Ancient Warfare 3 News

(Also includes patchnotes from 0.34.6.1 - 0.34.6.5)

Improvements

• Added an option to create corpses in the custom unit creator
  
  • Poses are random, but can be adjusted like in the animation editor
    
  • Instead of static passive units, you should create corpses, because they will perform much better
    
• Improved the navigation data for units
  
• You can now select landing points for ships
  
• Units that jump off ships will now face the ship direction to improve the target search
  

Bug fixes

• Fixed a some game crashes related to object destruction
  
• Fixed looping animation lag between the last and first frame then previewing animations
  
• Fixed that deleting foundations would not destroy stacked pillars on top
  
• Fixed that cavalry would kill other riders
  
• Fixed that the player could walk through vehicles
  
• Fixed zombie unit helmet model
  
• Fixed that duplicating units from a ship would keep a references to the ship
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed units to walk through walls in some cases
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented low foundations from connecting to the terrain in some cases
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented movement from one direction to the other
  
• Fixed a crash related to the destruction of some objects
  
• Fixed the flag spawn range for base flags
  
• Fixed the visual representation of the conquest/KOTH flag range
  
• Fixed that buildings could get destroyed, but would still be visible
  
• Fixed that siege units did not target horses
  
• Fixed weapon sight centering on S47, Val, SRSS
  
• Fixed that skeletons survived the black hole gun
  
• Fixed jungle rock rotations
  
• Fixed jungle rock runtime visuals
  
• Fixed a bug that locked the UI when loading a player equipment preset
  
• Fixed C-130 movement problem on large terrains
  
• Fixed a bug that caused ship rotations when hitting the terrain
  

Content

• Added S36 rifle (WMC reward)
  

Passive units

• You can now create passive units in the custom unit creator
  
• Clothing/Armor/Equipment can be applied just like for default units
  
• By default no animation is applied and the unit is standing in T-Pose
  
• To change that, you can apply a preset animation or create custom animations
  
• Bones can be rotated and the some positions can be changed to adjust the pose
  
• To save the current pose, you have to create a keyframe in the timeline
  
• Clicking/Dragging on the timeline will preview the animation at that point and allows you to insert keyframes
  
• Units with only one keyframe will have a static pose
  
• For seamless loops, make sure that the first and last keyframe are equal (you can do that by copy pasting the pose)
  

Features and Improvements

• Add ragdoll inertia
  
• Horses will now damage units they run over
  
• Units can now be placed on modular stairs
  

Bug fixes

• Fixed multiple bugs related to the horse AI
  
• Fixed attacking of melee units against horses
  
• Fixed attachment options in the arsenal
  
• Fixed that units equiped with certain armor would suffer from visibility problems
  
• Fixed that custom placed trees would disappear when placing certain objects
  
• Fixed default spawn point generation in Conquest/KOTH
  
• Fixed destruction of objects that are placed on other objects
  
• Fixed ragdoll stretching for textured clothing objects
  
• Fixed selection of some helicopters in the editor
  
• Fixed a bug that caused spawners to spawn units in the terrain
  
• Fixed GL mode of the P-rifle
  
• Fixed that chaning the equipment before respawning would allow animals and bug out the player
  

Content

• Added modular glass wall, small wall, floor, triangle floor, door frame, pillar
  
• Added a modular glass door
  
• Added 2 modern modular doors
  
• Added wooden door and window barricades
  
• Added stones from the christmas biome to the placement list
  

Features and Improvements

• Added "Wander" mode to unit settings, which will make units walk randomly around
  
• There will be movement speed settings in one of the upcoming updates, which will make this setting even more interesting.
  
• Zombie spawn points can now be placed on buildings and will be deactivate if the building is being destroyed
  
• Custom zombie units are now in the zombie placement category
  
• Behaviour settings (guard/patrol/...) will now work for zombies
  
• Renamed M1 helmet to msk1
  

Bug fixes

• Fixed attack distance settings (unit behaviour range multiplier) for siege weapons spider droids
  
• Fixed A6 helmet glass
  
• Removed color settings panel from the police vehicle
  
• Fixed mesh normals on the destroyed van
  
• Fixed some clipping problems with the future shirt
  

Next update

The passive unit creator is scheduled to be released next monday

Content

• Added Maska 1 helmet (class 4, "M1 Helmet" in game)
  
• Added Altyn helmet (class 4, "A6 Helmet" in game)
  
• Added a small plate carrier (class 4, 4 versions, "EL Body Armor" in game)
  
• Added an armored rig (class 4, 2 versions, "FP-2" in game)
  
• Added a soft body armor (class 2, "Soft Bodyarmor" in game)
  
• Updated the modern helmet model
  
• Added decorative car and truck objects (available in the vehicle category)
  
• Updated and added more destroyed car variants
  

Features and Improvements

• Helicopters will now change their height quicker
  
• Drop helicopters will now try to increase their height to reach high drop positions more easily
  
• Units placed in conquest/KOTH are no longer affected by the game rules, which means that they will no longer target flags!
  

Bug fixes

• Fixed rotation limits of Marksman tanks
  
• Fixed S4 scope size
  
• Fixed that throwing grenades while reloading a shotgun could result in broken player interactions
  
• Fixed that units would generate paths through destroyed vehicles
  
• Fixed thatthe game would not end when the last transport vehicle got destroyed
  
• Fixed hit detection of small helicopter rockets
  
• Fixed helicopter vertical rotation snapping at limits
  

Next update

Sorry for the slow pace of updates lately. The missing WMC reward will be released in the 0.34.5 version.
The next update (0.34.5) will also include the custom passive unit editor, which I dont expect to be released later than next week.

