I'm happy to announce that 2.25 has finally been released! client download page server download page On behalf of the dev team, I'd like to thank the empires community and all testers participating and giving feedback throughout the process. Now on to 2.26! Have fun and be sure to leave comments!
I hope you guys enjoy the new features! Pity there wasn't a massive balance overhaul but oh well. post hijack: I'm abusing the second thread to highlight that there are some known issues that we are going to address soon: All shell based weapons (mortar, rpg, cannons, missles) might behave weird on the client. Support for systems without the SSE2 instruction set was dropped. If you are affected the game will crash on startup, to resolve this you have to upgrade your cpu. Contact me if you are affected, I will investigate if there is a possible individual fix. /post hijack ~brutos
Empires v2.25 April 14, 2010 ---------------------- Empires 2.25 Changes Added: + Spectators can now see the names and health of nearby players when spectating. + Hint system. + Speedometer. + emp_forceautoassign + emp_scrambleteams + Map entities swappable between teams, via a console setting. + Autorespawn support for emp_vehicle_spawner. You can still spawn as many vehicles as you like, but only the most recent will respawn on its destruction. + Sabotage support for map buildables. + Steamworks API. + Chat escape sequences %_r and %_R for research and research time respectively. + Skins (camouflage) for vehicles. + Unbuilt and sabotaged building effects. + Chassis-specific self-destruct timers for vehicles. + More weapon variables like turning speed, explosion force, etc can be changed in the scripts. + Made grenade timer, damage and explosion radius scriptable. + Made heal and repair amount for the engy tool scriptable. + Custom particles appear on a vehicle when it dies. + Implemented scriptable VGUI skills and weapons for the classes. + emp_sv_lua_from file displays Lua error messages now. + Per map particle manifests. + Particle support for all grenades. + Particles for vehicle weapons. + Show current research in hud. + Color in commander name dependent on health. + Cvar to show damage done to tanks in number. + Added a console command to dump all the active sound names. + Static crosshair with hud_dynamicrosshair 0. Modified: + Map skybox raised for commander view and standardized squad artillery. + emp_canyon: Reworked with textures and added rain. + emp_district402: Added back way into NF 3rd flag. + emp_duststorm: Reworked with textures and effects. + emp_isle: Retextured, replaced old palm trees and added 2 new ladder in NW. + emp_glycencity: Retextured and tweaked to allow acceptable HDR, new snow blending effect. + CV hull health is 2000, CV armor plate health is 250. + Soft collisions: player doesn't collide with teammates but instead is slowly pushed away. + Optimized bandwidth used by dumb missiles and shells. + Optimized CPU time used by tanks. + Scout sabotage changed from damage type to setting health directly. + Chat window now always has a slightly grey background. + Sabotage damage to 4hp every 3 seconds. + The amount of ammo a class gets at spawn is now scriptable. + Grenadier can now carry 12 rockets (gets 8 at spawn). He also gets 5 mines at spawn (max is still 8). + When spotting enemy armor, it will now name the actual chassis of the vehicle instead of just "armor". + Restrict skid sounds to play only if handbrake is pressed. + Limit horns to a time interval, rather than 4 times per map. + Game music volume is now set by volume slider in options. + First spawn does not take any tickets. + Bots follow your view angles in vehicles. + Ambient Sound Lengths are no longer hardcoded. + Changed the dropdown-box for vehicle weapons to buttons. + Enable APC spawns from the start. + Disabled green background in mortar HUD. + Scoreboard now shows the classes of all players after the game ends. + Player now always sees the chassis indicator for tanks of the same team. + Moved heat capacity from chassis to engine. + Each commander has his own engine now. + Increased the amount of particles that can be sent through the TE system to 4096. + Increased the max engineer walls to 30. Full walls now cost 3 of this limit, 1/3 walls cost 1. + Fixed an issue with commander ML turrets not doing damage when you built them and then changed team. + Made the vehicle preset dropdown bigger so you can write more in it. + Precache all vehicle models on maps where commander exists. + Dead people can talk with alive people. + Teammates are not blinded by concussion grenades. + Projectiles (grenades) go through friendly players. Fixed: + emp_streetsoffire: Fixed crash. + Changing infantry weapons as vehicle passenger works again. + Invalid chat escape sequences are printed back to chat. + Particle tracers no longer spout off attachment error. + Chat window hides when nothing to read. + Crash in spectator. + Crash with the vehicle spawner. + Calculator amount doesn't get reset on suicide. + Can now destroy buildables that have never been healed (issue with solid on spawn). + Fixed issue with sabotage triggered outputs. + Stats saving after a client disconnect. + Passenger could control tank. + Removed unnecessary (un)parenting when getting attachments. + Multiplayer tonemapping fixes. + Unbuilt walls not taking damage. + Fixed bug where player sees mortar shells from a grenadier staying inside his model. + Fix showing default tracer instead of weapon-specific for vehicle MGs. + Scout rifle cycle time matches animation. + Effective turn rate of missiles depending on tick rate. + Resources given from refineries with output greater than 1 weren't scaled properly. + Incorrect starting point for weapon tracer. + Scout silencer not working.
