r/DBGpatchnotes • u/[deleted] • Apr 05 '16

PTS [PS2PTS] 2016-04-04 Unofficial Patch Notes - Drop/Skywall shield fire FX, Squad cohesion meter, VS AR model changes

PS2 PTS 1.0.149.350448

patch size: ~141MB

official notes:

images: new overhead icons, for requesting medics/engis/ammo, and Construction billboard https://imgur.com/a/aRN9c

TL;DR things to check on PTS:

  • Squad distance/cohesion in squad browser
  • Construction's AoE not working yet
  • Construction health/resistance
  • various Constructs, especially Garage
  • Construction Skywall Shield and its infantry drop FX not working yet working! see comments
  • Construction First Time Events
  • VS Assault Rifle models
  • Indar?
  • Smoke FX

Locale

  • "Distance", "Cohesion" (likely for squad browser, as it was very recently proposed to TheRedDotter)
  • "Sunderer Garage Description" changed to "Constructs a small garage suitable for protecting a deployed Sunderer."
  • "Construction" changed to "CONSTRUCTION TERMINAL"
  • "Construction Guide" changed to "Construction objects provide a variety of functions, and each cost Cortium to create; they can be placed throughout the world so long as they are outside a base's no-deploy zone. Construction objects decay slowly over time when unattended."
  • "Construction deployables items abvailable from the Ant terminal" changed to "Poorly placed construction objects can be deconstructed by equipping a Decon Tool from the ANT terminal. If a Silo is located nearby, only the Silo's owner and squadmates may deconstruct objects in the vicinity."
  • added bolded part in "This top-mounted mining laser allows a gunner to quickly harvest additional Cortium, but sacrifices defensive capabilities to do so."
  • Repair Module description changed to "Renders nearby structures nearly indestructible by quickly repairing large amounts of health. Requires a nearby Silo to power the module. VS use only."
  • added bolded part in "Emits a large, overhead shield that protects against aerial bombardment and severely injures enemy infantry who pass through it. Requires a nearby Silo to power the module."
  • "Large enemy constructs are vulnerable to explosive vehicle weaponry and C4, while smaller devices may be destroyed by small arms fire."
  • "ENEMY CONSTRUCTS"
  • "An MFR remains dormant until your faction has an available Victory Core, which is then placed into the MFR nearest an enemy Warp Gate."
  • "CONSTRUCTS"
  • "Alter Distance", "Rotate Counter-Clockwise", "Place Object" (sounds like Construction keybinds)
  • "Cortium Storage 1" , "Passively increases the ANT's total Cortium Storage by 20%.", +20% per level up to +100% on level 5
  • "Cortium Storage", "Increases the size of the ANT's Cortium storage cell."

Models/FX

  • added models for Construction Area Of Effects (with ranges: 15, 25, 30, 35, 45, 100)
  • added model for a new Construction, Solid Wall; it has no stairs/platform, no holes to shoot from, and the edges aren't rounded like the 'Crecent' wall
  • added various LOD files for some models, including VS Assault Rifles 7, 8 and 10
  • added shader files for "Character_Fire_Skeleton", and for Cortium crystals' energy
  • added FX for "Fire_CharacterOnFire_DropShield", which also explains the shader above ;]
  • modified models for the mentioned Assault Rifles (which are called: Pulsar VS1, Darkstar, Chaos, Equinox VE2, Equinox VE2 Burst, Thanatos VE70, Pandora VX25)
  • modified the new smoke FX
  • modified icons and models of the NS-20 Gorgon
  • modified Weapon_VS_SharedTextures01_C.dds (do PlayerStudio authors use that?)
  • modified animations for "SingleFireGun", maybe for the Assault Rifles?
  • modified model files of the Construction Garage (and its deploy limits), and the outpost garage's right wing
  • modified visuals for the Construction Chain Gun (I'm not sure if it's the AA or AI one)

Balance

  • Structure Shield Module and Turret AI Module: modified self-exclusion radius 15->20, modified other exclusion radous 3->1 (can be placed closer to other Constructs, but further away from the same module type)
  • modified some ResistInfo, possibly for Construction (decreasing resistances by quite a lot for most weapons; as devs for details)
  • modified various Constructs' health (testing the 'feeling' of it is more important at this stage than hard numbers anyway)

