It’s a simple description of what was done, perhaps not as electrifying as some, but apt and important.

This new update focuses on further working on UI and art, as well as cleaning up some bugs and rough edges related to moving between areas.  Cars and worlds look better. I also started down the path of improving load times, and took some first steps towards upcoming content revisions. 

It’s a great time to go check it out… Just click on the hothothot Jupiter Cricket below!

Version 0.6.21 Release Notes

Gameplay

• Armor is now expressed in terms of “plates”, 1-4 on each side.  Each plate has a fixed armor level defined by the level of the enemy or the chassis model.  This gives players a much clearer view of what sides are the strong ones on an opponent, and it also is how armor is upgraded on their vehicles…  by finding models with more plates on the sides they want. 
• Armor now costs only 1 part per 5 points to repair, rather than 2.

Gangs

• Created an entire flavor of bandit gangs, the “Wild” gang.  Paves the way for more themed gangs as we move forward.
• “Wild” agents have names and quotes that match their theme.
• Cleaned up some character names and quotes. 

UI

• Armor is more prominently visualized on vehicles, including the adaptation of the “plates” listed above.  This includes when you are NOT aiming at them, but the display is made more visible when the player is targeting a vehicle.  
• Removed the solid backdrop from the two agent panels in the upper left and right, trying to separate the “vs” data shown normally and the “targeting” data when you are focused on an opponent.
• Moved the targeting box to the upper left.
• Got some new icons dropped from Scott Rays. 

Social Feed

• Tweets from bosses shouldn’t appear before the map even appears anymore.
• Put anon and boss tweets into chat bubbles.
• Removed name and colors from keywords in tweets for readability.

Bugs

• Fixed a irritating bug with entering cities when certain quests were active. Sorry about that one.
• Player can’t move past an encounter by keyspamming anymore, they should stop immediately.
• There was an issue with the camera sometimes zooming in after completing a mission and staying there.  It turns out there was a conclusion encounter that wanted to play and just wouldn’t give up the ghost, even if you moved to new areas afterwards.  It should now play properly.
• Quelled the double-intro from bosses with quests attached.
• Fixed some issues with allowing input not working properly with some popups.
• Cleaned up issues with restarting the game after player death.  Should properly go back to the intro and restart without hassle now. 

Tech

• Updated to Unity 2020.1.6
• Added Addressables Package and converted a number of sounds to addressables.  Started on the road to speeding up load times.
• Stripped out a few libraries including CTS in favor of Microsplat, which has been much more performant.

Camera

• Cleaned up issues with camera focusing or stuttering between transitions and encounters.
• Fixed camera looking at target sideways during starting cutscene
• Changed the camera post processing to add focal length and bloom. 

VFX

• Cleaned up a bunch of stuff around vehicle explosions, the particles were too large and the hierarchy made some stuff look terribad.
• Cars now throw tires and other large parts as part of their death. 

Vehicles

• Revised some of the vehicle manufacturers and names.
• Cleaned up Battle Car package with up-to-date toon/outline shaders.
• Put in a number of new car models and created enemies that will use them.
• Cleaned out the rough and out-of-date MadCars vehicle library (the predecessor to the Havolk cars) 

Audio

• Revised sounds for UI, including menus, reward panels and chat barks
• Fixed some issues in how soundtracks and boss music was playing (and sometimes re-starting).

Environment

• Shrank the size of the single barrel because it was yuuuge.
• Grass wasn’t appearing in some terrain maps.  Cleaned up the references and got rid of some old terrain libraries. 

Content

• Small rewrites of quests, aligning things for a larger revision.
• Completely reorged the gang definitions to give gangs stronger themes.  Wild, Fire, Stone and Tech themes are now taking shape.
• Started to revise the handling of quests, with an eye towards completely overhauling the overworld organization into a real U.S. map.