Cool stuff. Changelog would be nice and download is slow from all 3 options. Also Empty you should update your utorrent client to 2.0 Please call the next version 2.3, i know you can do it!
facepalm things: apc speeds - Tokyyooo driiffttt in mah fat racing car, sayonara rpgs. (this+spawn+2 grens with armor buff = LOLOL APC RUSH) scout speed + 3phase - i went from 50-54 speed in the apc to 56-60 (why i dunt haz 20%?) nuke effect - unless this thing kills everything in 1 hit its silly... arty effect - lol smokescreen general firing of particles from vehicles - derrrr its not aligned with the weaponry... rifleman exp-nades - unintentional smoke grenade while spammed? scout concussion nade - broken? or is self-flash/team-flash removed? and why does it make a big flamey explosion if it does 0 dmg? =S *awaits a multiplayer server to be hosted to exploit imbalances*
2.24d Hotfix Release ( 1 2) Coffeeburrito 06-05-2009 10:47 PM Btw. balance changelog would be also nice. And not to forget: Thanx to all developers and everybody who has spent his free time to finish 2.25.
Dont update until friday or saturday. There might be something gamebreaking left that remained unnoticed.
Well when I stared testing 2.25 a few weeks ago I was eager to see what you had done. And I was amazed by the new effects and the ideas you had. And I still think that 2.25 has many good things inside: The gui information about the research is a very good idea and help players alot. Also the ingame tutorialscreens are very good for new players. The removal of the MkIIs leave me with a teary eye. I liked those but i guess they still made mediums obsolete and therefore its better to remove them. The idea of displaying the com healthstatus, by colouring the coms name appropriate is also very useful. And lots of other features I just found in the changelog. Beside that there are some things I have to say make this release look wrong: First of all the scout concussion. I mean wtf. There are some videos on youtube where you can see how flashbangs actually work. Like here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0vNqsC_Sog and here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZM8Mq9ll1g&feature=related. In Empires they look like a explosive grenade that does actually damage. Second some particle effects. Well the idea with the particles is good. They give Empires a fresh look and most of them are nice but some of them look just like they have to much effect for the real effect the weapon does. Looking at the explosion of the nuke it looks like it should kill everything inside. But it doesn't. Also the effect of the HE Arty looks good but does bad because its worse than scouts spamming smoke grenades. We had a situation on slaughtered were arties were firing at s-bend and we were unable to see if anything was coming at us. Because of this several enemy tanks (which were uneffected by friendly fire) slipped through our lines because we couldn't see a thing. The last thing really annoys me. APCs have spawns from the beginning, which makes them extremely powerful at the start of a match. Sometimes APC rushes could be fun. But having them from the start takes us back to the old times where many games lasted only five minutes because of the fucking spawns. And many coms did that 5-8 times in a row. So either one team is fucked because of the rush or the other one when the rush doesn't work out properly and their com wasted all the res on the vf and the apcs. Just my 2 cents anyway. Thanks for the work. I really appreciate that. And I hope for faster releases in the future. I will try to help to test them as often as I can.
