Time for another progress update, development has been slow this last year or so I know but hopefully I can get on top of that soon. Anyway folks heres the stuff I've managed to clean up since the last playtester build;
- All reported CTDs and bugs have been squashed, along with a bunch of niggling things the last build introduced (I'm still not sure how they crept in.. maybe I mixed up some files without realising)
- Refined and enabled some new shader features, this is essentially done now save for gathering coordinates data for some wet surface aspects.
- Hopefully removed the stash that spawns in the middle of a anomaly at Agroprom, its a bit of guesswork getting the right stash here but I'm pretty sure I narrowed it down to 1 of 3 stashes... so 1 in 3 chance I got it right first time :p
- Mutants are now deadlier than ever, on top of already being faster and more agile, immunities, attack strength and force of attacks have all been rebalanced. Varying attacks also now have varying attack strenghts, distances and times just to make things more lifelike and to add a bit more of a natural nature to things. Beware of the Chimeras and Giants, they can seriously kick your arse now and make you their bitch. Videos of brutal deaths are welcome :)
- Of course, the new zombie types, 6 in total, 4 of which have different \ new appearances. Naturally they have all also had high quality normal maps created for them short of modifying the model itself in something like Maya they won't look any better than they do.
- Fixed a few performance related issues being caused by level size \ number of spawns, X-Ray shouldn't get weighed down in those situations anymore.
- Fiddled with bone specific damage to human NPCs so hopefully they will react more realistically now based on how heavily armoured they are and where you shoot them.
- Few texture tweaks and changes here and there, nothing major just stuff mixing up the appearance of some rusted surfaces mainly.
- Finished adding the new spawns to all.spawn (addition of the new zombie types, fixed a few minor things and so forth)
- Fixed the shitty edge of the torchlight where X-Ray stretches some textures to unknown arbitrary sizes, also fixed as many as possible light sources that are treated the same way as the torchlight by X-Ray so hopefully the lighting will look nicer.
- Made a few changes for continuity such as giving Sakharov? (sp) a white researchers jacket.
- If you visit the Dark Valley early the gates are now unlocked so you aren't forced in one direction. Its also now possible to visit Radar before you have collected the documents from Agroprom... assuming you are fine with paying a substantial bribe to the Warrant Officer.
- Added mutant body parts to various stashes. A little cannibalistic? Perhaps, but the zone is a harsh place.
- I don't think this was in the last PTB, I have enhanced the rain quality purely to just make X-Ray look that bit more up to date. Toying with adding specularity to rain but not sure if this would have any visual benefit what so ever or just be a waste of time. Probably won't work as a lookup table would be needed and the X-Ray shaders can't do that, ho-hum.
- Some explosion particles have been optimised, should avoid any slowdown now when excessive amounts of particles are generated.
Note: For testing purposes a bunch of the new zombie types will spawn via script the first time you talk to Wolf after starting a new game. Because I hate the base commander (I don't know why.. I just do) at the military outpost they will be attacking that.
Expect the new playtester build to be uploaded for testing soon I just have a few quick things to do and something to run by meltac which will add a nice, thoroughly unpleasant, mean, bastardised surprise if its possible >:D
Hm.. thats actually more than I thought that list, I guess I haven't been as lazy finishing the mod as I thought.
UPDATE: 26/7/15
Some of you may of noticed with patch 1.0005 and using a modified renderer for grass draw distance that the grass visibility was\is severely limited compared to 1.0004 versions, it was\is a severe annoyance to many people and something that especially pissed me off, I've now fixed that problem never again will it detract from immersion the only limitation now is how far of a grass draw distance your PC can handle ;)