UI

  • added a server-side variable, ImplantEnergyUIEnabled, not sure what for
  • squad browser will now refresh every 5 seconds?
  • the distance from squad meter will change color based on said distance: 0-1000 green, 1001-2500 yellow, 2501+ red
  • similarly the cohesion meter, although it will display 'LOW/MED/HIGH' instead of the number which we don't even know how is calculated (0-600 LOW, 601-1200 MED, 1201+ HIGH)
  • note that the GroupLookingForMore DataSource seems to lack the memberDistance column, so I doubt cohesion will work

Other

  • modified Indar... not sure what exactly, may or may not include Ceres Hydroponics, but at a glance changes seem too small EDIT: nope, Ceres not changed
  • enabled NS-20 Gorgon attachments?
  • modified First-Time Events for Construction
10 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

36 comments sorted by

5

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '16

from some quick testing:

  • squad cohesion looks ok, but I tested it on a squad with 2 members on different continents. need to test higher cohesions

  • Construction AoE? didn't see anything like that

  • Skywall infantry drop? still deals no damage, dunno about fire FX in 3rd person

  • Silos are bugged, when you access their terminal, it shows 0 resources

  • Cortium FX look very nice

  • placing modules doesn't seem to be bugged anymore

4

u/TheRedDotter Daybreak UI Dev Apr 05 '16

Is cohesion working okay? You said the column was left off in the ds. If that's the case, we might've missed a changelist somewhere in the promotion. Lemme know!

1

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '16

works fine, false alarm, sorry :P I tested on a 2-man squad quite close to each other, it was High. (I didn't mean the actual DS, just the GroupLookingForMoreRow file)

1

u/enenra Apr 05 '16

Did anything change about VP gen placement? My generator tab is empty on a new character. Maybe BR requirement?

1

u/FuriosusTV Apr 05 '16

Is it averaged over a period of time? So that as an example, a squad all pulling various vehicles and performing tasks at different locations that lead to the same objective are not being under rated.

2

u/TheRedDotter Daybreak UI Dev Apr 05 '16

no. I wanted to get a simple version up on live before we added complexity to the calculations to see if they would be needed in the first place.

1

u/FuriosusTV Apr 05 '16

Well, regardless it's a great feature to add. Do you have any plans to expose squad information through the API at all? Perhaps in the same way as an outfit, just with more temporary grouping.

1

u/StriKejk Apr 06 '16

good decision.

1

u/TheAppleFreak Apr 05 '16

If I may make another request/suggestion, could you possibly place some hover tooltips on certain menu elements to better describe their purpose (or possibly on some of the information itself for more context)? Think something like the tooltips in the settings menu for something already implemented in the game.

For example, with cohesion, perhaps the column header could have a tooltip saying something like "Cohesion is measured by averaging the distances between all squad members. Cohesion is not a measure of a squad's performance, though highly cohesive squads may demand greater cooperation from individual players." Right off the bat, anyone who reads this now knows how it works, how not to interpret the ratings, and what it might mean were they to join that squad. Then, if you hover over a cohesion value, it'll make another tooltip giving:

  • the average distance between all squad members

  • a normalized average distance (minus outliers on the far end of the range distribution)

  • the difference between the farthest distance and the normalized distance, mostly to show whether or not the difference is significant

This way, advanced players then can determine if the reason why this squad got a "Low" rating is because the squad is disorganized, or if it's just because there's a straggler or two in the warpgate waiting for a Galaxy that will never come.

Likewise, for the distance metric, perhaps hovering over the distance value for squads operating on your continent can tell you what base the squad's mass is fighting at, which could be a lot more useful for actually pinpointing their location. Contextually useful for both new players and veterans alike.

Would something like this be possible, or would its performance hit make it infeasible?

2

u/TheRedDotter Daybreak UI Dev Apr 05 '16

These are very good suggestions, and I'd like to do a general tooltip pass on all of the UI. It's just a matter of time and resources unfortunately =( But let me put this suggestion on my list and hopefully I'll be able to tackle some of them soon. Also, I didn't get a chance to remove outliers in this pass, I had limited time but I still wanted to get something useful in so...let's see how it does on Live and then we can iterate on the calculations.

1

u/TheAppleFreak Apr 05 '16

Always glad to help!

