Here's a list of the latest updates live in today's build.
OPTIMIZATION
We have decreased the update time per second of physics calculations (As you can imagine, we had to adapt a lot of things, so you may notice some minor glitches - we're working on them).
Now all the interactive street objects are drawn in a single draw call while remaining illuminated.
Fixed memory leak and frame rate drop for journalist photos.
Optimized memory management for spawned objects.
Optimization in the drawing function of the characters.
A lot of script optimization.
Optimized INDIGNADOS_2 level (To be applied to all others maps).
POLICE
Fixed offset of the police formations that was bugged when surrounded by the crowd.
Fixed spam error in the log when the police could not correctly calculate a formation.
Fixed a bug that allowed cops to do more attacks per second in some circumstances.
VIOLENCE
We refined the violence and public opinion level in order to make it an integral part of the gameplay.
The main changes are:
The political score now affects the winner of the match
In the gui you'll find text that indicates the behaviour of the faction in progress. It's only in English for now, but we'll translate this too.
Possible status (for now) are:
PEACEFUL when you're not using violence at all,
PROVOKING when you're using a small amount of violence according to the situation,
VIOLENT when the violence used is much higher than the opponent,
PAYBACK when you use violence to defend yourself from a violent adversary;
All these situations have a different influence on public opinion, as you can imagine during the payback status the violence inflicted has much less weight than those who attack peaceful people in VIOLENT status.
Now it's possible to use all this mechanics to peacefully win each level, or to use subtle strategies such as provoking the adversary until it becomes violent in the eyes of the public, and then attack him.
Violence now scales non-linearly, so the first violent actions, the first casualties, or even deaths have a much greater weight. The player must be careful who starts being violent first
We have completely reworked and rebalanced the values of public opinion and violence to make them more sensible and realistic
NOTE
Since we have made a lot of changes, we will continue to test and refine everything over the next few days. It may be necessary for us to issue a hotfix. Let us know if you notice any strange bugs due to optimization!
Update News!
Hello everyone
The team are working around the clock to implement fixes and improvements to the game.
Thank you to everyone who's provided feedback and bug reports to help with their efforts.
So that we can bring you even more fixes, we're making a slight change to the update schedule.
Fixes planned for the 29th are being pulled forward into an earlier build!
To do this, we're not going ahead with the build planned on the 22nd. Instead, a mash-up of both updates will go live on the 24th.
The update will include balancing and optimisation of match results and various bug fixes.
Exact details will be posted closer to the release.
If you're still experiencing issues, please make sure to report them on the Discussion Board > Bug Reports. We are reviewing this regularly and taking every effort to address all reports.
Thank you for your patience while bugfixing continues.
Thanks again to everyone who's helped make the game a success.
Kind Regards
Update #8 - 15 January 2018
The team's been working hard, fixing a wide range of bugs and issues. Here's the list of what's been corrected in the latest update
All police teams could be eliminated by leaving the faction with zero teams
Sometimes adding a new team created an invisible card
Sometimes by clicking "Edit" an assault team would open even if you were editing a balistic or tactical
The "Cancel" button editing a police team saved the changes anyway
The ballistic weapons inside the "Edit" menu had different indices than the main police menu, so sometimes the correspondence between the weapon in the team card and the one in the Edit card was lost.
Police item icons were not displayed correctly
Clicking on the "None" object did not exit the object selection menu
Opening the object selection menu for the police does not show correctly the selected object
Vehicle in-game icon sometimes disappeared: FIXED
When a vehicle is destroyed, the side icon becomes grey.
When a vehicle is destroyed, player is adviced by a in-game popup.
Fixed bug which made run police men X-flipped.
Zago is trying to find (then fix) the bug of in-game popup which remains on screen (stretched)
By editing a police team the level of armor appeared always written in caps and not translated
By deleting all the teams and adding only ballistic teams sometimes they were created with non-ballistic weapons and with a wrong background colour
Increased the cost of police items
Hotfix
Some of the intro video lost the reference, resulting in a black screen. This has now been fixed.
Update #7 - 8 January 2018
We’ve been working hard on building a new asymmetrical parameter system, which was not provided for in the original gam design (originally the game was more simulator oriented). We can now balance the game in a better way by activating or deactivating the behaviour of certain units in either faction. In this way, we can make the game easier for the player so the learning curve isn’t too difficult.
