Angels Fall First News

Hey there AFF Community!

Immediate hotfix for the last update, because of course we goofed and accidentally created the most scary railgun this side of Antares;)



You can still grab AFF 40% off for a few hours by the way, both the game and the soundtrack.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/367270

Hotfix changelog:

• Fixed insane firing rate of the bomber railgun
  
• Fixed serverbrowser picking wrong server to connect to for some people
  
• AI now properly understands repairing and sabotaging ships’ subsystems (turret consoles, shields etc.)
  
• Fixed projection axis on the top-down radar-minimap-thing. Oh yeah, by the way we somehow missed that in Update 19 notes - when playing as infantry or ground vehicle, the radar display in the corner is a top-down projection instead of 3d wraparound now.
• Further improved AI’s behaviour around the get-in and get-out-of-vehicle callouts
  
• Adjusted\removed some unintended weapon firerate reductions. Slightly increased damage dealt by UDP and EVP pistols.
  
• Gunship missiles with slightly better tracking, gunship rocket fire interval increased by 0.01s to make the dps slightly more sane
  
• Fixed DPS stats in loadout for bomblets, increased bomblet burst interval by 0.03s to disperse the area of effect slightly
  
• Locust’s primary fire interval increased 0.05s to bring it in line with Sturm
  
• Partisan shell’s proxy detonation radius reduced by 30%
  
• LZ modules now have 30% more health on maps with vehicles
  
• Gunships 20% less health and 10% more susceptible to small arms fire
  
• Fixed an AI pathing glitch in the AISN fighter base interior
  
• Fixed some newly-introduced oddities in Partisan’s and Turtle’s physics
  
• Fixed loose infantry view pitch up/down limits
  

For feedback, or just a lovely chat with the devs, post on AFF's Steam forums or contact us directly through our Discord!

Onwards and upwards!

Hey there AFF Community!

We’re back with another patch, this time during the Summer Sale! Considering the intergalactic theme of this year’s sale, it seems like a perfect time to grab AFF for cheaps and burn some spaceships down!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/367270

This update greatly improves infantry AI, fixes some annoying issues, adds polish and a few smaller features. Next aim of ours is definitely making the game more approachable and user-friendly, via tutorials and UI improvements. That’s taking a while for various reasons, the details can be found on our Discord as always. We’re back to full speed now, though - and with a whole bunch of cool content lined up for the coming weeks and months.



Bots are getting a whole bunch of combat-focused upgrades and changes. Obviously we keep improving them all the time and will do so for a while - in this patch they should be noticeably more snappy and understand various combat situations better, both in space and on the ground.





Statistics for all loadouts items are now fully implemented, with a handy comparison system showing the difference between currently equipped and selected item.





An immediately obvious change in this patch is the rearranged main menu. We altered it a bit to be more understandable but we’d also like to use this opportunity to run a bit of an experiment:

Over the entire Early Access period we’ve been hearing how new players get to the server browser, see more-or-less empty game and just not join anything because of that. So the less players on the server, the less players on a server. A bit of a vicious circle there. At the same time we know that those times when people start joining a server it just snowballs into a populated one.

So let’s try something out: we added an “instant play” button to the main menu that’ll just connect the player to the most suitable server instantly. We’ll monitor what impact that functionality has on players actually joining matches.



Full changelog:

• Reorganized the main menu, with a new experimental “instant play” function
  
• Loadout stats now fully implemented
  
• AI more responsive in combat now - fixed some issues with target acquisition and prioritization, weapon mode switching, reloading and crouching conditions
  
• AI reviving more robust
  
• Stopped AI from using the multiwrench on enemies when it’d be much more optimal to just shoot
  
• Bots use land vehicles’ shields more effectively now
  
• Bots now slightly less inhumanly-precise with sniper rifles
  
• Fixed stalls in space AI pathing under some circumstances
  
• Fixed AI sometimes flying out of the space maps’ bounds
  
• AI should no longer wait to fully charge L9R and MNL when in close-quarters combat
  
• Fixed AI-driven capital ships being able to occasionally use disabled warp-in points
  
• Fixed AI pathing on some doorways in Irega and on the Huginn’s bridge
  
• Added AIA win cinematic to Irega
  
• Lukather adjustments:
  - Added more cover on the approach from the car park
  - No more snagging on invisible wall above the airport building
  - Relocated Territories LZ capture point slightly towards the AIA side
  - Added a vehicle-blocking volume to the top of the ATC tower
  
• Fixed missing collision around breachpoints inside the Khamun
  
• Hangar location (when pointing a player to an objective that requires launching from the carrier) now precisely pointing to a fighter-launching console
  
• Exiting a gunship now requires the button to be held for half a second - less accidental splats.
  
