CHANGES:

• AI added! I can't tell you how happy I am that I was able to add AI, as I really wasn't sure if it was going to be practical, or even possible, due to the unique challenges presented by ZGA. Indeed, this was an enormous feature to add, taking the majority of my time since the last update and now amounting to about a third of the overall size of the codebase. It might not be of near-human intelligence, but it's now at the point where I think it can provide a good challenge at multiple skill levels.
  
  
  
  • The bots can have a variety of traits, to change their skill level and behaviour. A type of bot also has a “Level” to describe it's difficulty. Right now, I've just set 9 basic bots of increasing skill level, but more interesting variants could be added in future.
    
  • It was important to me that the bots were sufficiently similar to humans in behaviour that the same tactics were effective against them. For example, no matter how high the bot's aiming traits are dodging will always be effective, and, like against humans, the more unpredictable the better.
    
  • Bots will automatically spawn on a dedicated server if there are only one of 2 players.
    
  • Listen server hosts can add bots at will.
    
  • You may notice not every map and game mode is supported for AI yet. I'm hoping to add support for some if not all of these before launch, but can't make any promises due to time constraints. In general, there are various improvements that I'd like to make to the AI, time allowing, but I think it's in a good enough state to be a very important addition to the game still.
    
  
  
• Brand new gamemode, “Spaceball”! “Spaceball” was supposed to be a temporary name, but having built the update, I've just realised I forgot to rename it. Anyway, the game mode is a sort of sports-ball type, more like soccer than the existing “Capture the sphere” mode. It has it's own new map, made by Ex3m.
  
• Spawn points now prioritized first on team then on distance from other players
  
• For auto-managed (including dedicated) servers, instead of a 10 minute timed game, the automatic game type for kind of the hill modes will be first to 120 points (still sort of timed for king of the hill...).
  
• The dedicated server will eventually change back to Pipe and Free For All if left unoccupied for a certain period of time. This is to prevent it from being left on a map that's unsuitable for one or two players (so could discourage people from joining again).
  
• If there is only one player on a server, the map vote will end as soon as they cast their vote. Also, if there is only one player and bots are unsupported for the current map or game mode, the map vote will begin instantly.
  
• Servers now have an optional skill level setting. This can be set by listen server hosts as an option when hosting. It is not enforced in any way, but rather just a label to help people find a game against players of a similar skill level to them. I plan to set up dedicated servers with different skill levels for the main launch so that newbies aren't destroyed by you veterans.
  

• Changed ERC rate of fire from 5 rounds per second to 4.5. Not a big change, but I think if it was overpowered before then there wasn't much in it. This is really just to make it a bit harder to get close ranged spamming kills.
  

• Huge changes to the layout of Temple.
  
• Boxes in the railgun room in Pipe are now less densely arranged.
  
• I finally put something in that big flat floor in Factory. I've been meaning to do this pretty much since I added Factory to the game nearly 2 years ago.
  

• New decals on all official maps. These include fictional logos (the closest thing you'll find in ZGA to lore), warning signs and the like.
  
• Max has done a major overhaul of the graphics on “Temple”, turning it from one of the more outdated official maps into the fanciest visually.
  
• New weapon models
  
• New weapon visual effects
  
• Main menu scene changes
  
• New Boxes on Pipe
  
• New model to represent spawn point of CTS sphere
  
• New weapon spawn location model
  
• New splash screen
  
• New models in Inception.
  
• Improved reflections in all maps.
  

• I've put together and integrated the beginnings of a soundtrack. Right now there are just 4 pieces, which are selected from randomly when a match starts. I'll most likely do some more work on these pieces, and I plan to add some more pieces to the soundtrack. There are some quite different styles among those 4 tracks, so feel free to let me know which one you like best (the track name appears in the HUD when it starts playing) and I can take that into account making future tracks.
  
• Here are a bunch of great new sound effects from Deika:
  
  
  
  • New rocket fire sound
    
  • New weapon switching sound
    
  • New SMG impact sound
    
  • New rocket explosion sound
    
  • New sound on picking up weapons
    
  • There is now a feedback sound when you get a kill
    
  • CTS goal and sphere respawn sounds.
    
