Zero-K v1.4.3.0 to v1.4.3.3

The past week has seen nerfs to Warriors, drops, Warrior drops and now drops in general. Valkyrie may need some buffs to make it better in the midgame but we will solve that problem when we reach it. We also have the weapon shiny gadget by Beherith from BAR (with modifications). Here are the changes.

Balance

Warrior:

• DPS 285 -> 265 [?]
• Cost 210 -> 220 m [?]
• Regen 40 -> 30 hp/s

Valkyrie:

• Cost 80 -> 100 m
• Altitude 80 -> 140 elmo

Valkyrie and Vindicator speeds are now more affected by the mass of the unit they are transporting[?].

• Relatively heavy units are transported at 66% the speed that they used to be transported.
• Lighter units are slower to transport than they used to be. In particular Warrior causes Valkyrie to slow to 75% speed where previously Valkyrie was not slowed at all.
• Very light units are unaffected. This is relative to their transporter. For example Warrior still does not cause any slowdown for Vindicator because Vindicator is a beast.

Fixed overkill prevention for long ranged missile units.

Shiny

Weapon fire is now shiny[?]. Better shader code and more shiny things will follow. If knows how to write shaders their help would be very welcome. The shiny is enabled for everyone because we would like to test a range of hardware to see whether it causes errors or too much performance loss.

Fixes

• Fixed endgame graph jaggedness, added some parameters.
• Fixed debris of killed nanoframes not showing the owner.
• Fixed Spectator Panels causing a LuaUI crash.
• Fixed the resign message not showing if the player was the last on his team [?]
• Fixed team names when two teams being filled with members of the same clan.
• Fixed Commanders showing range circles for unequipped weapons.
• Fixed idle constructors not showing as idle in the Quick Selection Bar after move commands.
• Fixed Context Menu not showing Commander regeneration.
• Fixed Commander wreckage using old names.
• Fixed tooltips showing wrong Commander buildpower.

This works with both versions, it wouldn't be in the notes if it were a hidden feature. Spring 101 seems to have a bunch of ATI bugs and engine development is quite busy at the moment. I expect 102 soon but idk what the engine devs think.

Ok the new schaders are nice but is there a beam somewhere in the beamlight?
I mean can i turn that down to 20% of its effect or so?

quote: Transport alltitude height change now means that they are less efective as roach/skuttle 'bombers'.

Unless tossed at the enemy. Even that is slightly screwed up by skuttle drop standards. What it does mean:

- You get to toss the roach a little earlier
- You have to burst the roach over the target
- You need 3-5 roaches now to kill a com with roach drop (was 2-4).

I found out why I was getting no shiny. My springsettings had AdvMapShading and AdvUnitShading disabled (unchecked in the ZKL custom Spring configs dialog box). Checking those two boxes made everything look so much better, including having shiny projectiles.

I had reinstalled Zero-K from scratch a few weeks ago, taking pains to try to get an installation with all the defaults that a new user would get. In ZKL I clicked "Ultra" for graphics settings. It seems like this should have enabled AdvMapShading and AdvUnitShading, but apparently it didn't.

This might be worth looking into as a bug?

quote: Just want to say that zerok looks 2x as good with the new !shiny! effects.

Agree. :P

Except for hawks. Hawks look terrible with dynalights. Also grizzlies and stingers are too bright on some maps, although llts are not.

Also, a com with light particle + heavy particle beams would look ridiculously awesome with dynalights, except now it's impossible to build a com like that. :(