The May Intermediary Update

Hello, friends!

We've been hard at work since the last update - and too silent. We've been developing a lot of new tech and features and aiming towards Full Release. Quality and Polish of the experience are paramount for us, so it takes longer than we've hoped to get to that version 1.0 release.

We're not there yet! We're not ready to put most of the stuff we've been working on out there, but we wanted to release some improvements and fixes - and of course some new content for you fine folks.

So here's what's new today:

(There's also lots of under the hood or <redacted> stuff - take our word for it.)

New content: 5 New Maps can be found in the Tiny Troubles 2, Deck of Cards and Extreme Rescues 2 Mission Packs. And many improvements to the Mission Generator too!

To help with Situation Awareness and keeping your squad under control, a handy panel pops down from the upper left corner of the HUD. It shows the current status of each trooper and what gear or weapons they are currently using. And you can use the panel to quickly center the camera on a trooper - just left click on their portrait.

Your troops can now operate the Dushkas and engage the enemy. They're quite deadly, but mind the limited traverse speed and arcs. And no, you can't climb on vehicles and man those guns - but neither can the enemy.

New weapons! The Nowheraki boys got their hands on the intriguing SVU-A, a marksman rifle in bullpup format: handy for urban warfare and capable of (very wild) automatic fire. They also got handed down pump shotguns from Coalition forces. Hope they can source the ammo, though!

You can now set up your troops to sync their speed (to the slowest of the group). Ctrl-Click assigns a sync order to a particular troop or waypoint, and he syncs with those that are setup the same. You can use this to keep a formation or clear an area in sync with other troops. This way no one goes ahead of his buddy - even if they are on opposite walls of a large room. More sync options and experiments might come in the future - but let us know how useful you find this.

As for Steam Workshop improvements, we've added tags to missions, which should make the Workshop easier to navigate. However, you'll need to update your map (via the Editor) since the tags are added automatically by the editor when you publish a map. Until you do that, tags will have limited usability since they will only filter a very small part of existing maps.

We've also gathered some incredible new workshop maps in a fresh collection. Check it out, one of them has an actual pyramid in it:
(click the link, embedded seems to be bugged)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2973956618
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2973956618

Last, but not least, we noticed you like Mods and keep producing them, downloading them, using them. We're still not ready to open the Workshop for all mods, but we've added an in-game mod management page: instead of mods being auto-enabled, you now need to manually enable them in the menu.

So, this is it for today. But what comes next? More gear, weapons and missions of course. Doctrines for sure. But further than that, we are working on two campaign-like Game Modes. One of those is the Tour of Duty mode, which has you take a single squad through one week of daily missions. Managing the squad to survive the Tour is not easy, and combining this with the (optional) Iron Man makes for a very high challenge.

But that's all we'll reveal for now. Full changelist of today's update below, and you can start playing. And full speed ahead till the next update, for us! When will it come? Like always, quality comes first.

Your Devs @ KHG

Changelist for v0.35:
- 5 new maps
- added trooper list in UI
- your troops can now use mounted guns
- Nowheraki SWAT can now equip the M500 pump shotgun and the SVD-U bullpup marksman rifle.
- mission generator: many upgrades including faster generation and more variation. Still no night-mode, sry
- coop: can now play single while waiting for someone to join
- experimental speed sync (click + Ctrl on a trooper/path to enable). All nearby troops with 'speed sync' enabled will move at the same speed
- enemy AI improvements
- taking a big damage hit has a chance of making humans flinch (mini stun that resets weapon aim)
- improvements for existing maps
- savegames are now backed up and have a lower probability of getting corrupted
- tweaked AI reaction to grenades (they react slightly before the first impact)
- reduced duration of smoke generated by frags
- in-game UI improvements
- previous squad is used when going into the next random map, instead of the default squad
- many tweaks and improvements to in-game UI and actions
- optimized replay skip/fast-forward speed
- warcrime detection
- fixed enemies set to stand (investigate chance 0, ambush 0, range 0) going after enemies they've lost LOS to
- added SA24 and small mortars as sabotageable items
- many other tweaks, fixes and improvements
- fixed several issues related to how waypoints show up on items (can no longer place slaps on cleared windows, can no longer clear windows with metal bars in front of the glass etc etc)
- fixed enemies throwing frags & using launchers around friendlies
- fixed paths not being saved when no deploy slots were present
- fixed paths not being shown for auto-deployed folks when planning
- fixed sometimes incorrect detection while crouching in cover
- fixed couple of bugs with jumping over obstacles
- fixed some bugs related to AMD's latest drivers
- fixed DOT areas working through walls
- fixed number of stars going negative
- fixed showing danger zones in replays
- fixed troops getting stuck when arresting a hostage and hostage died
- fixed hostages being saved even though their saver died in the process
- fixed ammo AP level not interpolating correctly over distance
- modding: now mods are shown in a game menu page. They need to be manually enabled.
- modding: full update of the humans rigs to include all available dummies
- workshop: maps will now be auto-tagged accordingly, allowing for easier Workshop navigation
- workshop: much improved loading time and quicker sorting when subscribed to a large number of maps
- workshop: fixed several bugs related to Workshop Missions
- workshop: fixed not being able to update published maps when you had over 50 of them
- workshop: auto-tags for maps
- editor: new interactable entities (see help_entities.txt for details)
- editor: added option for cropping the map canvas
- editor: added option for hiding Target lines
- editor: moved the Open Editor button from main menu to Your Creations
- editor: added layers. Entities can now be assigned to layers (View->Show Layers Bar), with one layer being randomly picked at map start. They can be used to more easily randomize map elements like lighting, fog and wind. Bear in mind that (like alternate spawns) adding obstacles to Layers will break any pre-made plans.
- editor: new prefabs and items
- editor: high-res png screenshots are saved with transparency
- editor: increased center-selection cross size