Guns Of Icarus Online

Admin => Dev App Testing => Topic started by: Watchmaker on July 17, 2014, 10:59:17 am

Title: Dev App 1.3.7 (392)
Post by: Watchmaker on July 17, 2014, 10:59:17 am
We are now testing for the 1.3.7 release!  This is primarily a bugfix release, but there's also a few new features and some fancy new ship cosmetics.

FEATURES & CONTENT
- Clan list improvements: added search functionality and additional ranking schemes
- Added new ship themes: Valentine’s Day and The Fortress
- Added new figureheads: Totec, Sylph, and Chrysomallus

- Added additional antialiasing option, FXAA.  Faster on most hardware and fixes a number of glitchy cases
- Added 3rd-person animation for looking through the spyglass
- Added distinctive costume for AI crewmembers
- Chat commands now described by typing “/help”
- Added confirmation to all “Exit Game” buttons
- Automatically retry login from the “Login Failed” screen
- Added indicator to main-screen Progression button for unclaimed prizes
- Added descriptions to badges
- Changed labeling of customization buttons for clarity

BUGFIXES - GAMEPLAY
- Fixed: no achievement progress for fully repairing a buffed hull
- Fixed: first fire stack deals more damage than intended
- Fixed: raycast weapons might not apply skill modifiers on their last shot in a clip
- Fixed: Holding down the mouse button buffs/rebuilds slower than clicking rapidly
- Fixed: Tar Barrel clouds not affected by wind
- Fixed: Crew members do not show up victory screen when their ship is distant or in a cloud
- Fixed: Signal volume slider not working
- Mine balloon hitbox matches visuals now
- Extended ship walkable volumes a bit to prevent cases of fading out while still on the ship
- Fixed: a case where you could be “respawned” while using a gun
- Fixed: text in Training achievements referring to Sandbox rather than Practice

BUGFIXES - UI
- Fixed: some UI sounds not affected by SFX volume slider
- Fixed: choosing a dye in the ship customizer reset team color
- Fixed: text could overflow container in clan quotes and messages
- Fixed: erroneous “connection failed” message when moving into a game
- Fixed: Swapping slots from captain to crew leaves a Ready button on the screen
- Fixed: Captain’s Priority marker doesn’t disappear when the target is destroyed
- Fixed: Ship cosmetics not showing up in prematch preview
- Fixed: Chat doesn’t minimize when entering clan page from a player’s profile
- Swapped positions of “Cancel” and “Submit” buttons on the Report page for consistency

BUGFIXES - VISUAL
- Fixed: silhouette created by flares disappears when zoomed in with spyglass/scope
- Fixed: fog artifacts on the edges of distant objects
- Fixed: Clouds “pulsating” on some maps (when postprocess effects enabled)
- Fixed: Effects left behind on the seats of medium guns
- Fixed: Map edge effects triggering in certain spots in the middle of Battle on the Dunes
- Fixed: Flickering artifacts on certain meshes in Battle on the Dunes

BALANCE
- Updated novice loadouts based on community feedback
- Tar Barrel is now click-to-activate on a 3-second cooldown; damage lasts for 3 seconds after each use.
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: Watchmaker on July 17, 2014, 02:27:21 pm
Couple other fixes I missed in the first post:

- Split hitboxes used for shooting and player collisions, allowing them to use different sizes; player hitboxes are slightly smaller now.
- AI crewmembers on guns will target the Captain's Priority target
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on July 17, 2014, 03:19:12 pm
Quote
- AI crewmembers on guns will target the Captain's Priority target

While a nice edition, could you also up the duration of that priority? (I'm assuming you mean the Captain's Mark). In-game it's like 5 seconds.

Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: Byron Cavendish on July 17, 2014, 03:34:18 pm
Anything about the looping audio when alt tabbed from GOIO?
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: GeoRmr on July 17, 2014, 03:34:37 pm
I heard a rumour about the aerodrome badges, are they going to be included with this patch?
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: GeoRmr on July 17, 2014, 03:36:43 pm
Anything about the looping audio when alt tabbed from GOIO?

To get rid of looping audio run the game in full screen windowed mode with the launch option "-popupwindow" ^^
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: Queso on July 17, 2014, 03:45:37 pm
Aerodrome badges are in.
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: Byron Cavendish on July 17, 2014, 03:52:25 pm
Anything about the looping audio when alt tabbed from GOIO?

