Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop News

Here are some fixes for recently-reported bugs and a few map and workshop improvements.

• IAF HAS42 Devastator: Increased firing sound volume for the player firing the weapon.
  
• Fixed end-of-mission stat graph lines being unexpectedly far apart in some cases. (Thanks SJAS)
  
• Updated how the Mission Complete screen is rendered to allow supporting more languages.
  
• Addons with an autoexec file are now listed on the workshop under the "Config" tag.
  
• Going forward, uploading addons with config files in them to the workshop will be limited to autoexec_[addon ID].cfg to avoid collisions between different addons and between addons and user files.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the "help" command to limit descriptions to 80 characters. (Thanks 法克*尤尔*马泽尔 and Zero)
  
• Fixed Bastille only playing one of his two death sounds. (Thanks Beka and krtek2k)
  
• Fixed a bug where sv_memlimit would sometimes fail to exit. (Thanks Mithrand)
  
• Fixed the asw_vehicle_jeep entity being unintentionally disabled. (Thanks jhheight)
  

[h2]Tears for Tarnor: Insertion Point[/h2]

• Changed how some invisible walls are defined to allow drones to jump over certain rocks but not through cave walls.
  
• Increased the height of some invisible walls intended to keep players from being thrown out of the playable space by shieldbugs. (Thanks kubaaa015)
  
• Reduced lighting complexity for areas far from the playable space.
  

[h2]Accident 32: Lab Ruins[/h2]

• Changed some materials in the starting area.
  
• Fixed being able to hear the boss doors closing when the mission starts.
  
• The sewer now deals damage over time instead of killing instantly.
  
• Added ladders to allow climbing out of the sewer.
  
• Added stairs to the area where the harvester spawns in the beginning.
  
• Added an area to the west of the big bridge with additional supplies.
  
• An ammo stash on the main path has been reduced from 100% full to 60% full to encourage seeking optional supply areas.
  

[h2]Missions[/h2]

• Operation Cleansweep: Storage Facility: Removed tech marine requirement. Added a chainsaw near the first door and twin pistols near the last door.
  
• Research 7: Illyn Forest: Removed "Melee" game instructor hint from blockade. (thanks Dmitriy!)
  
• Research 7: Illyn Forest: Generator no longer takes damage from marines or explosions.
  
• Research 7: Illyn Forest: Adjusted boss bar graphics.
  
• Tilarus-5: Cold Catwalks: Fixed a misaligned railing. (thanks WTF-8!)
  
• Paranoia: Crucial Point: The satellite dish no longer takes damage from marines. (It could previously be damaged with the Tesla Cannon.)
  
• BioGen Corporation: Operation X-5: Fixed a spot where marines could fall out of the map. (thanks Blueberry!)
  
• Accident 32: Information Department: Fixed reactor hack area sometimes being disabled.
  
• Accident 32: Information Department: Made aliens move slower in water.
  
• Accident 32: Powerhood: Changed eggs objective to clearing out any eggs rather than eggs in specific rooms in the map, for challenges that spawn additional eggs.
  
• Accident 32: Powerhood: Unwelded supply room door and added more ammo types.
  
• Accident 32: Research Center: Added a button to blow away the fog.
  
• Accident 32: Research Center: Adjusted spawns.
  
• Accident 32: J5 Connector: Made aliens move slower in the shower.
  
• Accident 32 (all missions): Improved reflective surfaces.
  

[h2]Bugfixes[/h2]

• Fixed the crosshair not rendering correctly for some users. This was most noticeable while hacking.
  
• Fixed the mission chooser no longer showing bonus, endless, or deathmatch missions after viewing the missions in a campaign and then backing out.
  
• Fixed a crash in the new PBR shader.
  
• Fixed the L1/LB button ceasing to function after using the radial menu to activate equipment. This also fixes the marine swap radial menu sometimes dropping commands.
  
• Reverted dedicated server workshop changes as they were causing unreasonably increased server load.
  
• Fixed tech weapons requiring the ability to hack rather than specifically the ability to use tech weapons like weapons for other classes did.
  
• Bots can no longer fire medic guns, the mining laser, or the tesla cannon after a mission has ended.
  

[h2]Misc[/h2]

• Voting to change the mission during briefing or after the mission has ended now only requires a majority of the voters to agree, not a majority of the players in the lobby. Repeatedly calling unsuccessful votes will result in a temporary cooldown. Voting to change the mission during gameplay is unchanged.
  
• Muting a player in a lobby, voting to kick a player, or voting to make a player the lobby leader will now send a mini-report to our ticketing system if you have not performed that action on that player recently. We're using this to test our reporting server while we work on a more versatile in-game reporting system.
  
• The convars r_flashlightdepthres (1024), rd_max_depth_texture_shadows (1), r_flashlightdepthreshigh (2048), and rd_max_depth_texture_highres_shadows (0) can now be changed while the game is running (or added to autoexec.cfg). Changing them should only be done while not in a mission as they will cause your game to freeze for a few seconds while the render targets are reallocated. We might consider adding settings to change these in the future, but for now they're being made available for power-users (people who are comfortable editing autoexec.cfg).
  

