Maximum Action
Maximum Action June News
New Levels on Testing Branch!
TESTING BRANCH UPDATE
The 0.90 testing branch has been updated! Go check it out:
Early drafts of the new Jungle level and Arctic 2 level.
Updated Jungle Level
Go try out the updated Jungle level! Enemy placement, textures and placeholder props are all subject to change and further the level eventually will be divided into two for even more action.
Note please walk into
the foggy fence and the end of the village section to teleport to the military base!
Arctic 2
Inside the Arctic tape there is now a button for Arctic 2, the sequel! Fight inside a missile silo. This is also a very early version with lots of placeholder and missing assets.
WE WANT YOUR FEEDBACK
We wanted to get these out for testing much earlier in the development cycle so we could incorporate feedback from you all! @o... and I figured the sooner y'all get your hands on these levels the sooner we can figure out what's working well and what isn't!
Please post in the Maximum Action Discord It would be greatly appreciated!! thanks so much!
Right click on Maximum Action in your Steam library and click on "Properties.." then go to Betas and switch to the "0.90_testing" branch
0.95 Patch
PATCH NOTES:
- Fixed broken Tiny Mode
- Fixed bug where picking up a gun over and over kept giving you ammo
- Fixed issue where your first person model was always wearing a vest regardless of your character edits
- Fixed particle effect issues with glass railing prefab in editor
- Added out of map reset to Hotel Endless
- Increased size of out of map reset for Rooftop
0.95 New Player Controller Update Release
NEW PLAYER CONTROLLER
I am so happy to be finally releasing the new player controller update to you all! After months of hard work and fine tuning I think you'll find it is a much needed upgrade to Maximum Action. Dozens of new animations for the player and even more bug fixes.
WARNING FOR YOUR EDITOR LEVELS
Backup your "AppData\LocalLow\BalloonMoose\Maximum Action\Custom\Levels" Folder!!
especially if you are on the testing branch!
Myself and others have encountered a bug where Steam cleared the entire folder of anything that wasn't subscribed to. Meaning any non published levels you are working on could potentially be deleted. Working on a fix for this now!
This happened when booting up the game and the workshop items failed to load properly.
Full Body Awareness and Rock Solid Weapon Handling
No more 4 arms swinging around when looking up and down.
No more head and body dislocation when diving and sliding.
Every movement has been fine tuned and has a unique full body character animation. From a complete in air diving animation tree to rolling around on the ground. Immersive first person character movement like never before.
My goal was to upgrade Maximum Action to the polish level of games like Mirrors Edge while still maintaining the same animation style and feel. It's what Maximum Action always should have been. It will feel familiar yet so much improved.
New Slide and Slide Kick Animation
Sliding has always been in Maximum Action but it was so subtle it mostly went unnoticed. Not anymore, sliding is now an entire other mode of movement with its own animations.
Even further, slide and then hold the dive key to infinite slide. The same way you can infinite dive slide while prone by holding the dive key.
New Cover System with Auto lean and improved animations
Use the auto lean to blind fire around corners and even over low cover while crouched. This feature makes it easy to use cover even while playing with a controller!
Player Bullet Hit Detection Fix
Even further player bullet hit detection has been overhauled so you can shoot accurately around tight corners. No more bullets hitting the wall in front of you while leaning or shooting from cover.
AI HIT DETECTION FIX
Another fix in this update that has been long needed and is still being fine tuned is the enemy bullet detection. Now enemies will correctly aim at the center of the player whether you are diving sliding proning etc. And cover will effectively block their bullets. Until THIS update, the hit detection for enemy bullets against the player would not resize properly when diving sliding crouching. Now you can crouch or lay behind cover and be fully safe from being shot. It's a small fix but you'll notice the combat feels much more tight and accurate, diving and sliding and crouching is much more useful. A beautiful balance of high speed acrobatics and tactical cover shooting. Each equally useful.
Lots of Settings to Tweak
Turn on and off lots of aspect of the new player to tune it to your liking. Enable camera rolling and camera tilting to roll forwards and backwards from diving in full motion sickness glory.
Disable Camera Roll
Use this to disable and enable camera rolling while player is rolling out of a dive
Dive Camera Tilt
Enable / Disable camera tilting when diving
Camera Bobbing
Use this slider to control the camera bobbing rotation intensity of the player
Auto Lean From Cover
Turn off and on the new auto leaning cover system
In the reverse, turn these off and turn down the camera bobbing to have a stable smooth first person camera experience that still is packed full of detail.
I personally switch these on and off almost every time I play based on how I'm feeling. Sometimes having your head roll with your body just feels so damn cool. Other times it makes me want to throw up. So give it a try yourself!
Delays and Coming Soon
There was so much more I wanted to get into this update but I decided to prioritize getting my progress out to you all first for testing before packing on more fixes and new features. For example, I really wanted to get this new player controller working in the replay system as well, and from some initial tests I've done it will work amazingly. Here's some clips of a rough test
New Player Animations In Replay Test
I decided to save this for the future since I want to make sure I give it the time to polish and cook it into something really special. Rather than tack it on last minute to this update.
