Hello everyone!
It's been a while.
The first thing I want to say is that the game is NOT dead, even though there hasn't been an update in the last six months. I know exactly how that feels, I play Project Zomboid too, and I'm still waiting for B42 Stable.
There are a couple of reasons for the long silence. The main one is our first title, Hex of Steel.
It turns out that developing two very different games at the same time while being the sole programmer is... tricky.
I've spent most of my development time polishing Hex of Steel. In fact, I've released 30 updates over the past months, or roughly one update every six days.
That's a lot of work, and a lot of time. Unfortunately, that also meant that Beasts of Steel had to take a back seat for a while.
But this project is very dear to my heart, and I have absolutely no intention of abandoning it. The changelog below speaks for itself.
It's a massive one, so grab a cup of coffee or tea, sit back, and enjoy the read. :)
I'll see my beta testers very soon for a community playtest to put all these new changes through their paces!
See you soon for more.
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ADDITIONS
● Yak-9 to the USSR.
● Me 410 A-1 to Germany.
● Spitfire Mk. IIa to the UK.
● T17E1 Staghound Mk. I to the British.
● M4A3 (105) to the USA.
● Soviet Li-2 transport plane for paradrop scenarios.
● StuG III F (early) to Germany.
● StuIG 33B SPG to Germany.
● StuG IV to Germany.
● Flakpanzer IV Wirbelwind SPAAG to Germany.
● Tracks sag + dynamic sag on all tracked vehicles. Gives tracks a more 'alive' and less static feel.
● Assist logic (dealing damage to a player but not being the one to achieve the kill).
● Shell shock effect to crew members when hull is hit or perforated by big rounds.
● Camera distortion effect when shell shocked.
● Assists player stat.
● Assists game stat.
● Building things as an engineer will now reward merit points (with the exception of landmines).
● All crew members (except passengers) will now get an assist/reward when a kill is performed by any other member of the crew (rewards teamwork when playing multicrew).
● New simulation button: repeat last. QoL button to quickly iterate and compare weapons/distance without changing the trajectory of the projectile.
● New simulation button: repair vehicle. QoL button to reset the armour integrity of all armour pieces on the vehicle, you no longer need to respawn the vehicle to get it in a fresh state to continue iterating through simulation.
● 2 new skins for the La-5FN.
● 1 new skin for the La-7.
● 3 new skins for the Yak-7B.
● Fw-190 A8 loadout: dual MK108 (55rpg) in the outer wing instead of the regular MG 151.
● Conversion between metric/imperial systems in the Encyclopedia.
● Dedicated killfeed icon for crushing another player to death.
● Wing surface area stat for all planes.
● Turn rate (in deg/s) stat for all planes.
● Occlusion culling to the Encyclopedia scene.
● Missing localization entries.
CHANGES
● Rebalanced entirely the merit points system (cost and rewards).
● Penetration rule/damage logic to be more realistic and allow for smaller calibers to also penetrate armour and generate spalling.
● Spalling will now occur even when a projectile only goes through the armour without disintegrating upon hit.
● Reworked HEAT projectiles physics entirely.
● Logic for 'going through without disintegrating' for projectiles has changed and now uses actual physics.
● Vehicle modules now have significantly more HP to prevent them from being destroyed in one hit (it doubled from what it previously was).
● AI infantry no longer bypasses visibility rule when a player has been marked (should help with the feeling of AI shooting through bushes).
● When getting inside a transport vehicle, a passenger seat will be assigned to you in priority instead of whatever first seat is available. This will prevent being assigned a gunner seat when joining a transport plane even though you just wanted to jump from it (since the boost in exit speed is linked to seat type=passenger, this change matters).
● HE AA rounds vs planes will no longer deal 100% of their damage as long as you're in the damage radius, damage received/dealt is now randomized (otherwise planes would get one-shotted every time).
● Reworked HE rounds 'penetration' and detonation system. They will only detonate upon direct hit if the velocity loss is significant enough to 'trigger the fuse', so a 122mm HE round won't detonate when hitting a 5mm side skirt for example, it would go through and detonate on hull impact. Ricochet from HE rounds has also been greatly reduced and they will explode more often (ricochets would occur only under 10 degrees from hit normal angle).
