Infinity: Battlescape News

This is the final patch primarily focusing on the star map and mission screens. It contains a lot of improvements to these screens, including an improved representation of conflict zones or bases under attack. This patch also replaces and introduces a bunch of new sound effects, with more to come later (we'll be revamping the sounds over the coming months, and are also in the process of doubling the amount of musical tracks in game). There is still a lot of work to do related to the UI and menus, however we'll be refocusing our efforts on gameplay starting this next patch, and work on the UI will take the back seat from now on.

• Active mission's objective's location is now automatically pre-selected on HUD upon entering the game
  
• Fixed ship movement being on hold while menus/UI are opened (this caused players to overshoot or collide with planets in warp)
  

• New interceptor thrusters sounds
  
• New small machine gun and blaster sounds
  
• New gun and blaster projectiles impact sounds
  
• New small ship and missiles explosion sounds
  
• New mk4 (corvette) turret machine guns and blasters sounds
  
• New shotgun (bomber) sound
  
• Added sound effects for AMS lasers and rotating turrets sound loop
  
• Rebalanced volume of various sound effects
  
• Thruster sounds now have a dynamic pitch based on the ship's angular speed, which should feel more immersive
  
• Sound effects range and performance optimizations, which should reduce clutter that deteriorated sound quality during large battles
  

• Added mission symbols (letters: A, B, C etc..) in starmap/mission screen's viewports. Each mission is given its own unique color ( with a different hue and saturation ) to help differenciate missions
  
• Added quick-deploy buttons floating over the starmap/mission screen's viewports
  
• Added a panel for filtering and rendering options to the starmap and mission screens. It is now possible to filter the map by entity type (ex.: bases, players, teams, logistics like haulers) etc..
  
• Added a "heat map" (colored halos around team assets) to map's viewport, which should emphasize areas of conflict (blue for allies, red for enemies, so it turns purple in areas of conflict)
  
• Added threat/under-attack indicator dots (orange = threat, red = under attack) to map's viewport and entities panel
  
• Added back "Select on HUD" buttons in mission menu and star map for the selected item in the info panel at the bottom-right
  
• Added arrows on starmap and mission screens showing the direction between your ship and the closest allied base (blue arrow), or to the selected mission (green or orange arrow)
  
• Added the selected mission's symbol and objective type to the ship's HUD floating below its target location's icon (this should make it extra obvious to new players to see where their objective is)
  
• Current mission can now be deselected on mission screen (default: backspace)
  
• Minor UI tweak: tighter tooltip positionning when opening a tooltip around the screen borders
  
• Minor UI tweak: checkboxes can be toggle by clicking on the text too (not just the check icon only)
  
• Minor UI optimization: added screen culling to icons rendering
  
• UI is now properly refreshed when changing the color theme or the language
  
• Tweaks to UI style in the mission and starmap screens (ex.: new icons for mission categories, improving coloring coherency, etc..)
  
• Fixed icons located in the back of the camera appearing on screen as mirrored ghost icons
  
• Fixed HUD and menu icons to be fully resolution independent
  
• Selected mission's objective's indicator is now always enabled on the HUD even if not actively selected (before: it was hidden if it was far away)
  
• Distances in starmap and mission's targets list is now calculated as the distance between the player's ship and the target's (if in game)
  
• Fixed coherency of mission names + locations in UI
  
• Top 3 missions in deployment panel now selects the mission in the mission screen and focuses the camera on it instead of starting deployment
  
• Improved representation of the selected/active mission in the missions panel
  
• Fixed trade routes not showing up in mission screen
  
• Fixed trade routes randomly appearing in team screen
  
• Deployment panel is now also fully available from the ship screen
  

• Updated 3 station modules with improved geometry and materials
  
• Updated map icons to differenciate between planets, moons and asteroids (they now use different icons)
  

• Fix for the shield visual effect not being played when a projectile bounced off a shield
  
• Optimization fix for internal cockpits being loaded/attached and updated for all ships and not just the player's ship, which wasted cpu resources for no good reason
  

• Increased game's default camera's vertical FOV from 70° to 80° to see more of the cockpit in small ships
  
• Server admin commands now dump information to the chat box instead of the HUD's info MFD (which was too limited in size)
  

This new patch introduces the new revamped mission screen, which should make objectives more clear to new players. The mission screen now acts in a similar way to the star map, with a 3D viewport showing the stellar system, the planets and the objectives.

The missions are now listed on the right side of the screen and can be selected to get more information about the current status or objectives in the bottom-right info panel. Note that each mission also has an eye icon (to set the camera on it) and an "i"nformation icon, which opens a panel with mission details.