• Stealing a fighter from an enemy carrier’s bay will now spawn the ship with your own last-used loadout for that ship type
  
• Added an alert when the enemy owns all the Territories points
  
• Dropship arrival sequence, when making a comeback from a wipe-out phase, no longer wastes the remaining match time
  
• A bunch of HUD improvements in preparation for hints and tutorial elements
  
• Incursion timer suspension message now matches the actual gameplay conditions (last 60s of phase)
  
• Suppressed a few unwanted match status messages popping up during briefing
  
• Optimised animated elements and meshes in the briefingroom
  
• Fighter controls a bit less wobbly now, especially online
  
• Upgraded usage of playername with an additional squad prefix (B2 etc.) and future support for a clan/outfit prefix
  
• Bots within ~10m now respond to a 'get in my vehicle' callout from the callouts menu (“B” by default). Similarly they respond to a new 'get out' callout. Load up your APC, airdrop a bot from your Sturm, all’s fair in love and space.
  
• Mag-size and ammo storage mods now correctly working with vehicle weapons where applicable, mag-size weapon mod’s reload penalty matches the description of 5%
  
• RID primary charge time increased 0.5s
  
• Chons’ ion cannon range doubled, same as Anubis' now
  
• Removed spread penalty on unholster speed mod
  
• Reduced medium capital ships’ vulcan turrets’ spread
  
• Amended Dhaka’s turret to full-auto rather than burst so u can keep a barrel back by tapping instead of holding fire
  
• Buffed bomber RID/plasma weapons firing intervals significantly to provide 75/85% of torpedo DPS, projectile impact damage remains the same
  
• Partisan and mounted turrets now given proximity-detonation shells similar to the C30i
  
• Deployable turrets’ health increased 50%
  
• Reduced gunship rocket-pod range to match primary weapons’ ranges, removed a mod slot from all gunship secondaries, reduced the range-reducing weapon body slot mod penalties to 5% from 7%
  
• Boarding approach now immediately interpolated, without the physics-driven initial phase that often left the dropship missing entirely
  
• Dropships now have 25% less boost duration, 20% more HP
  
• Successfully latching a dropship onto a target ship now awards 50 support XP
  
• Post-death forced detpack detonations now deal 20% of normal damage instead of 50%
  
• Much less aggressive steering reduction versus speed/boost on Hare, Silverback and Turtle
  
• EMP no longer disables firemode switching
  
• Armour regeneration disabling feat moved back to EMP from acid
  
• Minor infantry weapon tweaks - with two notable changes being knife primary slash getting a significant increase in firerate and damage and L9R charge time getting almost halved to correlate with max-damage firerate of the P8 rifle
  
• Small fixes and optimizations in spaceship physics calculations
  
• Fixed some inconsistencies in damage type multipliers, mainly increasing anti-vehicle damage of lower caliber guns and shield damage of higher caliber guns and also applying some missing armour damage penalties on the higher cal guns' elemental ammos
  
• Fixed underbarrel shield’s health display on clients
  
• Fixed flame turret rotation speed limit
  
• Fixed some math in recoil multipliers from weapon mods
  
• Fixed some issues with landing zone recapturability delay
  
• Fixed post-match mapvote displaying weird numbers of votes
  
• Fixed getting stuck in the vehicle deploy sequence
  
• Fixed some inaccuracy calculations while aiming-down-sights
  
• Fixed numerical accuracy issue in HUD speed and distance formatting
  
• Fixed vehicles falling reeeaaally slooowly due to some mis-configuration
  
• Fixed a few issues with disappearing and re-appearing vehicle drop offers
  
• Fixed vehicle drop offers being incorrectly available during the wipe-out phase
  

Huge thanks to everybody who joined us in the game during the sale! We absolutely adore playing with our Community!

For feedback, or just a lovely chat with the devs, post on AFF's Steam forums or contact us directly through our Discord!

Onwards and upwards!

Hey there AFF Community!

We expected this to be a small patch to fix some issue with map voting but there’s so much going on at AFF right now we just had to throw some extra changes in:



Until now when you reached rank 25 in all aspects of loadout budget (combat, support and command) there wasn’t really any progression beyond that.