We’d welcome your comments regarding the game’s overall balance. Please share your comments on the community hub under the pinned topic “Balance”. Please try to include the following information:
What level? (i.e. NO_TAV1)
What difficulty level?
Are you playing as the rebels or police?
What was your overall impression? (too hard, too easy, too short, etc.)
Any notes or details for your impressions? (i.e.: were the police too slow reacting in the beginning)
DEVLOG
bug fixing and improvements
We removed 1.5 seconds of delay before starting the animation of the leader using the radio (just before the police charge – but we kept the sound).
Fixed a bug which blocked police units for all gameplay.
We added a safe timer which unblocks units that used to stay panicked for too long.
Initial cooldowns for skills at “too easy” and “challenging” difficulty have been removed.
M16 now has the correct text in the loadout menu
It is now impossible to have all units or groups panicked simultaneously – you’ll always have at least one to control.
We changed the “aggressive icon” from rocks to a red circle icon
The defensive icon has also changed to a blue circle icon too.
We have removed a bug which sometimes showed cooldowns as still active on weapons even if you were not aggressive.
Difficulty rebalance
All difficulty levels
Police controlled by the player - police units now try to get the selected (by the player) point for 10 seconds + x seconds depending on leader discipline.
They won’t flee every time they are subjected to rocks or other rebel actions.
Input and actions depending by psychological parameters (i.e. fear) are well separated; so, it is easier (under our dev-point of view) to manage them.
Damage is halved in single player (compared to previous version) in “too easy” difficulty; this is a bit less in “challenging” difficulty.
Police units now recover from “fear” more quickly.
Too easy difficulty level
Rebels controlled by the player:
When moving have a stronger push.
When idle have greater resistance to police units.
Have more resistance while they are pushing of more than one police unit.
Ignore panic.
Rebels controlled by AI:
Don’t use barricades.
Can’t ignore police repulsion in conditions when normally they’d be immune.
Police controlled by the player:
Ignore panic.
When a police officer is on fire (i.e. after been hit by a Molotov), his unit won’t retire.
Normal difficulty level
In single player, teams won’t get panicked while they are selected. But you still can’t select a unit/group that is panicked or running away.
When a police officer gets hit with a Molotov, the unit won’t automatically become panicked but gets large reduction in morale.
EASTER EGG
By unlocking all levels, you can now unlock INTIFADA level (CGA 4 colours)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86BRHPgzBE8 Click on the floppy disk in the custom menu, and you’ll play INTIFADA level!
Update #6 - Saturday 30 December
Hi everybody!
This time is Ivan posting you! We're here working for you on Riot!
So, first of all: sorry for my bit-rough english!
We added > "Like" points where you take a picture with camera (rebels)
> "Views" points where you take a picture with camera (police)
> Money earned is shown when you take a picture as journalist (in journalist mode)
> M16 authomatic rifle: easter egg!!!
You will find it in the police item list when you'll have unlocked doing this and that... guess it!
Balance > Flags now have less weight in total people count
> adding items to units or groups influences the total number of people expected (if you add as police, you will have more rioters; if you add items as rioters, you'll have less rioters)
> overally improved police courage... hope that now they're not too much brave!
NOTE! As we added these "weights" to items, all game balance is to be finish (quantities of people are changed almost everywhere). You can find plenty levels with a faction too strong or too weak.
NOTE(2)! We activated the .log file writing, so it could be that, if the system detect an error, you'll have some lag for reading/writing the .log file.
But this way we'll be able to ask you to send us the .log file if any crash.
Fixes > Pozo Soton fixed: now all police units have more than only one member, rifles cooldown time is 1/2. And we add grenades. (In the next weeks, we'll cut completely the initial cooldown on rifles, but now it would modify too much things, so we need to do it structurally). Please note that the level is still hard!
> Battle of the Camel: fixed. Now police is not so easy to unsaddle.
> a crash fixed
> updated compression for graphical atlas, so loading times are a bit shorter. (sometimes, still some ghosts on the screen if you begin playing when still graphics is not totally loaded - we'll fix it soon)
> loadout menu problem solved
> total count of rebel groups: it happened that sometimes you have on screen a group less then how many expected.
New known problems of this last build (as we changed things and other things broke)
Red rectangles around objective text remains on screen more than before... F**K!
