Game version 3738 (19th of June, 2022)

The past month has been exciting - there is no other word that we can use.

From a development perspective we’re on the verge of being able to provide a modern, interactive development environment to our community. With the work of Eluvatar a Visual Studio Code (VSC) extension is close to release that provides intellisense support for map scripters, mod makers and game developers. And with the work of Ejsstiil the Lua debugger that ships with the game is fully functional again when you work from your development environment. Programmers understand how critical these features are for the development of essentially anything.

And from a user perspective the game has never been more performing. Specifically the infamously slow ASF battles has been tackled. For the majority of matches the game no longer slows down, with the assumption that there is no potato processor participating in the match.

All of that shadows all of the other critical work that has been done the past month with thanks to all the remaining contributors, including SpikeyNoob, Hdt80bro and LilJoe7k4 who made their first contributions to the game repository.

A great deal of appreciation towards everyone that made this patch possible.

I hope you all enjoy the lack of APM during a late Seton’s Clutch game,

With kind regards,

Jip

Bug fixes

• (#3896, #3899, #3901) Fix UI elements ignoring the console command UI_ToggleGamePanels

• (#3909) Fix enhancements ETAs leaking to the other screen when using split screen

• (#3876) Sanitize weapon target priorities of Point Defenses This fixes the issue that point defenses are not firing while a target is in range

• (#3923, #3924) Fix an economy related glitch that allows you to gain resources free of charge For all intends and purposes we will not dive into the details ;)

• (#3946) Fix damage of child projectiles, such as Cybran tactical missiles after they split

• (#3961) Fix issue with the attachment bones of the tech 2 Aeon Transport As a consequence the tech 2 Aeon transport can now carry up to 3 tech 3 units, instead of 2

• (#3966) Fix roll off points for various factories The roll off points were not properly aligned, as a consequence ships had trouble leaving the dock. This was especially noticeable on the naval factories of the Cybran faction

Features

• (#3887, #3968) Introduce Intellisense support for the FA Visual Studio Code (VSC) extension As map scripters, mod makers and game developers we have been living in a cave. But no more - thanks to the work on the extension and the work in this pull request we are slowly introducing annotation across the repository.

  For those with programming experience: it is like the introduction of Typescript, after working for years on ends in Javascript.

  This also works when you have no development environment for the FA repository on your system, see the readme on the Github page of the FA repository for more information.

• (#3938) Revive the FA Lua debugger Revives the FA Lua debugger when you are working from your development environment. Allows you to set breakpoints and inspect the stack, locals and globals. Extremely useful when you are debugging your maps, mods and when you’re working on game development in general.

  Requires a development environment in order to work. You can set this up in half an hour, see the readme on the Github page of the FA repository for more information.

• (#3883) Introduce a UI to keep track of the mass fabricator behavior The UI element is to the right of the economy panel. It can be dragged horizontally by using the middle mouse button.

• (#3889, #3906) Improve in-game chat settings panel Fixes various small issues with the chat panel and allows you to view and inspect the changes in the settings live by using the apply button.

• (#3863) Pimp the Aeon Quantum Optics Facility The unit was unfinished in every regard - as part of a live programming session we improved the feeling and aesthetics.

• (#3905) Add guidelines for a development environment for FA for Linux-based operating systems For more information, see the work instructions of the github page.

• (#3933) Use playable area instead of map size on the default scoreboard

• (#3835) Introduce a builder pattern to create UI elements An alternative, more modern approach to creating, positioning and checking of UI elements.

• (#3972) Add the ability to manually recheck weapon targets of the selected units via a hotkey As per #3857 the weapons of the majority of units do not recheck their targets. Usually this is not required, but it does cause a big hit on performance. This new hotkey is introduced to allow you to let your units retarget on command for those situations where that is required

  You can find the hotkey by searching for ‘recheck’ in the hotkeys menu

For map, mod and AI developers

• (#3884) Add support for a unit.IsCivilian flag Introduces an easy to use flag to indicate whether a unit belongs to a civilian army

• (#3894) Add support for a unit.ImmuneToStun flag Introduces an easy to use flag to make a unit immune to stuns

• (#3894) Add support for a shield.SkipAttachment flag Introduces an easy to use flag to allow shields to function when attached

• (#3944) Add support for multiple upgrade animations via the function unit.GetUpgradeAnimation

Performance

• (#3845) Reduce table allocations when defining weapon target priorities

• (#3875, #3945) Reduce memory impact of units, weapons and props

• (#3891, 6fefe78) Sanitize guard scan radius of units The guard scan radius is used by units on attack move or patrol to find and engage hostile units in their surrounding. The value was all over the place and could cause serious slowdowns, especially during the late game.