We’ve added a way to reset the ranks once you reach rank 25 in all three aspects. Some games call it “prestige” and make you unlock everything from the start but of course this is AFF - we’re not changing our philosophy that every loadout item is available to players from rank 0. You will simply be back at rank 0 and will have the opportunity to rethink basic loadouts and scavenge situationally-appropriate guns from fallen foes.

In exchange for accepting the rank reset offer, you’ll receive a camouflage pattern. The more times you reset the more unique patterns you’ll accumulated. We know our visual customization system is a bit barebones for now so let’s consider this an experiment. We might tie the whole concept of “prestige” into a more elaborate visual progression system further down the line.



If you choose to ignore the rank reset entirely, “prestige” levels will continue to accumulate in the background until you do accept the offer. This also means “prestige” levels will be applied retrospectively over total career - we actually keep the entirety of the players’ XP pool, even if the game only displays up to 25 ranks.



The scoreboard screen was a bit of a multi-layered chaos, quickly put together for the last big UI rewrite. Now that we’re focusing on polishing the user experience, the scoreboard got a revamp too.



Changelog:

• Prestige (rank resetting) functionality
  
• Loadout costs rebalanced to better utilize the entire pool of loadout points, at the same time the acquisition of ranks has been sped up
  
• Rewritten the scoreboard screen
  
• Refactored logic of individual bots that resulted in them being less responsive than expected while moving
  
• Stopped AI from deploying dropships where they shouldn’t be allowed
  
• Reduced the amplitude of ship interior impact shakes
  
• Reduced SM54 minimum inaccuracy (sighted) to pistol default to make it a tad more predictable
  
• Gunships knocked down a health grade, now similar to mechs in terms of health and mod slots
  
• Removed legacy passenger weapon assignments on dropships and replaced with equivalent faction-specific weapon variants
  
• Further tweaks and optimizations to the new master server
  
• Added a cover overpass to Igneous phase 1, plus some miscellaneous meshing around that area
  
• Moved Irega phase 2’s spawn back a tad and added a shield, fixed a bunch of collision problems there
  
• Fixed glitchy phase 3 spawn in Irega, adjusted team protection volumes
  
• Fixed some oddities in the dropship and fighter launch animations inside the Huginn
  
• Fixed some lighting glitches on Fortress’ droppods and Ixion’s fighter launchers
  
• Fixed some mangled interaction labels on ship components
  
• Fixed a bunch of effects needlessly spawning off the vehicles on the server
  
• Fixed inconsistent handling of passworded games when joining from the server browser
  
• Fixed the map voting, hopefully for good this time, and adjusted some formatting on the end-game screen
  
• Fixed the operations menu still not letting you host online games when Steam was down, despite the fact we don’t need Steam’s master server anymore
  
• Fixed some instances of getting stuck at “connecting” in the server browser
  
• Fixed sort-by-map in the server browser
  
• Fixed C30i shells sometimes proxy-detonating past deployable shields
  
• Fixed C30i shells proxy-detonating on droppod turrets
  

For feedback, or just a lovely chat with the devs, post on AFF's Steam forums or contact us directly through our Discord!

Onwards and upwards!

Hey there AFF Community!

A few hotfixes for the last update. Happy Easter everyone!





The team balance changes didn’t work out so well in practice so we’re trying something else. Now it will work by straight-up balancing the number of players per team, except if both teams have equal number of players and the rank disparity is significant. In that case the next joining player will be limited to the under-ranked team instead of having both available.



Our Community has been asking for some old music pieces that were featured in and around AFF throughout the history. So we dug them up and added to the soundtrack package. If we find more of these we’ll put them in as well, promise!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/786890/Angels_Fall_First__Soundtrack/



Fancy words for one of the things we’ve been preparing in the background. While working towards integrating Discord’s Rich Presence and some other web-based features we added a way to run the game and immediately join a server from a simple link.

If you host an AFF server, just put a link to “afflink://” somewhere and the players will be able to join just by clicking that! Our Discord already makes use of that feature in its #serverbrowser channel.

Changelog:

• Team balance functionality changed again
  
• Added "afflink" protocol that lets you run the game/join a server from a URL
  
• C30 maximum range matches RID and MLI now
  
• C30 magazine now holds 8 instead of 9 shell but the gun got one extra mag
  
• RID primary charge time reduced 25%
  
• Increased multiwrench repair speed 30%
  
• Disabled leaning while incapacitated. Aww.
  
