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Patchnotes 0.6.0 Early Access Preview


Micha

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Dear Drone Engineers,

We just released the new Racing Update on the preview branch!
We need your help to test the game, report bugs and give us feedback about the new gameplay modes, so we can improve them before it goes live!  This testing phase will go on for a few weeks depending on your feedback and how many bugs you'll find :) 

Please post your feedback in the discussion forum.

Keep in mind that this preview build is still a work in progress, therefore I strongly recommend to back up your savefiles before downloading the preview branchHere is where you can find the savefiles and logfiles: https://strayfawnstudio.com/community/index.php?/topic/651-please-read-this-before-posting/

Patchnotes

New Features

  • New Location: Racing Ring with three different racetracks and highscore lists
  • New drone vs. drone tournaments: Race and Catch
  • New training mode for tournaments
  • New tutorial for autonomous racing
  • Added possibility to sort drones alphabetically or by date
  • Added text field to filter drones
  • Added new steam workshop tag for racing drones

New Drone Parts:

  • Proximity Sensor (can detect things inside an area defined by radius and angle)
  • Rng Gate (the rng gate has a configurable probability that the output key is activated)
  • Vtol Thruster (vtol thrusters rotate to a target direction automatically)
  • Afterburner (afterburners are strong thrusters that are only usable at high velocity)
  • Position Tracker (position trackers can be used as target for the directional sensor and the vtol thruster)

Reworks:

  • Synchronized logic and sensor parts with the physic simulation
  • Reworked the solar systems to contain less sumo rings and added racing locations.
  • Sumo and racing test-areas are now always accessible from the drone workshop
  • Added individually configurable detection layers for the distance sensor and proximity sensor. 
  • Added option for sensors to detect harvestable resources
  • The laser of the distance sensor is now better visible on higher zoom levels
  • Made the distance sensor round, so it can be rotated better
  • Added dynamic mission objectives. For example if only 9 eggs are spawned, the mission will no longer require you to destroy 10,
  • Removed velocity limitation for droneparts
  • Increased upper limit of the speed sensor to 300 m/s as reaction to the unlimited velocity
  • Keypresses are now allowed in sumo and racing test-areas to help testing the logic
  • Importing your own drones from steam will no longer apply the downloaded flag.
  • Changed the tournament statistics and added the option to not upload your drone
  • Replaced some images with videos in the tutorials to make things clearer
  • Added a confirmation dialogue when deleting a drone

Bugfixes:

  • Fixed randomly changing planet sizes on galaxymap
  • Fixed decimal input for drone part settings
  • Fixed scrolling of drone descriptions using mousewheel
  • Fixed too high thruster force while playing with low fps
  • Fixed spawn system to avoid unsolvable missions
  • Improved drone workshop performance when working on larger drones 
  • Improved loading times of drones with factory parts

Misc:

  • Upgraded our engine to Unity 2018.3 

 

Because this update contains new drone parts that are not yet live, the upload of sumo drones into the tournament is disabled. You can still play sumo tournaments, but the drones wont end up in the existing pool.

We had to reconfigure almost every aspect of the game due to the engine upgrade, so please also test some planetary missions and things like the weapon workshop and report if anything is not working.

Happy testing!

Cheers,
Stray Fawn Studio

 

Here is how you can get the preview build on steam:

– Open your Steam library
– Right click on Nimbatus in the Steam library
– Select Properties / Beta
– Select the Beta tab
– Select the Preview branch from the drop down
– Restart Steam in case the game does not update automatically

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  • 2 weeks later...

two things that seem like bugs to me, but may be features

 

1) catch allows for factories

2) when I activate a camera tracker, the tracker on the drone core stays active, so the screen adjusts to try to keep both the drone core and my sub-drone in view. I liked the old behavior that when a camera tracker was active, the implicit "camera tracker" in the drone core turned off. 

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2 is definitely a bug; in the bug reports section there should be a report you can upvote for urgency.

As for one, I'm thinking we might want to disallow factories on both racing and catch; their use seems to be mostly impeding other racers, and constantly manufacturing fuel to save weight. 

