Zero G Arena
Development files update 6 (mac support)
For any mac users, let me know if you have any issues with the mac version of the devfiles. I've tested them on my macbook and they seem to work but adding support for different operating systems generally results in some unwelcome surprises that aren't always immediately obvious.
Lastly, it looks like for the mac version you may have to navigate to the devfiles's installation directory and open them from there, since the play button doesn't appear to do anything. This isn't unduly surprising to me, since the devfiles don't contain an actual program, but are rather just files that are opened by Unreal. To my surprise, the play button actually opened them automatically with Unreal on Windows, once the file association had been set, but that minor convenience doesn't seem to have made it over to mac.
Update 38 (Timed matches, auto-managed listen servers)
As usual, having spent the best part of the day waiting for the update to build for release, I've realized I may have forgotten to hide the server host's options for auto-managed servers. These probably won't do anything, which may cause some confusion, but it's probably not serious enough to warrant a hotfix like last time.
Anyway, I won't be unduly surprised if there are issues with the auto management system, or the timed matches, since they're difficult to test thoroughly by myself.
COMMUNITY MADE MAPS:
- Ex3mx (Max Graw) has updated his map: “Inspiration”. If I remember correctly, there was a similar issue to the one that occurred for DarkGuy1001's map Prota, where some assets were lost in adding it to the main game. It's all asseted up now in any case!
CHANGES:
FUNCTIONAL:
- Auto managed mode, with map voting system. Thanks to everyone who's been discussing how the map voting system should work. The one I've rigged up for this update is pretty close to one of TheSodaCows's suggestions, but a bit simpler. I can always refine it in future.
- Timed matches are now an option instead of first-to-n-points. This option is available to the server host from the in game menu, if not auto-managed, and is the default for auto-managed servers. Timed matches just made more sense for a more consistent experience for auto-managed servers, but I can always change this in future.
- Changed CTS Sphere mass from 1750kg to 1000kg. This is quite a big change, so let me know what you think. The sphere will still be pretty hard to move, but the general pace of the matches should be increased a fair bit, which I thought might be a good idea, having played some extremely drawn out CTS matches recently. One side effect is that once one team gets close to their goal, it gets increasingly unlikely the other team will be able to respawn in time to stop them scoring once they're killed. Something I found in some of the matches I've been playing is that often, even when the sphere was quite close to a goal, the other team still had time to respawn and intercept the sphere before the goal was scored, leading to long stalemates.
MAP CHANGES:
- I've recently become aware that is was possible for the CTS sphere to get completely stuck against one of the roof beams on CTS_One. I'm hoping I've rectified this by moving the beams about a bit. I stand by my initial statement that this was a feature, not a bug.
UI:
- Minor changes to HUD, mostly making text smaller
ART:
- The pipe in Pipe is now red and white, instead of green and white.
- As I'm making things red, I've also made the skirting boards in Factory red, just as an experiment.
- I've also added a bunch more lights to Factory, so it should now be among the maps with a good brightness level without auto-exposure. I also added some more meshes in the form of wall panels and Ex3mx's light models.
BUGFIXES:
- Everyone knows that if you've got a leaky roof you don't fix the roof, but instead perpetually mop up the rainwater, right? In keeping with this principle of common sense, I hope to have fixed the issue of players falling out of the maps by detecting when they leave the boundaries of the level and teleporting them back inside.
Development files update 5
1)The assets Ex3mx made for the main game are now available in the content browser, and you're welcome to use those.
2)I've come up with an extremely inelegant “solution” to the people-falling-out-of-the-map issue, in the form of a special object called “LevelBounds_BP”. You drag one of these into your level to define a boundary for that level, and if any player leaves that boundary, they're teleported back inside the map.
The basic “LevelBounds_BP” class just has a box which you'll need to scale up so it encompasses the whole level.
I've actually already added one of these to all of my levels and the copies of user made maps on my end. If you're thinking of updating one of your maps in future, or making a new map, it'd be good if you could add one of these to your level. It doesn't have to fit outside the level really tightly, but it's best not to leave a huge gap, or an escaped player might try and grapple back into the map and not leave the bounds.
Note that you can add additional collision shapes to the bounds, and there's also a “LevelBounds_Blank_BP” with no default collision box, so you can use other shapes if it makes more sense. To be honest, I've just used the smallest box the level will fit in so far though.
Anyway, like I say, this won't actually prevent players from being thrown outside the map, but it should move them promptly back in, since previously they'd have to quit and rejoin, or the host would have to restart the match.
Update 37.5 (“Hotfix” for non-functional auto-managed server option)
As usual, there are a couple of other things that made it in with the hotfix.
