Change Log (pre 2.25)

Current Version : 1.07 Beta

Please visit the Download page to get the mod as well as the most recent updates.

Version 1.07 Beta

July 21, 2006

Additions

• New missile and shell models created by Hellion
• New convar "emp_vehicle_mouse_speed" which acts a multiplier for mouse speed when controlling a vehicle's turret
• New background image created by ^Dee^
• Spectating a player now shows their name on your screen

Fixes

• Brenodi team was able to build past the server's building limit
• Spectating a player now correctly shows their health and ammo
• In the commander HUD, the green passenger names of players in a vehicle were all set incorrectly, and would possibly crash the client if many units were selected
• HUD elements were being resized above normal if the user was using a widescreen resolution
• Exiting the commander mode sometimes causing a crash
• Rare crash of spawning on capture point causing the capture HUD to appear before the player has fully spawned
• Miscellaneous commander crashes
• In the commander HUD, the green passenger names of players in a vehicle were all set to the driver's name
• Commander still able to research even though all of the team's radars have been destroyed
• Research countdown timer on the commander's HUD freezing when anything other than the research tab is selected
• "Attempting to precache model, but model name is NULL" server console error appearing often
• 1.06 linux server was not compiled correctly, preventing players from joining the server

Modifications

• Escort - alterations to last two flags to require more than one person to cap
• Gauntlet - fixed issues that were causing the map to crash often
• MValley - many new changes
• District402 - reduced number of reinforcements for both teams by 1/3
• Increased NF assault rifle damage from 35 to 42

Unofficial Version 1.064 Beta

July 12, 2006

Additions

• Spectating a player now shows their name on your screen

Fixes

• Spectating a player now correctly shows their health and ammo
• In the commander HUD, the green passenger names of players in a vehicle were all set incorrectly, and would possibly crash the client if many units were selected
• HUD elements were being resized above normal if the user was using a widescreen resolution
• Exiting the commander mode sometimes causing a crash
• Rare crash of spawning on capture point causing the capture HUD to appear before the player has fully spawned
• Miscellaneous commander crashes

Note Please note that this patch is not official yet, but rather a hotfix to try and resolve issues with crashing whlile in Commander mode. A real patch will be available soon.

Version 1.06 Beta

July 1, 2006

Additions

• New Map - MValley by R_yell
• New Map - Slaughtered by Hellion
• New Map - Gauntlet by Doobie
• Revised Map - Escort by Doobie
• Tank rotate in place when at slow or still speeds
• 'emp_comm_restrict' brush entity that prevents either commander from building in the occupying area
• silhouette for binoculars when zoomed in

Fixes

• Brenodi ML level 2 turrets did not work
• Server crash related to armory or barracks being destroyed
• Memory leak that would lead to a server crash after an extended period of time
• 'emp_sv_player_think' cvar which was implemented to reduce cpu loading was causing hitboxes to not always be matched with the player correctly; this cvar has been effectively removed by defaulting it to 0 and making it a cheat cvar
• Turrets not able to hit players who are standing right next to the turret
• Console error when in a NF heavy tank reporting that four variables exceeded the max allowed value and were being clamped
• Cannon kickback being inconsistent with actual firing
• Vehicle self damage working the exact opposite, vehicle weapons hurting other friendly vehicles and not damaging their owner's vehicle
• Vehicle passengers always being parented to the vehicle's main body even if the position is associated with the turret
• Commander able to suicide and become invincible
• The vehicle HUD's chassis health indicator now scales with resolution to not get too large
• Changing teams now resets the player's class and spawn point selection
• Vehicles now show the order location/target of the driver and connect the line from the vehicle to that location correctly
• Vehicles can receive orders correctly now
• Units that are outside the commander's PVS/network update distance will now remain selected, will update their position, and can receive orders
• The Units selection panel lists all entities in the world regardless of your proximity to them instead of dropping ones off the list as they exceed the network update distance
• The second seat on the NF jeep was not positioning the player in the correct location
• The commander unable to see enemy units when in the driver position of the command vehicle

