Hello mates! Warpfrog team have a new bugfixing patch for you, along with some optimizations and improvements to AI behaviors.

Fixes in this patch address a wide range of issues such as the exploits where you could duplicate items, to full-blown nasty bugs such as crystals having a chance to fall through the ground when physics is set to set to low.

There are also a bunch of AI fixes included in this patch. As mentioned before, AI is hell for us because we have a very complicated system of behavior trees that have way too much cross-branch dependencies and spaghetti code which creates a system where one tiny thing changes here, one massive thing breaks over there, and a ton of iteration time in between.
This was just the way it all organically happened from constantly developing the game, adding a ton of new staff to the team to the previously one-man project over time, and changing the roadmap scope over years which added things to the game that were never planned for, etc.

The most major thing that would fix these type of issues would be to start from scratch with the lessons learned to develop a nice new clean code, and that is exactly what we will be doing when we develop our next game on the new Thunder Road 2 framework. However for B&S we are stuck, so the best we can do is keep tweaking what we have and try to iron out the worst issues.

One of the most notorious issues to be addressed in this patch was related to the AI getting too close to player, sometimes even glitching into the player. It may not be perfect as it is still a WIP but an easy first step fix we took to alleviate this issue was to remove the tiny weapons from AI where they could never effectively find the right attacking distance in VR; for example the little hammer.

Another good rangefinding fix was addressing an issue with shield bash where shield enemy would constantly get in the player's face to try and rangefind the bash attack as the primary behaviour, instead of only bashing as a secondary circumstantial behavior when player got in the AI's face. Before now, if you were fighting a shield enemy they were most likely constantly in your face trying to shield bash you which was the opposite behavior than intended; the bash was supposed to keep you away from the enemy.

These two fixes help a bunch, but where things get hairy is in waves of multiple enemy, as AI rangefinding issues tend to get compounded when multiple enemy are present. To help, we amended a behavior for AI where those were not actively attacking the player will now hang back and not crowd the player.
Multiple enemies will still close in to attack player, but those who are not actively attacking will get out of the way rather than just standing there idling in your face. This will hopefully help reduce the sensation of AI crowding the player for no reason in group fights.

Meanwhile 1v1 the AI seems to be doing well and ranges all seem to be good, and attack pattern seems to be good and working as expected. The later factions (Eraden, The Eye) will attack with more ferocity than the early easy factions (Wildfolk, Outlaws).



The dodging behaviours for all AI is something we still need to iron out, as it is still not triggering properly and so was not included in this patch. We have a strange issue to diagnose where the dodging enemy is moving as though stuck in mud... they do the dodge animation but remain on the spot, which as you can imagine is not effective, lol.

A nice plus for AI in this patch is that some missing death animations were restored! It was one of those things where a "simple" change somewhere totally innocuous caused a ripple bug effect to cause regression and it had disabled death animations.



Last note - You might have noticed the download for this patch is huge; really sorry about that, guys! There is an optimization in Unity we needed to activate because it improved loading times for all assets, including up to 50% faster loading for dungeons, which of course is a great thing. But that bad part is it causes all the asset bundles to rebuild, meaning a full redownload of the game bundles is needed. However, this was just a once-off thing, so the good news is it should not need to happen again in the future.

Cheers guys, full changelog below!

Full Changelog

Version 1.0.3.576

Enhancements

• Added initial enriched presence for Steam
  
• Increased audio sample rate SFX/Music to improve audio quality
  
• Resetting settings in the option book will save options with the default value
  
• Added some logging and fallbacks if the game cant write to the log file
  
• Added SpectatorHide layer which the spectator camera cannot see.
  
• The inventory artifact mesh preview is now invisible in the spectator camera. But is visible once grabbed
  

Fixes

• Fixed Navmesh issues in Collapsed Ceiling/SewerGate/Castle_10
  
• Fixed Transi_Castle_16 Rope rotating when the LOD changes
  
• Fixed T1 Lightning crystal falling through the ground in home on Low Physics quality
  
• Fixed items loading the wrong itemId when spawned via ItemData
  
• Fixed bucklers improperly positioned when worn
  
• Fixed error with archery target and archery target support not showing in inventory
  
• Fixed water settings refreshing too often, spamming the log file
  
• Fixed the skip message SFX not being linked to the UI audio slider
  
• Fixed Eraden Tunic nerfing the player's focus regen
  
• Fixed reveal decals not working on npcs when their ethnicity is changed
  
• Fixed missing characters on UIs with handwritten fonts on asian languages
  
• Fixed mod option tooltips not closing when a options' category is closed
  
• Fixed metallic props and weapons being too dark
  
• Fixed warbow orientation when held in the right hand
  
• Fixed citadel bird spawner facing the wrong way
  
• Fixed colliders on scaffolding in UndergroundZipline preventing you from going into the scaffolding
  
