May 10th Beta Changelog

[Yoshiro]

Gameplay - General

• First pass client side hit detection system. Client side hit detection works for all standard small arms bullet firing weapons and for melee. Client side hit detection can be turned on/off by server admins through the webadmin tool.
  
• New control options added for Crouch (Hold), Prone (Hold), Iron sights (Hold), and exclusive Focus / Breathing.
• Added a new system which scales down the damage of bullets as they lose velocity, and as they penetrate objects (based on the density of the type of object they penetrate). In particular SMGs and pistols will be less effective at longer ranges while rifles and MGs will still be effective at long range. Additionally, players will take reduced damage from bullets that penetrate objects before hitting the player.
• The distance the player can fall before being damaged/killed has been increased. Falling damage now hurts the players legs and in Realism & Classic mode makes the player walk slowly for a short time.
• Added suppression for melee
• The F1 grenade damage has been increased to match it's axis counterpart
• Smoke from smoke grenades now disappears between rounds
• The map boundary effect has been brightened
• Overtime timelimit has been increased to 3 minutes. Stalling an objective capture no longer ends overtime (the objective must be completely captured or lost)
• Improvements to prone physics in tight spaces (e.g. trenches)

Gameplay - Vehicle Functionality & AI

• Completely new AI configurability system with robust configurability including webadmin options. The system includes all new tank AI functionality with "player ordered AI gunnery only" as the default setup. With this new system, Tank AI will do nothing if the human player is in a tank, unless the human player orders the AI to do something. For example, if the human player orders the AI to attack an enemy, the AI will use the hull MG and the main cannon to attack the enemy for a short time. Then after a short time the AI will stop firing. In addition to this new default functionality the server admin can also run in several different configurations including turning off all vehicle AI gunnery, selecting full autonomous AI gunner, selecting player ordered gunnery only (the default), or individually turn off/on AI gunner for the hull mg and tank cannon. We highly recommend all admins try out the new player ordered AI gunnery system as it is a vast improvement over the original system.
• Fixed bugs that were causing the vehicle AI to be 100% accurate with their aimed shots when a human player was in the tank. This was the root of most of the problems with tank AI being way too hardcore and good.
• Completely revised AI gunnery model. This system has been tuned to be very forgiving and to not quite play as well as a human player would. With that said it will also be useful enough for players to want to use the system, but without completely destroying human players unrealistically like it was before. This system includes functionality that makes the AI less accurate based on many factors such as distance from the tank, movement state of the enemy (walking, sprinting, etc), as well as making the tank AI much less accurate if the tank is moving. Some elements of this system were already in the codebase, but not functioning due to a bug.
• Added some tank AI configuration elements based off of Ducky's Tank AI mutator
• You can now rotate the turret of the Panzer IV from the commander cuppola position by looking in a direction and pressing the fire button (you could already do it from the interior gunner position of the Panzer IV and the gunner/commander position of the T34)

Gameplay - Action Mode

• The crosshair size now scales with the base accuracy of the weapon. More accurate weapons have tighter crosshairs, less accurate weapons have looser crosshairs.
• The crosshair now expands with the recoil of the gun to represent the shooting being less accurate for longer bursts.
• Increased weapon spread when not aiming down sights.
• Set up weapons to fire at the crosshair location for Action mode (including fixed MGs) when not using sights.
• Removed "instant death" zones in Action mode. Damage to those zones is now just scaled up rather than instantly killing theplayer. Those zones are head, neck, heart, and acorns.
• Added a system to scale the damage on a per weapon basis. Weapon damage is now more balanced for Action mode. In particular, rifles are much more effective, and the balance between weapons is much better.
• Added a new system to scale the weapon spread of weapons when not aiming down sights. It is now considerably harder to hit players when hip shooting in Action mode, which puts more of an emphasis on using sights while still allow hip shooting to be a viable tactic.
• Added a system to tweak weapon recoil for Action mode. Adjusted the recoil of the PPSH and AVT40 to be more controllable for action mode.

Gameplay - Fixes

• In Countdown, the commander is no longer able to waste a reinforcement wave if nobody is dead
• Fixed an instance of getting stuck in suppression
• Fixed a bug preventing players from deploying MGs in some areas
• Fixed tank physics from 'popping' around online at close range - Still working on longer range
• Fixed disappearing players when using or viewing someone on a tripod MGs
• Fixed a rare situation where Countdown sudden death would not end
• Fixed a bug where you could get suppressed multiple times from the same penetrating shot
• Fixed a bug with melee that was causing it to not hit the body part you were aiming at
• Fixed a bug where damage scaling was breaking being able to damage tank crew members
• Fixed a bug where weapon rotation could get messed up when blind firing from cover in action mode
• Fixed a bug where the AI would take over control of the tank's turret/hull MG even if you had ordered it not to fire.
• Fixed a bug where the tank cannon would point off in random directions after the AI fired it round from it or moved it.
• Fixed a bug where the AI would just fire at anything they saw when ordered to suppress infantry rather than actually firing at the infantry the commander ordered them to fire at.
• Spectator/DemoRec no longer get stuck on the round end menu
• Servers no longer crash when misspelling a map name using servertravel