  
  
• The weapon noises now have a low-pass filter (less treble) applied that increases in intensity with range.
  
• The volume of the grapple sounds now drop off in volume faster with range.
  

• There is an addition to the Server tab in the in-game menu (accessible to listen server hosts) which enables kicking players and removing bots (through the same menu).
  
• The chat box now ignores capital letters. To my mind, the communicative facilities afforded by capital letters were far outweighed by having to constantly type “excuse caps” to avoid appearing ANGERY if capslock was on without your knowledge.
  
• Added individual SFX, Music and UI volume settings to the audio settings menu.
  
• After much deliberation about what to do with Cityscape, I've just decided to move it to the community made maps section.
  
• Also removed the creator field from the official map list, as now that Max Graw has contributed to all of the official maps in some way (most notably Temple), it would now be an oversimplification to specify a single creator, or both of us as creators. Max's contributions to the game are, of course, credited in the credits screen.
  
• Server browser rearranged slightly. Dedicated servers are now above listen servers. Also removed quite a lot of not-so-important text.
  
• New HUD weapon icons to match the new weapon models
  
• The HUD menu now adheres to the same layout as the other sub-menus.
  
• Added “Disable HUD” option to HUD menu
  
• Also added an option to disable just the magnet indicator in the HUD.
  
• The map info that shows on loading a new map now has a grey background.
  
• Moved the map vote screen so that it no longer obscures the chat box.
  

• Hopefully your feet/legs should no longer get stuck in the floors/walls. Unfortunately this is one of those things that's not really a “bug” that I can locate and remove so much as a limitation of various systems that requires some inelegant fix to be slapped on top of. With that in mind, I'm not sure yet if we've truly seen the last of this issue or if it's just less likely to occur now. Let me know if it happens to you again.
  
• Previously, only your personal total kills showed for the global total kills stat. This should be fixed now.
  
• Fixed audio control not working in main menu.
  
• Fixed grapple beam failing to de-weaponize after warmup
  
• Fixed blue team score indicator obscured for timed team gamemodes
  
• Fixed player icons persisting in the TAB menu after the player leaves (I'm pretty sure, but needs testing online).
  
• Made detection of when weapon is obstructed more accurate and less glitchy (it was the cause of various jittering bugs [jitterbugs, if you will...])
  
• I think the weapon obstruction code also failed to detect when a weapon was obstructed by the floor below (when pointing downwards). This is fixed now.
  
• Fixed bug where timed match would sometimes go into overtime even when there is not a draw.
  

• In a last minute attempt to fix a layout issue in the server list I somehow managed to produce another layout issue that's considerably more ridiculous. The original issue was actually fixed, but some text may be pretty much illegible in some cases.
  
• The static bots from the tutorial have vanished. There will be a revamped tutorial soon anyway.
  
• The global stats suddenly all list as 0.
  
• I think the bots might be having some trouble in the round room in Inception. I'm pretty sure I just forgot to rebuild the navigation data after some changes to the map.
  

• ”Market” by Max Graw (Ex3mx). This latest map from Max has a kind of cyberpunk aesthetic, and it's just unbelievably well pulled off, and has some really clever little details. All I can say is that I think this map is his best one so far, by a considerable margin, which is really saying something.
  

CHANGES:

• There is a new Stats screen accessible from the main menu, displaying both your personal stats, and also the global total stats, which may prove interesting.
  
• The server should now restart automatically within 10 seconds if it crashes or otherwise stops for some reason. After this update, there will be no known crashes, although I have found that the server process seems to quit after running for a week or so, seemingly by the design of something or other. What's imposing that restriction I don't know, and it probably isn't worth the time to find out now. Just be aware that if the server goes down while you're playing on it, it should be back up within 10 seconds.
  
• In King of the Hill game modes, you now get 1 point per kill, as well as for occupying the KOTH zone. This also increments your totalkills stat, where I don't think it did before, as well as showing the +1 symbol. I originally intended just to make the last of those 2 changes, but it was easier to add the first as well. We'll see how it plays.
  
• There's a brand new (albeit fairly similar to the old one) edit controls menu. It's main feature is that it now permits multiple keybinds per action, which was mainly for the purpose of better supporting gamepad controllers.
  