[h2]2023 Mapping Competition[/h2]

Congratulations to the winner of the 2023 mapping competition: The Gauntlet: Arctic!



All participants have also received the 2023 Mapping Competition Participant medal.



[h2]Texture Anti-Aliasing[/h2]

Anti-aliasing now affects alpha-tested materials like grates and foliage. Examples shown below are all at 8x MSAA, with how it was previously on the left and how it will be after this update on the right.







[h2]New Material Shaders[/h2]

For mappers: LightmappedGeneric now supports parallax-corrected cubemaps and we've also added the PBR shader.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3012996135

[h2]More Materials and Models[/h2]

We've added more materials and models for mappers to use. These are used by an upcoming campaign remaster we're working on, but can also be used for your own maps.

[h2]Dedicated Server and Challenge Workshop Fixes[/h2]

We've once again tweaked how dedicated servers load Workshop addons to try to fix an issue where addons are sometimes outdated for extended periods on dedicated servers. Challenges that are required on clients (for custom materials, models, particles, sounds, translations, etc.) should now more reliably load in time for the mission to start.

We've also fixed the challenge list not loading images or author names for challenges you didn't have installed locally and fixed console variables not being reset when a challenge is deactivated if they would have been set to an empty string.

[h2]Weapons[/h2]

• Ceilings (func_asw_fade) now collide with grenades that were thrown from above them and do not collide with grenades that were thrown from below.
  
• Expanded grenade custom collision logic to also apply to mines, beacons, rockets, and flares.
  
• Fixed flares bouncing off of non-solid objects like fire mine trigger areas.
  
• Fixed v45 Electric Charged Armor disappearing immediately when its last charge was activated.
  

[h2]Misc[/h2]

• The mission chooser is now all shown on one scrollable screen.
  
• rd_draw_minimap can now be set to a value between 0 and 1 in order to draw the minimap image semi-transparently.
  
• Added EmitSoundTable VScript function to entities.
  
• Fixed missing "Ignite" input on Biomass in Hammer.
  
• Fixed female colonists with randomized models occasionally appearing as the word "ERROR".
  
• Fixed leadership sound coming from the wrong location.
  
• Added a warning message if certain networking-related variables are changed to dangerous values.
  
• Fixed a several second game freeze when subscribing or unsubscribing a large quantity of Workshop addons at the same time.
  

We made changes to how Heroes of the Interstellar Armed Forces servers receive their mission list so it can be modified without requiring a full game update. Added a new command rd_hoiaf_debug to view information about the current ranked server configuration and loaded addons.

We are also adding HoIAF's first three endless missions starting today:

• Infinite Landing Bay by jhheight
  
• IAF Marine Academy by jhheight
  
• The Gauntlet: Arctic by Stral and Synmachus
  

A higher score inside an endless mission will increase the number of points you receive for completing it. As always, we are looking for feedback on scoring if we accidentally rated anything too high or too low.

View the full list of Heroes of the Interstellar Armed Forces changes on the developer website.

Additionally, we've fixed some bugs and added two new advanced configuration options and some features for modders.

• Fixed remote turret model appearing much higher than intended.
  
• Fixed Queen health bar being visible during debriefing.
  
• Fixed singleplayer non-campaign lobbies being limited to 4 marines.
  
• Accident 32: J5 Connector: Fixed shower water causing on-damage effects like L3A Tactical Heavy Armor losing charges and aliens moving slowly.
  
• In game modes that allow reviving, knocked-out marines in the escape area no longer count towards finishing a mission and knocked-out marines outside of the escape area now count as dead for the purpose of finishing a mission.
  
• Added a new ConVar: rd_represented_country. By default (empty), this will be set to your country based on the IP address you use to connect to Steam (the same as before). Can be set in autoexec.cfg to a different 2-character country code, or to XX if you do not wish to represent a country on leaderboards.
  
• Added a new ConVar: rd_movement_relative_to_aim. If set to 1, your marine's forward direction in top-down view will be based on the marine's angle rather than the camera's angle. Intended for players who want to bind +forward to a mouse button.
  
• Added new challenge ConVars: asw_marine_gun_offset_x, asw_marine_gun_offset_y, and asw_marine_gun_offset_z. For example, to make marines shoot out of the center of the first person camera, a challenge can set these to 0, 0, and 70.
  
• Added a new challenge ConVar: rd_grenade_gravity. It affects the gravity of the assault rifle's grenade. Default value is 0.05.
  
• Added two new VScript methods to triggers: GetNumTouching() and GetTouching(index)
  
• Added a new entity: rd_hud_vscript.
  
• Reduced storage and memory usage for inventory item icons like medals. They also load faster the first time they are displayed.
  
• The ForcePickUp and ForceDrop inputs and the OnPickedUp and OnDropped outputs are now available on all weapon entities, not just rd_weapon_generic_object.
  
• The Swarmopedia model viewer now supports bone merge, pose parameters, and animation blending.
  

As a final note, there is one month left before the entry deadline for the 2023 mapping competition. There's still time to get an entry in, even if it's your first time making a map!