NEW FEATURES
There is now a new Free-look mode spectating feature, which allows you to move the camera manually and look around the map. You toggle this mode with the space bar. You can also zoom in and out with the mouse wheel and alternate perspective/orthographic view by pressing P.

Battle mode now has a new FFA option, which forces everyone to play as mercenary.

Battle mode has another game option called Respawn Rounds. This will break the match up into rounds, causing everyone to respawn at the same time. When you die you will go into a temporary spectator mode until everyone in the round is dead and one team wins. Then the next round will begin.



MASSIVELY IMRPOVED NETCODE
The netcode has been improved to give almost perfect hit detection for those with stable connections under 300 ping. The server will now compensate for your lag by REWINDING other players to match what you saw in your client when you fired your weapon. This will have a huge impact on close range weapons and snipers, and should make a huge improvement to gameplay overall. Does this sound familiar? If so that's because I said the exact same thing about 5 versions ago.. however I only just noticed a huge bug which was preventing this rewind functionality from working AT ALL. So yeah.. my bad. But I've fixed it now and it's gunna be great!



FALL DAMAGE
You will now take damage when you fall from a huge height. You start taking damage from a 10m fall and the damage quickly ramps up the further you fall. Falling can never kill you, but it will definitely hurt in a combat situation and requires special consideration as you navigate around the map. Fall damage adds a whole new level of tactics and immersion to the game and I'm very excited to see how it plays out!



RESPECT CHANGES
A new option has been added to the player menu which allows you to enable/disable respect. This lets you disable respect when you want to experiment or just fool around, and enable it when you're feeling competitive. You can change this value ingame whenever you like, however you will be required to kill yourself for the change to take effect. If you want you can permanently leave it enabled/disabled, and this value will be saved and remembered by your profile. Team based respect (capturing flags, etc) will still apply even if you have respect disabled.
Respect can now be earned by mercenaries. If you don't want to earn it, simply disable it!
Respect is now earned in permanent servers at the same rate as in quickmatches.



MAP EDITOR FEATURES
Maps can now support decals! This allows players to add decals to the map, such as doors, windows, traffic lights, power lines, lights, trees, debris and more! This not only makes the maps look far more detailed but it also provides new gameplay elements as players will be able to partially hide underneath objects.

Map makers now have the option to add FOG to their maps, with the ability to change both the colour and density. This can be used to simulate fog, dust, smoke, clouds, or a whole bunch of crazy effects. It looks awesome.



GRAPHICAL IMPROVEMENTS
Muzzle flash from weapons now dynamically light up the map! This looks extra awesome in dark places and makes players easier to see as well.
Explosions from grenades, bazookas, flashbangs, stinger missiles and vehicles also light up the map, making them look extra flashy.
Added ambient occlusion to the map lighting phase, making corners seem darker and more gritty.
Fixed a few graphical display glitches.
Added a new option that allows you to zoom the camera in and out of the map, adjusting the field of view and making the maps more immersive.
Added a new option that provides fullscreen antialiasing (defaults off). Makes everything look a little bit sexier.
The high-res walls option now bevels corners of geometry, making everything look a lot more chunky and 3D.



HUD/MENU IMPROVEMENTS
The menu has been reworked slightly, making it a bit sexier and easier to use.
The HUD has been made to look cleaner and sharper.
The minimap now shows spawn zones.
The game objectives now display underneath the minimap and default to permanently displaying.



PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS
Added a new option that adjusts the shadow quality, allowing you to significantly increase your fps.
Made other optimisations to increase fps.



OTHER SMALL CHANGES
Added a new Indonesian translation. Thanks krazerdx!
Added a new Polski translation. Thanks Visegerd!
Updated STMResidence. Thanks STM1993!
Updated Corrumpo. Thanks Qwertybeef!
Improved stats tracking for skills.
You can now set a specific hosting IP via the command line.
You can now choose a name to play as in lan games even if you don't have internet access. Instead of showing "player" it will show whatever you have typed into the login box wih asterixes infront of it. Eg: **bencelot
Barrier now fades out when you have low mana.
Gangsters deal less damage with the knife.
Gangster no longer spawn with super weapons.
Super weapons now glow on the ground, making them easier to see.
The mouse sensitivity will now change when using sniper rifles to move at the same speed as other weapons.
Jumping now slightly increases your weapons recoil.



WEAPON CHANGES
USP Tactical damage is now 18 instead of 19.
USP Tactical fadeoff is now 0.8 instead of 0.5.

Deagle damage fadeoff is now 0.8 instead of 0.75.

M3 Super range is now 30 instead of 33.
M3 Super rpm is now 100 instead of 90.