We still have to clean up the 3D viewport itself (make it interactive, improved the text and icons, make it more clear where the objectives and missions are), which will probably be the focus for the next patch, currently scheduled around mid/end august. After that, we'll be refocusing back on gameplay (and particularly, match/battles/missions progression).

• Warp charge duration and warp cooldown is now set per ship instead of being the same for all ships. Interceptors and bombers still need 5 seconds to charge the warp drive, but corvettes and above now charge a bit slower. Large capital ships (cruiser, carrier) charge much slower (10 seconds for the cruiser, 12 seconds for the carrier). The warp cooldown after exiting warp also behaves in the same way: higher cooldown for the bigger ships..
  

• Aiming direction dot indicators are now displayed on HUD for gimbal weapons (Note: the HUD was already showing these small dot indicators for turrets, but not gimbal guns. Since the gimbal guns kind of behave like turrets, just with a smaller angle, it made sense to also display the dot indicators for them. It'll also help players to understand why they're sometimes missing ships quickly traversing their view due to the gimbal gun's rotation latency)
  
• Selected target indicator no longer fades out when too close (Note: the selected target indicator was disappearing when you were getting close to a station or a capital ship, making it impossible to know that you had it selected.. )
  

• Revamped the mission tab menu screen. It now has a visual style / layout similar to the star map
  
• Mission menu is now the first tab, and is also the new default when launching the game, to emphasize its importance for new players
  
• Destroyed bases are now dimmer in star map's targets list
  
• Implemented under threat/under attack status (orange or red dots in the right column) in starmap's targets list. Orange dots notify under threat, where a limited number of enemies are gathering around an objective. Red dots notify that the objective is under attack by a large force
  
• Star map's search filter now updates targets list dynamically based on what's being typed
  
• Star map target's list now auto-refreshes every 10 seconds while in-game (previously: it only auto-refreshed during respawn, not in game)
  
• Buttons and various UI text blocks that don't allow multi lines now auto-rescale their text content down when it's too long. This should particularly be helpful to fit some localized strings within their UI block
  
• Buttons border brightness is now reduced compared to content color (small visual tweak)
  

• Fixed a bug that caused some sounds with a non-standard pitch to get cut short
  
• Tooltips no longer appears on top of a UI control that has keyboard focus (like an edit text area)
  

• Tobii Eye tracking library upgrade to the latest version. Please let us know if you encounter new issues
  

This patch contains quality-of-life improvements over the last patch and the new development system. In particular, we have introduced a waiting queue upon deployment if you were trying to spawn at a moving carrier, or if the hangars were busy.

We also have a new countdown mechanism so that players can't abuse the quick-deploy at the same base/battle instantly after dying. A minimum "buffer" of about 30 seconds has been introduced, but the trick here is that this countdown is shared/synchronized by all players trying to deploy at the same location (so they'll spawn in game at the same time).

The help tips system has been revamped, is more contextual and new help tips for beginners have been added.

• Introduced deployment waiting queue for carriers or busy hangar spawns
  
• Introduced countdown deployment timer if you try to respawn too quickly at the same location
  
• Deployment countdown timer is currently set to about 30s and is synchronized for all players waiting to respawn at the same time intervals
  
• Deploy buttons have been added to the ship selection menu (that way you have to go back to the star map to spawn, which will be important in the future when the ship upgrades/loadouts are added to the ship selection menu)
  
• More improvements to deploy buttons (they now become disabled if you can't afford the ship cost) + more feedback messages that will tell you exactly why you can't deploy at a given location
  
• Star map menu now properly sorts listed missions/battles by top-down priority
  
• Star map's containers in targets list are now collapsible (there's a small arrow on the left of each item, which you can click to (un)collapse the item)
  
• Added back spectator mode (accessed through RMB contextual menu while selecting a target in map menu)
  
• Added "select closest deployable base" in the star map's targets list contextual menu (RMB). This will select the deployable base that is the closest to the target you have clicked on
  
• Updated generic list box and scrollbar arrows buttons icons visual style
  
• Fixed various issues related to tooltips staying alive after spawning or changing game states
  
• Fix for sensor screen's base grid reference, which should now properly orientate the grid on the nearest base
  
• Revamped random help tips. The new system is contextual (ex.: it'll show a tip about using chaffs only when a missile is fired at you). New tips have been introduced, which should help with the basics for new players. The tips now properly display the active keybindings in their text
  

• Fixed a rare client crash bug happening due some fired projectiles during high network latencies
  

This patch focuses on the first iteration over the star map revamp. A new deployment (aka. spawning) system has been implemented to make it more clear to the players where the deployable bases are and which kind of ships they can spawn.