Modifications

• Matched NF Assault Rifle's damage to the BE Assault Rifle
• Increased HMG weapon damage from 20 to 25
• Halved movement speed when zoomed in

Version 1.05 Beta

May 13, 2006

Additions

• New Map, District402, a linear capture the flag based map in an urban setting with only infantry combat
• Map .cfg files are now loaded by the clients on initial spawn, this is for altering bloom color values, radiosity levels, or other client side parameters to situate the map.
• When a team wins, the winner is written in the chat area
• When the game ends, the winner and loser are declared on the score board
• In the F popup menu, added a "Kick Commander" button to the squad menu area which votes to kick the team's commander
• "emp_sv_kick_commander_be" and "emp_sv_kick_commander_nf" server side commands to automatically eject a team's commander from the command vehicle, just like if a vote to kick the commander succeeded
• On the scoreboard, the number of players for each team is listed next to the team's name

Fixes

• More than 32 emp_cap_models on a map were causing minimap flags to not show correctly
• Some players as commander were still crashing in relation to client-side physics
• Scout's hide ability turning on and off when the player's rank was equal to or greater than Sergeant (E-4)
• Scout being able to hide, then walk around freely while staying hidden by using binoculars
• Scout rifle being able to shoot faster by zooming/unzooming inbetween shots
• Turrets not shooting crouched players
• Throwing a grenade no longer auto-switches to another weapon if the player has another grenade to throw
• Engineer kit wasn't starting with full ammo on spawn
• Rapidly switching between the engineer kit and another weapon would quickly regenerate the engineer kit's ammo
• Engineer grenades healing enemy buildings if it explodes far enough away from the building
• If a team can't spawn due to running out of tickets and all players on that team are dead, then the game will now end
• Blood spray was not being shown when a player was shot

Modifications

• A hidden scout will only be spotted by a camera for 0.2 seconds per every 3 seconds instead of 1 full second per every 3 seconds
• Decreased damage from vehicle collisions and made the damage apply to armor instead of just to the hull
• Spawning in an APC will spawn the player at the highest numbered seat available instead of the lowest numbered seat (driver seat)
• Closing the MOTD screen will immediately bring up the team selection screen
• Increased mortar explosion radius from 150 inches to 210 inches
• Increased NF shotgun pistol damage from 10 to 12 per bullet
• The Increased Movement skill no longer drains stamina continuously
• The Rifleman's Dig-In ability has been altered: When taking damage while crouching, half of the damage is taken from stamina bar, and the other half is dealt to the player. If half of the total damage exceeds the amount of available stamina, then as much stamina is available is used to reduce the total damage.
• Reduced force knockback from being shot by a player by half
• On the scoreboard, the classes of the enemy players are not shown
• APCs are now correctly shown as only having one slot for an engine
• Vehicles can now hurt themselves with their own weapons
• Vehicles can now be customized even if there are insufficient resources to build the vehicle
• Increased spread for all pistols

Removals

• Auto-reload for those players who were complaining that it interfered with using melee after unloading a clip

Version 1.04 Beta

Additions

• New version of emp_canyon map to fix glitches
• New version of emp_escort map with fixes and modifications
• New map emp_badland; it's a large commander based map with fog
• Message of the Day panel that appears when first joining a server; it displays the server name at the top and a viewport for displaying the MOTD.txt file on the server (place just a url in the file that redirects to a web page or keep the .txt file under 2048 characters); also, clicking the "Help Guide" button will load up the Empires manual
• Anything spotted via the F voice menu or the scout's binoculars will have a blinking red indicator over it for all players in the HUD
• Brenodi Empire specific textures for the engineer radar and camera
• Vehicles now take damage (directly to the hull) from impacting with other objects; the jeep is much weaker than other vehicles to reduce it being used to ram enemy tanks and get them stuck
• APCs have spawn points, if the vehicle isn't full, then spawning at the vehicle will place the player inside, otherwise the player will spawn outside
• APC passengers (all except the driver position) get their health refilled at 5 HP/sec and ammo refilled at the same amount as ammo crates

