Due Process News

[h2]Regular Updates:[/h2]
We are attempting to switch to a new file storage technique that should alleviate the issues some users have with how Steam handles the default way that Unity stores data for our levels. For most games this would not be an issue, but most games also do not ship hundreds of new levels. We know that this has been an issue that has bothered players and will be keeping an eye on this to see if we need to take even further measures to lessen the issue of downloads.

• Initial download expected to be large. Future incremental updates will probably be larger they have been in the past.
  
• Time spent writing to disk after an update is downloaded expected to be only a few seconds instead of upwords of twenty minutes.
  
• Downloads should no longer get stuck at "100%"
  
• Verifying files can now be used without it taking upwards of an hour on slower hard drives
  

[h2]General Bug Fixes:[/h2]

• Some changes were made to reduce crashes on level loads but we are still working on reducing those issues
  
• Updated to slightly newer unity version, fixed engine bug that caused bad stuttering on some machines
  
• Unity version change should also alleviate the issue where some post effects were not behaving as expected
  
• Fixed bug where joining at the wrong time as the match starts prevents you from loading the first level, and you would get stuck in a blank map named "training"
  
• Fixed issue where rejoining a private match using a password would not work after one team had gotten a certain number of points.
  
• Fixed some backend bugs to fix other cases where joining a match in progress could fail
  
• Fixed disable sprint brace preventing you from aiming while holding shift
  
• Fixed issue where toggle crouch would sometimes cause you to crouch again after sprinting
  
• Fixed issue where toggle crouch would cause you to stand up if you tried to brace with sprint+aim
  
• Fixed disable sprint brace button not saving/applying properly on restart
  
• Any time you save the resolution/window settings in the due process options, it should now save internally in unity. This should hopefully cause it to re-open in the correct mode more often.
  
• Tweaked spectator cam to use correct post effects, draw distance, lens flares, and decals.
  
• Updated nearly every single map to correct light bake issues that occurred after switching to unity 2021
  

[h2]Added:[/h2]

• Put button in training shooting range to spawn/delete bots you can shoot for target practice
  
• Added siren to bank vault, new sound effects for security checkpoints, and the bank vault button.
  
• All buttons in all tilesets should now make unique, per button sounds.
  

We've upgraded our engine version to Unity 2021 to take advantage of the features included to increase the performance of the game for our players! Additionally, to celebrate this we've put the game on sale and have introduced a new battle pass for players to unlock new skins we're introducing during this event! There are also a few other improvements to the game included.

• Free, limited-time battle pass to accompany the update and game sale!
  
• Upon completion of the first match, you automatically are awarded with a matching shirt and pants set.
  
• Smaller than the seasonal updates, with less time commitment required to finish the pass.
  
• New UI for encouraging players to activate new battlepasses, also includes a description and end date.
  
• Battle pass now extends a few days beyond the sale to allow players who buy towards the end of the sale to still be able to complete it.
  

• Upgrade to the latest of the Unity engine, taking advantage of myriad features in order to increase game performance.
  
• Overall expect a 10-20% performance increase across the board.
  
• Frame drops, and lowest frame rates overall improved to bring a better, more stable frame rate.
  
• Tileset specific changes to address specific areas where framerates would be much lower than others.
  
• We are still working on bringing some of our post-processing effects back up to where they were before the engine upgrade, some things like fog, lighting and smoke may not be exactly as you remember them.
  

[h2]From Creative Director Baard:[/h2]
This performance update has been the primary effort of our engineering team since the release of character customization/progression in October. Upgrading to a new Unity version is a substantial effort. Consider that Escape From Tarkov, another Unity game, has only just now upgraded to Unity 2019. As of today, we're on Unity 2021, and what that has brought is a substantial improvement to the lowest framerate seen on player's machines.

It is for the above reason that for far too long updates to the game featured only new cosmetics. The last thing we want to do with this Early Access game is reduce it to a hat-o-thon. We'll do a better job of pacing out our updates to ensure meaningful changes to the game are made in a timely manner.

While we're still a long way from a rock-solid 140+ framerate we'll one day achieve, raising the lowest framerate has a profound effect on the feel of the game. Our intention was to couple this performance update with a meta-changing design iteration of the game, but simply put: we didn't want to hold out on you. You guys deserve to have this framerate improvement as soon as possible. For that reason changes to weapon handling were held back until Cadet feedback on the feature could be wholeheartedly addressed.

We'll have more to share on the meta-changing update we have planned subsequent to this one soon.

As a final note: there will be bugs--particularly when it comes to visuals. Unity upgrades always yield unexpected surprises. Please help us find these issues so we can expediently address them in the #bug-reports channel on discord. (Find the discord link in game on the home screen!)

• (WIP) Crouch animation state now dramatically lower to match 1st person expectation and to make crouching behind objects less likely to leave your head sticking up
  
• Kill alert popups now can show multiple successive kills in a row
  
• Bank vents now have a less subtle appearance, showing light coming through the vent to help guide attackers
• The client and the backend now have a working re-connection flow that should take place for most cases where clients would disconnect when on the main menu. We are working on improving this further to make it more seamless, but for most cases it should at least automatically reconnect without requiring a game restart.
  
• User config now saves into two separate files, and no longer syncs machine specific data to the cloud (Resolution/volume/microphone) to make cloud saving more useful. This imports your old config before saving a new version in %appdata%/Giant Enemy Crab/Due Process
  
• Clarified names and descriptions of settings for "Press key to aim brace" and "Inverse Aim Brace" in the options menu
  
• Added ding (???)
  

