Due Process News

The largest change in this patch is the new version of the bomb, nicknamed "Omnibomb" for it's ability to be defused from all sides. Other changes include the community asked for "drop sounds" for when players jump off of heights, and showing the tileset order on the map screen, among other fixes and changes.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Omnibomb is the next iteration of the bomb design, we spent quite a bit of time during the development period testing this alternate design for the bomb, and now we are giving it to the community. The "omnibomb" focuses on shifting the objective of bomb defense by changing the dynamics around it, allowing the bomb to be defused from any open side while also fully concealing players behind it.

Bigger, rounder, and taller:

• The bomb is large and round, about one tile in diameter and about the height of a shipping container. Plenty of room for attackers to completely be concealed when hiding behind it.
  

Defusable from any side:

• As long as you're in the interaction radius and you have line of sight to the bomb, you can defuse it while looking at it's general direction.
  

Cannot move and defuse:

• Moving while holding the defuse key "stalls" the defuse. The defuse progress bar will remain visible but say "stalled", notifying both the defenders and the defuser.
  

Why Omnibomb?

• There's a developer Q/A at the end of the patch notes that will hopefully answer the "why" of Omnibomb, but if you have more questions or feedback you're more than welcome to join us in our discord for that. (Find the discord link in the in-game home screen)
  

Other Omnibomb Changes:

• There are slightly different sound cues for when the bomb defuse is started, stopped, stalled and progressed.
  
• Holding an unpinned grenade in the throw-prep state will block defusing, will need to pin or throw grenade to defuse
  
• No "long arming" the bomb, moving out of the defuse radius will correctly and immediately cancel defuse
  
• Defuse radius is plainly visible on screen when close to the bomb and highlighting it
  
• Bomb has an always visible "offscreen indicator" for the execution phase
  

• Landing on the ground from a jump height fall will create a specific "landing sound" separate from footsteps and gear sounds
  
• The above includes a jump from ground level
  
• Drop sounds are team specific; the attacker sound is more "heavy equipment" sounding
  
• Water now has an "entry" and "splash" sound, the splash sound is only made when the landing sound would be appropriate and replaces it, the entry sound always plays when entering water from any height
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Other New Additions:[/h2]

• Map View Tileset Order: You can see which maps are part of the current set on the Map View instead of having to memorize them
  
• Spawn Protection: Added behavior so that when you teleport, your velocity and movement input is arrested for a very small window to help stop you from walking off into pit or toxic, etc.
  
• Spawn Protection: Check player puck locations before teleporting, and move them to a backup spawn point if it's invalid
  
• Spawn Protection: Double check our default spawns, if they are invalid, spawn protection will spawn the defenders on the bomb in the case of a spawn failure
  
• Spawn Protection: Better puck dragging to prevent you from dragging the puck inside an object or tiny space
  
  
• Music Settings: Added "Competitive Music" setting to the Audio menu (this makes the music fade out at the start of execution instantly, and fade in later when round ends)
  
• Music Settings: Added "Disable Music in Main Menu" config setting to the Audio menu
  
• Music Settings: Redid settings menu to split Sound menu into Audio and Voice setting menus
  
  
• Phase Change Banners: Added back Detonation Imminent banner when < 30s left on the execution timer.
  
• Phase Change Banners: Replaced subtext on the sliding round banner with a more readable "Enemies are Approaching" banner
  

[h2]Other Changes:[/h2]

• Fixed bug allowing laggy players to defuse while dead or far from the bomb
  
• Fixed the client predicting the round ending when cancelling a defuse (the banner shows up and you can't defuse the bomb anymore, etc.)
  
• Can't interact with objects through solid objects now, require actual line of sight (we found a few problems and corrected them, but let us know if you find more.)
  