● Reworked the Encyclopedia simulation system to be more modular and allow for detailed simulation events. All possible events are now independently recorded (Hit, Penetration, Ricochet, Spalling, Explosions).
● Projectiles will now properly enter/exit vehicles with proper physics/energy when a round goes in and still has enough energy to go out in an okay-ish shape.
● Hit sounds against vehicles in FPS no longer are muffled, you can clearly hear them as they hit your armour, improving situational awareness.
● Improved land vehicles physics (more pinned down to the ground, heavier feel, less 'flying'/'floating' when going uphill/or on ditches).
● Time to leave a vehicle while sitting in a passenger seat has been reduced by 50%.
● Reduced ricochet chance off trees for big HE rounds.
● Improved planes aerodynamics when engines are off (improved gliding flight physics).
● T-34 85 1944 model.
● StuG III G now has armour side plates.
● M4A3E2 Jumbo turned/renamed into M4A3(105)HVSS.
● Several vehicles have been renamed.
● Damage indicator on the UI will now scale with the amount of damage received, helping with situational awareness.
● Spalling will now apply a slight random modifier to damage when hitting internals, based on angle/distance from origin.
● Spalling system now has a 'budget' where a single spall event generates X amount of 'material' being sent in a cone at penetration point, and every hit along the line eats up that budget, preventing triple crew kills when all would be aligned near the spall origin, the first crew member will now eat most of the metal/shrapnel, while the others will have increased survivability.
● Armoured Assault gamemode now has a 'flag based' victory condition (instead of the old 'deathmatch' victory condition type). Engagements should be more dynamic now.
● MG 131 has been reclassified as autocannon.
● Increased FOV zoom when in first person in tanks when using the cupola.
● Changed the killfeed icon for 'falling to death' death reason.
● Rebaked all planes impostors.
● Reworked the whole killfeed network system from scratch to be more efficient and reliable.
● Complete rewrite of the weapons reload system (much cleaner to work with).
● Complete rewrite of the weapons UI system (lots of optimizations made).
● Plane camera zoom/FOV change is now better looking/feeling.
● Rewrote AI tank target priority pick. Will pick targets in a better way.
● Greatly improved performances of AI tanks scanning for enemies.
● Improved AI strafing routine to make it more safe and prevent crashes more often.
● Cleaned up several achievements (added new ones and removed impractical ones).
● When exiting a vehicle, the game will now try to place the crewman to an available spot around the vehicle instead of forcing you out on top of the vehicle.
● Armoured assault gamemode will now automatically exclude vehicles have MGs only as weapons (Panzer I for example, or early T26)
● Wheeled vehicles can now steer their wheels when not moving forward/backward.
● Many british tanks should have had the 'pivot turn' enabled but did not.
● Updated multiplayer API.
FIXES
● Most likely fixed an instance of black screen on online game join.
● Proximity voice chat volume was too low.
● Attempt to fix infantry staying upright when dead in some rare cases.
● Several guns had wrong reload time.
● Vegetation flickering often when craters were being spawned on the map (not everyone was affected though).
● When the loader crew member was dead, you could still fire even though the weapon was reloading (slower than regular rate due to crew missing).
● When the game ended, if you were using the FreeCam, all of the scoreboard entries would be 'red' instead of 'blue/red' based on the team.
● Drag was not taken into account for projectiles on trajectory calculation to display impact position on UI.
● Infantry small arms getting stuck mid lerp when activating/deactivating it on other players (rare occurrence, but should be fixed now).
● Small issue with voice proximity speaker.
● Sd. Kfz. 234-4 Pakwagen had wrong weapon (7.5 cm KwK 40 L46, which does not exist IRL) instead of the regular 7.5 cm Pak 40.
● Added support for many more file managers for Linux installs to have it automatically open the log file.
● You could enter destroyed/dead vehicles (as infantry) and end up locked inside.
● AI not finding path to move towards tanks that were idling for some time (spamming the console in the process).
● Panzer III J projectile spawn position was wrong (outside of barrel).