Texts in weapon box and some option box get overwritten in the beginning... F**KF**KF**K!!!
But we wanted to give you an update before the end of the year...
GOG > yesterday: we updated the GOG version
NEXT UPDATE It is previded for monday 8th of january 2018, we'll return regularly to monday update.
> we'll probably focus on fix a group of problems coming from the old game design (which was completely thought as a simulator - so it is in conflict with current "more reactive" direction of the game); we'll need to do parameters asimmetrical and variable for every game mode and difficulty level... big work! But crucial for having a good balance.
> as usual, minor bugfixing
> ...if time will be merciful, we'll add another veryverygooooooood easter egg!
AND THIS IS THE END OF 2017!
BTW: in the last weeks, two (real) italian police "chiefs" who did bad things in G8 Genova (2001), as taking false molotov bombs inside the Diaz school (the one we simulated in police tutorial), not only they are still not punished... the government promoted them! To key high-positions in police hierarchy.
https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/premium/articoli/dalla-diaz-alla-dia-vince-il-manganello/
(sorry it is in italian)
so we're a bit sad... this is pure unjustice.
RIOT ON!
...and HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYBODY!!!!
Producer, Ivan Venturi, discusses RIOT - Civil Unrest
As there’s a quiet lull in the festivities between Christmas and New Year we took a moment to ask the game’s producer, Ivan Venturi, to talk us through some of the finer aspects of RIOT – Civil Unrest.
At first glance Riot – Civil Unrest looks like a traditional RTS game but you describe it as real-time riot simulator. How would you define the difference between the two genres?
RIOT is a new sub-genre and it is difficult to define it in a couple of categories. Initially, Leonard’s idea was that it should be solely a riot simulation - crowd vs police. As the development of the game evolved, so too did the strategic and tactical elements of the game. The end result is a complex mix - real riots are not a clear sequence of facts and actions. They are chaotic, confused, disordered, with no sensation of understanding what it is happening.
So, recreating such an extremely chaotic situation would be great if we just wanted to create a scientific simulator; but less enjoyable as an entertaining and challenging videogame.
We decided, that even in in LAWLESS difficulty, you can experience the confusion and disorder. However, to follow the videogame paradigm, we tuned down the pure simulation element. We understand that, in a videogame, players expect immediate feedback for their actions. In easier modes, the game will seem more responsive to the player as we have reduced the lag of the crowd AI but on the game’s the hard difficulty you can expect a more simulation experience.
Take a look to the first trailer Leonard did years ago.
At about 50 seconds in you will see police and rioters running against each other as two medieval armies. This is absolutely unrealistic, BUT in a videogame, it is exactly you’d expect to do. So, in TOO EASY mode, we allow players to fight as an army, even if you’re controlling the rebels. It is IMPOSSIBLE to see this type of behaviour in a real-life riot.
When playing the game as the protesters I notice that there’s a real sense of the mood ebbing and flowing as the crowd reacts to the police’s actions. Can you explain how the psyche of the crowd works?
You feel the sensation of being in a situation that changes continuously and not only for your direct actions. The crowd is a fluid mass of people which moves and changes with its own mechanics. Every person, every AI, is moved by physical status, but more of all by an emotional and psychological status (anger, fear, calm, cold power you have when you know at 100% that you’re fighting for your rights without wounding the other people’s rights, shock for viewing violence, angriness for being attacked without reasons etc. ).
The best way to succeed, if the level allows to it, is to keep calm and be peaceful. If you have to use tactics to create human barriers and sing choirs to increase everybody’s courage levels, so be it. Moreover, if you use violence for no reason, you will pay a heavy price – on subsequent levels you will find the opponent faction really angry and armoured. So, if you play as rebels, often it is better to use your head, not your weapons, keep calm and “fight” without fighting.
Can you explain the subtle differences in the different police squads? What are the best ways to use the tactical, assault and ballistic teams?
Tactical units are the most powerful in terms of resistance and also for pushing the crowd. Testudo formation is the best way to push crowd with energy but without using violence. Assault units are quick and if you have to attack, they are probably the best units to use.
Ballistic units are always an important part of your strategy to clear an area but it depends on the level you are playing. In some scenarios, they carry smoke grenade launchers while in others they have live ammo. Use them sparingly as once deployed the hostility can escalate rapidly.
