Diabotical Dev Tracker

Editor

• Implemented volumetric light objects into the editor. The new implementation is fairly light on performance. Volumetric objects can be set to type “rectangular grid” to create hexahedral beams of lights in a grid configuration. The parameters “Segments”, “Vertical segments”, “Gap” and “Vertical Gap” can tweak the appearance of the grid. This performs better than creating multiple objects for each beam, so this option should be used whenever appropriate. Volumetric objects can also be set to type “radial” to create radial configurations, in this case the “Segments” parameter determines the number of arc segments. Further options to tweak volumetric lights and general improvements to their appearance will come in future patches.
• Billboards, when selected, now have a “Backface” setting in the Editpad Properties section to make them display on both sides of the billboard.
• The editor now shows the technical name of the keyword...

Netcode

• Projectile netcode has been tweaked to better represent the position of enemy projectiles. This change may appear to buff projectiles but no functional change has been enacted, projectiles are simply represented more accurately than before. Further incremental netcode improvements will follow soon.

Spectating

• Spectators can now see when spectated players are zooming.
• Fixed an issue causing the Controls element to not update immediately when switching the player that’s being spectated.

Editor

• A “Vertical scale” property has been added to the terrain entity properties that applies a vertical scaling factor to the terrain. This can be used to achieve higher terrains (currently requires the map to be saved and loaded again to see its effects).
• The “Vertical offset” property is now accessible in the terrain entity properties screen...

HUD

• The new “Controls” HUD element shows your direction keypresses (forward, backward, left, right, crouch, jump) as well as those of the player being spectated.

Masterserver and matches

• Fixed an issue that affected transitions from the warmup mode to the map vote screen when a match was found (fixed earlier today).
• Fixed an issue causing the placement number of top ranked players to sometimes be incorrect.
• The inactivity detection now won’t trigger while replaying a demo.
• The inactivity detection now won’t trigger while editing a map.

Gameplay

• Fixed an issue that would cause the MacGuffin to immediately return to the hand after being thrown.

Netcode

• Fixed issue potentially exacerbating congestion in connections with some package loss.

Audio

• Fixed issue causing players to not emit some sounds if their audio subsystem is uninitialized due to a missing audio device.
• Audio system micro-optimizations affecting heavy combat situations with a high frequency of sound creation.

Replays

• The command /annotation adds a mark to a currently recording replay associated to the current time. /annotation followed by text attaches a text comment. /annotation -list can be used to list current annotations while recording or reproducing a replay. /annotation -seek X can be used to go to the time of that annotation, where X is the ID of the annotation shown by /annotation -list. An annotation can be added to point some time in the past with /annotation -back X where is the number of seconds to go back in time. A UI interface for replays, including access to this feature, will be added soon.

Content service

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Content service

• It’s now possible to search maps in the Community map list.
• It’s now possible to order maps in the Community map list according to the most recently published, earliest published, highest rated, and alphabetical order.
• Fixed an issue in Custom Games where a community map would stay selected when changing mode.

Gameplay

• Default weapon respawn times in Time Trials are now 1 second instead of 9 seconds. In order to prevent spawn delays and prevent issues when playing a map in multiplayer, especially since pickups don’t work for each player separately yet.

Replays

• Fixed an issue causing client-side replays recorded with multithreaded input enabled to become corrupt.
• Client-side replays are now only committed to disk after the game is over to avoid stutters. Note: Client-side replays are currently only usable thr...

Content service

• It’s now possible to rate community maps in the game report/final scoreboard screen. The average rating of each map is displayed in the community map list.
• Content service stability improvements.

Visual changes

• Removed a small accidental delay in the PnCR beam animation.

Editor

• Save, Undo and Redo buttons have been added to the Editpad interface.
• New buttons to set the type of block have been added to the Editpad’s Properties section when a block is selected: “Set empty”, “Set solid”, “Set diagonal”, “Set invisible, player collides, fire passes (player clip)”, “Set invisible, fire collides, player passes (weapon clip)” and “Set invisible, player collides, fire collides (full clip)”.
• The layout of the block properties section has been tweaked.
• A new command /modifylist has been added t...

Gameplay

• Item respawns are now precise relative to the exact time of when they were picked up instead of rounding down to the nearest second.
• The MacGuffin item now spawns correctly with the instagib modifier turned on in Custom Games, allowing Instagib MacGuffin to be played.

Content service

• Author names are now displayed in the Community map list and clicking on them takes you to the mapper’s profile.
• Fixed issue causing some game servers to sometimes timeout prematurely while trying to fetch a community map for a game.
• Publishing a map without terrain no longer warns about an error concerning missing terrain files.

