Another month getting the engines fired up and the environment polished. We had a fun few things get done.
List of changes this month:
-Users can now hold shift while crafting for 1 of 2 actions. Shift-Clicking "Craft" button or using "Shift +C" hotkeys will invoke the effect, keeping it open to all control styles.
*If the player holds shift while converting scrap to materials, it will produce a 5 piece stack, regardless of current quantity setting. For people making ammo or pickups in small batches, this means a lot less work for routine bits.
*If the player is doing breakdown, assembly, disassembly, crafting, or incineration, holding shift while crafting will perform the action the maximum amount of times. Obviously we don't do it for "refine" type actions as it would be a bankruptcy switch. This means if you have some weird quantity of parts (Say you're putting an 11 stack of ammo components together from salvaged rounds you've taken apart), it'll save you the effort of having to be precise to just re-process the same concept (11 material to 11 casings, 11 casings to 11 ammo packs, whatever), while producing the desired quantity.
-Fixed MORE weird handling of weapons mysteriously appearing with parts over 100% condition. See footnote for details on the incident, but know for now it'll be resolved by repairing an item, fixing the negative part damage for no cost to the player.
-Rebalanced revbow reload time slightly to make it less clunky.
-Nerfed poison damage to no longer cause large levels of armor corrosion on poison DOT. This was done to make sure poison DOT worked, but it became very apparent that this is redundant and contributes to poison previously being overtly overpowered.
-Modified corpses within the Hatchet testing environment to use spiffy dynamic code to match the entity they came from, absolutely regardless of corpse position, model, or skins needed.
-Fixed using medkits in the heal part screen from reporting "healed X points" for spreading healing to other limbs. This was really just some loose, useless data lying around.
-Added perceivable armor rating to Hatchet decorations. Previously breakable physical projectiles (revbow darts, for now) would shatter against any decoration that was invincible or highly damage resistant, such as cameras, turrets, and alarms. Now they shatter based on decoration armor reporting, which is done dynamically.
*In the case of our ballistic targets, they report locational armor based on hit zone, and will only cause dart shattering if the armor they simulate for a pawn would cause dart shattering on said pawn.
-Physical projectiles that become stuck in walls now exercise VASTLY larger hitboxes for retrieving them for a scrap refund. Due to velocity vs position conflicts, high speed physical projectiles are incapable of having a hitbox location that matches their visual position. Stupid, yes, I know. Now with expanded hitboxes, they are fairly easy to retrieve regardless.
-Fixed an effects error of Incendiary 19mm rounds not rendering a fire effect, even when dishing fire damage.
-Shooting NPC's in the legs and causing leg damage now has a tactical effect. For NPC's that use acrobatics or fancy maneuvers (including, say, sprinting), causing various levels of leg damage (less damage needed to disable more elegant tricks) will now disable their acrobatic responses. While not easy to achieve for all feats, it is incredibly vital for players that want to close the distance without the enemy outmaneuvering them at the last second of throwing a strike.
-Did very slight early modeling for Shuriken Ring weapon. Been mostly a code-focused month, so this wasn't top of the list as per usual.
-Vastly rebalanced the way melee weapons take damage while parrying, so that instead of suffering 1 point of damage per hit registered as "blocked" (which made auto shotguns doing so little player damage shred parrying weapons, while high caliber weapons did almost no conceivable damage), they now suffer a PROBABILITY of taking damage that goes up with damage level received, and the damage suffered when the probability occurs now scales with the power of the weapon.
Long story short on this guy: low caliber, single projectile weapons dish light damage, shotgun spreads dish moderate damage (low probability of damage, high quantity of projectiles), and high caliber weapons dish very high, almost guaranteed levels of damage. A pair of .50 cals from an Order Sniper can dish roughly 18 points of damage to all parts on a RevKat's 150-ish max condition about 80% of the time per projectile, or about 64% of the time for both to dish 36 to a part in question. .50 Cals eat swords that are in their way, and a .308 or .45 revolver round will take a good chunk out of them as well.
EDITS:
-2/25/16:
-Containers will now display "unknown contents" when rummaging through containers in the dark. A nice touch for lighting mechanics. This now also applies to corpses with identical circumstance.
-Forgot to mention in main post. Reduced or perhaps eliminated a bug wherein NPCs performing dodges could stop existing altogether. This was (primarily) invoked by high velocities and not tracing ahead for a clear path before leaping. Now that they look before they leap (so to say), the "Houdini" rates have been reduced extremely. It is yet to be confirmed whether this fix was 100% effective, but 6 hours later in gameplay an NPC has not been confirmed to have vanished or destroyed themselves mid dodge since this change. Yay.
-When chopping up dead bodies, diversifying strike location speed up the corpse hacking process by about 2 fold. We've all done it in Deus Ex, especially with Dragon's Tooth Sword, and we all know it takes extreme amount of effort. Ideally, this weird little touch will add a bit of technique to one's ability to rapidly attempt to dispose of evidence. The stuff I think of, yes, I know.
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FINALLY: A bonus excerpt on the state of over 100% part conditions, case study #2:
After case #1 occurred on a trenchkat a few months back, it was assumed that it related to negative corrosion values being processed and/or a bug when throwing knives for lethal damage (yet to make a formal cameo, but I assure you it exists and it is sweet stuff), and blockers and code checks were put in place for this situation. Further, this predated the weapon part condition overhaul related to "part specialization" AKA part spec.
Case #2 occurred on a gust rifle in a different mission, after the part spec rebalance occurred. The body of the weapon subsequently appeared with a condition above that of 100%, after use under perfectly normal circumstances. Further, the part damage effect occurred at some point in the level (as opposed to traveling between levels, a known point of issue for some property systems), and the weapon never left the player's inventory, but was used during this period. The weapon did not come into contact with usage by a cleaning kit or roll of duct tape, and was not at any point disassembled for part replacement or part changing (the gust rifle can use 3 barrel styles to affect damage and noise output, but this model was used purely with a top-damage, zero stealth barrel)
It is concluded that the damage could NOT have physically occurred due to negative corrosion value calls, as previously theorized with the knife. The condition level was then analyzed for mathematical relevance, and, on a weapon that saw VERY little use, the value that occurred on the weapon's body was NOT at or near any level of mathematical relevance to condition based on quality and/or material effects on condition. Finally, the weapon was repaired exclusively in the past using "repair all" type repair, activated by a lone keystroke and dubbed convenient, meaning single part repair bugs could not be to blame.
The weapon was unable to be repaired as its overall condition was "at or above 100%", and caused the weapon to be arguably incapable of proper maintenance from there on out. As mentioned above, it has been patched so that repairing items with over 100% on any part will control part condition values and repair the weapon, fixing any further cases of this that occur into the future.
It is the opinion of myself (WCCC) that what has occurred only twice, in weapons of two different uses, in two different levels, in two different playstyles, and only twice across DOZENS of playtesting hours I've had first hand, that the bug may be a rare occurrence of corrupt or fudged data, possibly by save/load, but likely something that cannot be identified.
Thought I'd post about this fun little anomaly to kind of let you all know how seriously we take bugs here at Hatchet. Spoiler alert: Very.