UZI movement speed is now 0.92 instead of 0.9.
UZI movement recoil is now 3.4 instead of 3.5.

M249 reload is now 3.2 instead of 3.0.
M249 vehicle damage multiplier is now 1.9 instead of 2.0.
M249 movement speed is now 0.76 instead of 0.78.

Ruger damage is now 42 instead of 45.

MP5 damage is now 21 instead of 20.
MP5 bullet speed is now 46 instead of 48.

SPAS range is now 25 instead of 27.

M60 range is now 55 instead of 60.
M60 bullet speed is now 60 instead of 63.
M60 movement speed is now 0.72 instead of 0.74.
M60 vehicle damage multiplier is now 2.2 instead of 2.5.
M60 reload is now 3.5 instead of 3.0.

Barrett damage is now 65 instead of 64.

Tasers damage is now 26 instead of 22.

Nailgun damage is now 32 instead of 28.

Blast Cannon explosion range is now 3 instead of 2.
Blast Cannon spread is now 2 instead of 4.
Blast Cannon recoil is now 0 instead of 0.5.

Minigun damage fadeoff is now 0.55 instead of 0.6.

Seek Rifle damage is now 35 instead of 40.
Seek Rifle rpm is now 150 instead of 180.



PHYSICAL SKILL CHANGES
Final Focus duration is now 3s instead of 1s.

Frenzy initial rof boost now ranges from 120% to 105% instead of 130% to 102%.

Clip Magnet reload time now ranges from 130% to 200% instead of 150% to 220%.

Force Fields now last 8s instead of 6s.
Force Fields cooldown is now 10s instead of 8s.

Bouncing Bullets steering speed is now 200 instead of 150.
Bouncing Bullets bullet speed is now 20% instead of 30%.

Radiate now causes your enemies to fire at 140% instead of 130% rof.

Stagnation slow now ranges from 85 to 57 instead of 80 to 52.
Stagnation bullet damage now ranges from 85 to 57 instead of 80 to 52.

Parasite Swarm parasite speed is now 8.5m/s instead of 10m/s.
Parasite Swarm weakness duration is now 4s instead of 3s.



MENTAL SKILL CHANGES
Regeneration mana regen now ranges from 0.5 to 3.3 instead of 0.5 to 1.9.
Regeneration range is now 20m vs mutants instead of 15m.
Regeneration range is now 10m vs gangsters instead of 5m.

Disabling Drop will negate all fall damage as long as you successfully land on an enemy.
Disabling Drop max fall distance is now 18m instead of 15m.
Disabling Drop range is now 2m to 7.6m instead of 2m to 6.2m.
Disabling Drop enemy regen rate now ranges from +1.5hp/s per meter to +2.2hp/s per meter instead of a flat +2hp/s per meter.

Dash fade time now ranges from 1s to 4.5s instead of 1s to 5.2s.

Infection seek speed now ranges from 80% to 10% instead of 75% to 5%.

Teleportation avoids fall damage, allowing you to teleport off buildings without taking damage.

Black Hole now causes enemy bullets to travel at normal speed, instead of 25%.
Black Hole enemy bullet seek is now +50 degrees/s instead of +25 degrees/s.
Black Hole slow now ranges from 45% to 66% instead of 50% to 64%.

Darkness fade speed now ranges from 35% to 77% instead of 30% to 86%.



CYBERNETIC SKILL CHANGES
Shockwave now prevents your victim's barrier from absorbing damage.
Shockwave slow is now fixed at 80% for all levels instead of ranging from 75% to 47%.
Shockwave duration is now 3s instead of 4s.
Shockwave mana cost is now 15 at all levels instead of ranging from 15 to 29.

Energize base rate now ranges from 120% to 162% instead of 115% to 157%.

Phasic Bullets can now only bounce off walls once.
Phasic Bullets reload time now ranges from 130% to 200% instead of 150% to 290%.

Fire Storm 2x chance now ranges from 30% to 86% instead of 30% to 100%.

Bullet Time cooldown is now 7s instead of 6s.
Bullet Time radius is now 3.5m instead of 3.75m.

Stolen Seekers now requires 12 bullets to activate instead of 10.
Stolen Seekers now freeze for a short period of time before firing off.

Static Charges no longer regenerates you by +1mana/s for each of your charges in existence. Instead you will simply receive an immediate but once off +2 mana for each charge you create.

Lasing Orb is now an active skill and casting it for 100 mana will teleport the orb to your current location.
Lasing Orb now has different triggering rates for you and other players. You will range from 10% to 38%. Others will range from 20% to 76%. It used to range from 10% to 52% for both.