COMMUNITY MADE MAPS:
- It turns out DarkGuy1001's map Prota was actually supposed to have a couple of big rotating coil models around the electrified cylinders. These got disconnected in transit (it happens). The map is now looking how it was supposed to, including some materials that also got removed. The coils look really cool, and should also serve to dampen the extreme killing power of the electrified cylinders, which killed me probably more than any other player in the couple of matches I played yesterday on Prota.
VISUAL
- With yesterday's update I was finally successful in raising the brightness level of the map Temple to a good level for those not blessed with the auto-exposure feature (it doesn't seem to work with integrated graphics). Unfortunately this had the side effect of making the map several orders of magnitude too bright for those with auto-exposure. I've now found a way to limit the auto-exposure so it doesn't blind anyone else. RIP the eyesight of everyone I was playing with yesterday.
UI:
- The aforementioned non-functional “auto managed'' server option has been hidden.
Update 37 (New graphics stuff, general improvements, community map updates e.t.c)
Since I've been so impressed by the visual design in Max's maps, I commissioned a set of 3d models from him, to fill in some of the gaps still remaining from the visual overhaul. See below for a full list. I think you'll agree he's done a great job. My personal favorite is the pipe in Pipe, which really needed to be more fancy looking than it was before, considering the map's named after it.
Anyway, having also been really impressed with the sounds Deika made for ZGA before, I commissioned a set of them. A few of these have already been added to the game, although I may have failed to mention that there were more on the way. A couple more of these have made it in this update, and there are still some more to come. Once again, I think Deika's got a big talent for sound design, and the sounds he's made so far have really enhanced the game.
Anyway, my next number one priority for ZGA is doing what I can to ensure you can find an online game most of the time. The first thing I'm trying to do on this front is set up some dedicated servers. This was shaping up to be an insufferable hassle last time I looked into it (shortly before the Early Access launch), but I'm hoping with all I've learned in between it should go much smoother this time.
COMMUNITY MADE MAPS:
- DarkGuy1001 has updated his map “Prota”, and he's made some pretty major changes. The map's had a major visual overhaul, so now it's really looking great, but also it's now got a circular floating King of The Hill zone, projected between two huge electrified cylinders. It's a really cool idea, which I'm not sure I've described very well, so I encourage everyone to play it themselves.
- Ex3mx (Max Graw) has also updated his map “Inspiration”. Although update may not be the right word, since it's changed so much as to be almost unrecognizable, but the central area with the King of The Hill zone still reflects the old version. It's also undergone major visual changes, since it was one of Max's oldest maps, and therefore wasn't quite up to scratch with his newer ones. It certainly is now though, and it's got two crazy hologram things at either end, which I strongly suggest everyone has a look at!
CHANGES:
FUNCTIONAL:
- When a full-auto weapon becomes obstructed, it will now resume firing when it is unobstructed, if the button is still held down. Having done some testing, I was not entirely surprised to find that sometimes while firing full auto, my gun would unexpectedly stop firing during a particularly flamboyant stunt, due to it momentarily clipping the floor. Now the gun will only stop firing momentarily, which should be much less confusing and annoying.
- Changed FPS cap to 240 from 144. This is mainly to make it easier for me to measure performance changes, since the game was almost invariably maxed out at 144fps on my PC, even on max settings.
- The “news” section is temporarily removed from the main menu, since there isn't currently anything relevant to put there.
- Client side improvements:
- I've eliminated the delay in weapon switching caused by ping.
- I've also eliminated the delay in hit feedback
- I've eliminated the delay in weapon switching caused by ping.
UI:
- I've added a message below the quit button discouraging people from leaving team games that are still in progress. Whether it will prove persuasive enough remains to be seen...
ART:
- By Max Graw:
- The pipe in Pipe
- The pillars in Temple and Inception
- Boxes in Pipe
- Circular, and oblong lights
- Health box and a spawn platform for the health box
- Pillars in CTS_One, and the beam structures near each goal
- The floating walls near the sphere spawn in CTS_One
- The pipe in Pipe
- I've began the process of arting-up “Temple”. Like Inception, I haven't got around to making new versions of assets such as the circular floors yet, so it's not finished yet. I've actually got some pretty substantial visual changes in mind for Temple still, that I'm yet to make.
- Grapple beam weaponizer model is now red to match the colour of the weaponized beam itself.
SOUND:
- By Deika:
- Homer projectile sound
- Grapple engage sound
- Homer projectile sound
OTHER:
- In Inception, I've removed the health pickups from the two middle rooms. I have no idea what design philosophy I was adhering to that required a health pickup in every room...