• Speaking of gamepad controllers, I've had multiple requests for gamepad support since ZGA's early access launch, and I've finally been persuaded to give it more time. I'm generally a big fan of gamepad controls over mouse + keyboard, but I suspect ZGA will be comparatively unsuitable for gamepads. Nonetheless, with this update, I've added partial gamepad support. You should now be able to set full gamepad control schemes from the controls menu, which you couldn't before. I've set some gamepad default controls, but I'd love to hear from you if you set some alternative controls that you prefer. I haven't spent very long with the gamepad controls yet, so I hope the community will be able to help in arriving at a good set of defaults.
  Anyway, like I say, I'd call this partial gamepad support, rather than full, as, as it stands, the menus won't work fully with a gamepad, so you won't be able to play entirely from your sofa (couch) yet.
  
• The framerate and frametime breakdown displays now close when exiting to the main menu.
  
• Not unrelated to the previous items, the various performance stat utilities that were assigned to H, J and K are now rebind-able and show up in the menu.
  

• There are 3 new achievements unlocked by landing 5, 25 and 100 kicks on an official server. Note that this is just landing the kick, rather than necessarily scoring a kill with one, which I find to be a considerably rarer occurrence.
  

• HUD redesign. Most of the HUD elements have been visually redesigned by Max Graw. We might refine the HUD further, but I think it's looking much better now already. On notable addition is an indicator for whether your magnets are on as part of the HUD. I'm not sure if we'll keep this as there are already lights on the avatars, and I like to minimize the HUD's use of screen space. Nonetheless, I don't think it was always clear when your magnets were on or not, so let me know what you think of this particular change.
  
• Max has also redesigned most of the menus visually, which I think are definitely looking a lot neater now.
  
• Team scores now no longer have “Red team score” and “Blue team score” text, as I think this should be apparent from the context and color of the text.
  
• Some menu text is now using a lighter version of the same font (Bank Gothic)
  

• Avatar cosmetic options:
  
  
  
  • There are now 3 new footwear options which can be unlocked with a mixture of speed and kicking based achievements. I made the “Industrial” one and the other two were made by Max.
    
  
  
• Minor changes to base character model
  
• You may have noticed in various places a new logo, which was made from the superimposition of a Z And G (which may not be immediately obvious). Thanks to Max for the help in making this. It's designed to be an in-universe logo, as well as for use outside of the game.
  
• All official maps now make use of the new logo as part of the visual design, which I think looks very good in some contexts, but I will probably have to rethink others.
  

• You'll notice there are a bunch of cool new UI sounds in the menus. You probably won't be surprised to hear that these were made by Deika. As usual, they're just really pleasing to listen too, and I think fit really well into the menus.
  
• Also made by Deika is a new ambient sound which you can here in the menu and all official maps. This makes the maps seem a lot more “alive” to me, or something like that.
  

• Removed one potential cause of server crashing. (I believe this was an extremely rare case scenario relating to grappling other players).
  
• There was an issue where the “Octangle” helmet would always appear red (irrespective of your colour scheme). This should be fixed now.
  
• TheSodaCow discovered that if you leave a server in the prematch phase, and then rejoin once the match has started, your points from the prematch phase are retained. This should be fixed now, well spotted SodaCow!
  
• Removed the debugging messages that appear on screen when map voting starts. Not really a bug, but shouldn't be there anymore anyway.
  

• There's a new map from Max Graw (Ex3mx) called “Mine”, which he finished not long after the last update, so needless to say it's about time it made it into the main game. As usual, Max's latest map has a very distinct and focused visual style, so I think you'll be able to see why I hired him to make some assets for the main game (in this update: an array of helmets).
  

CHANGES:

• Dedicated server(s). I've parenthesized the “s” there, because I've currently just set up one dedicated server, although it will be easy to set more up as the need arises. If the server's always full (we can hope), just let me know and I can set up another. I've found a very affordable hosting package, so I can set up a few more without money being much of an issue. The first dedicated server is located in New York City, so good news if you live in that neck of the woods: you should get a low ping. When I set up more, I'll try and get some in different parts of the world.
  
