge things since you might miss a cruiser going across the map and it will kill all your stuff before you can react, especially without Engineers.

Unless I'm forgetting something we currently only have one map with both MiGs and Cruisers and then one other map for each unit seperately, which is a bit sad since we really want to show off those new units.

[Pushwall]

14 hours ago, Raap said:

If I had the time - and confidence - I'd look into a T5 naval/air map. Maybe someone else can do a map for once and not just Pushwall, Chop or myself. 😩

I have plans for that utilizing a map that's been left in the gutter for about 4 years, which will also include ground vehicles. Like Neo Hostile Waters I think I'll take the same "release playable concept first, add detail later" approach just so that people have more mig/cruiser maps to play on sooner.

[KevinLancaster]

1 hour ago, Dghelneshi said:

Could you upload the crash dump? You can find it by clicking on "User Data Folder" in the APB tab on the launcher, inside there should be a "debug" folder. Upload the newest file only.

I sent the crash dump. I found it seemed to happen more often if I launch the game through the launcher, not directly from the .exe, but it isn't a certainty.

Related to the issue, when I've exited from the map the Quit Game text on the main menu ocassionally gets garbled or disappears.

Edited November 9, 2018 by KevinLancaster

[OrangeP47]

23 hours ago, OWA said:

 

I tried testing out a 1:1 scale Cruiser last month. Let's just say that it would have required a lot of map changes to accommodate it.  

Put it on Lunar Paradox

[des1206]

How about Ridgewar? Migs will be good for that map. 

[Pushwall]

Problem is we're looking for maps where we can have both migs and cruisers.

And if we're just adding migs to existing maps then we'd have to find a map that isn't already Soviet biased like Ridge War is.

[Raap]

7 hours ago, Pushwall said:

I have plans for that utilizing a map that's been left in the gutter for about 4 years, which will also include ground vehicles. Like Neo Hostile Waters I think I'll take the same "release playable concept first, add detail later" approach just so that people have more mig/cruiser maps to play on sooner.

If its the one I'm thinking of then you need to retool it to avoid the "Siege problem", you also need to make the naval routes not take 2 months to finish. 

What could be fun is, if the naval route wasn't at the side of the map, but straight through it, with land on either side. You could then take a page from the previous HostileWaters and connect land masses via high pass rock formations (the current concrete bridge would clip too much into the ships). Perhaps disallow naval vehicles from going around, it would force naval unit players to not take a boring long route and put them close to the action. The middle might have to be a multi-path route though to avoid meat-grinding.

You would save a little development time by not needing to create super detailed external-facing cliffs and underwater regions. The challenge though? Create waterways big enough to let Cruisers do their thing while still offering enough ground-level gameplay above it (so, not 75m straight and long bridges),

And then this also leaves you with two very distinct vehicle lanes, each with their own environment and gameplay. Granted, with all that said, you're basically making a new map by that point... Although purely theoretically it sounds fun to play and unlike the current maps in rotation in terms of design.

Edited November 9, 2018 by Raap

[VERTi60]

After playing with the Mig, I would suggest to increase it's range a wee bit - when flying low you will not hit anything due to missiles hitting ground instantly but if you are high the missiles tend to explode mid air. Usually you miss 1/3 of the payload this way when determining the exact altitude. Hitting moving vehicles is a lot harder now and not sure the craft can be called anti armor at this stage either. Hitting small buildings like pillboxes is also difficult.

And one other thing, and not sure if we want this fixed or not, but the Mig can actually easily land and take off sideways from the airfield.

[Pushwall]

2 hours ago, VERTi60 said:

After playing with the Mig, I would suggest to increase it's range a wee bit - when flying low you will not hit anything due to missiles hitting ground instantly but if you are high the missiles tend to explode mid air. Usually you miss 1/3 of the payload this way when determining the exact altitude.

More range will not fix the problem because the problem is the target box not going away quickly enough (really, going more than 5m away from your max range against something should do it as well as whatever undetermined amount of time outside of range does it). I could give the migs 500m range and people would still fire when they're 510m away having flown past their target, miss because the target box continues to persist for a while when you leave something's range, and claim its range is insufficient as a result. Also, if it had any more range it would be able to outrange AA guns (while flying parallel to them so it doesn't go directly into them).

[Raap]

I think slowing down the MiG's flight speed slightly could help with the targeting difficulties. 

But that said, I still think lock-ons made more sense. But ya know, dead horse, etc.