• Fixed some collision issues in CoastalFort
  
• Fixed collider on Museum ocean so it cant be walked on
  
• Fixed incorrect flowmap texture used on fire imbue trail vfx
  
• Fixed bug with some ethnic groups eyes not being able to change color in character select
  
• Fixed storm beam vfx flickering
  
• Fixed some typos in the lore
  
• Fixed eyelashes using old shader, they now use TR/Litmoss
  
• Fixed tutorial stone in home using old shader, now uses TR/Litmoss
  
• Fixed male and female shirt textures stretching
  
• Fixed small stone sword holder orientation being wrong in the shop
  
• Fixed the journal not being lit properly in some instances
  
• Fixed new characters in character creation having the inventory of a previous character
  
• Fixed an issue where saving a new character wont refresh the character slot
  
• Fixed the gold death penalty causing all gold to always be lost
  
• Fixed currencies not being reset on death
  
• Fixed multiple cheats carrying over from sandbox to crystalhunt when switching characters
  
• Fixed being able to duplicate items in the item book
  
• Fixed the players eyes looking at nothing when close to the mirror
  
• Fixed spectator cam not enable book UIs after changing level
  
• Fixed being able to store broken parts of items
  
• Fixed NRE when cloning null content states
  
• Fixed issue with the shopkeeper not burning
  
• Fixed incorrect, broken mercenary shoulders appearing in shop
  
• Fixed the item book being empty if the category is null
  
• Fixed the game attempting to load old saves from before 1.0 and logging it as a error
  

Optimisations

• Build size reduction from removing duplicate assets
  
• Added LODs to particle effects so they fade out/disappear when you are far away from them
  
• Optimsed many particle effects to reduce their memory impact
  
• Optimised infuser VFX to hopefully reduce crashes
  
• Asset bundle optimisations
  

Skills

• Fixed unconscious creatures becoming intimidated.
  
• Karate chop always scares at least one additional creature
  
• When in hyperfocus you move faster
  
• Ranged Expertise will bounce projectiles off walls instead of going through them
  
• Fixed movement speed multiplier on swords slowing you down
  
• Heatwave shouldnt stagger if the creatures already burning.
  
• Fixed boost jump resetting when you reload the spell
  

Crystal Hunt

• Lowered the number of enemies in the eye home invasion wave.
  
• Lowered Golem explosion radius
  
• Fixed issues which can break the golem fight
  
• Prevent staggering if the golem is already stunned
  
• Prevent the golem from exploding without the crystal being pulled out
  
• Fixed issue with effects not stopping in some circumstances
  
• Fixed issue being unable to respawn if you die while climbing the golem
  
• Lowered meteor damage to player
  
• Fixed the secret ending being solvable with only one fuse
  
• Fixed the infuser orbs not making you ungrab any of the orbs before they despawn
  
• Fixed being able to store items in inventory while they are in the infuser or skill tree holders
  
• Fixed your hands still holding onto the infuser orbs if you take out the ungrab the orbs when the crystal is taken out the infuser
  
• Fixed gravity push knocking the crystal out the infuser
  
• Fixed errors when loading and unloading the tutorial dungeon
  

AI

• Removed very small weapons from dungeon enemies to prevent them from getting up too close
  
• Exclude shield bash ranges from min and max melee ranges. Significantly improves the behaviour of shield enemies, prevents them getting super close
  
• Fixed Shopkeeper movement issues in some situations
  
• Fix death animations not playing properly
  
• Prevent creatures playing death animationss if inert or destabilized when killed
  
• Prevent creatures not engaged in melee from advancing in and hugging the player
  

Modding

• Add begin transaction event to shop
  
• Made skill load events static
  
• Fixed issue with SDK manikinproperty scriptable objects not being treated as equal to the base game ones. It will now check it based on the asset name
  
• Fixed overriding ethnicity in creature tables and waves jsons not working
  
• Made some methods on the golem virtual
  
• Brains can load a subclass of a module types, allowing for extended brains modules
  
• Avoid NRE when the playerhand has no ragdoll hand
  
• Added a public setter for the Spectator.LockedTransform
  
• Added automatically calculating the defaultValueIndex for mod options based on default values on the method parameter/field/property