Defining Awesome

I felt I need to make something for people that just start the game for the first time and need to target practice or are just waiting on an empty server for someone to join. An idea popped into my head: MUTANT SEWER RATS! When you join the game now the map will be inhabitated by living rats. Now these aren’t just moving sprites, they function as a little eco-system. Meaning they fight for food, mate and avoid predators. This mini-game in Link-Dead is a tribute to a game I played years ago called “Rats!” on Windows 3.1. Enjoy.

Changes 1874-1878:

– added rats
– fixed crashed caused by non-existing bots
– fixed crashes that appeared from crashrpt
– fixed console log crash

[balance]
– Scram cannon requires two shots at one spot to kill
– Nidhogg has a much bigger fire arc

[editor]
– fixed editor loading infinitely map when “Don’t use disk” option is on
– duplicate edges are automatically removed

Btw. There is a fresh portion of gameplay screenshots on the official LD website.

Lots of changes that will auto-download once you start LD.exe.

Most important things are 2 new weapons for Ubermen & Mutants 
Scram Cannon – ramjet technology long distant rifle
Nidhogg – automatic grenade launcher

Added blinking lights, teamchat, a lot better use of pie menus when switching items and added a lot of fail safe methods to keep the game and server from crashing. Below is the complete changelog. Please note that the Factory map has been improved and edited so when you run this version for the first time it will need to render again, this might take up to 2 minutes.

To start playing go to this page.

Changes 1865-1874:

[gameplay]

– added team chat (toggled with right ctrl in chat console)
– ragdolls are now more responsive to bullet hits (more force applied on hit)
– fixed grenade not causing damage through platforms
– fixed explosion hit going through wall[weapons]
– added new Mutant gun – Scram cannon (sniper)
– added new Ubermen gun – Nidhogg (grenade launcher)
– Glitnir slugs now pierces through bodies

[map]
– added blinking hanging lights
– added more details to Factory underground

[interface]
– added grenade throw mouse cursor
– fixed changing key when clicked on preset
– pie menus: changed entire concept
– items are now in certain slots and are always in the same position from inventory
– pie menus: menu with 1 item is now called only on half of the pie
– inventory: only ammo from guns chosen appear in ammo belt selection
– inventory: last added item appears under mouse cursor
– action menu: grouped weapon actions in weapon group
– main menu: added “Don’t use disk (if pauses when moving)” option

[network]
– fixed possible double player respawn bug
– added fail safe methods to network code to prevent random data crashes
– fixed ragdoll velocity values over network
– disconnection if too much bad deltas

[other]
– moved light textures to Sprites/Lights
– added more detailed map loading messages
– map parts that were changed are now redrawn on map load
– added build number next to FPS
– fixed “Sounds/metal/bullethit_metal” file not found
– fixed messages on startup not being logged to console.txt

[engine]
– fixed more than 2 lights a time visual glitch
– optimized proper light+shadow rendering with RTT
– optimized shadow drawing (reduced shadow polycount by 90%)
– particles don’t draw out of screen too
– fixed not rendering sprites out of screen algorithm
– fixed fullscreen shader ATi compile error

[visual]
– bullet trails are rendered now with additive color
– fixed particle lighting on shaders
– modified flashlight texture
– UM bullet shells are now grey
– chrome difracts more
– ash particles don’t show on low presets
– fixed blood artifact on shaders on
– fixed minimalist render brightness
– new menu cursor

[editor]
– brushes can be saved and loaded
– added sprites context menu editing
– added free of GUI play test mode to editor
– map automatically compiles before play testing
– fixed playtest exiting

I just reminded myself that my old laptop has an ATi card lol (I was pretty sure it was an nVidia). I quickly fixed the rendering issue, it seems ATi is less tolerant for pixel shader errors. I also noticed that LD runs at a really good framerate on this old machine: it’s a Pentium M 1.6GHz; Radeon 9700 64mb; 512MB RAM. I guess I’ll lower the minimum requirements.

How weapon menus will work in the next patch.

I got some footage of gameplay, I will be editing that and uploading when I have some time.

I had to write a lot of new code to manage lights as interactive map objects. It’s nearly done. I also did more improvements on the pie menus today.

Stop what you are doing, go here – and VOTE Link-Dead for ModDB game of 2010!

Got tired of doing little fixes & tweaks after the release so yesterday I felt like really moving forward. I started coding map objects, which will be stuff you can interact with. First thing coming is switchable lights.



I sat down and did some major optimizations. A couple ones were very obvious but I never got to do it cause I waited until it was really needed. The time has come and I present a new build of Link-Dead alpha. An interesting thing is a lot of performance waste was because of the sound engine, I didn't suspect that. Anyways I hope this works great.

Changes 1864-1865:

– added grenade explosion decal on wall
– fixed pickup and drop menus rendering outside screen bounds
– increased item pickup radius to allow picking from ceiling
– fixed editor crash
– fixed server crash when lots of traffic
– fixed loose parts of gostek warping from top left corner
– optimized sounds when body hits ground
– optimized many sounds playing at a time
– bullet impact sound pitch now varies depending on bullet velocity
– added splat sound when blood hits wall
– optimized decal painting
– reverb sound effects play only if fps > 60
– optimized actor raycasting
– optimized ragdolls
– fixed sliding ragdolls
– optimized sprites outside screen borders
– fixed climb speed when legs hurt
– fixed bug causing linux server to consume over 30% CPU
– removed player light
– fixed respawn queues not destroyed on client on map restart
– fixed double player after map restart
– fixed not respawning automatically after map restart
– player scores don't reset after round restart
– fixed wrong time and units count on server join

[controls]
– removed sneak option – walking is now silent

[balance]
– increased power of mutant pistol and shotgun by 10%

Biggest changes or additions in a nutshell:

I never liked the idea that Ubermen look like sprites, they wear metal armor so it should look like metal. So I added a chrome shader that reflects the surrounding in their armor and guns. I added light flares and generally improved the pseudo-HDR effects. Explosions should be more spectacular now.

Most important gameplay balance change is reducing Ubermen armor by 50% and making the Mutant guns slightly more powerful. It seems everybody was complaining about the Ubers being too powerful so we played a match with this balance and it was much more fun.

Big tweaks in game pie menus, they should be more accessible now. More ideas on improving them are appreciated.

Added air control. It seems games can’t live without this. It is much easier now to jump and grab what you want.

To grab your hands on this game and play it now click here.

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