Ships
Ships suffered from many different problems that were related to the latest AI changes. Below is a list of fixed bugs and improvements.

• Fixed that on-ship movement did not work
  
• Fixed that ships could get stuck in the ocean
  
• Fixed various bugs related to ship boarding
  
• Fixed various bugs related to ship landing
  
• Fixed rotation jittering with low frame rates
  
• Fixed a bug that caused units to not stay on the ship then loading a battle
  
• Ships will now use the shortest boarding/attack side instead of a random one
  
• Fixed a but that allowed ships to move below the terrain
  
• Ship rotation is now linear
  

Save directories
You can now create folders in the load/save panel to organize your battles/prefabs/units/equipment. Files can be stored directly in the folders or you can drag existing files into other folders.
Please note that using your OS file browser to organize the files will result in broken thumbnails.

Vehicles
All removed ground vehicles got deleted and recreated from scratch to create a working set of features with the new AI systems.
As already explained multiple times, from a game design perspective ground vehicles do not fit into most maps, because the space is very limited.
That's why vehicles work best as static objects.
Below is a list of changes and expected behaviour.

• Vehicles are no longer physics based!
  
• The weapon systems are more reliable than before
  
• Weapons will not shoot through walls
  
• Most vehicles will move towards their target until the main weapon can shoot at the target or the vehicle is too close to the target (can be deactivated by using 'Guard' mode)
  
• Small obstacles like rocks will be ignored
  
• Weapons will not target units that are too close to the vehicle to prevent damage to the own vehicle
  
• Vehicles can NOT be controlled by a player. That is the case because they are no longer physics based and only move based on the AI system.
  
• Added a futuristic walker tank that was requested as a WMC reward a long time ago
  
• Ground vehicles in the object placement list are not functional and decorative objects
  
• Added destroyed vehicle variants to the object placement list
  
• The vehicles CCKW, LAV and BTR can transport units to a set position. The LAV/BTR will return to combat after dropping the units.
  
• Vehicles have custom armor and calibers for more realistic and adjustable damage values
  
• Do not expect vehicles to work perfectly in all cases. There are a lot of different systems that interact with them and a lot of settings have to be adjusted.
  

Melee AI
The ranged AI got improved a lot in the past and it's time to bring some attention to the melee combat.

• Randomized the melee AI attack timing
  
• [Experimental] Added animation canceling when hitting shields, weapons and armor
  

There will be more improvements in the upcoming updates!

Other improvements

• Reduced the overall RAM usage
  
• Increased the max. conquest flag amount from 5 to 10
  
• Added a "None" gamemode without end conditions
  
• Increased the max. terrain height from 40 to 120
  

Bug fixes

• Fixed that air vehicles couldnt be placed off the terrain
  
• Fixed a bug that caused flags to not generate spawn points when placed on high terrain
  
• Fixed that prefab placement with environment objects could result in objects being placed at the world origin in some cases
  
• Fixed drop helicopter rope visual bugs
  
• Fixed visual clipping problem with future armor
  
• Fixed that trying to reload miniguns would break some player interactions
  
• Fixed a bug that caused navigation problems on stacked stairs
  

About the recent behaviour in the community
If you didnt behave in a bad way because vehicles got temporarily removed, you can just skip this part. Thank you for being a nice and patient individual!

I just wanted to say some words about the recent behaviour of some people in our community. Not only because it happened in our community, but because it's a problem you can see in other communities too.
As most of you know, ground vehicles lost more and more compatibility and caused many problems. That happened because of changes to the AI system and the overall design of the game. At some points (a few weeks ago), vehicles had almost no functionality.
The decision was to temporarily remove ground vehicles to restore their functionality. Nobody offically said that they will be gone forever!
The only thing that changed was that you can't place a not working object!

As a result a lot of people got mad. Some wrote negative reviews, but most of them decided to use direct messages to harass and insult the developer.
But why?
1) There arent many workshop maps with vehicles (those maps could still be played with vehicles)
2) The game is in early access, which means that the final set of features can change...
3) Ground vehicles are not advertised on the steam store page in any way...
4) It's just a computer GAME, not your life!

DEVELOPERS ARE HUMANS. You should think about that before you write something. Instead of starting an open and calm discussion in the offical forums or discord, you decided to hide you disgusting character behind DMs.
And here is the reality: There are no they, there is only me behind this game. A student studying in university and developing this game in his free time!
I spend more than 2 years only adding suggestions from the community, just think about that for a second before harassing or insulting me for a few weeks without a not working feature during early access.
If you want to tell me that I'm doing a bad job, you can go ahead and do it in a reasonable way and I will consider it to improve myself.
If you want to insult me, you can do that in the public forums to show everyone your real character.
We could have had vehicles back much earlier, but I needed some distance from the harassment. Those messages caused nothing but delay and demotivation.
Most developers are always open about constructive criticism and I'm one of them. But you also have to respect the humans behind computer games, because they sacrifice a lot of time and energy to entertain you.

Next update
There will probably be multiple small updates to balance and fix some stuff in the upcoming days.