KovaaK's News

Hey guys - Under normal circumstances of this game's development I'd be adding more features to profiles, fixing up the UI, and making the game more awesome to give you guys more options in your training. But as some of you know from the tweet back in January, I'm working full time with The Meta on the "2.0" version of this game with slightly different focus. Unfortunately, we're still decently far away from release and can't share details/spoilers quite yet. So our plan between now and the release of 2.0 is to trickle in a few high-impact but low-cost features that expand the possibilities for scenario authors.

So the patch that I just put on Steam does the following:

• Updated "Fortnite" FOV option to the way Fortnite is handling FOV now (16ML9, in FILM notation)
  
• Added "Fortnite Legacy" as an FOV option that does it the way Fortnite used to (16MI9, in FILM notation)
  
• Added Spawn Offset X & Y for character profiles so that scenario authors can do more cool stuff. Think stuff like Snake Tiles, but in more dimensions :)
  

More little changes like this will come as time goes on, but the big changes will happen with 2.0. I can't wait to share more!

1.0.7 Changes:

• Updated Unreal Engine version from 4.19 to 4.21. This resolves the long standing memory leak due to drawing 2d things in 3d space (such as the floating combat text), and makes the game start on the primary monitor for all users.
  
• Fixed the "shotbug" where longer up-times of the game resulted in deviations to fully automatic weapon DPS.
  
• Added "Switch Time Reduction" to Weapon Profiles, which allows characters to change weapon before the current weapon is ready to fire again. Example: 0.8 secs between shots for a weapon with the new variable set to 0.5 means that 0.3 seconds after shooting the weapon, your character is allowed to change to another weapon.
  
• Added "No Dodging" and "No Aiming" as Bot AI options (which entirely blocks AI Dodging and Aiming from occurring, for performance reasons)
  
• Separated Burst functionality into the new burst variable. Made Charge work with burst. Stuff like Zenyatta's right click is now possible. Also, I believe I made it so any existing Burst weapons were properly converted to the new variables...
  
• Made scenario browser not automatically filter on each text change (user has to press enter or change focus). Back when there were only 30 scenarios on the workshop, filtering each key press happened much faster...
  
• Fixed "My Scenario" bug when editing scenarios, hopefully.
  
• Fixed exploit for scenarios that are intended to lock FOV to a certain value.
  
• Floating point inputs in menus will now show an extra digit of precision.
  
• Limited Overshot protection to 250ms
  
• Expanded range of inputs for some scenario creation variables
  
• Made explosion properly use random(min,max) of flat knockback variables.
  

1.0.6.2 Changes:

• Added options to change Sky Color under Game Options -> Visuals
  
• Added option to set custom resolution under Game options -> Video
  
• Added Fortnite sensitivity dropdown options.
  
• Added Weapon Profile option to block ADS/zoom while in air.
  
• Added Weapon Profile options to shift 3rd person camera when you ADS.
  
• Forced the player's visible weapon model to be hidden when in 3rd person.
  
• Made clicking on "Cancel challenge" unconditionally show the scenario browser and session manager.
  
• Fixed bug/exploit that allowed users to have extra time on certain challenges.
  

1.0.6 Changes:

• Added scenario scoring option for "Score per distance traveled". Scenario authors can now provide incentive for players to move around while aiming!
  
• Added options for third person camera under Character->Main for scenario authors.
  
• Added Weapon option for "Force First Person In ADS" to make otherwise third-person characters go to first person when zooming in. This defaults to on.
  
• Exposed a third friction-related variable for character physics (linear decrease in velocity over time on the ground). Also renamed the other two to hopefully be more descriptive.
  
• Updated default list of Favorite Scenarios for new users (Added Tile Frenzy & Mini, Ascended Tracking v2, 1wall5targets pasu, Cata Plasma Long Strafes, and Thin Aiming Long - check these out if you haven't yet!).
  
• Fixed Zoom FOV and Sensitivity Scaling inconsistencies (Weapons with 0.0 time to zoom in were not reading the right variables).
  
• Re-did code around spawning bots for challenges so that it shouldn't be possible to end up with more bots in the challenge than intended. They also no longer reset their velocity and health a split second after spawning.
  
• Re-did code for challenge timer so that it uses some different methods. There was something weird going on for people who played the game for a _very_ long time that resulted in the challenge countdown going slower than it should.
  
• Respawning clears stun.
  
• Respawning blocks "bogo jump" until you let go of jump and press again.
  
• Made Challenge Timer more precise when it is down to the last 10 seconds.
  
• Removed "ADS/Zoom" text from hotbar when the character you are playing doesn't have any weapons capable of zooming.
  
• Added option to hide UI element for remaining time on challenge.
  
• Added vertical spawn offset for character profiles.
  

Note:
The Paladins and UE4 sensitivity scales are inaccurate. When I first implemented Paladins sens, I was unaware that the game's yaw/sensitivity was dependent on FOV. I plan on eventually changing the sensitivity options in this game to allow for custom yaws, and I encourage people to use https://github.com/KovaaK/SensitivityMatcher/releases/latest to figure out how to convert sensitivity between games!

I've been digging into this hitching issue that some users are experiencing in the game. I now know for a fact that the old version of UE4 (4.18) works perfectly fine, and the instant I upgrade to the current version (4.19), hitching starts to happen. So something changed in the engine, and I have no idea what. Using the profiling/statistics features of the engine shows me that there is a specific function of the engine that is causing the problems, but it's nothing I have control over. And using Process Hacker shows that every hitch is caused by hundreds of thousands of page faults (where the game tries to access memory that it hasn't mapped yet). So it's something to do with memory management, but I'm re-using actors/assets everywhere I can be, and it wasn't a problem in 4.18...

So why don't I just downgrade from 4.19 to 4.18? Unfortunately, UE4 does not allow developers to downgrade engine versions. I do have an old copy of the project from just before I upgraded from 4.18 to 4.19, which is the game version 1.0.3. So for those of you who are having hitching issues, I've uploaded that old build on Steam under the "1.0.3 - Old version" build. If you go to the Betas tab of the game, you can opt into that. Notably, leaderboards will be missing from that version, but there shouldn't be any hitching problems. See the previous patch notes listing for what changed in 1.0.4 and 1.0.5 - those features will be missing from this build. That said, the 1.0.3 build is in shipping configuration for improved performance.

Going forward, I will resolve this issue with the latest build of the game one way or another. Of course I'm hoping a UE4 patch to 4.19 comes out that just resolves it (would be really nice since I'm still working 60hrs/week at my day job), but I'll continue to investigate every option available to me. Sorry for the inconvenience to those affected!