I've got a LOT of new stuff in this next patch with still more to come. Progress has been good lately. Here's a preview of what to expect (but not when to expect it, of course):
Upcoming Version 5.04 Suff:
New Pawns:
DemonBehemoth: Fires seeking demon skulls.
DoomBrute: Has a powerful burst-fire machine gun.
EXUPredator: From RTNP. Fully functional EXU-based Predator.
EXUSpinner: From RTNP. Fully functional EXU-based Spinner.
PlasmaBrute: Rapidfire bursts of plasma with the occasional medium plasma ball two-shot.
ShrapnelSpider: Spinner that blasts you with flak chunks.
TachyonCharger: Don't let this thing get close. You'll regret it.
Campaign Changes:
- Hellcastle (Menu Map)
- Added some fine art all over the map. Very fine art.
- Did some more minor visual tweaks to the skyboxes.
- Fixed a few technical issues and discrepancies, general polishing/fixing semi-stupid stuff.
- Infernal Falls (Map 2)
- Improved AI pathing and expanded enemy movement abilities.
- Fixed geometry error inside cave by the steel boxes. The invisible wall is gone, improving movement.
- Added indicator to the ending door showing whether it's locked or unlocked (unlocked once miniboss is destroyed and indicator disappears).
- Improved environment art.
- Gauntlet of Pain (Map 6)
- Rebalanced gameplay a bit in the last two combat arenas to include additional health and armor drops via pawns.
- Major improvements to geometry stability in the entire level.
- Doom Arena (Map 12)
- Massive visual and gameplay overhaul complete. This one's like a brand new map, vastly superior to the older version.
- Blackness (Map 14)
- Significant improvements and polishing in certain areas.
- Fixed a few geometry / collision bugs.
- Highlands (Map 15)
- Fixed music not restarting when loading a save.
- Added inventory drops to enemy respawner systems. Enemies that spawn nearby now have a small chance of giving you some kind of item.
- Improved visual touches here and there. Oh also, I literally saved like THREE FUCKING HOURS OF WORK by writing a brushbuilder that did everything in ONE CLICK! OH HELL YEAH FUCK, JESUS CHRIST, BRUSHBUILDERS. THEY ARE FUCKING CRAZY DARK MAGIC SHIT AND I LOVE THEM
- Other Maps (3, 4, 8, 11)
- Oh my god, again, and I mean AGAIN, misc. technical fixes and tweaks.
Other changes:
- Fusion balls, firebombs, demonic / fire meteors, and sky fire projectiles now have burn proxies applied (like RFPC plasma projectiles), so near-misses will still scorch you a bit.
- Tachyon Driver primary fire can now be disengaged without firing by hitting alt fire while holding a charge. Alt fire Tachyon Storms can now also affect bots and players (if they are not on your team). Also improved the visuals a bit for primary fire (plus better netcode).
- Fixed Piddledoper MP beams not using the right effects when Pentapowered.
- Improvements to GenericSpawner. Handy for level designers.
- Added the Biopod decoration. It can be configured to open up and spawn any sort of horrible monstrosity after taking enough damage.
- Major optimizations for effect lighting which should help prevent crashes and slow performance whenever lots of performance-intensive visual effects are spawned at once.
- Added EXUExplosiveBarrel and subclasses. These are found in several maps and are a lot more interesting than your standard FPS hazardous barrels.
- Added Joltstone environmental hazards to some maps. Joltstones react violently when shot with the Piddledoper primary (or Shock-type projectiles), but not the beams. They are useful as stationary damage-enhancing hazards, and they can chain-react or set themselves off if their sparks make contact with other nearby joltstones.
- EXU flak chunks now have a ballistic drop trajectory after a second or two of flight time. This means that they will fly out straight, but then fall to the ground once they have been in the air for a little bit, limiting their max effective range.
- The Extractor can now manually fire its gore blast if you have at least 15% of the ammo tanks filled! It takes a bit longer to completely fill the tanks now, but you can fire the blast much quicker than before, just with fewer chunks. At 100% capacity, it launches 48 gore pieces. So while you can fire sooner for a quick damage boost / ranged attack, suck up to maximum for the motherlode. Also fixed Extractor bug where the primary fire DamageType was using the gore blast mode's DamageType instead of the correct one.
- Included a \d3d10drv\ folder for your ..UT\System\ directory if you use D3D10. I don't use it, so I didn't realize it was required. Whoops! It's part of the full install package now.
- Fixed Archdemon fire so that the effects scale with the size of the pawn, though the emitters currently do not.
- Robotic enemies now have a small chance of playing a loud explosion sound and blasting out chunks of metal when they take damage. It's random, but rare. Looks cool!
- Added EXU2MiscTex.utx to the texture packages list. So far this just has Hellcastle art in it, but may have more stupid shit in the future!
- Fixed Tachyon Driver alt fire lightning storm buggeration and fuckery online.
- Fixed EXUGrenade subclasses online. The parent was set to bNetTempoary=True, which is VERY BAD for unpredictable actors online. Set it to false, so this should fix lots of grenade types. Also fixed seriously bugged out Hyper Grenades.
- Level designers: Fixed RandoPanels selecting a texture from the full list of Glows textures rather than from however many textures are actually specified. Now, if you only list 5 or so, it will select from those 5 instead of from the full list (which would mostly be None).
- Fixed Extractor being able to damage Watchers and Sentinels. Full Ammo bucket no longer gives ammo to the Extractor, either.
- Dark Pupae improved and redesigned. They now behave a bit more like Demon Pupae, but are not Demon-type enemies. Instead, they shift between being corporeal and incorporeal. They only become corporeal while attacking, and are otherwise invulnerable. Have fun with those little fuckers!
- Blast Bapes and Insane Boots further visually differentiated from EXU Jump Boots (first now has orange glows, second has red).
- Default charge for EXU Jump Boots doubled from 15 to 30.
- Chaos Barrel ammo capacity and pickup ammo amount doubled from 2 to 4.
