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devblog 84 v1330
DIR By: jjed11
Date: October 30, 2015, 12:47 pm
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Devblog 84
Posted on October 29, 2015 by Craig Pearson
We added the sentry gun, throwable axes (and other weapons and
tools), banners, and new signs. There’s also building cupboard
tweaks, the removal of the often mis-used half-block (and how
we’ll replace it), and lots more.
Garry
Cupboard Placement
We hate the cupboard. We’re trying to phase it out over time, to
make it less powerful and less required. We’ve changed it so you
can only place a cupboard outside the sphere of influence of
another cupboard, even if you own that other cupboard. Here’s a
diagram.
As you can see, as a builder you can no longer have 15 cupboards
in your small 4×4 base. We don’t think this is going to affect
things as massively as people are acting like it will. At least
not nearly as massively as when we completely remove it.
Corpse Stuff
A long standing problem with corpses was that they slide down
hills or fall off cliffs, then become unlootable and
unharvestable.
This was happening because ragdolls are clientside, but the
“corpse” is serverside. So when a ragdoll moves too far away
from a corpse, and then you try to loot it, the server says…
‘Hang on! You can’t loot the corpse from where you are, you’re a
liar.’ This is because the ragdoll was meant to stay near the
corpse, but it wasn’t, it was ignoring it. This should finally
be fixed now, along with a bunch of other ragdoll related bugs.
Steam Items
We’re doing something a bit different with Vince’s sign items.
They work like normal items, you can find and research
blueprints in game. But because they’re decorative and don’t
influence gameplay, we also drop them randomly in the Steam
inventory. Which means that if you’re lucky enough to get one,
you’ll be able to craft them on any server. We’re not selling
these in the item store, but if you get a duplicate or need the
cash, you can sell yours on the marketplace.
Also Valve has added an item store to Steam, so now you can buy
items from us without going into the game. This is a work in
progress, so if you find any bugs or have any suggestions,
please let them or us know.
Block Removal
We removed the half-height block and the slanted block. You
probably want to know why. You probably used them all the time,
you probably think they were really really useful. Did you use
them as a half height block and slanted block? Or did you use
them to ‘be creative’?
Well, we appreciate that creating shelves is now impossible. But
we can make that possible again by adding, you know, shelves. We
appreciate you can’t create bunker style windows, but we can fix
that by adding bunker style windows. You don’t need these
blocks, no-one used them for what they were for, so let’s just
cut the fat and get shit tight as fuck.
Door Animations
We converted the doors to use an animation system on the client
and server. Previously doors were only animated on the client,
and were animated through some “turn to this angle when open”
junk, which worked fine for the doors we had, but obviously
wasn’t going to work for anything more complicated than that.
We have made them animated on the server too. This fixes a bunch
of problems that kept cropping up, like not being able to fire a
rocket through the gap in a closing door. Or not being able to
use a door as a shield against a turret.
Memory Leak
I think we’ve found the memory leak. It’s to do with shadows.
It’s apparently fixed in Unity 5.2.3, which isn’t out yet. So
we’re going to have to suffer for a week or so longer, sorry
guys :(
Wipe Schedule
Our schedule right now is looking like this:
Today: Update
5th November: Update + Forced Wipe
19th November: Update
3rd December: Update + Forced Wipe
This isn’t set in stone. This isn’t a promise. This is our plan
as of this exact moment.
Halloween Items
The community got themselves together to make a bunch of
Halloween items. Which is cool! So we’ve selected a few of them
and put them on the store, and made them random drops. They’ll
be available until the day after Halloween, at which point we
won’t sell or drop them anymore, but if you’ve got one, you can
keep and use it.
This seems like a fun seasonal thing to do, so we’ll probably do
more of this if the community makes the items.
Maurino
Sentry
Phew! Good thing we had a week to test this thing as it was
chock full of bugs. It may have a few more due to the fact that
it is so rare that it hasn’t been tested fully. Nevertheless
it’s in and ready to work for you while you’re offline.
Here’s what you need to know:
The blueprint is very rare, and the item is only craftable from
components found at helicopter crash sites and in air drops.
This means you can’t just build a million of them, you gotta put
some work in. They’re vulnerable to all damage types but take
extra damage from explosives, so use your grenades! One thing to
note about the sentry turrets is that they have a short range of
20-30M, and will not engage targets beyond this point. This
means you can’t just put them on a roof and have them kill
everything in sight. Anyone can destroy it from outside that
radius. They are meant for being placed indoors.
They also can only cover one 180 degree arc at a time, you can
rotate to pick which arc, but they are vulnerable from behind. I
hope this encourages people to design their bases a little bit
differently than just layers upon layers of doors. It should
also provide a little more peace of mind every time you log off.