Coming Soon
Jungle 2 Work In Progress Screenshot
Andy @optionalSpace and I have been working hard on new levels and really wanted to get them in this update but decided we need more testing and feedback from y'all first. Expect to see rough cuts of our new Jungle rework and Arctic 2 levels on the testing branch soon! We have lots of other new levels in the works as well but want to give them the proper time and care to make them maximum action worthy. For those of you craving new content all I can say is sorry and that it is coming soon! Always feel free to hop in the editor or download some workshop levels in the meantime!
Arctic 2 Work In Progress Screenshot
Patch Notes Full List
NEW SETTINGS AND ANIMATIONS
- Added setting for disabling camera tilting while diving sideways and diagonally
- Camera Bob setting now affects the camera bobbing animation strength
- Edited player stop walking animation, toned down so less jarring when stopping movement
- Smoothed out camera rolling animation transitions
- Fixed bug where after rolling camera could be stuck intensely bobbing
- Fixed bug where first person hands slowly drift away from guns
- Drop kick added back vertical height boost
- New diving tree animations for looking down while in air
- New / re-added crouch kick animation
- New diving in-air state, if you dive off a high object you will stay in the in-air state until hitting the ground
- Fixed leaning animations
- New blocked pose, your guns will move backwards near walls to indicate being in cover
- New Auto-Lean setting, if you aim or shoot you will automatically lean out of cover if possible
PLAYER COLLIDER FIXES
- Player bullet hit detection fix, you can now shoot around tight corners without your bullets hitting the wall in front of you
- AI-aiming and bullet fix, AI will now correctly aim at the player's center of mass while crouching diving sliding
- AI bullet player hit detection fix, the player hit collider now correctly resizes so crouching and diving behind cover correctly blocks enemy bullets
- Added Crouch blocking, if you crouch under a low object your player will stay crouched so you don't get stuck in geometry
- Tuned player collider size so it's harder to get stuck in shelves and under tables while diving
OTHER FIXES
- Tweaked door physics, when you kick open doors they should no longer fall through the floor and stay in the level
- Hopefully fixed bug where parts of the level could get impaled and attached to thrown katanas or cleavers
- Fixed RPG rocket and m16 grenade launcher trajectory so it aligns with where you are aiming
- Fixed not being able to walk straight bug on controllers
- Fixed issue with dropped enemy weapons not giving you ammo in endless mode or campaign levels
- AI ragdolls will now stay standing / upright if they are not dead, fixing issue of AI falling over and looking dead and then teleporting back to standing
- Added popping up out of cover when crouched to the Auto Lean system
- Fixed issue with apache prefab shooting while in the editor
- Reduced camera clipping through walls while diving and rolling
- Smoothed out transition from sliding and rolling to jumping
- Fixed issues with game volume setting in options menu
- Fixed Walking on controller not being straight
- Fixed Diving on controller not being straight
- Fixed issue where diving diagonally would make hands and camera over-rotate right and left
Hope you all enjoy this update as much as I did making it!
Please post any bugs you find or feedback in the Maximum Action Discord It would be greatly appreciated!! thanks so much!
-George Mandell
Next Update Available For Testing!
UPDATED PLAYER CONTROLLER READY FOR TESTING
HOW TO GET ON THE TESTING BRANCH
Right click on Maximum Action in your Steam library and click on "Properties.." then go to Betas and switch to the "0.90_testing" branch! The game should update and you can now try the new player controller!
DISABLE CAMERA ROLL
Most of you will want to enable this setting if you want to prevent motion sickness. If this is disabled, the first person camera will roll with the player rolling animations for a more true first person experience.
CROUCH SLIDE, AND KICK!
New crouch slide has been implemented, as well as a kick. Kick a guy out a window like a true action hero.
IT'S NOT A BUG IT'S A FEATURE
Enter a crouch slide then press and hold the dive key immediately after to trigger an infinite super slide.
As long as you hold both the crouch and dive key you will slide forever. You can kick to redirect yourself.
GO DOWNLOAD NOW!
Any feedback is greatly appreciated! Still making tweaks and I have a few more things I want to add. This is one of the biggest updates to Maximum Action and I wanted to give you all a chance to try it and give input before it is fully added to the game
Thanks so much for your continued support of Maximum Action!
-George Mandell
New Stuff Coming Soon!
NEW FPS CHARACTER ANIMATIONS
It's finally time for the first-person controller to get some love and polish. Working on all new full body animations for diving, sliding, rolling, kicking! No more floaty 4 hands! Very tight and arcade-like.
Dive Backwards and Land Animation Tree
New Slide Animation
Roll from Land Animation
LEVELS
Arctic 2
OptionalSpace has been hard at work on a sequel to Arctic!