• Fixed matchmaking bug that allowed 6v5s
  
• Attempted fix for issue that caused server-wide crashes when loading some maps
  
• Fixed chat box text wrapping and font sizes incorrect after 2021 upgrade
  
• Fixed various maps with feedback from players
  
• Fixed variant of killhouse lockers that was thinner than others, they should now be all the same thickness
  
• Fix two input bugs involving crouching and aiming with toggle crouch reported by players
  
• Players should no longer get stuck with a brace sensitivity setting of 0.1
  
• The volume slider on players in the main menu now has a wider range; you should be able to make players much quieter before actually muting them.
  
• Fixed bug where the client would not realize their config was incorrectly formatted, leading to various bugs (like Vivox not working) The config now detects if it's incorrectly set up / unreadable and will reset itself if that is the case.
  
• Optimized dragging the player puck (to make up for the new cost of checking the collision)
  
• Spectators: Spectators get kicked from the match as soon as they disconnect (they don't have to wait 3 minutes to join)
  
• Spectators: Fixed bug where spectators joining a new match after the match ends would have broken voice
  
• Spectators: Spectators can reconnect to matches as an attacker or defender that they have been "kicked" from (they are no longer banned when admin kicked)
  
• Made message of the day reset itself after the servers come back up because I never remember to do it manually, I'm sorry
  

New Known Issues:

• Defuse sounds from the new bomb interaction may not correctly line up with the defuse progress on screen and may end up playing for a few extra seconds after a successful defuse
  
• The bomb's position may not be ideal on every map, while just about every bomb has been moved or tweaked, the older maps were not made for the new bomb
  
• Room labels may be missing from some older maps (feedback is appreciated if you spot one)
  
• The position of the new match timeline / map tileset order on the map screen is not ideal, the bottom left corner of the screen is a little cluttered and it will likely get moved, but I wanted to give it to the community first before spending too much time tweaking it.
  
• You may find yourself not spawning where you placed your puck; if you have this happen to you and you can get video or a screenshot of where you placed it, please report it. The game is simply trying to make sure you don't spawn inside an object or floor.
  

rev: What was the ultimate goal for omni bomb?
Vince: Well, the goal came down to how one on one engagements or two on two engagements unfurled without Omni bomb. And you know, the anticlimactic endings of holding really long angles for the defenders, which is what we explicitly wanted to change.

rev: Right now in the game, what we see a lot is attackers playing a little mini game at bomb where they’re moving back and forth around the interaction point, right? We won’t see that anymore will we?
Vince: Yeah. That that's not going to be a factor anymore. What we'll get is a lot more ‘play’, a lot more kind of ‘jockeying’ around the bomb to, you know, lure the defender in. You might have a flash bang and you're just waiting there on the bomb to hear that first footstep, then you toss it over and then you go into the assault position to wipe out that last defender.

rev: Do you think that the nature of sniper rifles as a power weapon will dramatically influence how people approach defuses on the omnibomb?
Vince: You know, we're going to have growing pains. We're going to recognize what a bad position for Omni bomb looks like. It's going to come down to like, all right: we recognize these are the types of bombs we don't want in the game, where the enforcers can cover way too many angles from too far away, and all they need to do is get one body on that bomb-and they're good. We’re keeping an eye on that.

rev: Will you be retroactively updating all the previous maps for omnibomb?
Axsom: Ozy is going to give us a list of maps that are going in and we’re going to have a look at them. I don’t think the new bomb will be much of an issue on old maps. On bank, we don’t really care, it’s already in a vault. But on c-store, again, (it’s) very small, we might have to shimmy it around a little bit on c-stores to get it away from the storefront windows.

rev: With attackers able to approach the bomb in different ways, it seems the meta might change for a lot of people’s defenses. We might see players value different rooms or hold more aggressively.
Axsom: Yeah, like I said, I think overall it be better for the health of each map. You’ll be able to play the map in a lot of different ways rather than the one I dictate now, which will increase the longevity of each map. Right now I dictate where you can hold the bomb from how I place it and how I orient it, and you know, with the new bomb that just goes away. So there’s a wider variety of places you can hold. Metas will surely arise from this but I think that’s a good thing for the game.

[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