• (#3892, #3903) Sanitize footprints of air units All non-experimental air units had a footprint size of 1 - the size of a wall. Because of that there were two issues: due to their proximity it introduced mesh intersections that break the immersion of the game. And due to their density it causes performance issues. From now on all bombers have a footprint size of 4, all gunships have a footprint size of 3 and all interceptors have a footprint size of 2.

• (#3930) Remove dependency on the schook folder Improves code maintainability and reduces the amount of hooks that ships with the game.

• (#3857, #3931, #3950) Sanitize weapon parameters There are three crucial parameters that determine the behavior and performance of weaponry: the weapon target check interval, the weapon tracking radius and the retargeting behavior of weaponry. The weapon target check interval is now based on the rate of fire of the weapon. The weapon tracking radius is reduced to 7% for non-anti air weaponry units and 15% for anti air weaponry. The retargeting is disabled unless the weapon is considered artillery or anti air.

  This slightly changes the behavior of units, by standardizing their weapon parameters. In return, the game performs a lot better and units respond more consistent based on their weapon statistics.

• (#3949) Reduce impact of props on FPS Aligns the rendering distance of props with the base game

• (#3943, #3951) Reduce impact of mesh entities on FPS Aligns the rendering of various mesh-based entities with their respective size. As an example, the adjacency node was rendered up to the same distance as that of shields.

• (#3967, #3965) reduce impact of projectiles on FPS Sanitizes the LODCutoff of projectiles that have a mesh. The average projectile is emitter based, but some use a mesh. These meshes were visible at extreme ranges, causing them to be rendered even though they were completely hidden behind the strategical overlay of projectiles (dots)

Other changes

• (#3885) Fix argumentations for the Hunter AI

• (#3879) Fix minor issue with lobby

• (#3881) Refactor effect files of the Lighting Tank As told to us by Rowey - we’d be lost without him.

• (#3895) Fix minor issues with the initialisation files

• (#3907, #3926) Improve the /nomovie command line switch

• (#3908) Introduce a /nomusic command line switch

• (#3904) Fix game options menu not being scrollable by mousewheel

• (#3913) Fix issues with the .gitignore of the repository

• (#3921) Add tooltip to patchnotes button in the lobby The mighty Rowey - at work again.

• (#3882) Fix bone names of the upgraded Hives

• (#3925) Fix the width, padding and layouts of various UI elements

• (#3912, #3724) Add in remaining base game blueprint and script files Greatly improves code maintainability of working on the game as a whole.

• (#3947) Fix UEF engineers not applying their water animation

• (#3948) Fix a rare issue where the speed adjustment of (slow) hover units caused an error

• (#3941) Fix categories missmatch for the Atlantis

• (#3969) Fix the Flayer (AA) missiles of the tech 2 UEF Cruiser The missiles were using a torpedo mesh, instead of the typical UEF AA Flayer mesh used by sams

Contributors

• LilJoe7k4: (#3845)
• speed2: (#3885)
• 4z0t: (#3879, #3883, #3835)
• Jip: (#3895, #3894, #3884, #3875, #3863, #3891, #3892, #3903, #3923, #3913, #3924, #3857, #3931, #3912, #3724, #3944, #3947, #3946, #3945, #3948, #3950, #3972)
• Ejsstiil: (#3896, #3889, #3899, #3907, #3908, #3909, #3904, #3906, #3901, #3926, #3925, #3937)
• Madmax: (#3863, #3951, #3943, #3961)
• SpikeyNoob: (#3905)
• Tagada: (#3876)
• Rowey: (#3921, #3881, #3882)
• Hdt80bro: (#3933)
• Eluvatar: (#3887, #3968)
• Uveso: (#3941)
• M0rph3us (#3969, #3967, #3965)
• KionX (6fefe78)

Translators

• 4z0t (Russian)
• M0rph3us (French)
• Unknow (French)
• Carchagassky (French)