UPDATE #15 - UPLINK, Plasma Saber, AI

The last few weeks have been real fun! I finally got around to implementing a few of the "major" ideas we've had for the future direction of HEXION. I'm really happy with how the new game-mode (UPLINK) turned out, it's a lot more action packed than Overheat, but without the chaos from Team-Deathmatch. We still need a lot of polish on the new stuff, especially on the audio side of things, but I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on it!

NEW:

• New game-mode called UPLINK! (explained below!)

• A ton of new additions to the BOT AI - They can now choose to chase players, go for the current objective, stand their ground and fight, fight while moving and a lot more. Overall way more dynamic AI

• Buy-Zones, players now have to stay within range of spawn to be able to buy

• Permanent buy-time. Used in warm-up and in the new game-mode.

• Map-specific power-up. A giant player-controllable Mech on the map Europa (available in all game-modes) - it's a bit OP against BOTs at the moment tho! :)

• Knife has been replaced by a Plasma Saber. It can be toggled on/off on the reload button - and has the ability to deflect shots (expect arrows), and it can penetrate thin walls to kill unsuspecting players!

• The sniper scope can now be toggled between 12x and 6x, by clicking the reload button on the off-hand when holding it with two hands.

• Added Healing-Stations to all maps - simply hold a part of your body inside the glowing green ring, and you will regen HP

UPLINK FEATURES

The goal in Uplink is to keep control of the center hex, until your upload is complete. The first team to reach 100% wins. It's faster paced than Overheat, and a bit more forgiving - while still being very teamwork oriented!

• Respawn on death

• Max energy for item-purchase on respawn, buy a full loadout and head into battle!

• Each spawn has forcefields that block the opposing team from entering / shooting

CHANGES:

• Toned down the haptics on the teleportation

• Dead players can now locomote through dynamic geometry like doors and forcefields

• Rebalanced a lot of the BOT difficulty settings, they should be more fun to play against on all levels now (might be a bit harder overall now tho)

• BOT AI can now see through glass, and understand that they can't hit you through it - they will instead try to flank

• Made some minor changes to the geometry on Europa - added some much needed cover in certain locations.

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a bug that often caused BOT's to mess up their pathfiding

• Deathmatch item-spawners are now correctly disabled for clients in game-modes that aren't using them

• The lobby UI will now be correctly unlocked when a client has left a game

Next up is something I've wanted to do for a long time, but have had to postpone for several reasons - I'm going to focus on getting fully native WMR support. Once that is taken care of, I'm going to switch my focus towards how we can enable our playerbase to better setup planned games. Furthermore, I'm currently working hard on our next iteration of the player avatar. The goal is a full-body avatar, with good IK while being fully physics simulated. This is also a prerequisite for our new interaction system, that will enable us to do cool interactive reload systems and more! As always, I'm very open to hearing your thoughts, critiques and ideas - just hit me up on Discord for a conversation :reheart: