Gang Beasts Aquarium Update (build 1.13)

Some of you may already know this but the Aquarium Update (build 1.13) has now been released! This update has a new Aquarium stage, an updated Wheel stage that works online, a series of super hero/villain costume sets, and numerous fixes for stages, online, and gameplay issues.

General:

• Updated the game engine to Unity 2020 (from Unity 2017). This was a significant upgrade and although we've fixed a massive amount, there may be a few bugs we haven't caught yet with the transition.
• Unity 2019 dropped support for 32-bit Linux operating systems, as such Gang Beasts can now only support 64-bit Linux operating systems.
• Fixed an issue preventing bloom from working.
• Updated the project to be able to build and test on consoles again.
• Updated graphics settings to fix a few issues with the transition from 2017 to 2020.
• Mac builds now use Metal as its primary graphics API, as such there should be some performance gains for Mac users.
• Fixed some issues involving camera tracking.
• Updated splash and loading screens. This is a temporary measure until we can overhaul the entire UI of the game.
• Completely rebuilt the way we fracture glass. This new system should both look and perform significantly better on all systems.
• Completely rebuilt the way we do buoyancy. This new system should perform significantly better on all systems and allows us to do multiple types of liquid (such as meat paste).

Costumes:

• Bear and Rhino kigurumi no longer make Elevators explode.
• The "Yogscast Charity Drive 2015 DLC" has been added to the game as a default option, this was done as we found far too many people trying to exploit our users on grey markets by trying to charge exorbitant amounts of money for legacy codes. Since the DLC has achieved its purpose of raising money for charity and it has been several years since its release we figured this was the best way to protect our players.
• Added 8 "Supers" costumes to the game for a total of 24 new parts.

Stages (General):

• Rebaked the lighting on all stages to fix legacy lighting issues so shadows should no longer be dark and stages should be more visually appealing now.
• Adjusted any emissive materials across all stages now that bloom works again to look better.
• Updated the visuals of water on Buoy, Containers, and Wheel but there's still more improvements to be made.
• Fixed the objects that didn't interpolate online.

Stages (Aquarium):

• Added a new stage called Aquarium, please don't feed the fish.

Stages (Billboard):

• Adjusted the physics properties of the billboard panels to be more realistic.
• Adjusted the catwalk of the billboard to be flatter and added assistive colliders to help players stay on for longer.

Stages (Blimp):

• Adjusted the physics properties of the balloon section of the blimp to have more grip and assist players' movement over the surface.
• Adjusted the ribbing on the balloon section of the blimp to no longer collide with the players' ball collider, which should help with navigating the blimp.
• Adjusted the blimp to be more affected by player movement.
• Added a wind effect to the blimp to help visualize the movement.

Stages (Buoy):

• Added more ice to the stage.
• Fixed a bug preventing the ice from breaking.
• Broken ice will now melt over time.
• The buoy is now significantly less stable.

Stages (Chutes):

• Adjusted the lights to remove light artifacts from falling sausages.
• Adjusted sausage distribution.
• Adjusted the chute doors to be able to hold more weight and slower to move, this should, hopefully, incentivise players to fight on them more due to the reduced danger.

Stages (Elevators):

• Replaced the glass to use the new fracture system.
• Elevators now escalate consistently.
• Applied a temporary fix for a significant stability issue on Elevators, this fix currently does cause some visual peculiarities when played online but we felt it shouldn't hold back the update.

Stages (Gondola):

• Fixed the grating using the wrong shader, it should look more crisp now.

Stages (Grind):

• Adjusted the lights to improve baked quality.
• Added buoyancy to the meat paste at the front of the stage.

Stages (Incinerator):

• Replaced the glass to use the new fracture system.
• Updated the fire particle system.
• Adjusted the lights to make the stage brighter and fix some lighting artifacts.
• Fixed an issue with boxes and barrels passing through the front wall.

Stages (Lighthouse):

• Replaced the glass to use the new fracture system.
• Updated the background water shader, which is a temporary solution until we upgrade the project to Unity, Universal Render Pipeline (URP).
• Updated the glass materials to prevent a weird lighting issue.
• Adjusted the joints on the Lighthouse to be stronger, so they should no longer break at the slightest touch.

Stages (Ring):

• Adjusted lights and materials to brighten the stage slightly.
• Adjusted the rope height to make it slightly easier to eliminate players.

Stages (Roof):

• Adjusted the joints on the Roof stage to be stronger, so they should no longer break at the slightest touch.
• Lowered the lip of the Roof slightly to make the stage slightly riskier when fighting on the edge.
• Added assistive geometry to help characters navigate.

Stages (Wheel):

• The stage has been completely rebuilt to play better and work online.
• The lights on Wheel now sync to the music.
• Wheel now has better escalations.
• Added a dwell timer to the insides of the wheels burger gondola that will make them fall if players stay there too long.

Stages (Subway):

• Fixed an issue that made the front train push players away instead of pulling players towards it.
• Hopefully fixed the issue that was making some sounds on subway play too loud.