A "quick deploy" button has been added to get back into the action quickly. This will help to cut down the amount of travelling necessary for attack battles, making it more fair to the attackers versus the defenders that could always respawn instantly at their own base.

The way quick deploy is implemented, if a base or a carrier are available in defense, you'll be spawning there as usual. If however those aren't available, you take over an A.I. ship of the same selected class. The algorithm gives priority to A.Is that are not engaged in combat and undamaged. If the ship you take over is somehow damaged, you'll get a refund proportional to the amount of damage. Note that since the bot had already been paid by the AI commander, the cost you pay for taking over is going back to the team's funds instead of being paid twice.

The patch also contains a second iteration over the new sensor screen tactical overlay (default: tilde key), which now shows arrows to highlight ships attacking each others. Finally, amongst other fixes, we improved Tobii Eye tracker and integrated TrackIR to the game. Feedback on how good/bad the implementation is, is appreciated.

The next patch, due later this week, will most likely be a hotfix with a number of left-over quality-of-life improvements.

• Implemented new deployment (spawn) system with quick deploy and deploy at buttons in the star map
  
• Cleaned up star map, added ship selector, automatic refresh of targets list, etc..
  
• Quick deploy allows to take over an AI ship in a battle
  
• Added high priority missions list quick spawn in the star map;
  
• Added deployable states and icons to targets list in star map
  
• Deploying over an AI bot will refund credits proportionally to how the bot is damaged
  
• Added selected target's info panel to starmap and sensor screen
  
• Added search filter to starmap's targets list
  

• New holographic visual style for the sensors overlay / tactical screen for planetary surfaces, stations or ships
  
• Arrows are now displayed to show who is attacking who. You can see who's attacking you / who you are attacking, same for your selected target or the ship you're hovering on with the mouse
  
• It is now possible to click on the sensor screen to select a target, or double-click to recenter the view around it
  
• Added more options to sensor overlay screen: show MTBs, show vertical lines, trailings length
  
• Sensor overlay tactical screen will no longer show arrows or vertical lines for far away / invisible targets
  

• Revamping UI visual style with custom buttons
  
• Added various new icons to the UI
  
• Mission screen's missions list now automatically refreshes every second
  
• Fixes for various UI elements not correctly displayed as grayed-out when inactive
  
• Fixed indicators being displayed behind the camera on the starmap
  
• Fixed layout issues in missions list
  
• Fixed "_deleted_" objective names appearing in missions list
  
• Selecting a mission in the mission menu will now also highlight it on the star map
  
• Mission menu's missions list is automatically refreshed as soon as a mission or battle gets created or destroyed
  

• Improvements to Tobii Eye tracking integration
  
• Added head / gaze tracking settings in controls options menu
  
• Added option for clear UI (gaze-based highlighting of MFD)
  
• Tobii eye tracking now supports head position offset/strafing
  
• TrackIR integration
  
• Added better error handling for Tobii and TrackIR (if the libraries can't be loaded, an error message will pop up)
  

• Temptative fix for server browser pings all being the same on some machines
  
• Fixed a rare server crash bug when an actor gets deleted at the exact same time a player disconnects
  
• Updated match victory conditions: carriers are no longer taken into account in team score calculation, preventing a match from ending
  

We have quite a bit of work left on the star map and the other in-game menu screens, so it is likely that the next major patch, probably until some time in July, is going to focus on those. The star map now has its new targets list and deployment system, but the viewport / rendering has to be improved, made more coherent ( like the sensors screen ), interactive ( being able to click on it ) and better represent the various points of interests and icons. For example, it is critically important that the star map clearly represents the active missions, or the bases under attack - and it fails at doing that at the moment - so we'll be working on that next.

The other screens are also going to get some updates, but this should go faster. The team tab's screen is probably going to be the most complex one. It'll get a proper leaderboard, showing scores / stats for the players, but also team related stats and information. The idea here is that it'll list all the bases, their status / HP, their recent income, damage take, etc..

Once the UI revamp is over, it'll be time to move on to the more gameplay and match-related items, as mentioned in the last update. What will be coming next is probably the rework of the passive credits redistribution system, the match progression / critical battles, and we'll be looking at starting the work on the AI / mission objectives soon in July, followed by the infamous ship upgrades.

The experimental atmospheric flight model is still coming, although the exact timing is unknown. The tricky part here is making the AIs take into account the atmosphere when flying ( rolling instead of yaw-ing, like in space ), but I think it'll be pretty fun once it's done.

-Flavien Brebion