VEHICLE CHANGES
Roadster now has 750hp instead of 800hp but a smoke point of 300hp instead of 400hp. Fragile but agile.

Radar Truck now costs $2500 instead of $3000 with a sight range of 25m instead of 20m. However it only has 750hp instead of 1000hp. This wasn't being purchased enough due to having a fairly high price for a 'team vehicle'.

Pickup now has a regen rate of 3% instead of 2% and starts smoking at 300hp instead of 500hp. This also wasn't being purchased as much as other vehicles, and these changes should make it better at hit and runs and chasing enemies.

Torpedo now takes 5s to detonate instead of 6s, however the explode damage is only 750hp instead of 1000hp. This makes the Torpedo funner and easier to use, while making it less effective vs the combat vehicles with 1000hp (Pickup, Hornet and other Torpedos).



MISSION CHANGES
Torturer now requires 750hp damage instead of 500hp.

Grenadier now only rewards 10% for gangster kills instead of 20%.

Ammo Drop has been removed from the game and replaced with Roadkill! Roadkill rewards you $20000 when you get 2 consecutive roadkills. Gangster roadkills only reward 10%.

Rifle Range now requires 12 consecutive shots instead of 10.



BUG FIXES
Fixed hacking on the server-side by monitoring values as they're updated and automatically reporting and correcting suspicious activity.
Fixed an exploit where you could jump with Spike Trap.
Fixed a bug when typing values into text boxes in the map editor.
Fixed a bug where teleportation would sometimes cause the mouse pointer to jump to the top left corner.
Fixed a bug with warpy bullets while driving a vehicle.
Fixed a bug with support not working when you jump.
Fixed a bug where disabling drop would sometimes not trigger when you held down jump.
Fixed a bug with skill cycling.
Fixed a bug with mouse jittering.
Fixed a bug where the game would crash when you tried to disconnect halfway through loading the map editor.
Fixed a few graphical display issues.
Fixed a bug with Assassination and Hit Man missions respawning.

Hm.

1) Are newbies getting some kind of newbie shield against knives? There is no way a 100hp newbie who doesn't know Barrier can get slashed by a 125 damage knife(and Parasite penalty is not triggered) and still stand.

2) Batman said that you can jump and throw Spike Traps, and still get the traps quite well concentrated in an area.

Please make menu entries that are clickable glow in a bright color (brighter than red) that might even move a bit (twinkling). It seems like the Interface is still too cluttered (imagine there are three menus: MAIN MENU, Left column, Pages).
Why I'm suggesting that? Some newbies couldn't find the Regeneration skill because they didn't know/see that there were actually 3 pages of skills!!!!

Despite all the balancing stuff recently,
I'd rather see Ben complete this before anything else now that the majorly game-breaking stuff for 0.7 are out of the way.

hehe yup, it's about time

M249 SAW and M60 need a tone down or a change in game dynamics elsewhere but
people are constantly buying these weapons because it is super-easy to kill everything with it.
Mutants, cars, gangsters... everything lays down.
Popping out of invis with vamp and static and bam there you go. Maybe even Final focus.

Counter: Skills (BT) or knife + running (and hoping that they will bow to your USP or Ruger)

Balances for weapons, missions and vehicles are up. Voice your thoughts!

USP and UZI get a buff? Seriously?

Also, there are some damn skill combos where every weapon will simply deal too much damage making it easy to spam bullets and kill people, a tactic employed by some new players. Also founiette uses this tactic a lot. I don't know their actual build but this is so damn op as it disrupts every normal gameplay (imho).
M4A1 with this build is a sniper gun and all the heavy machine guns create an area denial field.

But that was not what you asked for. Sorry.

Missions still are way to unobstrusive. They are simply there. I'm in favor of selecting ONE single mission that gets displayed somewhere on screen permanently (toggleable).
Making missions harder is better at the moment. Making it harder to sniper is good.

I didn't complete Torturer very often, but when I did it was easy so I'm also for the higher damage needed.

The reduction of Torpedos damage is a good choice. However, it only recently got used more and more while being treated as an unwanted step-child all the while before.

Seek Rifle nerf: great. We need to see how it performs.

For vehicles and missions I have stats tracking showing completion and purchase rates as raw values in the database. In general I'm aiming to balance things out and get lots of variety. So for example the Torpedo was being purchased more than it should for it's price, so it gets a slight nerf. Torturer was rewarding a lot more money than Silent Stabbings (same tier) so I made it a bit harder. As for the overall design of missions I'll leave it as is for now, but when I implement mercenary based contracts etc I might rework it a bit and integrate them into the game better.

As for skills, I'm getting started on that now, and will look into these OP combos that you speak of (though I'm not entirely sure what skills you're talking about in that OP combo you mentioned).