Stages (Trucks):

• Slight adjustments to the materials and textures;
• Added a slight tilt to the trucks when they move to make their movement more apparent;
• Fixed an issue where the trucks would occasionally mount the curb and collide with oncoming signs;
• Reduced an issue where signs could pass through players instead of colliding with them, this is not perfect though and we will continue to try and fix it.

Stages (Towers):

• Added a pink smoke effect rising from the cooling towers.

Stages (Vents):

• Fixed an issue with Vents
• Fixed a significant stability issue on Vents that appeared in the update from 2017 that caused the bridges to instantly collapse.
• Fixed a significant stability issue on Vents that appeared in the update from 2017 where as soon as the main fan activated the stage would explode and characters would find themselves embedded in the walls or ceiling.

Physics:

• Updated some physics settings to take advantage of some of Unity 2020's improvements. This will be an ongoing process to fully take advantage of all the changes. These changes should provide some small performance and stability improvements.
• All physics objects in the game should now interpolate, this should reduce an appearance of lag locally and online.

Character Movement & Combat:

• Fixed a bug that was causing arms to no longer reach when holding grab.
• Adjusted character drag to 1.6 (from 2).
• Increased punch velocity for close targets.
• Adjusted how grab and punch's resolve target vectors for the physics animation, this should significantly improve how often they reach the intended target.
• Fixed a bug that would sometimes make a character float when grabbing something above them with both hands after their stamina drained fully.
• Fixed a bug with kicking that would generate incorrect target vectors for the physics animation.
• Adjusted force and attraction distances when grabbing to help reaching close targets and reduce weird behaviours under certain situations when targets are just out of range
• Added slightly more force to the arms in the stage just before punch and grabs to help reach a better position. This should make punches and grab's more consistent.
• Adjusted targeting to be slightly more weighted to the players input direction.
• Increased the strength of throws slightly
• Slightly increased grip break threshold.
• Added a slight alignment force to the body when climbing, the character should be more likely to face input direction while climbing now.
• Slightly increased self lift strength on characters when climbing. This should make it easier to climb.
• Stamina now always drains when grabbing, even if feet are touching the floor. Most players will not notice any change with this. This is to try and prevent people from getting into exploitable positions where they can hang on forever. Additionally this should help reduce stalemates where someone can hang on to another player indefinitely.
• Fixed a long standing issue with the character that made it difficult to go up slopes greater than 30 degrees. Players should find it significantly easier to go up slopes and stairs now.
• Added the ability to swim for a short period to the character they will gradually sink over time after this.
• Added a temporary diminishing damage reduction when a player revives from a knockout (100% damage reduction on revival reducing to 0% over 10 seconds) to prevent knockout camping.
• Fixed an issue that would prevent players from controlling their movement when lifting themselves, additionally this should now perform better then it did prior to the bug.
• Adjusted arm direction when cheering to be relative to the character's up instead of world up.
• Increased reaction forces of all moves, they should feel more satisfying now.
• Adjusted damage of all moves to better balance them.
• Adjusted damage received when in certain situations or attempting certain attacks to help balance combat.
• Adjusted character collision to hopefully improve stability during combat.
• Added code to dynamically adjust characters collision mode based on context to help reduce likelihood of limbs getting embedded in objects, this helps reduce the frequency of a bug that appeared in the transition to Unity 2020 but more work is needed to fix it completely.
• Fixed a bug that was making the characters hips get stuck in certain geometry since the transition.

Audio:

• Added a new way we manage audio to improve the consistency of sounds across the game.
• Changed all audio to use the new systems and did a pass on every sound in the game to be better balanced and more pleasing to the ear.
• Swapped a menu sound to be less intrusive.
• Added engine noises to Train
• Added engine noises to Trucks
• Added better audio cues to indicate oncoming road signs on Trucks
• Added an audio cue to indicate an oncoming train on Subway

Online:

• Fixed a bug that would mean some scripts would not reset correctly on the second round in an online match.
• Fixed a few bugs with PhysicAudioEmitter not emitting online
• Fixed a long standing bug with knockouts not working as intended online. Locally it would increment by 1 second each time your KO'd to a potential maximum of 20. Online this would always be set to 4. This should significantly improve the feel of combat online.
• Fixed an issue where some physics objects were moved using an incorrect method. This should help improve some stability issues when characters are pushed into strange positions or somehow move faster than usual (such as getting hit by a moving vehicle).
• Fixed a long standing issue preventing boxes on Incinerator from rendering online.
• Fixed a long standing issue preventing the vehicles on Trucks from moving correctly online.
• Several optimisations and fixes to the character system to improve online performance.
• Several optimisations and changes to the way we sync objects online. This should improve online performance and stability.
• Fixed an issue with the join screen that meant player names wouldn't show up.
• Fixed an issue on Elevators that made the hatches start in the wrong position on level load.
• Fixed an issue that prevented Containers mechanics that move the containers from triggering correctly online.