Welcome everyone, we would like to announce that starting from Friday 19th of April 2019, Bear Force II Multiplayer will be going through a test period. During this period, a new version of Bear Force II will be uploaded exclusively to the Steam Workshop. This is to test an environment where we can put out more regular content without forcing you to manually having to download and install every patch yourself.
Below you will find more information about this test period, the consequences of it and some news about the WIP Singleplayer side of Bear Force II.
What about ModDB?
ModDB has been the main platform for Bear Force II for a long time now, nothing has changed in our opinion of the website and we are not leaving. However, thanks to the Steam Workshop Multiplayer mods compatibility patch, we can use the Steam Workshop more reliably. This means that mods that are updated on the Steam Workshop will also automatically be updated on your PC if you are subscribed to them, no actions need to be taken by the user. This would allow us to more regularly bring out smaller patches, fixes and updates!
We are not leaving ModDB, the coming test run is not going to change everything. We want to test the viability of using Steam as our main platform. We will gather feedback from the community, see what technical issues might occur, if we are able to put out weekly or monthly updates and how this will affect the mod as a whole. So nothing final is decided yet with this announcement. Depending on the success of the test build, we shall decide what course to take.
However, should we decide to move Bear Force II to Steam, this will not happen instantly and we won't completely leave ModDB. ModDB will serve as a platform where we post blogs, update news and patch logs, as well as a variety of other functions that we also use it for now. You will be able to find a link on the front page of the Bear Force II ModDB page that will lead to the Steam Workshop page.
How will this work?
During the test period, all the player has to do is be subscribed to the “Bear Force II PTR” and make sure their Warband is set to “always keep this game up to date”. During the 5 week test period there will be a ‘main’ update every Sunday at 10pm GMT and smaller patches/fixes during the week at irregular intervals.
Before every update there will be an amount of server downtime, of which the length is announced beforehand and varies depending on the size of said update. After a server update is done, all the player needs to do before starting the game is to make sure their Bear Force II is updated.
Why try this at all?
The reason we want to give this a try, is because this will allow us to more easily fix issues and release them to the public when done. This way, the public don’t have to wait for an entire new version to come out for their small fix.
Singleplayer
Currently the progress is stagnated due to a lack of time and team members. We've decided to stagnate it until we don't have to worry about Multiplayer anymore, which was planned to happen after 0.94 came out. However, we have found that the current updating system is not suitable if we want to work on a SinglePlayer mod at the same time.
If we can get a regular pace going for these weekly/monthly updates, we don’t have to worry about smaller bugs/glitches becoming a day-to-day problem for players until a new release, allowing us to delay plans for future big updates on Multiplayer until a viable release for Singleplayer is ready. Meaning we can focus our work on Singleplayer without abandoning Multiplayer.
Patch notes:
New features
- Added Weather systems
+ 24 different possible skyboxes for different hours of the day
+ Random chances of fog, rain or snow depending on the map type
+ Random wind strength and direction
+ Moving flora and trees depending on wind factors
+ Moving volumetric clouds depending on wind factors
- Completely reworked environment shaders, textures and visuals
- Binoculars
- Clone face will spawn when no helmet is chosen for clone troops
- New tooltip for mod controls in equipment menu
- Coloured Flare grenades
- Nautolan race added
- Chagrian race added
Optimisation and performance
- Loading time decreased from 3-5 minutes to 20-40 seconds
- Removed all Native items, textures, materials
- Removed all unused mod assets
- Resized all textures to powers of two
Class balance fixes
- Magna Head Armour increased to be the same as Clone ARC head armour
- BX head armour moved from invisible helmet to body armour
- Head armour for all republic/separatist classes moved to body armour to allow more customisation
General class changes
- Sniper = Low mobility, high damage, low health
- Jets = Extreme mobility, low health, flanking unit
- Heavy = Very low mobility, tank health, medium damage
- Commando = Fast movement, above average health, medium damage
- Trooper = Medium mobility, medium health, medium/high damage, all around class
- Officer = Medium mobility, medium health, medium damage, utility weapon options
Weapon changes
- Removed movement lock with HMG but make movement slow
- Decreased damage for LMG but buff spread control: spread: 2 > 1
- Decreased LMG ready-to-fire time: 7 > 6
- Det pack tweak: ammo: 3 > 2 packs. dmg radius: 5 > 3 meters. dmg: 175 > 215
- Moved detpacks from normal trooper to Commando/Heavy class
- Rebalanced stable rifle: Medium accuracy, high fire rate, low spread, medium travel speed, extra low damage
- Increased accuracy for cycler rifle: 5 > 4
- Miniscule decrease in accuracy for sniper to potentially fix accuracy bug: 1 > 2
- Removed warmup on sniper rifles
- Damage increased Sniper: 42 > 44
- Damage increased Cycler: 31 > 33
- Sniper weight increased: 13 > 65
- Magna now has Viber Blade & Sword
- Senate Pike fire damage buffed: 33 > 35
- Smoke nade ammo increased: 1 > 2
- Grenade ammo decreased: 3 > 2
- SMG spray factor nerf: 10 > 12 (aimed)
- SMG spray factor nerf: 19 > 23 (hip fire)
Sounds
- Added ambient sounds
- Rebalanced sounds for clearer warcries
- 101 new voice lines
Bugs fixed
- You will no longer stay zoomed in on death
- Medpacks can no longer be abused to increase their amount
- Fixed Bounty Hunter white shoulderpads
- Fixed orange lightsaber damage
- Adjusted rigging for Jedi/Sith robes
- Adjusted rigging for Bounty Hunter armour
- Horses removed from admin panel
- Fixed stormtrooper desert camo bug
- Fixed Wookiee transparency issues
- Fixed magna staff seeing through the map
- Fixed melee mode only admin option
- Fixed dual pistol sound
- Fixed lightsabers losing visibility
- Fixed sheathed positions of TOR/Sith Empire guns
And much more!
Please team, consider not abandoning moddb.
Some os us have the GOG version of M&B, you're basically shutting us out of your mod.
Please, think about this.
Thank you!
For non-steam users we will set up a way to manually install the updates. Using Steam is still the recommended way of approach but we are thinking of using GitLab and will hopefully have a system for that ready to go soon!
Thank you Mark! :)
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