Fixes

• Map placed turrets now work and their level can be defined within the entity properties in Hammer
• Barracks spawn points would not always show up/would be grouped together with another barracks
• Explosions could hurt players through buildings and vehicles
• Artillery tank cannon appearing backwards
• Can't switch from the RPG until it's fully reloaded
• Scouts using hide could stay hidden when firing
• Players in an armory when the armory dies/recycles able to change class anywhere on the map
• Gngineers can no longer revive players who suicide
• Grenadiers could fire the mortar in the air by jumping and ducking
• Grenadier's armor spotting skill was taking an excessive amount of time to show enemy armor values, similar to the scout's hide problem in 1.02
• Command vehicle appearing as the enemy team's color when first joining the team
• Repair stations could repair either team's vehicles

Modifications

• Reduced tank turret sensitivity
• Reduced MG turret rate of fire for all levels
• Increased rifleman's max ammo for rifles from 60 to 150, increased max 50 cal ammo from 30 to 60
• Increased kick of both IMP and NF assault rifles
• On spawn, all players receive 1/3 of their total ammo for each weapon
• Removed weapon accuracy penalty when the scout uses his hide skill
• Raised the player's viewpoint when crouching to more accurately reflect the location of the player's head
• Upon firing the RPG launcher, the player must continue to hold the Fire button to guide the rocket; letting go of Fire will set the rocket to dumb fire mode and reload the RPG launcher for use again
• Set default "zoom_sensitivity_ratio" convar to 0.3 instead of 1.0, this convar reduces mouse sensitivity when zoomed in
• On death, set vehicle velocity to zero
• When building a building as the commander, decreased distance the building must be away from an enemy building or vehicle to 1000 units from 3000 units
• Enemy engineer cameras and radars no longer restrict the commander's ability to place buildings
• The scout now retains his crosshair when hiding
• Turret damage resistance has been lowered from 4 to 3 (damage received is divided by this number)
• Increased length of time a unit stays spotted from 5 seconds to 7 seconds
• Moved capture point flag model animations client-side
• Switched damage, cycle, and kick values for the Imperial Assault Rifle with the Heavy Rifle (makes more sense that the heavy rifle does more damage

Version 1.031 Beta

Fixes

• Artillery tank cannon was backwards due to the new client-side turrets

Version 1.03 Beta

Additions

• Vehicle turrets are now handled client-side to eliminate lag
• Holding onto a grenade after pulling the pin will cook off the grenade down to a minimum 1 second fuse, total grenade fuse time has been increased to 6 seconds
• Engineers now get points for healing friendly players, healing 200 points of health will give 1 rank point

Fixes

• Scout's hide was broken with 1.02
• Spectator was causing the client to crash due to an error with the new minimap code
• Random commander GUI based crash due to an uninitialized research variable
• As the commander, selected turrets were not showing the correct image in the selected unit area
• Buildings no longer animate while dead (radar spin, turret rotation, etc)
• Vehicles getting stuck after exiting and re-entering (especially NF artillery tank)
• Changing seats in a vehicle causing the vehicle to stop momentarily
• Walls were not changing their physics collision mesh on raising and lowering (this only affected vehicle interaction)
• Vehicle presets wouldn't save if your language setting was anything other than "English"
• Bringing up the scores panel while the team or class selection panel was open would cause the team or class selection panel to show up again after joining a team/selecting a class

Modifications

• Made extensive changes to vehicle, engine, and armor properties (improved weight as well as other changes)
• Made changes to the research tree
• Improved how engineer buildable map objects handle players standing inside when construction is completed and they turn solid
• Improved engineer repair kit regenerating while not in hand or while in a vehicle
• For engineer revive, increased the distance the ragdoll can be from where the player actually died
• A player's ragdoll is immediately removed when he respawns making it easier for an engineer to know if a player can be revived or not
• Set NF and IMP scout rifle parameters to match in terms of accuracy and damage
• Set engineer camera and radar and radar building to detect players/vehicles through objects
• Increased default tickets to 200 per side