Next version update
Ivan wanted to let you know that he and the team are working on the next update as promised. They are currently testing the build and expect to post it live no later than Saturday 30, December.
Apple Mac version NOW AVAILABLE
It has arrived! The Mac version is now live and includes all Windows PC features! A new Mac update will be available at the beginning of 2018!
Update #5 - Thursday 21 December
The team have been working hard to bring you updates on time and we're here to deliver!
Included in today's update are some of the most requested features we've had to date.
REBEL Tutorial
A tutorial for the rebels has been introduced.
You can access this by choosing to play the tutorial on launch.
In this scenario, you'll learn how to control the rebels. Mastering their basic functions, movements and even how to make barricades.
POLICE Tutorial
To better explain how the Regroup ability works for Police, the 'Radio' has been added to the tutorial
POLICE Morale
Following complaints that the police are too easily scared, we've put them through boot camp!
Police units should now have better fortified morale and resistance to fear.
There may be some additional balancing to this in the next few updates, so please share your feedback.
We've got more updates soon so keep an eye out for more posts.
To anyone experiencing technical difficulties, please be sure to report these in the Bug Reports sub-forum.
The team aware of issues and are working hard to improve the game.
Thank you for your patience whilst they continue their efforts.
Update #4 - Monday 18 December
Here we are with the new Monday update...
The main addition is the POLICE TUTORIAL. The idea is to give a basic overview of the main functions you can perform as the police. For a more in-depth analysis of what the police can do, you’ll need to look at the game’s wiki section (there’s a lot of functions the tutorial doesn’t cover).
Background to the Police Tutorial
The Police tutorial is based around real-world events that occurred in Genoa, Italy back in 2001 when the G8 Summit was held in the city. The "Armando Diaz" School, the temporary headquarters of the Genoa Social Forum, was also raided shortly before midnight on July 21. The State Police of Genoa, Rome and Milan attacked the buildings, with the operational support of some battalions of the Carabinieri.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnRHVPleY98&t=641sNote - this clip contains scenes of graphic violence.
Following the raid, 93 protesters were arrested. 61 were seriously injured and taken to hospital - three of them were in a critical condition and one in a coma. Several of the arrested protesters were tortured and humiliated before being released. The police also planted evidence including Two Molotov cocktails, an array of knives, sledgehammers and pickaxes. All of which they claimed to have found at the school.
Over 70 police officers were subsequently sent to trial but none were charged due to delays in the investigation and incompleteness of Italian laws under which torture is not recognised as a crime. On April 7, 2015, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Italian police had violated the European Convention on Human Rights and ordered compensation for a protester beaten by the police. The “Mexican butchery’ dealt out by the police cost the chief of police a mere 47 euro and 57 cents.
Also included in the update is first version of the REBEL tutorial. The team is still working on this section but for now you should be able to get a better understanding of the rebels’ main actions. In the next update (coming later this week) we’ll aim to offer the complete version. Keep an eye on this hub for the update.
Alongside all of these new features, the team have been working diligently to resolve various performance and stability issues.
We’d like to thank everyone experiencing issues of this nature for their continued patience whilst the team continue their efforts.
Planned Updates
With the holidays fast approaching we thought you'd like to understand our schedule. Here's what the devs are aiming for for the next couple of weeks.
21st December: (in place of the Monday 25th update -Christmas holidays).
The rebel tutorial will be complete
Mac version will be released
more police morale balancing will be implemented
The Use Item skill in the police tutorial
Choir skill and offensive barricade skills in the rebels tutorial
28th December:
Various bug fixes
This will include easter egg content
New year update:
Various bug fixes
This will include a new easter egg level, based on an 80's game. Focuses on israeli and palestinian conflict.
Venezuela's “Wonder Woman”
Venezuelan fitness fanatic, Caterina Ciarcelluti, dubbed “Wonder Woman” by fellow activists appears in RIOT – Civil Unrest’s Venezuelan Riot.
The protests began in early February when students demanded increased security after a female student was allegedly been the victim of attempted rape. The students also complained about record inflation and food shortages.
Protests turned violent and several several students were arrested. This lead to further demonstrations in the capital, Caracas, demanding their release.
The protests in Caracas turned deadly when three people were shot. There have been many demonstrations since then, varying in size from small gatherings to large rallies. Venezuela has the fifth highest murder rate in the world, and crime is rife in many urban centres.