This feature took some doing but I hope you all enjoy it and I
can’t wait to see what shows up on Youtube.
Grenades
I took a look at grenades because no one was using them. Why?
Because they sucked. They were totally unreliable, and you
basically had to get lucky to do any damage or kill anyone with
one. I fixed this by reducing the bounce substantially as well
as modifying the friction values and throw velocities. The end
result should be far, far more predictable grenade throws. I
realized this while doing a balance pass for the sentry and
trying to land grenades next to them. It was nearly impossible!
In addition, I increased the stack size from 1 to 2, so you can
have more ready to go on your belt. Enjoy!
Next Week
As I said in my last devblog this is the last thing I was doing
for the endgamers, and now my focus is purely on the early/mid
game. I’ve heard a lot about how people have the most fun right
after the wipe and everyone is just starting out and I tend to
agree with that assessment. There are a few reasons for this:
things like the progression curve being all out of whack, and a
rich-get-richer problem. I’ll be addressing all of this in the
coming weeks, and adding some new toys and mechanics
specifically for those starting out. No, I won’t be making the
bow insta-headshot anyone again. I’m thinking more along the
lines of upkeep and non craftable gun components, things that
make being at the top of the top take real work and not just
bathing in resources and newspawn blood. I’m also going to take
a look at reducing the quality of Radtown-found weapons to 0 or
near 0, so you have to repair/craft your own rather than just
get lucky and have the best weapon in the game when everyone
else has nothing. Also, I know the turret is for endgamers, and
we’ve had some internal discussions about traps. I have a few
ideas for some that work in a similar (albeit not as effective)
fashion for early/midgame players. More on all this next week!
Andre
Footprints, Part 2
I finished up the footprint system for the most part. Players
now leave bare or boot footprints depending on whether or not
they’re wearing boots. They also leave footprints even when
crouching, and I allowed artists to set up separate, less
noticeable footstep effects when crouching, which Scott wanted
to utilize for water impacts.
Projectile Additions
I added some new functionality to projectiles that was required
for the sentry. Nothing too exciting to see there.
Tool Cupboard Exploit
The tool cupboard was not checking for a clear line of sight
when someone tried to authorize or clear it, only the distance
between the cupboard and the player. This is now fixed.
Building System
There are some fairly major issues with our current building
system, and I started prototyping some potential solutions this
week. The problems are the following:
Queries to get nearby entities utilize the physics system,
which is slow and turned out to be a problem for more than just
buildings.
Building blocks do not know which sockets of other building
blocks they’re connected to after placement and therefore cannot
use this information for conditional models or stability.
Building blocks do not know which of their own sockets are
occupied and therefore cannot reject placement of additional
building blocks on the same socket other than by checking the
physics system.
Conditional building models do physics checks to determine
their state, which is slow and unreliable and is therefore only
done on the client.
Conditional building models are slow to render and therefore
only spawn very close to the camera.
Conditional building models cannot change building
colliders.
Building stability uses the physics system to determine the
stability of a building block, which is slow and unreliable.
Building stability is quite basic and doesn’t take the
weight of objects that are placed on top of building blocks into
account.
All of those issues are more or less related to each other, so
they can’t really be solved individually and many of them
require some pretty significant changes. I also can’t say for
sure that the stuff I’m prototyping will actually work out and
solve those problems in a solid, maintainable way. Expect more
on this over the coming weeks.
Next Week
Since we’ll wipe next week I’m going to check off some wiping
changes from my TODO list, then get back to my building
experiments.
Vince
I finished the banners and implemented them earlier this week.
With all the new signs I have added a total of 13 items. Some
issues might be left at this stage on some models, but otherwise
it’s ready to use. The banners still require some shader love in
order to give them the final look: at the moment they’re static,
and I’m not entirely sure about the gap I left between the
hanging banner type and the walls. It might be less awkward
moving about if it sticks closer to walls.
I also improved our barricade deployables, making them more
competitive against high walls. Some changes to sockets made
them easier to place on terrain. The cover is also raised to
1.4-1.5m, a cover height that fully encompasses your crouched
pose and lets you fire over the barricade when standing up. The
sandbags and concrete ones have more life now too. I believe all
these changes should give those items a little more interest.
Thanks to Rustafied for the pic.
I started working on some shutter items that will let you hook
on your windows just like you attach your window frames. I’m
thinking of having three different versions coming to you in
next week’s update: a vertical and horizontal ‘arrow slit’ that
will aim to replace the hacky bunker windows that the
half-blocks were allowing. I’ll also add a simpler wood shutter
that fully opens and closes.