To get rid of looping audio run the game in full screen windowed mode with the launch option "-popupwindow" ^^

Thanks, thats a great hotfix! I do hope they can fix it that it works normally without having to anything special.
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: Queso on July 17, 2014, 11:37:24 pm
It's annoying that you can only do that with a launch parameter, but it's a Unity limitation at the moment.
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: Watchmaker on July 18, 2014, 11:20:18 am
Unfortunately, there are several bad things that can happen when you alt+tab the fullscreen game, and these all seem to be engine bugs about which we can do nothing directly.
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on July 18, 2014, 12:20:14 pm
Is there a way you could default the borderless-windowed mode? I have it set already and its solved countless issues, but I wager you guys get a lot of support tickets with borderless being the fix.
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: Queso on July 18, 2014, 12:40:33 pm
Borderless is known to cause some framerate issues on some machines, so it's not too viable a fix.
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: RearAdmiralZill on July 18, 2014, 12:54:05 pm
Well crap.
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: Sammy B. T. on July 18, 2014, 09:07:35 pm
Sky league badges?
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: Milevan Faent on July 18, 2014, 11:23:23 pm
If the build is currently active on dev app, Tar does nothing now. It doesn't do damage OR make the cloud, no matter how long i leave it on.
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: Queso on July 19, 2014, 12:16:25 am
- Tar Barrel is now click-to-activate on a 3-second cooldown; damage lasts for 3 seconds after each use.
Gotta use primary fire now.

I'll see what can be done about making that point more obvious. The way pilot tools work currently (and always have worked) is a pretty terrible paradigm for certain use cases. This tar barrel change is both to bring it back into a useful state, and to experiment on a larger scale the viability of changing up the current messy state pilot tools have been in. The biggest issues with the current workings is the ability to cause massive damage to your own ship simply by brushing a scroll wheel for forgetting to switch tools. Click to activate abilities have the potential to clean up those issues, as well as provide a more accurate interface for the pilot tools. We figured tar barrel would make the best test case because it was broken to a state where nobody used it, so if didn't work, no harm done. Additionally creating a tar cloud is a fairly obvious case for a discrete action that item switching can't provide without a minimum of 3 button presses for every time you wanted to use it.

Now is this a perfect solution for all use cases, of course not. Already it's obvious that we are going to have to do a bit more to educate users on how it works. Additionally having it follow the new model for only one item creates a very obvious break in uniformity. We're very much looking for feedback and thoughts on this interface change, as well as the balance of tar barrel as a result.
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: Milevan Faent on July 19, 2014, 01:01:02 am
I had originally expected it to work like 90% of all games, where it's "use it, it does it's thing, cooldown happens". Like, hit 3 (with tar in slot 3), it uses tar, you switch back to your previous (or no) tool immediately after it's done automatically. In this sense, it would be intuitive. Most tools are toggles, some are activate and forgets.
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: Queso on July 19, 2014, 11:19:19 am
The thing about most games played in a first person perspective is that you usually have to switch to a piece of a equipment before you can use it. Having something happen simply because you switched to it is fairly different from how most games handle it. The other major ways games handle it are having simply pressing the button does something once, and then you return to a neutral state. Something like a granade button in an fps game. It throws a grenade. It doesn't keep throwing grenades until you press the stop throwing grenades button. If that's a direction we want to go, it's also possible. Another direction is more of a MOBA like route. You press a button to prep an ability and then you click to activate it, and then you return to a neutral state. The closes thing to how it works now is a toggle ability in a MOBA, where you press a button to turn on a skill, and then you have to press that same button to turn it off. Almost no game forces you to press a cancel all abilities button. Maybe what we have in game already is the best solution, but we'd like to explore other avenues that give us a bit more freedom of design in creating pilot tools and ease of use for new players who are coming from games of various genres.
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: Omniraptor on July 19, 2014, 11:47:03 am
My preferred UI for pilot tools would be- press number key to activate, release number key to deactivate. Almost the same as your model, except it only requires one hand and makes it much easier to switch between tools (no fumbling with mouse buttons).

In an FPS, I would want to keep throwing grenades (even if they are limited) as long as I hold down the 'throw grenade' button.
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: Queso on July 19, 2014, 11:51:53 am
Certainly a possibility, although I think flying would be difficult with say, a finger on the 2 button.
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: Omniraptor on July 19, 2014, 12:23:46 pm
oh, forgot about that... I use mouse buttons for altitude and throttle, only steer with ring and index finger (A/D).

With the new system, I would bind tools to the keys (3), (W), and (S), the column between A/D. So, that would leave my middle finger dedicated to tools, and pinky (SHIFT) for voice chat. Woo hoo, all five fingers have a clear job to do in combat!

p.s. speaking of which, GOI's default keyboard bindings are a thing of cosmic horror. Seriously, for example how am I supposed to change altitude (S) and chat (X) and turns left (D) all at the same time? It's a pretty common combination that is horribly inconvenient to do.
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: Milevan Faent on July 19, 2014, 12:36:04 pm
oh, forgot about that... I use mouse buttons for altitude and throttle, only steer with ring and index finger (A/D).

With the new system, I would bind tools to the keys (3), (W), and (S), the column between A/D. So, that would leave my middle finger dedicated to tools, and pinky (SHIFT) for voice chat. Woo hoo, all five fingers have a clear job to do in combat!

p.s. speaking of which, GOI's default keyboard bindings are a thing of cosmic horror. Seriously, for example how am I supposed to change altitude (S) and chat (X) and turns left (D) all at the same time? It's a pretty common combination that is horribly inconvenient to do.