Editor

• Fixed issue causing the color of the current object to be copied into the next object selected if the color picker was still open.
• When a prop is selected, color fields in Editpad’s Propertie...

Masterserver and matches

• Masterserver stability fixes. Stability
• Tentative fix provided by Coherent happening in Gameface (HTML UI engine that we use in the menu) to a crash that can happen when loading a map or finishing a game.

Content service

• Fixed issue causing community maps to be downloaded twice.
• The map download screen now shows total download progress.

Gameplay

• Inventory reset actions (as in some Race maps) now affect the relevant players instead of affecting everyone on a server.
• When there is an inventory reset the current weapon is now automatically switched to Melee.
• The position of moving objects like lifts, doors and other moving props is now reset when a game or round starts.

Maps

• Collision fix to Icefall regarding an issue affecting the lift jump.
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Gameplay

• The lift jump behavior is no longer negatively affected by low or very high framerate conditions.
• Fixed an issue causing a slippery feeling when walking along the top-facing surface of a moving prop due to the player erroneously being determined as airborne in that situation. As a result of this, wall-clipping is no longer triggered at the top of lifts just by pushing against the ledge. Players should still be able to reach locations previously reachable due to the unintended wall-clipping effect thanks to the fixes above which make it easier to control a jump’s direction and to circle-jump off lifts.

Survival

• Fixed an issue in Survival causing the base cost of items to be charged instead of the full amount when buying items repeatedly.

Editor

• Fixed an issue causing the Editpad interface to sometimes ignore UI actions.

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Editor

• An “Analyze lighting” function is now available for binding in “Settings-Controls-Analyze lighting”. Using this function toggles a heatmap of lighting calculations. In the visualization, values closer to red indicate that a pixel is affected by more lights. The cost of the lighting pass broadly scales with the amount of pixels lit per light. Mappers interested in optimizing lighting should attempt to not let maps get too hot in this visualization in any view inside the map. This can be accomplished by trying to rely on fewer lights or on smaller lights with harder falloffs to achieve similar effects. Well-performing maps can be loaded in the editor and referenced to check what are acceptable levels. We recommend that before deciding to invest time in optimizing lighting on a map, the mapper deletes all lights while looking at a hot part of the map (/del light*) and note the framerate change to see what’s the performance gain ceiling that could...

Custom Maps

• Fixed new community maps not being correctly downloaded by players who did not create the lobby (fixed earlier today).
• Fixed the Community map list in Custom Games not listing all of the available maps.

Editor

• Fixed selection preview in the editor erroneously pre-selecting an ulterior object below the cursor sometimes (fixed earlier today).
• Moving the cursor in the editor now resets the pre-selection cycling count (published earlier today).
• Fixed the selection boundaries of Weeballs and the MacGuffin.
• When a map is saved, dashes in map names are now automatically converted to underscores, uppercase letters are now automatically converted to lowercase in order to conform with the format expected by the content service.
• The map names are now subject to approval by moderators. In order to not delay a map publication, maps are temporarily gi...

Custom Maps

• It’s now possible for any player to upload custom maps to our new community content service, allowing them to be downloaded and played by other players on any server. The “Content creation” menu can be found on the top right of the screen. To publish a map: after you have made a map go to the “Content creation” menu, click the “Create new” button and follow the instructions, then select that map, click the Edit button, /bakesave the map again, and then click the Publish button. To play a map: create a Custom Game, select a mode, then click on the map, click on the Community tab, and select a map (the maps are mode dependent). This is a service under development and new features are planned, in particular improvements to browsing maps, and the ability to search, rate and flag them.
• Every player has 100 MB of space for custom maps in the content service. (Note that maps now take less space, so this should fit around ...

Halloween Survival

• At the end of a round HP and Ammo are now refilled.
• Some collision fixes to the map.

Visual changes

• The trail and halo of grenades is now team-colored.

HUD

• Saving a HUD without a name will now result in a default name being used instead of the HUD not being saved.

Modding

• New logic entity trigger type “On Wave Start” executes an action when a new wave starts in a wave-based mode
• New logic entity trigger type “On Wave End” executes an action when the enemies have been cleared in a wave-based mode
• New logic entity property “cycle” allows on_wave_start and on_wave_end logic entities to trigger cyclically. (Extended documentation coming soon)

Audio

• The enemy movement sounds have been returned to the previous sounds...

Halloween Survival

• The availability of the Halloween Survival in match-making has been extended beyond the initially planned period. Documentation about creating survival scenarios will be released soon.
• Survival is now also available in Custom Games.
• Fixed an issue with the item shop sometimes showing the incorrect amount of money (fixed earlier today).
• Fixed an issue with the “Ammo buff” upgrade being erroneously granted to the whole team (fixed earlier today).
• The coins in Survival now start flashing 3 seconds (up from 2) before expiring to be consistent with the rest of drops.
• The Item Shop now displays descriptions of the items within.
• Collision fixes to the Halloween survival scenario.