• Optimized some more stuff in the master server
  
• Fixed infantry camouflage colours resetting on opening the loadout
  
• Fixed the Irega point A fail and rebuilt some lighting, adjusted some killzones down in the chasm
  
• Fixed C30 item name when picking it up
  
• Fixed ammo mod effects on P8, C30 and bomber torpedoes
  
• Fixed flipping counters on the map voting screen
  
• Fixed AI stalling on Yin Tao Shan
  

For feedback, or just a lovely chat with the devs, post on AFF's Steam forums or contact us directly through our Discord!

Onwards and upwards!

Hey there AFF Community!

We’re back with another big update! Let’s address what is not in this right away though: the tutorial. Truth is, all those server performance problems we had to deal with the last few weeks delayed everything a bit. We’re working on it.

More importantly, what you see in this update is maybe half of the actual work we put into the game since the last update. There’s a lot of under-the-hood technical stuff going on in AFF development right now. Keep an eye out on subsequent updates in the coming weeks, or on us inevitably spoiling something in Discord

As for the contents of this update:



We’ve added a new weapon to the game - Sigurn-Fost C30i, a portable anti-vehicle cannon. Since the faction-specific anti-vehicle weapons balance has always been a point of contention we figured we need a new, neutral option in the AV department to topple the status quo.



It’s simple to use, its shells will detonate in proximity to any enemy vehicle (especially useful for taking down aircraft), it’s available for both factions and its animations are bloody cool. The visual effects for the weapon are still a bit of a work-in-progress but we wanted to release it as soon as possible - it will certainly require some tweaking anyway, after you guys and girls put it through its paces.



We love Steam because it’s super convenient to use, for developers and players alike. However, for our current and future online backend we needed something more responsive and flexible, without relying on 3rd party infrastructure. So we’re rolling out our own master server - that’s the stuff that makes our (and player-hosted) game servers visible for players.



What does that mean exactly for the players? More reliable and faster server browser, no more empty server lists when Steam is down for maintenance. Possibly some upcoming web-based and discord-intergrated features too but noooot spoiling anything yet.



We keep optimizing the game almost constantly but after the whole Meltdown/Spectre fiasco we seriously needed to make it run faster. And that doesn’t just mean painting it red, unfortunately.

We did some low-level optimizations in the engine, removed unnecessarily bloated system calls, fixed some AMD-specific oddities. Long story short - the game runs significantly faster on servers now and noticeably faster on most consumer-grade PCs. All official servers are back to 64 slots too.



We try to balance the game to be as fair as possible for all players but we also strongly believe there is something like too much balance. We like to think in the categories of “Is this item fun to use? Is it still fun when your opponent uses it?”, not only apply pure math to everything in AFF. We feel like after the last couple updates we made the infantry suits (and their mods) too prone to straight-up min-maxing instead of all of them being viable situational choices. Hopefully this update addresses the issue.



We also re-balanced most of the vehicle weapons, especially in terms of accuracy.

Another notable gameplay change is that the Territories gamemode now starts with frigates being available to the teams, instead of battleships. This should take the edge off the initial mad boarding rush.

In an effort to bring more varied maps to players’ attention we also made the post-match map voting list exclude the maps that have been played on the server already. The list returns to all maps available after at least half the maps have been completed. It’s an experiment and we want to see how the AFF Community reacts to it.



If any of you missed the last update, we're selling this piece of awesome content now:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/786890/Angels_Fall_First__Soundtrack/
Why? Because it's so damn cool to help the kids, that's why!

Full update changelog:

• Added Sigurn-Fost C30i portable anti-vehicle cannon
  
• Implemented a custom master server to make server listing more reliable and responsive
  
• Reworked suit mods, there’s no empty slot option anymore, everything’s either armour or a functional mod:
  - light suit: 3 helmet slots, 1 body slot, 50-130 armour, 286-310 speed
  - medium suit: 2 helmet slots, 2 body slots, 150-310 armour, 244-286 speed
  - heavy suit: 1 helmet slot, 3 body slots, 330-570 armour, 191-244 speed
  - standard armour mod: free, +90 armour
  - heavy plating mod: +130 armour, - 4% speed
  - servo mod: +50 armour, +4% speed
  - regeneration mod: +70 armour, +30% regeneration rate
  - ammo reserves mod: +80 armour +30% ammo
  - insulating mod: +100 armour, +20% elemental resistance, -20% ammo
  - blast protection mod: +110 armour, +20% AOE damage resistance, -20% regeneration rate
  
• Jump height bound to total armour value, no longer affected directly by servos/heavy plating
  
• Vehicle and fighter body mods and stats rebalanced to reflect infantry
  
• Re-ranged all vehicle regeneration delays to be a bit longer
  
• Reduced vehicle drop offer timeout to 60 seconds
  
• Friendly rearming points show ammo icons rather than transition icons
  
• Removed reload mods from ship weapons that don’t actually reload
  
• Buffed fighter mine speed and acceleration
  
• Gunship rocket pods made more viable
  
• Fixed and refactored the default mods system for loadout items. Tightened the verification process of loadouts in online game.
  