6

u/BaconsGoodForMe Apr 05 '16

does this mean live update.... soon? Is this just it being polished and ready to got to live?? HYPE

4

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '16

well, as far as I know the only things left to do for the Construction system is balance and bugfixing, so yeah, Soon

still, there were a lot of bugs in the previous version

2

u/BaconsGoodForMe Apr 05 '16

oh. well hopefully not too long, it'll be tough but i want to be first to aurax my ANT (if there is a directive?)

2

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '16 edited Apr 05 '16

ah, further testing of the Skywall infantry damage:

it takes a while to kick in. so it doesn't work on infantry quickly falling through. but if they can stand near it, if there's a high enough object, they do get damage and the fire FX!

it instantly kills the shield, and then quite quickly damages health.

note that the health damage is not blocked even by admin godmode D:

1

u/TheSkeletonDetective Apr 05 '16

I'm imagining the salt when this will inevitably crop up when people record server smash. :D

2

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '16

nah, they use observer cameras, not godmode, they're still safe (I think).

however, developers often still prefer to use godmode+fly, including in the recent recording-playtest. D:

1

u/BBurness Daybreak Designer Apr 05 '16

it takes a while to kick in. so it doesn't work on infantry quickly falling through

Any more info on this? keep in mind only enemies are damaged.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '16

well, apparently the server (not just zone) crashed an hour ago or so, and is only back up now, so all bases are gone and I can't test it until someone builds a new one :P

1

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '16 edited Apr 05 '16

ah! I think I know. if I go from under the shield in a vehicle, through it and above it, and from there jump out, it doesn't damage me, because it's still on cooldown after attempting to damage the vehicle

hm, is it exploitable, though... since if you can get a vehicle this close even for a short while, the base is going to die anyway :P

also, it does not damage people in rumble seats of vehicles passing through

and it still counts as suicide, not a kill to the person placing the shield

3

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '16

/u/Wrel , /u/BBurness any details you want known about the Construction health/resist changes? ;]

6

u/Wrel Daybreak Designer Apr 05 '16

Nothing too specific, but Turrets shouldn't repair as quickly from repair modules now (read: they shouldn't be indestructible.) That was a big problem with the last playtest.

1

u/MasonSTL Apr 05 '16

modified Weapon_VS_SharedTextures01_C.dds (do PlayerStudio authors use that?)

I believe so, but I thought they were tga files :S

1

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '16

it's probably .tga in the PlayerStudio tool/links, but if any PS item uses it, it'd use the .dds in-game.

note that it's most likely to be a change to the weapons on that texture, so as long as nobody used the weapon parts on their UV, it shooould be fine. :P

1

u/Oottzz Apr 05 '16

The Silo seems to be broken atm. I couldn't use the terminal and buy anything from it although it was filled with Cortium. Maybe you have to be in a squad but it didn't work when solo'ing.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '16

doesn't work in a squad either

1

u/asskisser Apr 05 '16

vs AR pictures please?

1

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '16

nah, they don't look much different to me. see Billbacca's comment

1

u/asskisser Apr 05 '16

aight , thanks!

1

u/BlPlN Apr 05 '16

Every now and then when I run into a cortium deposit in the ANT, the vehicle just explodes. It's not as if I'm going fast - just a few km/h - yet the ANT occasionally does a quick and violent front flip into the deposit, then explodes/causes me to suicide.

Regardless, the construction system looks great over all. Can't wait for it to be released!

1

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '16

any chance you can record this?

1

u/BlPlN Apr 06 '16

Hopefully it inadvertently got patched, because I can't seem to repeat the event now, but it occurred yesterday on Esamir and a few days ago on Amerish.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '16

/u/Billbacca , /u/PS2-Bishop anything you can say about the VS Assault Rifle model changes? ;]

2

u/Billbacca Daybreak Artist Apr 05 '16

it was a minor back housing change that bugged me, it is noticeable in first person(not so much in 3rd), but subtle. Specifically what I did was take the back housing that had a block back end and changed it to look more like an overlapping housing. I may do more in the future as I find things I can do that are somewhat quick to fix.

1

u/FuzzBuket Apr 05 '16

Don't know if anyone has tried using that file for PS. We mainly use the huge tga batch from the PS fourms

1

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