Version 1.02 Beta

Additions

• Removed some unnecessary building and tank network vars that were wasting bandwidth
• 'emp_sv_refinery_interval' server cvar for setting how many seconds pass before a refinery will generate a resource point (default is one second)
• New cvar 'emp_sv_player_think' to set the frequency of the player's post think function which takes up a decent chunk of the server's cpu time when running every single frame

Fixes

• Commander crash when having only one unit selected and that unit dies
• Players could build a vehicle from an unbuilt vehicle factory using the menu bound to "v"
• Bots now spawn when using the commands "bot_add_nf" or "bot_add_imp", all they do is run around
• Using the "f" voice menu while holding crouch would skip the second tier menu
• Unbuilt armory giving ammo to vehicles
• A player's rank in the squad menu was being displayed as one rank higher than it actually was
• Building a turret, camera, or radar as an engineer now requires that the surface angle is greater than -45 and less than 45 (AKA the ground and not the ceiling)
• On the team select screen, 'Northern Faction' was misspelled once and the objectives were the same for both teams
• The Brenodi APC & AFV had areas near the front which were being treated as rear armor instead of side armor
• Players can no longer block the vehicle factory build area to prevent vehicles from being created
• If the interior of a vehicle factory is blocked and prevents a vehicle from being built, it no longer deducts the cost of the vehicle even though the vehicle wasn't created
• Inverted mouse pitch now works when aiming a vehicle turret
• A player who team kills another player loses a rank point instead of gaining one
• Scoring rank points as a squad leader no longer goes toward extra points for the squad; only the other players in the squad's earned points go toward extra squad points
• Commander in command view was able to be killed even though he was invisible
• Server crash when spotting a tank's turret with the scout's binoculars
• Server crash when a tank's turret would collide with a mine
• Server crash when a homing missile's target was removed while the homing missile was still alive and tracking it
• Player RPGs had stopped being guided in 1.01 Beta, they now guide as they did in 1.0 Beta
• NF scout rifle was missing its deathmessage icon
• On death messages in the HUD, the weapon name no longer get cut off
• Client side assertion when bringing up the scoreboard on a 32 player server as the 32nd player
• Entity responsible for sending player minimap positions was causing a crash when attempting to run a 64 player server
• Optimized building collision meshes to reduce cpu usage
• HUD now works with widescreen resolution
• On suicide, a player no longer gains a rank point
• Armor and engine weight and cost values were not being factored into the final weight and cost labels in the vehicle build panel

Modifications

• Moved turret rotation to the client when not attacking to save on bandwidth
• Optimized turret range checking code for less cpu usage
• Optimized commander visibility range checking code
• Cut out the parts on the client dealing with physics collisions that were causing crashes
• Optimized the player's think functions to reduce cpu usage
• Increased cost of all vehicle chassis
• Increased cost of all vehicle engines
• Increased cost of all vehicle armor
• Reduced standing spread on most infantry weapons
• Reduced bio MG total damage done over time to 80 down from 300
• At the end of a game, players are only locked in place now instead of freezing their controls so that they can hide the scoreboard
• A scout using the hide skill in the open will be hidden from turrets instead of being required to be in contact with at least one surface
• Increased max player limit to 64
• Added "emp_env_embers" map entity which copies the "env_embers" entity but allows setting of the start and end sizes
• Set vehicles to kill themselves immediately upon reaching their self destruct time instead of slowly hurting themselves
• Changing class to an engineer starts the engineer kit off with zero ammo, spawning as an engineer starts the kit with full ammo
• On damage to turrets, only the owner is notified unless there is no owner, then everyone is notified
• Optimized netcode for entity responsible for sending player minimap positions by only sending necessary information to each team
• Made the local player arrow icon brighter
• Made the local player arrow show even when inside a vehicle
• No players can spawn when there is only one reinforcement remaining

