Due to the engine upgrade in this release, all modders and servers must update their .pak files. See below fore more information.
As this release changes a lot of technical stuff you can switch back to v1.2.0 in the beta tab on Steam for testing purposes. (Onset -> Properties -> Betas -> v1.2.0)
Client changes
Unreal Engine upgrade to 4.25
Onset has been upgraded to use the latest Unreal Engine version 4.25. There are numerous improvements related to performance since 4.23.
One requirement of this is that .pak files must be re-packaged with the new modding tool for 4.25. Otherwise the game crashes when loading a old pak file.
Here's a guide for modders and server owners on how to update. If you need help with this please reach out to me.
1. Install Unreal Engine 4.25 from the Epic Games launcher.
2. Download and extract the new modding tool for 4.25 from here: https://dev.playonset.com/wiki/Modding
3. Copy the new Config + Plugins directory and OnsetModding.uproject to your old project. (I recommend doing a backup before.)
4. Launch the project and repackage the .pak file like always.
Load time improvements
Teleporting around the map has been problematic because of the game loading new level tiles from disk everytime. In this version the game loads parts of the level assets in the background an keeps them in memory. Therefore you will see an increased RAM usage. But it definitely pays off: The loading time has been reduced to ~1.5 seconds on HDDs and almost instant for some SSDs.
If you system has a quad core CPU and at least 4GB free of RAM the game will load even more assets into RAM.
The RAM usage increased from ~1.5GB to ~2.5GB because of this.
Landscape Performance
Thanks for a new rendering system the landscape now requires a lot less GPU performance.
On a test system the draw time improved by 2ms per frame.
View Distance
All levels now have an improved automatically generated proxy for ultra far view distances. Therefore the far depth of field effect has been disabled by default.
New sky and lighting
The sky has been completely replaced with a new one. This also comes with an improved lighting setup. It makes use of the "Sky Atmosphere Component" first introduced in Unreal Engine 4.24. This enables a much more realistic scene lighting than before.
The Lua funciton SetTime can be used as usual to set the game time.
Early morning:
Midday:
Evening:
Cloud Density
SetCloudDensity(density) controls the amount of clouds. A density of 0 hides the clouds on the first cloud layer.
A density of 4.0 will cover the entire sky with clouds. This also has an effect on the lighting on the ground.
Other sky functions:
SetSkySaturation(saturation), default: 1.05
GetSkySaturation()
SetCloudSpeed(speed), default 0.1
GetCloudSpeed()
SetCloudDensity(), default 1.15
GetCloudDensity()
SetSunRadius(radius)
GetSunRadius()
SetMoonRadius(radius)
GetMoonRadius()
The following functions have been removed in this release:
SetSunShine
SetSunAzimuth
SetStarsBrightness
SetMoonShine
SetFogDensity
SetSunLightIntensity
SetSkyLightIntensity
SetMoonLightIntensity
SetSkyRotationSpeed
SetWeather
Game size reduction
All game texture settings have been revised and are now shared among other assets.
Old game data size: 27.1GB
New game data size: 20.9GB
Material/Shader improvements
The games materials have been cleaned up. There's now a 40% less shader overhead.
Onset now also ships with an experimental support for the Vulkan render API thanks to Unreal Engine. You can launch the game with the "-vulkan" commandline parameter to try it out.
New interior
The white building next to the big shopping mall now has a walk-able interior. It is directly connect with the underground parking space.
Other changes
- ReplaceObjectModelMesh now works with non-existent model ids. So you can add new ones without replacing another one. You can still use the existing approach with UnrealLua.
- Add clothing slots Clothing6, Clothing7, Clothing8, Clothing9.
- VoIP volume can now be changed in the main menu.
- Slightly improve the network sync of unoccupied vehicles.
- Increased pak mounting limit to 128 pak files.
- Should fix rare crash occurring on startup for some users.
- Fix helicopter rotor sound collision sound not being 3D.
- Implement animation inertialization blending thanks to the engine upgrade. This change has a positive impact on performance.
- Hide characters for server password input fields.
- FVector, FRotator, FLinearColor, FColor and FHitResult now have a string metamethod, so you can easily print them.
- Fix blood effect being spawned at the wrong location sometimes.
- Fix interior reverbs in all interiors near the big warehouse in the desert.
- Performance improvements near the desert warehouse and underground vault interior.
- Players no longer block the camera while you are in a vehicle.
- Fix lorry vehicle mesh having invisible parts.
- Add "-logfunctioncalls" game parameter to log Lua function calls to the dev log. (requires -dev)
- Add new UnrealLua functions:
FRotator.NormalizeAxis(Angle)
FMath.RInterpTo(CurrentRotator, TargetRotator, DeltaTime, InterpSpeed)
FMath.VInterpTo(CurrentVector, TargetVector, DeltaTime, InterpSpeed)
FMath.FInterpTo(CurrentFloat, TargetFloat, DeltaTime, InterpSpeed)
FMath.ClampAngle(AngleDegrees, MinAngleDegrees, MaxAngleDegrees)
Server changes
- Fix vehicle light sync.
- Fix vehicle rotation being wrongly set by the new sync from the last update.
The WorldDoors.lua has been updated for the new interior and a small fix in the Weapons.lua was made.
Known issues in this release
- The game can crash randomly when changing video settings.
- The game startup time can be extremely slow on the first time.
- Ocean color has weird coloring at different times.
- The game's pak file has not been split into several pieces yet (to improve Steam updating times). I will take look at it for the next update.
YRPF
Also want to give a shout out to Yuki for his RP server framework. A list of features can be found here: https://github.com/OALM-Team/YRPF/wiki/Features
It also features support for Tebex: https://github.com/OALM-Team/YRPF/wiki/Cash-Shop-TEBEX
It's open source on GitHub:
https://github.com/OALM-Team/YRPF
For more great Onset scripts visit https://github.com/alexandregv/awesome-onset