Sprocket
2003-05-07, 08:54 PM
Wednesday, May 7th
*** ALERT *** We removed a framerate optimization for testing purposes in tonight's executable. This optimization was making the crash bugs you sent us less useful than we had hoped due to the way it affected our stack traces. You may see some framerate loss tonight, but during our internal testing, that impact hasn't been severe. If you do experience an FPS drop, just remember that you're suffering for the good of the project and we'll get that optimization back into the game in a day or so after we receive more crash logs from you folks. *** END ALERT ***
Changes include:
1) The Gauss Rifle has a slightly longer burst mode and the recoil was reduced just a bit. The prior combination of both made it too innaccurate for close to medium-ranged firefights.
2) The Pulsar also had its recoil penalty reduced. (It was recoiling more than we had originally intended.) It should perform noticeably better, especially when crouched (since crouching always adds recoil recovery to your CoF).
3) The Vanu MAX was able to leap far higher, and more often, than was originally designed. The jump capacitor has been reduced by 33%, the recharge delay after use has been increased and the recharge rate has been decreased. This was the effect originally implemented with the game data, but due to code changes, that data had become extremely exaggerated. It's being brought back into line now.
4) VS Beamer and Pulsar now only use 1 (one) energy cell unit per shot when firing AP ammo. This makes their inventory much more flexible. However, the AP shots are not as rapid as the Standard shots now (AP is only slightly slower than Standard).
5) When a motion sensor is destroyed, it no longer leaves a "phantom" collision object behind.
6) Sound effect prioritization should now make it so you always hear your own weapons and so that weapon effects near you (whether firing, exploding, or bullets whizzing by your head) are also prioritized highly to enhance the feeling of combat directly around you.
7) A server memory leak has been found and squashed. This was the primary reason we would lose zones periodically through the evening when under serious load stress.
8) After further analysis of first-time experience awards, they have been increased slightly. If you start a new character and equip every weapon in the VR Shooting Range, you should get to BR2. If you then go to the VR Driving Area and try out each vehicle and weapon system, you should get comfortably into the BR3 area. (Previous to this, after doing everything described above, you would end up at about BR2.8 or so...which was unsatisfying after all the VR Driving Area experimentation.) Minor change.
9) We've reimplemented /who teams for you now. If you type "/who teams" in your chat window, you'll get a list of the relative percentages of player population on the server at that moment. For instance, you might see:
TR: 34%
NC: 35%
VS: 31%
Finally a balance for the Gauss and Pulsar, and Vanu AP shots fixed! The DEV did good on this one.
*** ALERT *** We removed a framerate optimization for testing purposes in tonight's executable. This optimization was making the crash bugs you sent us less useful than we had hoped due to the way it affected our stack traces. You may see some framerate loss tonight, but during our internal testing, that impact hasn't been severe. If you do experience an FPS drop, just remember that you're suffering for the good of the project and we'll get that optimization back into the game in a day or so after we receive more crash logs from you folks. *** END ALERT ***
Changes include:
1) The Gauss Rifle has a slightly longer burst mode and the recoil was reduced just a bit. The prior combination of both made it too innaccurate for close to medium-ranged firefights.
2) The Pulsar also had its recoil penalty reduced. (It was recoiling more than we had originally intended.) It should perform noticeably better, especially when crouched (since crouching always adds recoil recovery to your CoF).
3) The Vanu MAX was able to leap far higher, and more often, than was originally designed. The jump capacitor has been reduced by 33%, the recharge delay after use has been increased and the recharge rate has been decreased. This was the effect originally implemented with the game data, but due to code changes, that data had become extremely exaggerated. It's being brought back into line now.
4) VS Beamer and Pulsar now only use 1 (one) energy cell unit per shot when firing AP ammo. This makes their inventory much more flexible. However, the AP shots are not as rapid as the Standard shots now (AP is only slightly slower than Standard).
5) When a motion sensor is destroyed, it no longer leaves a "phantom" collision object behind.
6) Sound effect prioritization should now make it so you always hear your own weapons and so that weapon effects near you (whether firing, exploding, or bullets whizzing by your head) are also prioritized highly to enhance the feeling of combat directly around you.
7) A server memory leak has been found and squashed. This was the primary reason we would lose zones periodically through the evening when under serious load stress.
8) After further analysis of first-time experience awards, they have been increased slightly. If you start a new character and equip every weapon in the VR Shooting Range, you should get to BR2. If you then go to the VR Driving Area and try out each vehicle and weapon system, you should get comfortably into the BR3 area. (Previous to this, after doing everything described above, you would end up at about BR2.8 or so...which was unsatisfying after all the VR Driving Area experimentation.) Minor change.
9) We've reimplemented /who teams for you now. If you type "/who teams" in your chat window, you'll get a list of the relative percentages of player population on the server at that moment. For instance, you might see:
TR: 34%
NC: 35%
VS: 31%
Finally a balance for the Gauss and Pulsar, and Vanu AP shots fixed! The DEV did good on this one.