Now onto weapons which are the main chunk of balancing so far. I mostly balance these by the statistics pages. Maths is just the most reliable thing we have, and as this version has been around for ages we have a very large and reliable sample size. I've also read all of the posts in the balance thread of course, but stats take priority. So the general method is to look at the stats page and see what needs nerfing/buffing (supers are aiming for 2.0 KD/1.5 KP, Tier 2 aiming for 1.1 KD, Tier 1 aiming for 0.85 KD). I then go to the forums to see how people think it should be altered. Another thing I've done is compared the stats from previous versions and looked at previous changelogs to see what changed. The stats are very reliable and if I buff a weapon, the KD value almost always goes up the following version. It's actually quite amazing how predictable it is despite all the other changes going on that might affect the metagame.

Anywhoo, if you look at the stats this current version you can see that the UZI isn't performing all that well compared to the other tier 1 weapons. It may be the case that some specific skill/UZI combinations are OP, but the weapon itself isn't too great on average (over a very large sample size). So the UZI gets a small buff, and we can try and pinpoint the specific skills that are causing the UZI to do so well in certain situations and address them there (maybe Frenzy is OP for example).

As for the USP, it's just performing very poorly, and it might be nice to make it a bit more useful in general. Though by all means let me know if you feel otherwise. I wasn't aware that people considered the USP to be too strong?

Yeah but don't forget the uniqueness of a Torpedo. I mean, a Loafer, Buggy and Pickup more or less all serve the same purpose. In this case, the torpedo simply is fun because it has a special purpose and because EXPLOSIONS. Don't overnerf. Just sayin....


Is this really reliable? Isn't any weapon in the hands of a skilled player much more deadly than the best weapon in the hands of a noob? Idk if you also analyzed this level dependent but I really believe that the UZI shouldn't get a buff. I mean, do it if you want, we will see how it turns out. Maybe I'm wrong. The USP however is instaequipped which should make it worse than all other weapons. It should be sufficient if the enemy is playing very foolish but shouldn't be a weapon that gets used regularly, more of a last line of defense.

I'd love to see the following relations if possible:
player skill - weapon
map size - weapon

(for small maps, some weapons are much better than in open or semi-open maps - imagine the UZI on barn and asylum)

Of course it will be, but does this matter? We still need to balance the weapons regardless, and I believe this should be balanced on the average player. Subvein is first and foremost a fun casual game, not a competitive game. Balance and competition are still important, but I don't want to balance everything around the top 5% of players at the expense of everyone else. If we were to do that then weapons like Ruger would be nerfed massively, because it's very powerful amongst good players and useless amongst newbies. If we were to balance just for the top 5% though then we'd have to bring Ruger down to normal levels for top tier players, but in doing this the gun would be totally useless for everyone. I think instead it's best to balance around the average, so that good players who have mastered difficult weapons are rewarded.




Yup this would be awesome, but we don't have that data atm unfortunately. We certainly would see UZI's doing better on Asylum and worse on Barn (and Barrett would be visa versa). But while this information would be interesting, it's not needed for balancing. As we only have 1 set of values for weapons, they need to be balanced across the full range of players, maps and game modes (although Outbreak won't be counted towards stats tracking because it's PvE and it'd just skew the results).

True, for the sake of easyness, but given the current dataset, we gained more samples from veterans in relation to newbs I'd say. Anyway, let's try your changes and see what happens. With a huge player influx, we will certainly get an even better estimation as there will be a more realistic spread of pros vs. noobs.

Cheers,
chross

FALLING DAMAGE!?
Im gonna cry...

Great to hear about changes

The fall damage is just a test this version. If we don't like it then it can be very easily removed. But seeing as we're still in beta mode atm (before v1.0) I figure why not test it out? From the testing I've done it feels pretty nice and is only a huge factor on really high buildings. Anyway it will be interesting to see how it affects combat.

One more thing, nothing special but it might still be important for new players:

>Add a full map view (press M to see the entire map).

This should encourage teamwork and make it more tactical. I think it's kinda obvious.
Map could also possibly show us dead players (like it does in bf3 for example) and mark the spot where they just died with a skull icon. Always helpful in other shooters, gives you a better view of what's going on at the battlefield and helps making tactical desicions. Like "oh! the entire squad got wiped out right behind that corner! maybe i should take cover and wait for the reinforcements?" and so on.

Everything else sounds brilliant.

Just dont delay it for another couple of years please

hehe, I'm coding as fast as I can!

Ben, I dont have anything against that,
I meant only that I love to fall from X meters

+Christmas HUD and the 2x exp. Be santa for us!

Moar dmg! --_--