Introduction
This post is also available on GitHub Discussions.
After the very hectic month previously with new map launches and major revamps taking place on every one of the game's major components, I wanted to take it slow and give myself a break. That being said though, there were still a lot of changes, some included right now, and others being prepared to be rolled out in the coming weeks (or months). This includes a potential new port of NZ:P being in a limited-testing phase, which you can read about further below.
Despite last month's cramped update list, I still managed to lose a number of Patrons. If that trend continues I'll have to considerably slow down development on this project and move to other things (like picking up more hours for my real job :p). So keep that in mind if the trend starts turning that way!
Further Progress on Co-Operative between PS VITA <-> Nintendo Switch
The initial major hurdles with multiplayer between these two platforms have been overcome, that is protocol efficiency and crash testing. Right now, you *can* play with other clients (either through local WiFi connections, which is recommended, or hosting and port forwarding yourself, eh). You will just miss a lot of bells and whistles, like the revive feature being disabled for performance temporarily, or player names. I'd like to investigate using [Frag-Net](https://frag-net.com/) as a traditional master server and leave it up to you guys to host servers in the future, to mitigate any need for user port forwarding. There's still a lot to do before this is finalized, but I did a lot of work on it this month so I figured I should mention it!
Fixes for 32-Bit Desktop Systems
Rejoice! Issues with client prediction and player view angles have been resolved, restoring playability for 32-Bit Windows and Linux systems. I apologize for letting this slip under for so long -- and I will do a better job ensuring 32-Bit support remains stable and that no issues like this occur again in the future.
Further AI Parity Changes & Fixes
(Please don't mind the debug fire!)
A lot of time this month was dedicated to revamping AI systems to bring about more fixes and resolve more disparity between NZ:P and Call of Duty. In particular:
- Fixed several bugs and oversights with barricade hopping that made it either broken, or a considerably slow process.
- AI spawning is now more erratic, picking spawn points more randomly and also not waiting before spawning more than one zombie at a single point.
- AI now has a 30 second bleedout on the field if it gets stuck.
- AI now attacks much faster, and can "double-swipe" the player if they are not careful.
Progress on "VERRÜCKT"
Being the next major planned map release, it would make sense for work on Verrückt to begin picking up, which it has. I released a teaser video on YouTube of the German Spawn Area a few weeks before this post, so be sure to see that video to get a better feel for how the map is coming along.
General Co-Operative Fixes
Thanks to an influx of bug reporting by DerpedCrusader, a lot of time was spent fixing several general/gameplay-related issues with Co-Operative play. Please be sure to report some yourself if you play on any of the FTE-based platforms, now that Co-Operative is easy for users to access, it's more important than ever!
Development of Support for NZ:P Beta Maps
A long-term goal of mine has been to bring every one together through these new versions of NZ:P, and a big part of that is compatibility with our vast selection of legacy maps. This is a very long and tedious effort, and there are a lot of maps I need to play test to make adjustments for this feature, but the well-known map "Ankunft" is now mostly-playable, omitting an AI bug, which you can read about in the description of this YouTube video I released last night.
New Handheld Port Information
Porting NZ:P to a new platform is always a daunting and tedious task. NZ:P is not a conventional Quake mod -- there are a lot of changes and additions that need to be brought over to a vanilla Quake instance, or a lot of work must be done porting an existing backend to a new platform. This is why new ports are kept under wraps until they can be evaluated as being worth the effort, there have been quite a few instances over the years where something starts, then abruptly stops. This new platform being worked on, however, is showing great progress and further demonstrates NZ:P's scalability potential. It is not ready to be talked about in-full and announced publicly, but I'd like to invite you to my Patreon where I have written about this in more detail and also have released a very unstable, and unfinished, prototype build. If that's not your forte, no worries! Assuming progress continues at the rate it has been, you will eventually see public builds become available for testing as well. :)
Misc. Bug Fix/Small Addition Bullet List
Global:
- Addressed an issue where the Pack-A-Punch would attempt to locate it's model in the wrong path.
- Fixed cooling down the M2 Flamethrower when it was not in your active slot.
- Addressed several issues with Mule Kick and entering Last Stand.
- Add support for specifying custom Barricade health values for Map Makers.
- Addressed several issues with the Restart feature.
- Map Makers can now opt to make every Perk-A-Cola machine leave after a certain amount of purchases.
- Add "trigger_hurt" and "trigger_setfire" for Map Makers.
- Add the "scale" model field so Map Makers can scale models and sprites to be larger or smaller.
- Addressed an issue that prevented Map Makers from placing Zombie Spawn Points below the world origin (also fixes Christmas Special!)
And more, and more, and more.. See you next month!
Thanks to my Patrons!
- mochi
- Rinse a Gateau Mandate
- Benjamin Engelhardt
- Tony The Bird
- Derped Crusader
- MissLavender
- Ryan Baldwin
- LEXX