Next Week
I’m looking at finishing the high exterior wall gates
implementation and the stone gate should be available for next
patch from me. I’ll also work on a shelf item that’ll replace
your beloved half-block hack.
Diogo
I’ve been doing a lot of water work again this week, including a
small bit of shader work to help Scott pull off his improved
water FX improvements.
A lot of important things are still missing, like decent
underwater rendering (fog, reflections) which is
work-in-progress right now. I’m just wrapping up a completely
GPU-based water simulator, to free our CPU and system ram for
more important workloads. The improvement is massive, and it’ll
allow me to finally get a few different levels of simulation
blended together and make it easier to pull off a lot of what’s
left (e.g. deep water foam). Since there’s still a lot going on,
it’s likely that this water simulation perf-jump won’t directly
translate to an increase in FPS.
Also did some refactoring (incremental) to facilitate deployment
across to other games, like Before.
There are still players crashing on Intel HD 3000 hardware so I
went ahead and borrowed a 2011 Macbook Air to debug this
problem. I should have some news soon.
Next Week
Get all the work-in-progress done.
Gooseman
I finished sculpting the fine details on the M249. I then
created the low poly version in Topogun. It’s taken longer than
I expected due to the sheer amount of detail and edge wear, but
I’m almost ready to start animating it. The final texture pass
should be done by next week and then it’s on to animating it and
putting it in game. Here’s what I have so far:
Next Week
Finish texturing the M249 and start animating it.
Howie
Instead of continuing on with the totem pole from last week, I
decided to work on some ideas that could be implemented without
extra programming. These would all use existing systems and only
require art assets. Not all of these ideas are necessarily meant
to replace/compare to our existing doors and windows: some I see
as purely for aesthetics or to enhance role-playing.
Next Week
I think there’s still a lot more exploration to be done with
building parts like this. I’d like to experiment with different
shaped windows, bigger doorways that allow for sliding doors,
anything that still has utility but also gives the player more
creative choices.
Alex Rehberg
I spent some more time on the ambience experiments this week and
I think I’ve got a fairly good idea how I’m going to go about
fixing my gripes with the current system. It’s going to take
quite a bit of kind of repetitive low-level editing work to
split some of our ambience up into smaller isolated pieces, so
I’m going to do those edits alongside working on other things so
it’s not a wood chopping grind. I’ll do a more detailed write-up
on this once you guys can actually hear it all in game :). Also:
Finished up the new autoturret sounds
Finished up new landmine sounds
Fixed some issues with door sounds that came from us
changing how doors work
Made sounds to go along with the underwater bubbles and
bullet flybys that Scott did last week
Made gunshots use the same voice limiting system as gib
sounds
Added sloshing water sounds when players move in water. I’d
like these sounds to vary based on how fast you’re moving soon
too.
Added a large fire sound so the helicopter napalm and debris
fires don’t sound like quaint campfires anymore.
Added quick distant rocket launcher attack sounds.
Added a first pass at stone construction sounds. These sound
a bit too much like smaller rocks instead of stone blocks right
now, but I’m doing some recording to remedy that on Friday.
Added a flight sound to the thrown hatchets and pickaxe.
Next Week
Next week I’ll be working on the ambience stuff more, and I want
to start making alternate impact sounds for all the melee
weapons impacting soft targets so we don’t have goofy bonks and
clangs when you’re hitting a pumpkin or a sleeping bag. I’ve got
a bunch of smaller things on my list, like sign painting brush
strokes and research bench sounds, that I’ll do a few of too.
Paul
This week I’ve been levelling up a bit, dabbling with some 3D
(self-taught!) and implementing it into my concepts. Two birds,
one stone! I’ve continued on with more drone concepting, which
at the moment this is still a blue-sky concept. Helk has an idea
what he’s looking for so for the moment, so I’m just trying to
provide lots of different options for styles and looks, which we
can cherry pick from and come up with a final design.
RUSTdroneconcept3
I’ve also taken the crafted semi-auto rifle into ¾ and started
finalising the design for Tom to work his magic on. It’s still
WiP as of writing this, but I’ll post the press up. I think it’s
turning out pretty successful and swings the weapons back over
to the clunky, unreliable DIY built from nothing style, which I
think the most common chunk of guns should be, with the more
precise powerful weaponry being super rare and expensive to
maintain.
RUSTcraftedsemiautowip1
Next Week
Continuing on with pushing the drone to a final design, and
probably finishing touches on the crafted semi-auto.
Alex Webster
More throwable weapons this week, namely both hatchets & the
stone pickaxe. There’s still bugs to resolve & improvements I’d
like to make (including being able to make them spin through the
air), but they’re in and functional. They also become physics
objects on impact now and rocks no longer stick to you (thanks
to Garry). Here’s them in action:
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