BUGFIXES:
- There was an issue on Inception, whereby everyone would invariably spawn at the same spawnpoint. This is one of those bugs where it's just absolutely inconceivable that I could have failed to notice it for the year or so ZGA's been in early access, but nonetheless, it seems like it could only have been present the entire time. In this case, I'd forgotten to update the map Inception with a custom spawn point class that I made probably several months before the Early Access launch (the map Inception is actually over 2 years old now!). In any case, it's fixed now.
- The rocket launcher is supposed to do extra damage on a direct hit, in addition to the damage from the explosion. Either I forgot to apply this extra damage in the first place, or somewhere along the line I accidentally disabled it. In any case, it's working again now. Rockets still won't kill in one hit on a direct hit, but it'll get pretty close (and if the target's lost any significant amount of health they probably will kill in 1 hit).
Price increase on August 16th
Do please feel free to tell as many people as you want about this, so that they can pick the game up while it's cheap. This''ll be doing me a favour as well as them, since I'm going to be treating the time between now and then as a kind of promotion. Hopefully I'll shift a few units and we'll see a boost to the playerbase.
*The actual price change may take effect shortly after the 16th, as I believe changes to the price need to be reviewed by Valve after they're submitted.
$6 might seem like a bit of a jump from $3, but keep in mind I've neglected to raise the price at all since it became paid last November. People generally felt $3 was a very fair price for the game in the state it was in back then, and there have been a lot of improvements since. Here's a rough list of some of the improvements since then, although obviously there are far to many to list (you could trawl through all the release notes since November 2016 if you really wanted to):
- Pretty major graphical improvements
- Completely reworked animations
- 2 new official maps (including the addition of walkable spheres)
- 2 completely new weapons, as well as the grapple beam weaponizer and many improvements to the existing weapons
- A new game mode, King of The Hill, with corresponding team version
- The facility for community made maps, although I'm not including the actual maps in my assessment of the game's value, since these are made by the community, for the community, under the map maker's own motivation.
- LAN support
- Various UI improvements
- Improved sound
- An improved movement system, including the new slide abilities, as well as support for more complex walkable geometry (whereas the game previously relied on planar floors, or perfect spheres, now stairs, slopes or more or less anything is possible)
- A huge number of fixes, stability improvements, netcode improvements, optimizations and the like.
Update 36 (LAN support)
CHANGES:
FUNCTIONAL:
- LAN mode is now an option in the “Host listen server” menu and there is a corresponding “Join LAN game” menu. I've tested this so far as I can myself, but it'd be great to hear if anyone manages to play any LAN games.
Anyway, here's what it does:- Your server will not show up in the server list and can only be joined by computers on your local network.
- This does not require an internet connection.
- In order to join the game, you need to enter the host's local IP address. This perhaps isn't ideal, but I've put instructions in the “Join LAN game” menu on how to find that IP address.
- You do have to be logged in to Steam, but obviously it will still work in offline mode.
- I may have forgotten to ad any kind of feedback if you enter the wrong IP, so be aware if it takes more than a couple of seconds, you've probably made a typo or something. I'll try and remember to add some kind of feedback for the next update, if possible.
- Since the connection is directly between PCs on the same local network, there should be a very low ping and no practical bandwidth constraint.
- Your server will not show up in the server list and can only be joined by computers on your local network.
ART:
- Applied new assets to Inception. Note that I don't yet have new assets for some of the map features, such as the circular floor and pillars.
BUGFIXES:
- That nasty SMG issue where it would seem to fire in semi auto sometimes is now fixed. It occurred when playing as a client with high ping. Sorry this one managed to stick around so long for how serious it was, I need to try and do more testing on other people's servers, since I tend to host.
- I should have greatly reduced the chance of getting your foot stuck in the floor. Unfortunately this is not something I can fix completely with one code change, as it's more of an animation issue which requires almost excessive attention to detail.
Development files update 4
You're probably safe to start using the new assets in your levels now though, although they may change a bit. If any of them undergo major dimension changes, I'll probably just create a new asset.
Something you might be interested in is that I believe I set the new walls and floors up so that you can set a custom colour for your levels. Let me know if this is something you might want to do and I'll explain how.
Update 35 (Weapon obstructed animation)
Here it is if you haven't seen it yet:
https://youtu.be/930H5CZIeMg
Hopefully there are a few worthwhile improvements here anyway.
