FROM THE BLOG

Build 1110

Quite a big balance patch this time, with a few experimental changes in the mix too. Let the changelog begin:

• Knight Shield
  The Knight shield angles have been tweaked a lot – they should provide less cover overall, meaning that more arrows and explosions are likely to hit their mark. Specifically, the shield angle has been reduced from a whopping 220 degrees to somewhere between 130 and 160 degrees, depending on what you’re doing specifically with the shield at the time. Be a little more careful, knights.
• Kegs
  Kegs now can take much more of a beating, leading to less premature detonation. There’s a catch, however – kegs now get dropped when they’re hit, meaning someone can shoot or smack the keg off your back. People with kegs will need to be a fair bit more careful if they want to keep a hold of it; try to provide support for anyone on your team carrying them! Kegs also change their owner on getting picked up now, rather than on throw, so that the correct person gets the kills.
• Explosives
  Explosives now can’t actually destroy ground blocks – they’ll chew structures just fine, but will not remove any blocks The blocks will need to be removed by other means (sword, pick, drill, bolt, boat, pick your poison).
  This should help reduce the background terrain erosion a lot, and give builders more control over the flow of the battlefield, while still allowing blockades to be bombed down. Bedrock “eating” keg explosions should also be a fair bit better, and kegs should _not_ kill through walls that absorbed the explosion – of course, some dirt walls will not absorb the explosion even though they are not destroyed. This is experimental: we’ll see how this goes, it might need a bit of tweaking, but we’re tired of the massive erosion that happens to every map, every game.
• More Heads
  6 new heads (3 for each gender) have been added; Gurren Lagann heads for everone sporting kamina glasses or anime avatars on the forums, messy red hair heads to service that niche, and sk8r boi/gurl heads for those who miss the bad old days.
• More Killfeed Icons
  No more Keg causing “fall” icon! The drill and saw icons are stlil missing though..
• Traps and buildings
  Traps and buildings should be a little more viable long-term, as platforms and wooden doors take less damage from swords, and trap blocks cannot be damaged by swords at all.
• Optimisation
  The way the run flags for each script are calculated has been optimised so that the checks are only carried out a maximum of once per frame per blob. We’ll work more on optimising this as well, because there’s still overhead associated with checking all of them even when they aren’t needed.
• Cost Tweak
  Bombs now cost 25c in CTF; an even 100 for 4. Mines are now 60c so they see more use. Burgers are now purchaseable from the quarters/inn/kitchen, and the cost of healing items has generally been decreased. Archers can now shoot burgers to make ranged support via healing more possible (it works with fish too, but they can be tricky to come by in some games).
• Weight tweaks
  Corpses are now medium weight, so that lugging one around slows you down a little. Kegs are now heavy weight, so they slow you a lot.
• Run Through Doors Exploit Fixed
  Self explanatory.
• Fixed Smooth Shader
  First change by our long time support guy Lucas/Furai – the smooth shader should now work properly for all resolutions instead of just the default!
• No Light from Buildings
  This facilitates underground stealth bases more easily, and encourages lantern use.
• Modding
  Joining modded servers has been made less “scary” and annoying – the warning window only shows up on your first day of play. Servers are also flagged as modded less frequently, most notably maps, mapcycles and config files wont trigger a server as modded. Script changes will trigger a server as modded, as will any loaded mods (naturally). Hopefully the increased ease of joining and increased exposure in general will help kick the modding scene into gear :^)
  Mods verified with and uploaded to the API should now Auto-Update, though I’ll leave it to Tom to explain the specifics in the thread as I’m not 100% clear on them.

I think that’s about it – quite a lot so there might be a few issues, but it should be fine for the weekend. Have fun!

Max

Edit by Tom: Server auto-updates explained here