● Tracks guiding teeth were not 'scrolling' with the track, they were immobile.
● Projectile simulation trajectory visualization hit points could have some discrepancy (purely visually) in the Encyclopedia.
● Fixed Panzer III M exhaust model.
● Camera shake minor fixes.
● Panzer III M external MG had no casings spawned when shooting.
● Stummel Commander FPS view and Gunner view minor issue.
● Spalling happening after penetration of tracks/wheels on vehicles.
● Damage to vehicle displayed as 0 any time a module was damaged in the process (during penetration).
● Projectiles will no longer hit the same extra armour piece (external) twice even when the area overlapped with regular hull armour.
● D-5T gun had no penetration ballistic table for HE rounds.
● Many vehicles tracks.
● Many fixes to many vehicles armour layouts.
● Many fixes to many vehicles colliders.
● Many various misc fixes to vehicles stats.
● AN-M2 had wrong ballistics data.
● 76 mm F-34 APHEBC ballistics were wrong.
● P-38 J Lightning had the wrong main gun (12.7mm instead of 20mm).
● Flak HE explosions mid-air were not consistent and often yielded wrong results and resulted in very small injury radius, leading to often missing planes entirely.
● Damage indicator (direction) was not consistent and sometimes lied to you about where the damage came from.
● When dying in first person in a vehicle, whatever visibility object you had (cupola, episcopes...) would disappear and tank models would reappear, looking weird.
● Spawning a new vehicle while the previous view mode was FPS would enable/disable visibility meshes on models before the camera arrived at its target position, so you'd see half a tank for a few seconds (until the camera stops its movement).
● Tanks kept turning left or right for several seconds after you pressed the 'backward' key after you completed a turn.
● Explosion injury/death radii were only shown as halved in the Encyclopedia/Simulator.
● Pe-2B was missing a rear ventral gunner.
● No proper shadows casting from vehicles in the Encyclopedia when Armour Visualization was enabled.
● Serious issue with multi-frame penetration of vehicles by projectiles (happening sometimes, not always).
● Spalling would sometimes fail to damage internals even though they were located in the spall cone.
● Dying in first person in a vehicle would change the camera mode to be third person.
● Entering a vehicle from infantry mode while camera state for the vehicle was first person would temporarily switch third person camera lerp then hard switch to FPS. Now there's a nice fade to black to FPS position.
● Available weapons on UI in vehicles when doing multicrew could be flaky sometimes if some of the weapons were tagged as 'can be combined on UI' and two different crew members wanted to access its own.
● Wrong gears colliders on a few planes.
● Wrong flight speed for pretty much all airplanes.
● Half-tracks had no dedicated wheels (steering) module.
● Recoil when shooting on moving tanks was too strong and made them slow down noticeably.
● Killfeed messages spawned twice when a plane would crash in the ground on a proxy client.
● Loadouts amount mismatch with US P-51D.
● lefh18 had wrong AP round/ballistics.
● Death UI menu/overlay would appear in multicrew if you were in someone else's vehicle and one of the owner's alias died.
● Jagdtiger had ammo loadout issue for its main gun (no ballistic data for APC round).
● M-30 122 mm had no explosive filler for its HE round.
● You could repair modules on destroyed vehicles.
● Engine module would still show smoke GFX after being repaired.
● Bot could be freed and reused again even though it was still in use after getting out of a tank and re-entering it after finishing its repair.
● When the gun in your vehicle was destroyed, the UI would not reflect it and you could still select/unselect the weapon and had no visual feedback that it was outside of the modules list.
● You could still leave the vehicle and perform other actions when you died in a vehicle in multicrew.
● Some SFXs were not under the influence of the game's audio master and were being heard even though the game's master sound volume was zero.
● Valentine Mk. IX had the wrong gun data (L43 instead of L50).
● When doing multicrew you could honk even if the vehicle did not belong to you (not being the driver).
● An instance of double tank loadout UI element in some specific cases.
● One instance of camera being placed under the map in rare cases when using first person mode in tanks and switching seat/peeking.
● Double vehicle spawn in Encyclopedia scene.
● Many other misc fixes that are not listed here.