First thing I did when I got into game was say "nope" to the default controls and immediately change W/S to throttle controls, then put altitude as R/F. As my fingers naturally rest on WASD from sheer habit, this is a pretty easy position for my fingers, but W is "forward" in my mind, while S is back. They do not equal up and down. I basically had no choice but to change that right away. I've never had a problem using X+A+R though to talk while ascending and turning left, though I don't usually use 3 keys at once anyway.
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: Queso on July 19, 2014, 12:54:32 pm
I moved voice chat over to my mouse thumb buttons and switched ascend to s and descend to w. For some reason that made the most sense for my fingers.
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: Dementio on July 19, 2014, 01:27:21 pm
It took me a while to get used to the default settings, but I never changed them. The only things I did change was I disabled the ability to switch tools with the mouse wheel and switch the party voice chat button, because I have a QWERTZ keyboard and I can't press Z like this.
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: Richard LeMoon on July 20, 2014, 08:23:43 pm
As a person that primarily uses scroll wheel for helm tools, click/hold to activate is welcome.
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: Velvet on July 27, 2014, 06:10:25 pm
would agree that there's already enough buttons a pilot has to hold down at any given moment anyway. I could live with scroll /keyboardto select and click to activate but I think that needs to have some good interface change to make the functionality clear.

that said I think you'd make certain situations more difficult under such a system. for example if you want to activate multiple tools in quick succession (moonshine+impact bumpers for a ram, or maybe hydro+moonshine for a fun ram or an escape) the additional button presses slow down the process and add an additional window to make critical mistakes (eg. selecting impact bumpers then switching to moonshine before you remembered to click).
with that in mind, I say remove the scroll wheel and go for the MOBA system of having toggled and activated abilities with keyboard hotkeys. with no scroll wheel there's really no need for the additional confirmation of a left click.
There's a few abilities (hydrogen and chute vent) that really would make more sense as activated abilities rather than toggles.

activated abilities would also add the possibility of cooldowns, which might allow for some more powerful and exciting tools that may be conceivably balanced in skirmish mode but would definitely be a nice addition to coop. eg. massive short duration damage reduction with a 90s cooldown.
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: redria on July 27, 2014, 06:25:51 pm
Tick-box option. As an advocate for click-to-tar, I like it, but now I'm wondering how it would work for me. I have my tools set to key bindings, not scroll wheel. So now I have to hit a button and click to use my tools, which is not much but I'd prefer not to. So the option to choose either would be cool if we could go that route. :D
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: Queso on July 27, 2014, 09:32:49 pm
Really great feedback so far. I think quick activate with keyboard keys or scroll and click for mouse would be a really cool paradigm because currently mouse wheel is basically impossible unless you are super careful. Tar is still going to ship click to activate just so it's useful again, and we'll look at feedback from there.
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: Richard LeMoon on August 04, 2014, 07:44:32 pm
I see DevApp has just updated to build 380. What changes should we be watching for/testing?
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (356)
Post by: Watchmaker on August 04, 2014, 08:46:52 pm
This is a handful of small fixes as we eliminate possible causes of the performance issues so many people are seeing.  In particular, this one contains a fix to a memory leak that was causing extra effects objects to build up from match to match.
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (381)
Post by: Watchmaker on August 07, 2014, 04:11:33 pm
For build 381, we're out of the 1.3.7 branch and back into trunk.  Major changes are matchmaking improvements for the upcoming test, and the fact that we are now running on the latest version of the Unity engine, 4.5.2
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (381)
Post by: Richard LeMoon on August 07, 2014, 07:27:03 pm
There seems to be some buggyness with changing ship loadouts as Novice. You still can not change anything after you click 'Unlock' until you exit the ship loadout screen (say, to character) and go back again the first time.
Title: Re: Dev App 1.3.7 (392)
Post by: Watchmaker on September 16, 2014, 11:29:27 am
Dev App build 392 was just released.

There are a handful of things going on here, some of which awkm will call for testing when he's ready, but I'm going to call your attention to some more structural things:

We're now running on the latest version of the Unity engine, v4.5.4; this has come with some fixes to several annoying issues of long standing:
- Sound now continus to play as normal if the game is minimized
- Ping works in Linux
- Fixes strange behavior of postprocess effects (everything turns blue and white) on certain combinations of aspect ratio and monitor.
- "Fullscreen" on Windows is now a borderless window by default.  This prevents a lot of issues with alt+tab.

Other fixes of note:
- Changes to wind force calculations to make them more consistent; the Mobula is no  longer thrown around absurdly hard by sandstorms (it is still thrown around, just not as bad)
- If characters haven't loaded at the start of the end match sequence, they will now appear as soon as they have loaded (formerly they simply would never appear)