• Fixed the weapon accuracy interpolation when going into aim-down-sights, should feel more responsive now
  
• Fixed vehicle weapon inaccuracy math which was keeping them all pinned to maximum accuracy rather than blooming as expected, adjusted accuracy and damage values on vehicle and fighter weapons accordingly
  
• Rebalanced starfighter weapons, TT18s now fills a space assault rifle niche rather than an MG niche, mirrors DK11a
  
• Flechette overheat removed, ammo slot enabled and mirrors P4
  
• Re-normalised land passenger weapons versus their infantry counterparts
  
• Tuned some incendiary impact effects on infantry that looked too much the victim got set on fire but actually wasn’t
  
• Slightly buffed RID damage and primary lockon time
  
• Detpack trigger doesn’t detonate tripmines anymore
  
• Grenades now have friend- or foe-coloured trails instead of all being blue
  
• EMP disables vehicles’ capability to deploy countermeasures (shields) now
  
• Underbarrel shield health now visible on the HUD when active
  
• Added the ability to access the loadouts screen from the main menu
  
• Added a zoomed sensitivity multiplier
  
• Added missing “need repairs” and “get in my vehicle” callouts
  
• Some preliminary progress on more talkative AI
  
• Changed homing missile miss-detonation check to stop them from veering off and circling the target ad infinitum
  
• Frigates meltdown timer back down to 45s
  
• Ship boardable and boarded alerts made more prominent on the HUD
  
• Frigates are now the first-free-offer ships in Space Territories, to take the edge off the initial mad boarding rush
  
• Player balancing on the faction selection screen now primarily based off rank, for example 1 level-25 player equals 5 level-1 players
  
• Map vote screen will now exclude previously played maps until at least half the maps on the list are played - as an experiment in making maps more evenly played
  
• Implemented a server-wide meta-game manager, currently taking care of the map list. Commence speculation what its future purpose is!
  
• Delta updated:
  One less tank for each faction
  Added sniper catwalk/overlook near pipeline nexus overlooking Objective B
  Added more cover to the approach to Objective C from no man's land side
  Corrected some missing collision on tarps
  
• Adjusted lighting on several maps
  
• Added alternative route near the meatgrinder exit, adjusted cover and collision near terrain edges in Mirnoide
  
• Fixed more shadows around droppods on a few maps
  
• Moved the defender spawns in the 2nd and 3rd phases of Irega Incursion
  
• Moved ULA spawn and most objectives on Irega Territories
  
• Optimized several decoration meshes in space maps
  
• Added extra cover to NB3345 and Eye Of God
  
• NB3345 description changed to carriers-only
  
• Briefingroom ready-up klaxons edited to be less annoying
  
• Squadmates should see their squad leaders’ order (the one given to him by the commander) if the squad leader left them with no explicit order assigned
  
• Fixed land vehicles’ close camera drifting over time
  
• Limited outer cameras’ roll to world-up for less nausea (close camera is still vehicle-locked)
  
• Small adjustments to bot navigation and responsiveness
  
• Added missing “extending” and “retracting” animations to the RID when viewed in 3rd person
  
• Fixed grenades exploding when flying through any kind of flame
  
• Fixed grenades and detpacks not getting detonated by enemy grenades/explosives
  
• Fixed bots sometimes assigned to incorrect squads after traveling to a new map on the server
  
• Optimized the netcode of squad and team assignments a lot
  
• Optimized the number of network channels and replicated objects across the board
  
• Fixed pawns remaining in vehicles after the player has redeployed/changed team/left, in case of passenger seats online was blocking the seat completely
  
• Fixed noisemaker crash
  
• Fixed massive stacking of underbarrel flamer’s flames on a single object causing slideshows
  
• Fighter and passenger turret LSP variants now get modulated FX per-charge just like the handheld one
  
• Small optimizations to weaponfire code
  
• Slightly optimized replication of destroyed ship chunks
  
• A bit more Dhaka health, a bit less Locust health
  
• Corrected magsize mod description to state 15%
  

For feedback, or just a lovely chat with the devs, post on AFF's Steam forums or contact us directly through our Discord!

Onwards and upwards!