Beasts of Steel News

Hello everyone!

I am aware that it has been a long time since the last update, and it isn't because we were playing Monster Hunter Wilds (really not), but because we were working on the next big update for the game :)

It all really started as a small incremental weekly update, but it turned into a month worth of work.
I wrongly estimated the time it would take to revamp all vehicles to add new crew members, new modules, and so on.

We hope that our beta testers will enjoy this update, as always.

We will resume private playtesting next week!

[h3]ADDED:[/h3]
● New crew members in vehicles: Loader, radio operator. Your reloading speed is now tied to how many loaders are a live in your vehicle.
● Brand new modular buildings. Old ones were static/fixed and could not really be changed whatsoever, new ones are entirely modular and we can assemble them like legos. They will be more optimized in the future!
● New vehicle module: Radio (if destroyed, your nickname will be hidden to your allies).
● New vehicle module: Transmission (affects movement/turning speed of land vehicles).
● New vehicle module: Fuel tank (fuel is stored and split realistically across all fuel tanks. A damaged fuel tank will leak. A destroyed fuel tank will lose all of its fuel).
● Suppression system (Your screen will become increasingly darker as projectiles fly nearby or land anywhere near you).
● Visualization of vehicles internals in the Encyclopedia.
● M1927 76mm light artillery gun for the USSR.
● 7.5cm Le.IG18 light artillery gun for Germany.
● M4A3E2 Jumbo for the USA.
● Panzer I A to Germany.
● Camera inertia to land vehicles (gives them more weight and it feels better).
● Binoculars UI effect when getting your head out and zooming in as a tank crew.
● Wheels on guns now rotate realistically if you are moving the gun to the left or to the right.
● Smoke GFX to guns after they fire a shot.
● Smoke GFX to shells being ejected by guns.


[h3]CHANGED:[/h3]
● Encyclopedia scene is available again.
● Rework of the vehicles crew UI.
● Movement speed and turning speed is now directly affected by the health state of your engine/transmission.
● Updated multiplayer API. Performances improvements regarding multiplayer.
● The entirety of the crew member code has been rewritten and simplified.
● All crews are now sorted in the same way. Commander -> Driver -> Radio Operator -> Gunners -> Loader.
● Changes to shadows and post processing.
● Extended leaving battlefield despawn timer from 10s to 15s.
● Tracks dirt/mud and dust GFX for all land vehicles.
● Dirt coming off tracks/wheels will no longer happen if you are driving on a road (off-road effect only).
● Units with no customizable loadouts will now automatically take you to the spawn UI instead of having to do one useless click to validate an empty loadout.
● Reduced bean infantry models triangles (geometry) by 70%.
● Removed shadow casting from unnecessary parts of the bean infantry model (eyes).
● Distance text elements on markers and flags is now shown above the UI element instead of beneath it.
● Touch bending coming from vehicles will now be applied for 60 seconds.
● Optimized vegetation touch bending from tanks.
● Optimized vegetation touch bending from infantry.
● Changed aim reticles for vehicles (U).
● Destroyed vegetation elements will no longer scale down to 0, but fall slowly through the ground (more pleasing to the eye than a tree shrinking into oblivion).
● Reduced vertices of projectiles and improved general look.
● Projectiles penetration. Penetration distance and radius is now properly applied and based on shell used. APCR will go much further than regular AP, for example. And APHE will explode after penetrating the vehicle and deal internal damage to crew members and modules in a radius set by the shell calibre.
● Reduced deceleration rate of gun/turrets when aiming to a given point by 50%.
● Smoke GFX changes.


[h3]FIXED:[/h3]
● Engine internals position on Ferdinand.
● Hetzer external MG required you to get out to use it.
● Hetzer gun alignement was off on the vertical axis.
● Hetzer crew members position was not accurate (compared to IRL).
● Gunner crew in Jagdpanzer IV L48 had no access to the main gun.
● M24 Chaffee commander crew had issues.
● Action wheel toggle setting was using wrong text and was misleading.
● Rocket launchers (Nebelwerfer...) projectiles would lose velocity after being reloaded.
● Game would prompt weapon deconstruction if you were trying to build something (engineer) near a static weapon.
● Infantry interaction window would be shown when you were using the action wheel.
● Land rocket launchers were using the wrong dispersion table and had very little variation.
● British 90mm AA gun was missing from the new action wheel.
● US M45 AA was missing from the new action wheel.
● Dust from vehicles didn't have soft particles enabled.
● Some US tanks had a small track texture issue.
● Some UI elements overlap near the impact distance text.
● Churchill Mk. II was missing colliders for its gun.
● Impostors and LODs of several vehicles.
● Some planes would collide with their generated casings when firing (Bf 110 C3 for example).
● Bullets would show up as part of a custom loadout edit for land vehicles (for the M2 Browning specifically or the DshK).
● Crew members could collide with own vehicle's physics/colliders in some cases.
● Parachute ropes had a transparent material instead of opaque.
● La-7 had wrong AO texture.
● Tanks could be slippy on the ground when no input was done by the user and the tank was on a slope.
● Could not hit the Panzer III E hull sides when shooting at the track's level (it would always count as a track hit).
● Ladders not properly working/being glitchy to use.
● M4A3E8 had wrong vehicle orientation UI icons.
● When disarming a mine, the prompt asking you to hold F to disarm the mine would still appear.