Inspired by Goldeneye, and Biocyte labs shootout from Mission Impossible 2, this level will feature tons of dynamic shootouts and destructibles. All under the backdrop of a missile launch, but be careful, this rocket might be more than just a static background B)
A successful rocket launch?? not in maximum action :)
Jungle Rework
OptionalSpace and I have also been reworking Jungle! We are redesigning the open-world sections to make them fit the pacing and flow of the rest of the game.
OptionalSpace has taken the concept of Jungle even further and constructed all new sequences and environments from the pieces already in the game.
When complete the level will have much better pacing while still keeping open world elements.
NEW HANDS
I am improving the first-person hands 3D model, texture, and rig! As the game gets closer to 1.0, I felt the hands needed a touch up and some geometry fixes.
Below are screenshots of the new hands in progress and hand-painted texture for that early 2000s FPS aesthetic!
LOCALIZATION
Thanks to user GEGT, I'm making some great progress on localization for Maximum Action. Starting with simplified Chinese but will add many other languages once these first few are setup!
I hope you enjoyed the development update and thanks for all your continued support for Maximum Action!
-George Mandell
0.94 Patch
Big loading optimization!
I rewrote more of the game loading code and this patch should decrease load times for both campaign and workshop levels even further than the 0.94 update already did!
this patch fixes the following :
- Game crash and freeze bug at the end of Restaurant
- Issues with Player Arm Color not updating
- Rewrite to enemy weapon loading to decrease level load times for both campaign and workshop levels!
0.94 CUTSCENE UPDATE
Hello Action Fans!
All new cutscenes and loading cinematics have been added to Maximum Action
NEW INTRO CINEMATIC
New game boot-up cutscene! See your character in true action movie form
NEW LEVEL CUTSCENES
All-new intro cutscenes for every campaign level! Here's just a snippet of a few!
NEW LOADING SCREEN
Update features an overhaul to the loading screens, no more lagging and freezing, and a new badass loading level cutscene!
DEATH CUTSCENE
As well as a new-level end cutscene and a two "death" cutscenes.
These are all still work in progress, these cutscenes took me many long hours to create so I really hope you all grab some popcorn and sit back and enjoy!
NEW MUSIC
New track from Daniel J. Stimac, Hard Knox at the Woohouse! Check it out in the level
"Mr. Woo's Warehouse"
Other bug fixes:
- HUD UI Elements Upscaled
- Character Face Textures Upscaled
- Lighting and performance fixes for Mr. Woo's Warehouse
- Lighting and performance fixes for The Teahouse
- New layout for The Teahouse upstairs section (work-in-progress)
- Saloon new poker table props added
COMING SOON :
Even more, here's a list of things currently being worked on for the next MAXIMUM Action Update!
- Animation overhaul for first person and third person player in gameplay / replays
- Replay accuracy improvements
- New Replay camera angles
- New endless and campaign levels
- Player bullet ray-cast fixes
Please post any bugs you find in the Maximum Action Discord It would be greatly appreciated!! thanks so much!
-George Mandell
0.93 Controller Support Patch
- Fixed bug where player would freeze if crouched or slide on keyboard with controller plugged in
- Fixed bug with controller crouch and slide speed being too fast
- Night Club lighting rebaked
- Night Club neon lights added to stairs and more lights added around level
- Night Club performance and lighting optimization, should result in much higher FPS in all parts of the level
- Wall texture UVs fixed in Saloon
OFFICIAL CONTROLLER Support Update!
Hello Action Fans!
Controller Support has now been added to Maximum Action!
Go check it out! Tested to be compatible with Xbox or PS4 and even PS5 controllers!
Lots of cool features such as:
Controller Button Rebinding
Rebind any button on the controller to your liking! No pre-made maps every button can be rebound!
Note : Joystick mappings for look and move cannot yet be changed.
Aim Assist
Adjustable Aim Assist works great for making gameplay with a controller feel as natural and smooth as possible!
Use the "Terminator" mode to have cyborg levels of auto-aim!
Vibration and Stick Deadzone Settings
Enable / disable controller rumble and adjust the global dead zone value for your joysticks!
STEAMDECK SUPPORT
With the added controller support, the game now plays well on the steam deck using the game's controller mapping!
Official Steam Deck verification is still a work in progress,
NOTE the Maximum Action level editor still needs a mouse and keyboard to function properly!
Other updates:
ENGINE UPDATE
I have updated the Maximum Action project to a new version of the Unity Engine for increased support!
Other bug fixes:
- Enemy Tank AI bug fixed
- Lighting and performance fixes for Town
- Fixed issue with triggered activated objects in editor levels not showing up in replays
- Town Replay loading issue fixed
COMING SOON :
Even more, here's a list of things currently being worked on for the next MAXIMUM Action Update!
- New animations for player in gameplay / replays
- Replay accuracy improvements
- New Replay camera angles
- Performance and load time improvements
- Particle effects improvements
- New endless and campaign levels
- Player bullet ray-cast fixes
Excited to keep progressing and improving the game as it gets closer and closer to version 1.0
I hope you all stay tuned and enjoy the update!!
-George Mandell