"The Queen calls to her spawn, an inaudible link of the mind. She nests, interfacing with the biotic mass using her tendrils. They listen to her every command, yet, migrating leaves her vulnerable - an opportune moment for her elimination..."
-- Elite Captain Brenn of the Heavy Ordnance Unit
A wonderful spring day to you all!
Today's update introduces the Alien Queen to the Strategy game mode, whose elimination results in a loss for the Aliens, previously tied to the Nest. As an added bonus there are a multitude of performance optimizations, primarily improving late game performance with tons of units, as well as a plethora of fixes and improvements. Not forgotten are improvements and fixes to voice chat, which suffered from occasional looping.
The Queen herself is a formidable opponent, capable of defending herself should the need arise, though given her importance to the success of the Alien swarm, it is best to keep her safe and protected in a Nest.
With the above complete, our focus now shifts to improved respawn mechanics, AI collision avoidance, and the introduction of control points to all maps, providing additional objectives to capture and hold. Further performance improvements will continue to be worked on throughout the year.
Thank you all for your support, your feedback, and your patience.
Please take care and see you on Baltarus!"
Silica V0.8.49 Change Log:
Performance:
Improved: Network position/rotation synchronization significantly optimized on clients
Improved: Wheeled vehicles' raycasts are now batched, improving performance
Improved: Soldiers' AI evaluation raycasts are now batched, improving performance
Improved: Hovered vehicles' raycasts are now batched, improving performance
Changed: Loading of levels first unloads current level, then loads the new one, reducing memory usage
Gameplay:
Added: Queen as critical lose condition in Strategy
Added: Queen spawns with initial alien Nest
Added: General 'Special Action' support (such as 'Migrate Queen', or 'Deploy Units') including MP synch
Added: Aliens begin with 3 Shrimp
Added: If Queen is not nested, aliens cannot produce new units nor construct new structures
Changed: Queen now spits molten projectiles
Changed: Queen heals much quicker than other alien units
Changed: Queen is ejected when Nest is killed
Changed: Nest may be built right after BioCache, no tech required
Changed: Nest cost from 4000 to 2000
Removed: BioCache starting with free Shrimp
Fixed: Technological tier construction sites can no longer be obstructed
Visual:
Added: Display of voice chat icon for audible enemy proximity chat
Added: Coloring and icon of team for voice chat
Added: Name of player above icon in map
Technical:
Added: 'VoiceDebug' command in console to print out which players' voice chats are currently audible
Added: Waiting for server hint when the client needs to wait for the server
Added: Countdown to server disconnect when waiting for it
Added: Logging of friendly kills
Added: More logging for tech tier requests etc
Added: Drawing of damage grid debug info via 'DamageGrid' console command
Changed: Advanced video options always visible in options menu
Improved: Logging of issues and errors in network data write/read with associated ID and function name
Improved: Server/client connection timeout doubled when loading a map to ensure each has enough time
Fixed: Looping of voice chat in lower framerates
Fixed: Target detection system could sometimes break, causing wrong detection of enemy targets
Fixed: On level change, server sometimes instructed the client to delete network objects after they were deleted, potentially breaking the game for the client
Fixed: When HQ or Queen were deleted (not destroyed), the game did not register the loss/win
Fixed: Nest had tendrils which connected to Queen visible all the time
Fixed: When a unit boarded another and then ejected, its AI was stopped permanently
Fixed: Possible null reference in UnitAimAt component
Fixed: Possible null player reference in Strategy game mode
Fixed: Asynchronous loading of levels now ensures network objects are locally invalidated
Fixed: Vehicles shooting when destroyed
Fixed: AI Commander did not pause when AI was disabled
Fixed: Network heartbeats used scaled delta time, resulting in a disconnect when time was stopped
Fixed: Unit/Tech tier construction site progress time was not synchronized
Fixed: Unit/Tech tier construction site completion was rarely not correctly synchronized
Fixed: TimeScale console command was not correctly synchronized
Fixed: Potential NULL reference in IdleHarvesters UI
Fixed: Potential NULL reference in Structure for unit/tech tier construction site
Fixed: Sometimes team data was incorrectly sent/read