UI

• On the loading screen the game mode setting is now always correct
• Fixed incorrect server details icons in the server browser
• Added popup dialog boxes to the server browser the first time you connect to action or realism servers
• The territory spawn menu no longer displays if your team is out of reinforcements
• Fixed the kill message icon for the allied AT grenade
• Tweaks to the squad member list in tactical view
• Added notification message for team kills that tell both players involved
• Added notification message for MG barrel overheating
• In Realism Mode the minimap is now displayed in tactical view
• Refinements to role/kick voting menus
• Added a tip dialog box to the weapon select menu the first time a weapon upgrade is available
• Corrected battlefield commission text (Always said Axis team)
• Adjustments to some HUD font, size, and positioning.
• Players lists are now once again available in the server browser

Graphics & Performance

• Added a DOF graphics setting to the video options menu
• Fixed a texture size constraint that was causing some 32bit machines to crash

Audio

• Added new audio for the native voices option
• Refined and improved vehicle MG sounds
• Panzer IV now uses a looped MG shooting sound
• Tank AI Crew members will now respond verbally to the tank commander’s orders

WebAdmin

• Mutators now show up in the change map screen
• Added more flexibility to a number server settings including: team death icons, allow killcam, kill message mode/delay, friendly player name mode.
• Cleaned up some unused webadmin settings
• Fixed killcam settings not working properly in webadmin

Known Issues

• There is currently a known crash when a server changes maps
• Currently the map voting screen will not list maps, but the functionality still works (names are just invisible)
• Server Browser may display incorrect information
• Count Down ready up menus have some fake player placeholder names
• Rare case of muzzle flash not showing
• Weapon focus may get "funky" - We are trying to find a good reproduction.

[Neuromante]

Originally Posted by Yoshiro

Gameplay - General

• First pass client side hit detection system. Client side hit detection works for all standard small arms bullet firing weapons and for melee. Client side hit detection can be turned off/off by server admins through the webadmin tool.

Amazing. Thanks.

[Jodl]

Thousands of thumbs up.

[CaptRanger]

All sounds awesome! Thanks~

[Alphons Alphahane]

Originally Posted by Yoshiro

Gameplay - GeneralAudio

• Added new audio for the native voices option

Does this mean more voices and variety in the things that the soldiers say?
Very nice to see client side hit detection.

[Joseph-Porta]

Hope servers come up again ^.^

[=GG= Mr Moe]

Hehehehe - acorns

[Zetsumei]

Nice to see that it is now possible to unbind some of the buttons and have hold functionality instead of toggle. (please allow the scrollwheel to be unbound as well I dont want my scroll wheel to change weapon :P).

Will it become easy to filter out servers with and without lag compensation? As I cannot find an indication at the moment

and "Added a DOF graphics setting to the video options menu" hell yeah!

Btw any chance of seeing the very common (for me at least) chat bug fixed. Where if you hold say W and then press T to chat and type something and then when done you are still walking in the direction you were pressing before you typed even though you do not press the button.

[fiftyone]

Smells like release candidate material.
Is the Snowy Map going to be released when all this stuff goes live ?
I hope so, the troops are in need of some fresh meat to chew on.

I'm not even sure that I've played HoS with this client side hit detection mutator and to be quite honest I could always get a pretty decent game with a 150/170 ping.
It will be interesting to see if it makes a difference when I play on a 60/70 €uropean server.

Good work guys and Thanks for the Tanks.

[=GG= Mr Moe]

Originally Posted by fiftyone

Smells like release candidate material.
Is the Snowy Map going to be released when all this stuff goes live ?
I hope so, the troops are in need of some fresh meat to chew on.

I'm not even sure that I've played HoS with this client side hit detection mutator and to be quite honest I could always get a pretty decent game with a 150/170 ping.
It will be interesting to see if it makes a difference when I play on a 60/70 €uropean server.

Good work guys and Thanks for the Tanks.

MamayevKurgan? I hope so. In my opinion, it is one of the very best infantry maps TWI has released, and that includes those of ROOST.

[Joseph-Porta]

Originally Posted by =GG= Mr Moe

MamayevKurgan? I hope so. In my opinion, it is one of the very best infantry maps TWI has released, and that includes those of ROOST.

Stalingrad kessel is still my favorite.. but this one is on a good second.

[Nezzer]

Is it out already?

[Proud_God]

Awesome, just awesome.

Question:

Originally Posted by Yoshiro

[*]New control options added for ...exclusive Focus / Breathing.

Can you give more detail on that? Is there an added option for toggle Focus?

[Proud_God]

Originally Posted by Zetsumei

please allow the scrollwheel to be unbound as well I dont want my scroll wheel to change weapon :P

You can already do that (since RO UT2k3 actually). Might be that you need to do it in ini file.

[Zetsumei]

Originally Posted by Proud_God

You can already do that (since RO UT2k3 actually). Might be that you need to do it in ini file.

Scrollwheel currently changes the range on weapons as well as switch weapon.

Basically i want to keep the change range functionality while ditch the change weapon functionality. If I unbind the next or previous weapon command then i cannot change weapon range anymore

[LordKhaine]

Originally Posted by Nezzer

Is it out already?

Well it updated on steam for me. Or at least tried to. It's now infinitely looping between downloading 99% and validating. Oh well.

[Nezzer]

Originally Posted by LordKhaine

Well it updated on steam for me. Or at least tried to. It's now infinitely looping between downloading 99% and validating. Oh well.

Nothing here. Maybe it's just US and Europe for now.

[tixhal]

dat patch 8P

[Dionysos]

Nice! Hope first pass on the hit detection means that bigger calibre weapons come next. Awesome! I also hope there will be a way to filter those using it/easily see if it's on or off.

[Mormegil]

Maybe this should go in the announcement section too.