Version 1.01 Beta

March 17, 2006

Additions

• Linux server.so for running a linux server
• 'emp_sv_vehicle_resource_interval' and 'emp_sv_player_resource_interval' cvars for setting the interval between updating player & vehicle resource managers which send all info needed for the minimap
• 'emp_sv_vehicle_fadout_time' cvar for determining how long vehicle wreckage exists before being removed
• 'emp_sv_netvisdist_player', 'emp_sv_netvisdist_building', 'emp_sv_netvisdist_vehicle', and 'emp_sv_netvisdist_commander' cvars which determine how far each type of entity can be seen, commander affects how far the commander can see other entities
• Support for 'mp_autoteambalance', if a player tries to change teams and it would make the teams uneven, then the player is forced to the team with the fewest players
• 'emp_sv_vehicle_selfdestruct_time' cvar (default: 300 seconds) that determines how long a vehicle will go unoccupied before it starts to damage itself and then die
• Successfully moved all server-side vehicle wheel physics simulation to the client (steering, wheel height, wheel rotation) which reduces a lot of wasted network bandwidth
• Three new voice taunts
• "commander under attack" warning when the commander takes damage, only played once every 30 seconds
• "<building name> under attack" warning when a building takes damage, only played once every 30 seconds
• Map specific config files located in the "/cfg/maps/" dir; the .cfg file that has the same name as the map name is executed on map start; specifically for setting the number of resources/reinforcements per map (emp_escort NF reinforcements for example)

Fixes

• A research item was missing an icon
• Brenodi Empires could continue to build vehicles past their limit
• 'mp_timelimit' works correctly now, when time is reached, both team reinforcements count down at a rate of 2 per second
• When recycling a building, your team would gain the refund as reinforcements instead of resources, whoops
• As grenadier, oldest dropped mine was not always being detonated when attempting to drop more than eight mines
• Minimap would not show spotted/binocular targetted vehicles and buildings if they were out of your PVS (ie, not visible)
• Reduced network bandwidth used by minimap
• The player in the last slot on a server was not being shown on the scoreboard
• Northern Faction MG Level 3 turret's barrels were spaced too far apart to hit infantry
• Crash when canceling/completing an order and the target of the order was already removed from the game
• Crash when trying to issue praise to a squadmate that didn't exist
• Crash when a shell/mortar detonated and couldn't find its owner
• Crash when spotting a target with the binoculars, then 120 secs would pass and the binocs would try to remove the spotted status except the target had already been destroyed/removed
• Crash when a mine was checking if a vehicle that touched it had a passenger with mine defusal to prevent detonation
• Crash when denying a player from joining your squad
• Various client crashes (the big crash that affects everyone is a real pain, it's not fixed but it's rearranged to give me more info in the memory dumps on what exactly is going wrong)

Modifications

• Increased horsepower for some vehicle engines
• Various infantry weapons (hmg, scout rifle, pistols, brenodi rifles)
• Removed server vehicle wheel dust generation to reduce network traffic and time spent thinking
• Reduced time spent calculating physics
• Set voice commands to require at least a 3 second wait time before issuing another command
• Added a larger arrow over the local player on the minimap
• Increased rate all players can build buildings to 1 HP per every 0.5 seconds (engineer's build at 1 HP per every 0.2 seconds)
• A scout can use secondary attack while hidden and not be revealed, can also use binoculars and not be revealed
• A scout's rank affects how fast his invisibility skill hides him by lessening it one second per rank achieved (to a minimum of 2 seconds)
• Scout's invisibility now goes into effect even if the scout is not touching anything (50% transparency)
• Both command vehicle driver view points now sit atop the vehicle so that you have a frame of reference while driving
• Instead of putting '(Comm)' in front of the commander's name, the commander's class is set to 'Commander'
• Engineers get points for repairing the commander's walls
• Reduced frequency of updates for when a turret is playing its idle animation, need to move it fully client-side though
• Changed turret collision mesh from a pyramid shape to a box so that vehicles won't drive up onto them and get stuck
• Split resources and refinery cvar multiplier into separate cvars for each team, this is so that the reinforcements for NF can be increased by the server for emp_escort
• Set HMGs to increase in spread with each bullet fired, inaccuracy starts to take hold if the weapon is fired for too long

Removals

• Engineer's ability to build buildings via '+use'

Version 1.0 Beta

March 4, 2006

• Initial Release
• Added: ALL