CHANGES:
FUNCTIONAL:
- You can no longer stick your gun inside objects to shoot through them. Furthermore, the avatar now raises the weapon to avoid intersecting with objects. This also prevents you from shooting (although this isn't perfect). This could possibly cause confusion or annoyance under certain circumstances, so let me know if this gives you any problems. One concern is that it's possible for the gun to momentarily clip the floor if you land upside down or something, which could interrupt full auto fire for no obvious reason.
ART:
- I've replaced the weapon symbols in the HUD with updated images of the new models.
- I've added more lights to Pipe and Factory which I hope will make them lighter for low end PCs, or with post processing set to minimum.
- I've also covered up more of the green walls with the white wall panels in Pipe
- The death message is now a darkish red instead of orange.
- I've added an experimental normal map to the new floor panel model, which makes it appear slightly bumpy. This looks particularly prominent under strong lighting, or with strong reflections.
BALANCE:
- The delay before the weaponized grapple activates is now 0.4 seconds, from 0.6
BUGFIXES:
- Several users have reported spawning outside the map on Core. I'm not 100% sure what the cause of this was, but a couple of spawn points in the room with the small spheres were suspiciously close to the walls, which could well have been the problem. I've rectified this now, but we'll have to see if the problem persists.
- Fixed hole in the back of one of the floor panels. This was visible on Core.
- I think I've stopped the avatar's impact sound playing when they're hit by a projectile, which sounded terrible, since the projectiles have their own impact sounds.
Update 34 (Graphics, sound e.t.c)
I'm drawing the visual overhaul to a sort of informal close in that I plan to redo the promotional material with the game in it's current state and spend more time on functional additions from now on. I do plan to keep iterating on the graphics though, just not as the sole focus.
COMMUNITY MADE MAPS:
- ”Palace” by Ex3mx (Max Graw). Another spectacularly cool Capture The Sphere map by Max with it's own distinct graphical style, as usual.
You'll notice I've done away with the ADDITIONS, CHANGES format of the patch notes in favor of one big changes section, with sub-headings. The line between a “change” and “addition” was becoming increasingly blurred, if it wasn't before.
CHANGES:
ART:
- New SMG model. Like the other new weapon models, I plan to do some more work on this as and when I feel like it.
- SMG muzzle flare now produces dynamic lighting.
- SMG now has projectile trails
- Shotgun model improvements
- Railgun has new impact effects.
- Railgun has muzzle flash
- I've applied some of the new graphical assets to the following of my old maps:
- Pipe
- Core
- CTS_One
- Chamber
- Pipe
- New “Roof cover” model. You can see this in “Pipe”, over the health box.
- Changes to the “skirting board” model.
- I've shortened the grapple device model so that it doesn't stick out past the avatar's elbow so much.
- New kick animation, although it's still physics based.
- The grappling arm now extends when the grapple increases in tension, although this is hardly noticeable unfortunately.
- Changed team colours slightly
- Changed the defence bar to a green-blue from pure blue.
- The health, defence and ammo text now sits on top of the bars, which saves space and I think also looks neater.
- Recoil animations are now slower for slower firing guns. This just slows down the same animation, rather than each gun having custom animations, which isn't ideal. It may be worth making special animations for weapons like the rail gun.
- The general geometry behind the walls on the maps with the new assets are now green, as an experiment. Let me know what you think of this. So far I think this may be a step in the right direction, in which case I may make a proper green texture for this in future, rather than just a flat colour.
- It appears I have also made much of inception green, by accident.
- CTS blue goal changed colour to green-blue from a deeper blue.
- The CTS sphere now glows green rather than purple. I'm considering this as the new team neutral colour.
- The KOTH zone is now green, as well as the little corner projector things.
SOUND:
- There are a number of new sounds in the game, all made by Deika, who, as some of you may remember made the sound that replaced the original railgun sound (and was widely regarded as being far superior):
- Grapple beam has a new sound.
- The railgun has a new sound, which I think fits it really well now that it's restyled, and the previous railgun sound is now used by the shotgun, which again, I just think fits it better following the weapon restylings.
- New SMG sound
- Grapple beam has a new sound.
OTHER:
- The character edit menu now uses HSV instead of RGB. In my journey from terrible artist to quite bad artist I've discovered that this system makes it much easier to find tasteful color schemes. I haven't managed to produce a visual representation for the HUE slider yet though, so I'm concerned this may cause some confusion in the meantime.
- In the process of arting up Pipe, I also made some changes to the layout. Most noticeably in the room with the upright cuboids, in which there is now a staircase around the edge of the room.
BUGFIXES:
- Pretty sure the recoil animation didn't play for full auto projectile weapon (i.e. the SMG). Fixed now.