[h3]ADDED:[/h3]
● Brand new anti tank gun, the german Pak 43/41.
● Possibility to customize the amount of build points for each side when hosting a game.
● Mobile spawnpoints are now shown on the in game tactical map for an easier identification.


[h3]CHANGED:[/h3]
● Player's nicknames can only be alphanumeric now (a-Z 0-9).
No special characters allowed.
● Player's nicknames length is now set to 16 char maximum.
● All buildable AT guns now have a maximum of 50 shells (combined).
● If you started building a buildable object, and during the building process someone spent the last build points of your team, you would be able to finish the construction and the points amount would go negative. Now, the game will check if your team has enough build points even during the building process.
● Updateda bit the style of the spawnpoint icons on the UI.
● To prevent any abuse/exploit with buildable objects, when deconstructing it with an engineer, you will be getting back only 80% of the original value of the object.
● Added more sway to small arms (infantry FPS).


[h3]FIXED:[/h3]
● Mouse delta recorded whenever the cursor went from "free" to "locked. The Delta position cannot be prevented because the cursor/pointer is warped, but the delta generated should have been ignored/discarded. Concrete example is whenever you close the action wheel while the mouse cursor is far away from the center, the next time you move the mouse it won't send the infantry camera away.
● Having the scoreboard open while placing down a buildable object and holding down the mouse would trigger the construction of the buildable object.
● When the scheme of a buildable object appeared after you selected it through the action wheel, it would rotate on itself for like a few frames.
● Soviet M30 122mm artillery had no killfeed icon.
● In game FPS UI display sampling was wrong.
● Deconstructing an enemy construction would give your own team construction points (the amount of the enemy's object worth).

[h3]ADDED:[/h3]
● End of game battle stats (amount of shots fired, total amount of deaths, and more).


[h3]CHANGED:[/h3]
● Merged/Streamlined some network objects data.
● Turned ban procedure into fully networked system. Will work for people joining mid ban as well.
● Team/General in game chat is now a bit clearer as to what channel people are writing into.
● Bots no longer show their ping in the scoreboard.
● Post Processing style.
● Look of the fog.


[h3]FIXED:[/h3]
● Scoreboard numbers not being properly aligned with their header/category name (Kills, Deaths, Ping, Level...)
● During a ban procedure, if the player was leaving, he would avoid the ban. Nothing would happen.
● The ping time measurement in the scoreboard would not be localized.
● Some error in the code (related to markers).
● Ping value shown on scoreboard was not very accurate.
● Buildable objects could no longer be built after you built one or two, out of nowhere.
● You could go over the buildable object limit.

[h3]ADDED:[/h3]
● Brand new "outside map" / "Horizon". Randomly generated and properly optimized with a chunk based system.
● Max build limit per buildable object. To bring more balance and prevent exploits by players, in multiplayer games all buildable weapons now have a limit per player. Each player can only build 2 units of each buildable weapons.


[h3]CHANGED:[/h3]
● Supply areas are now despawning any projectiles trying to penetrate it. This should help prevent players camping the supply areas and killing people inside them when they are refuelling.
● Getting supplies cooldown has been changed from 3 seconds to 300s (5 minutes) to prevent camping the supply depot and getting infinite ammo and exploiting it.
● Updated AI pathfinding API.
● Custom tank loadouts are now properly saved and applied in between spawns (you don't have to set the loadout again every time you spawn with the vehicle).
● Changed a bit the presentation of the build panel wheel. Removed text and added icons instead.


[h3]FIXED:[/h3]
● 8 cm mortar range was broken (25m max).
● Smoke effects (from projectiles) were missing/pink.
● Getting supplies in a tank would not refresh the UI (new supply areas).
● Typhoon Mk Ib had casings being ejected only on the left side when shooting.
● Supply area for planes sometimes disappearing from the UI depending on camera angle.
● Sometimes when the camera changed its focused player some LOD crossfade could be observed.
● Dust spawning behind planes for just a few seconds when planes just spawned in the sky.

[h3]ADDED:[/h3]
● Brand new projectile + smoke effect for planes.
● Casings spawning out of planes when shooting with main guns (only for planes that had it IRL).
● Supply depots (equivalent of supply areas for planes) for land vehicles (works for infantry too).
They are placed behind the lines/spawnpoints, they will refill fuel and ammo for free.


[h3]CHANGED:[/h3]
● All newly built artillery guns will now be using indirect fire mode by default.
● Changed planes wing tip trails a bit.


[h3]FIXED:[/h3]
● Objects falling under the map (casings, as an example) would fall for as long as their lifetime did not end. They will now be despawned right after they are under the map.
● Spitfire Mk. XIV camouflage weird green color.
● Tempest Mk. V weird purple color.
● AO texture on Hurricane Mk. IIc.
● 37mm casings were too small.
● Casings didn't spawn on guns that had no physical recoil.
● TB-3 soviet plane had wrong AO texture.
● All rocks on the map were doubled (there would be 2 instances instead of 1 everywhere).
● Destroyed wooden pillars inside farm houses were missing their material (pink).
● Buildable schemes no longer are a child of the player, which led to triggering world stuff as part of the player.