Performance

• Minor rendering optimizations.

Visual changes

• All drops now start flashing intermittently...

Halloween Survival

• The Ammo refill shop item has been changed into Ammo Buff which refills your ammo and increases your maximum ammo.
• Slowfield Weeball is a new item in the item shop which gives you a Slowfield Weeball that slows down bots to 40% of their speed.
• Second Wind is a new item in the item shop which is a one-use health refill that activates when your health reaches 0.
• Berserker is a new item in the item shop which gives you 50% additional damage when you have less than 50 HP.
• The shop menu now visually indicates unavailability of Survival and Siphonator when either has been purchased for the current wave.
• The shop menu now visually indicates unavailability of Slowfield and Second wind when the player already has them available.
• Some collision fixes to the map.
• The ammo box now has PnCR ammo.

Audio

• The enemy footstep ...

Halloween Survival

• Between each round the Item Shop is now available for 15 seconds. Accessible with H by default, the Item Shop includes items that can help you survive. More items will be added in the future.
• Fragged bots now drop coins which can be used in the Item Shop, these coins will disappear if not picked up within 7 seconds. Coins collected by one player are distributed to every player’s individual coin counter/wallet. Dying results in the loss of half of your current coins. Huggers drop 1 coin, Boomers and Chuckers drop 2 coins, Bosses drop 10 coins.
• Tweaked the health and damage of bots to balance the new Item Shop.
• AI navigation improvements.

Statistics

• The statistics pages have been fixed so that statistics from past and future Survival matches don’t appear combined with stats from other modes.

Masterserver and matches

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Interface

• The “Menu Framecap” option in Video Settings has been expanded to also limit the framerate when the game is not in focus to avoid hogging resources when a player is on the desktop or in other applications. It’s now named “Menu & Background Framecap”.
• In Settings-More Settings there is a new option “Minimize when alt+tabbing”. When selected, the game will minimize when alt-tabbing instead of staying maximized in the background.
• In Settings-More Settings there is now an option for the Chat keybind to remember the last chat channel that was in use (whether team chat or all chat which have their own separate keybinds and can be switched between by pressing Tab). Note that the Team Chat button retains its function of selecting Team Chat.
• The Chat window now displays a tip on how to switch between chat channels.

Masterserver and matches

• Fixed an issue where the maste...

Halloween Survival

• Added Chucker bots (orange).
• Fixed an issue causing bots to receive excessive knockback upon impact when multiple ones were hit with the same shot.
• Fixed some AI navigation issues on the map.
• Bots now have hurt sounds.
• Boomers will sound a warning taunt when getting close to a player.

Interface

• Players that are part of the Twitch drops avatar campaign now have a Twitch link on their Diabotical profile pages.
• Updated translations.

Audio

• Fixed the announcer line for 100 damage PnCR shots which was happening in FFA Instagib on every hit.
• Removed frag streak and impressive announcer lines from the Aim Trainer.

Customization

• Some new avatars from the Twitch drops avatar campaign have been added for streamers and their viewers.
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Gameplay

• Fixed an issue sporadically causing grenade damage to be done far away from the actual location of their explosions. Thank you to VEDMEDIK and hhoyt for a reproduction video.
• Fixed an issue causing damage wrapped over obstacles to be incorrectly calculated for grenades exploiting due to expiration.
• Minor improvement to the accuracy of several combat metrics.
• Added a mechanism to prevent ping spamming.

Halloween Survival

• Added a maximum speed cap to survival enemies.
• Added a maximum HP cap to survival enemies except the boss.
• Increased enemies per round.

Servers

• A peering issue with the carrier Liberty Global has been fixed that will increase the ping to the Frankfurt location for customers of some Southern European internet service providers.

Audio

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Halloween Survival

(Some of these fixes were released to the servers throughout the day.)

• Fixed issue with a stairs prop’s geometry causing bots to not be able to traverse them.
• Fixed some minor bot navigation issues. More improvements in this area are planned.
• Implemented a more elastic flocking behavior so that bots don’t get stuck while going in different directions. More improvements in this area are planned.
• Fixed issue causing bots not to be affected by knockback.
• Tentative fix to a server hang related to AI.
• Increased the number of bots in the first round.
• Tweaked the health, damage and speed progression of bots.

Interface

• When a match is found the taskbar icon no longer flashes if Diabotical is already in the foreground in order to prevent some issues in Exclusive Fullscreen.
• The daily challenge countdown until...