[h2]Bug Fixes:[/h2]

• Shotgun rack bug fix
  
• Fire bells will no longer bug out and play the entire round if you detonate a second charge after the fire bell stops
  
• Fixed issue where clients would just show "STEAM ERROR" instead of the correct error message when disconnected from the backend
  
• Fix error preventing client from entering the disconnection screen when they actually disconnect from the backend
  
• Fixed issue where clients would sometimes be allowed to re-join games they were already removed from (6v5 bug)
  
• Fixed issue where the object changing state or highlighting multiple objects in succession would cause extraneous conflicting actions to show up
  
• Fixed issue on open lockable doors where both the open text (as [LOCKED]) and the CLOSE text will be in the list if the door is open
  
• Changed behavior for unavailable interactions to show failure reason instead of success text.
  
• Changed text on a lot of doors. Some doors have attacker specific descriptions.
  
• Fixed bug with customization UI showing objects from other tabs
  
• Various customization UX improvements, "pass completed" is no longer shown every game after achieving it
  
• Fixed various backend errors
  

If you were having issues in the last couple days with crashing or invisible player models, the issue should now be addressed and a hotfix was rolled out over steam with no downtime required for the servers. If you were using the "old version" branch, restarting steam should automatically push you onto the new update that solves the issue.

After the weekly update, some users had reported some crashing. The issue was unexpected and it appeared to only affect some machines. A quick rollback branch was shipped to allow players to continue to play the game by switching to the older version.

It appeared to be an internal issue with the unity engine that did not surface an error, but thanks to the quick reporting and testing of various community members in the discord, we were able to find and fix the issue promptly. Thanks to Roach, Requiescat, and ctrlalt3l1t3 for helping test the issue to get it resolved quickly.

Lots of bug fixes, some QoL additions. A lot of these issues have been around unsolved for too long and they are being fixed as part of a pass to solve long outstanding issues affecting the game.

[h2]Changes:[/h2]

• Makes it so that brace fire of SABR shoots from camera, not muzzle, because brace fire is emulating an ADS state. This should help with the brace fire not shooting at the intended tip of the irons.
  
• Clacker max RPM down from 1800 to 600, to maintain a fast speed while also reducing the utility of a macro. (Fastest possible 3x clack is now 0.2s instead of 0.066s)
  
• Changed the decal system so that player's guns will no longer render decals. Player bodies can still render decals but they should no longer show up on guns as you pass near or through decals which would normally make it hard to aim.
  

[h2]General Bug Fixes:[/h2]

• Fixed issue where clacker RPM would be affected by tickrate.
  
• Incremental performance optimization: 30% cleanup of memory allocations per tick to reduce memory overhead and cost of garbage collection
  
• Fix to remove legacy networking spawning code from unity systems, occasionally this old system would be activated by unity and cause severe performance dips on the server, affecting it's tickrate.
  
• Added fix for players spawning in the floor and dying while loading.
  
• Fixed one cause of an issue where players would respawn in the next round with the guns that they had in the previous round when they died
  
• If files are detected as invalid and you are blocked from connecting to a server, after the game shuts down, steam will attempt to silently verify files in the background; instead of just a popup recommending to verify files.
  
• More character content tweaks and fixes to various character customization items
  

Lots of bug fixes, some QoL additions. A lot of these issues have been around unsolved for too long and they are being fixed as part of a pass to solve long outstanding issues affecting the game.

[h2]Additions:[/h2]

• Customization variant picker: Similar items in the customization menu are now grouped together in the list. Clicking an item shows all the variants of that type, like different colors.
  
• Added brace sensitivity slider. If you already have hip sensitivity set in your config, and don’t have brace sensitivity set, it will automatically graft hip sensitivity to brace sensitivity.
  
• Adds "Disable Sprint Toggling Brace" option in controls, off by default, saves in DPIO. Does not affect Single Button Aim Brace. Makes sprint always have priority when holding sprint + aim or sprint and brace.
  
• Added simple HUD scaling: Doesn't really do much on 16:9. Mostly affects resolutions approaching square or ultrawidescreen. The slider is kind of obtuse, but 1.0 will make the hud small in ultrawidescreen; 0.0 will make the hud small in square modes. 0.5 is the old default. Recommend 0.9 for 21:9 and 0.1 for 4:3. Some more work is planned in the future for scaling of various UI elements and a better slider.
  

[h2]General Bug Fixes:[/h2]

• Added logic so that if you use toggle crouch and press use sprint+aim to brace, you won't errantly stand up when not moving
  
• Unblocked opening doors while holding a charge. You can now open doors while holding charges in your hands (door and wall)
  
• Inverse toggle aim for SBAB now disables itself if SBAB is turned off to show you that it’s a child option of SBAB.
  
• Reordered SBAB option to be above the inverse SBAB since that makes more sense to the user so you can understand that it's a child option
  
• Disabled doors occasionally killing players who were not standing near the door. The underlying issue was also found and resolved, so that it can eventually be re-enabled without bugs.
  
• Fixed issue where players who have toggled on ADS, Brace or Crouch have it errantly toggled at the start of the next round, and causes new players to not be able to pick guns up.
  
• Fixed bug where the UI during bomb explosion screen overlaps and covers the killfeed.
  
• Fixed bug where the UI during bomb explosion screen can have an incorrect duplicate.
  
• Fix bug where the UI toggle that lets you hide the password text in the matchmaking password field did not turn off when the password filter was completely disabled
  
• Fix players making footsteps when not moving due to being disconnected or loading the level
  
• Optimization regarding acknowledging events
  
• Make config write in a human readable form so it's easier to manually edit.
  
• Updated EAC violation UI so the checkbox actually does something when you click it
  
• Updated EAC violation UI so it will eventually automatically close the game if you don’t take any action (missing check box problem)
  
• Widened level numbers on XP climb so they don’t stretch out onto new lines on wide numbers
  
• Fixed the bomb indicator rendering on the bomb explosion view screen when it shouldn’t