The first is debatable; it's a question of whether we want racing to be about good sportsmanship and running your best race.  We may want to permit the more "mad-max" strategies.  The second is something I consider a cheat.  Fuel and energy, in my opinion, should manufacture empty and refuel from other tanks, or refuel themselves if they're that kind of tank.  The one-fuel-factory-to-rule-them-all strategy should not have a place in racing.

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I really don't like factories in racing at all. 

I don't mind mad-max style racing, the problem is when the enemy, over time, produces fifty attack drones. That tactic quickly becomes so powerful that it is the only viable strategy.

I guess I'd be fine with factories if they were nerfed. I think the best fix for factories is to conserve mass, I've suggested this before. 

 

Another bug, bio barrel missions don't work anymore. If I deposit a barrel the counter stays at zero.

 

*VENT*

I really hate bug 2 above. I like to keep multiple small sub-drones. I am not good at building large multi-purpose drones, as they get very clumsy very quickly. Only good news is that this forces me to make all my sub-drones autonomous, as I can only drive one drone. 

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Weapons are forbidden, so attack drones probably aren't an issue -- at least I haven't seen a successful attack drone in the top rankings - but I see a number of drones dropping things like banks of magnetic repulsors.

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8 hours ago, EvilTesla said:

I really don't like factories in racing at all. 

I don't mind mad-max style racing, the problem is when the enemy, over time, produces fifty attack drones. That tactic quickly becomes so powerful that it is the only viable strategy.

I guess I'd be fine with factories if they were nerfed. I think the best fix for factories is to conserve mass, I've suggested this before. 

 

Another bug, bio barrel missions don't work anymore. If I deposit a barrel the counter stays at zero.

 

*VENT*

I really hate bug 2 above. I like to keep multiple small sub-drones. I am not good at building large multi-purpose drones, as they get very clumsy very quickly. Only good news is that this forces me to make all my sub-drones autonomous, as I can only drive one drone. 

The camera will be reworked, so it follows more smoothly and the tracking bug will be fixed.
We'll update the game again next week with all the fixes :)

Allowing 1 factory part in the new PvP modes was an experiment, we'll collect some feedback soon and have a look at the drones in the pool to analyze the meta and see wether a factory part was a good idea or not.

One way to balance it out would be to give the factory part more mass, or mass depending on how many parts are "stored". So racing drones are slowed down by factory parts. Or it could cost energy to print, so you need to have enough batteries, which will also slow you down.

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Factories don't have to print a lot, though.  A magnet with a bit of power is enough to lock onto an opponent and throw off their center of mass.  If I would see a single race use that involved good sportsmanship, I would reconsider, (Has anybody seen effective use of factories in a race that's more' legit'?) but it looks like it's all magnet blocks and infinite fuel.

I really think fuel and energy should build empty.  Anything functional should be able to sustain itself; if you only manufacture storage, it can charge up before you release it.  The current model really doesn't add much, and makes exploits available.

 

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On 2/9/2019 at 4:53 PM, Lurkily said:

Factories don't have to print a lot, though.  A magnet with a bit of power is enough to lock onto an opponent and throw off their center of mass.  If I would see a single race use that involved good sportsmanship, I would reconsider, (Has anybody seen effective use of factories in a race that's more' legit'?) but it looks like it's all magnet blocks and infinite fuel.

I really think fuel and energy should build empty.  Anything functional should be able to sustain itself; if you only manufacture storage, it can charge up before you release it.  The current model really doesn't add much, and makes exploits available.

 

The first use I thought of (and attempted to work with) for the factory parts were for throwing forward sensors to send feedback to the main race ship. The goal being to increase reaction time at high velocities. My first attempt was basically a spring net with proximity sensors, position trackers, one small fuel tank, and thrusters on the ends to seek out acceleration and deceleration strips and guide the ship to the position trackers on the acceleration or away from the trackers on danger or deceleration. This technique took too long to print and required my main ship to be quite slow to be effective, but I am not very good at optimizing competitive play, so others may have better luck with that.

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I suspect print time would be too slow (As you suspect) and you just wouldn't be able to get reliable data from something without pinpointing it's relative position and then you're talking complex logic and you're tripping on things like mass and part limits.

 

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