• Achievements. Currently there are 27 achievements, relating to kills, kills with specific weapons, and also speed. I intend to add more and more interesting achievements in future. Note that all the current achievements are only unlockable when playing on official dedicated servers. Thanks to Deika, who made the background floor-panel-inspired image you can see in the achievement icons of the final achievement in each category. He also made the whole achievement icon for the final ERC_479 achievement (but perhaps more significantly, some of you may remember he made the model for the ERC in the first place).
  
• The first elements of a cosmetics system (see also: “art” section). Cosmetics are unlocked by achievements, but are otherwise free. Obviously having a good system for cosmetics has plenty of advantages of it's own (player identification, e.t.c) but my intention in locking cosmetic options to achievements is mainly to provide some long term objectives to the game, as well as encouraging people to play on the new dedicated server(s) more often (hopefully keeping the playerbase more active) and, of course, to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different cosmetics.
  Note that the current cosmetics may change the achievement they're associated with over the next few updates, as there may be more appropriate combinations once more achievements/cosmetics are added.
  Anyway, I'm intending to add all kinds of other cosmetic options in future, perhaps including shoes, textures, armor e.t.c. Will have to think more about what will be most practical though.
  
• Increased delay after match before map vote to 10 seconds from 5
  
• Increased map voting time to 30 seconds from 15
  
• It appears that turning the “value” slider for your armor colour up to max or near max now causes your armor to glow. I do not remember intentionally causing this behavior but I'm going to declare it a feature.
  

• Replaced the pillars in Core with the new model made by Max Graw.
  

• The main menu has a very different look, and a few functional changes too:
  
  
  
  • The background is now a 3d scene, featuring your avatar
    
  • The character edit menu now appears over the same scene, instead of moving to a new level
    
  • The graphics menu is now translucent, and takes up less space so that you can see the effects of graphics changes from the main menu. It also has an FPS monitor, so that you can make an informed decision on graphics settings from the main menu.
    
  
  
• I've replaced most of the buttons with a simple one that echos the wall panel design. Will probably work more on this in future.
  
• Removed LAN mode tickbox from server list menu. It doesn't work and I forgot to remove it earlier. Joining LAN games is handled though the LAN menu, by entering the host's local IP.
  
• Various visual changes to in-game menu.
  

• Avatar cosmetic options:
  
  
  
  • As the first example of avatar cosmetics, there are a range of helmet options with this update, one of which was made by me (“Octangle”), but all of the others were made by Max Graw. Although he's still learning 3d modeling (very quickly, I might add), I much prefer his designs, so intend to commission more models from him in the near future. Stay tuned for more cosmetic options in future updates.
    
  
  
• Team colours now glow, since team identification was becoming a major issue for some of the darker maps, particularly inside a KOTH zone too. I was going to add something fancier to the suit, but for now I've just made the coloured sections glow.
  

• There's now a sound effect for the slide animation, once again made by Deika. I've wired it up so the volume and pitch scale with speed, and I think it's sounding pretty much exactly how you'd expect a slide to.
  

• When first joining a game, all the other players will share your appearance until a new match starts or they die and respawn.
  
• Sometimes , on joining a game, all of your cosmetic options fail to load and the avatar appears completely black with the default helmet. This always rights itself after you die and respawn.
  
• Sometimes, after a match change, the countdown timer to match start isn't initially set to the correct time on your screen, so goes into negatives before the match begins.
  

• I've hidden the server host's control panel for auto managed servers, since it didn't do anything.
  
• The SMG stopped firing when it ran out of ammo, but the sound and muzzle effects continued playing as long as you held the mouse down. This is fixed now. Well spotted by DarkGuy1001.
  
• Fixed despawned weapon pickups remaining despawned on the match starting (previously, if they were despawned when the match started, the respawn timer wouldn't reset, which is not ideal behavior).
  
• Fixed issue where FOV reset to default on map change
  
• It's questionable whether or not this was a bug or not, but several people have observed in the past that your health sometimes shows as 0, but you continue living. I'm pretty sure this is just because health can be fractional but it's rounded down for the HUD, so was probably just <0.5 when it appeared as 0. In any case, I've made it show as 1 for values between 0 and 0.5 now, so it'll only be <=0 when you are dead.
  
• Fixed pickups being invisible for clients when first joining match, or being invisible all the time, but I think the latter may have been introduced since the last update anyway.