Alpha Build 15

Released: 17th April 2018

Link: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/mordhau/announcements/detail/2521329249649168004

 **Gameplay & Mechanics**

* Kick now stuns. When getting kicked in parry/block window, you will not be stunned and only flinched instead (same as the previous kick). This means that there is now another layer of defense against kicks that prevents you being stunned. Damage is dealt in both cases.
* Kick now has early release
* Kick windup increased 50ms
* Kick combo windup increased 25ms
* Kicking someone that has recently been in the stun motion will only flinch and not stun
* Removed ability to combo out of kicks. This means that missing a kick is now a lot more punishing
* Kick reduced stamina miss cost to 13
* Kick reduced feint cost to 13
* Kick clash no longer allows follow up combo, its duration is also increased to 300ms, acts like a blocked state
* Removed HP on kill
* Removed Active parry
* Removed Team flinch
* Riposte reworked - you can no longer be flinched during riposting, during a riposte you take 33% less incoming damage and 50% less knockback.
* Riposte Feint removed
* Riposte early release increased (now the same as regular strikes, which will help with ripostes hitting too fast in certain cases)
* Added ability for riposte to parry in early windup
* Increased riposte window by 100ms
* Successful parries/blocks now extend their parry by 100ms
* Initial Feint window reduced 75ms
* Combo feint window reduced 50ms
* Feint animation has been tweaked so that feints are still useful with the nerfs
* Removed hit recovery skip (when hitting someone and not comboing, the animation will go back to idle before you can attack again)
* Disarm now acts as a clash, which means you can now immediately follow up when disarming someone
* Disarmed recovery reduced 200ms
* Disarmed now forces partial sprint
* Hitstop recovery increased 50ms, now 400ms for all hitstop weapons
* Getting chambered/parried/blocked now forces walk movement debuff for the lockout duration - this means it will be much harder to run away from ripostes
* Combo windup now forces partial sprint
* Ground friction reduced by 1 (Movement slightly more weighty)
* Landing from fall or jump now forces partial sprint for 0.5s
* Sprint acceleration is now 4 seconds to max sprint, for all armor classes (also fixed a bug where you could reach max sprint instantly on any loadout)
* Reduced T0/T1 base speeds very slightly
* Max sprint speed increased
* Health regen start delay reduced 500ms
* Reworked how the hold RMB to parry works, it now doesn't keep trying to parry after it successfully does a parry, so if you want to parry again, release and press it again. This fixes issues where it would happen in flinch by accident, etc. - this should help with the mistimed parry issues in flinch
* Projectile flinch removed from smaller projectiles - affected are: Throwing knife, Shortsword, Dagger, Carving knife
* Throwable equipment can now also throw by pressing the altmode/reload key (R)
* Reduced global hit knockback
* Morphs reverted to patch 13 (Morph window decreased 25ms, morphs less dynamic & increased morph blending slightly to make them look better)
* You can now restock ranged throwable equipment from your loadout at ammo boxes
* Ammo boxes no longer go on cooldown if they're not able to restock/heal anything
* Hitstop now has attack queueing
* Re-equip after throw is now smarter and less buggy. It will try to find the same equipment that was thrown if it exists and switch to that. Failing that it will try to find a weapon, last resort will be fists.
* Increased jump stamina cost to 13
* Jump cooldown increased 50ms
* Bubble reverted to patch 13 (slightly increased again)
* Team deathmatch now uses wave spawning, spawntime increased from 5s to 10s (makes average time to spawn remain the same)
* Fixed lunge attack jump
* Added slight knockback to team hits
* Switching equipment is now smarter: if possible it will automatically switch mode to accommodate e.g. a shield if it has a one-handed mode
* Added new weapon: War Axe

 **Weapon & Equipment Balance**

* Shield lower/raise delay removed
* Getting blocked by a shield now has less recovery, making them easier to pressure
* Shields can now attack at any time when shield is being lowered
* Shield turncaps made less strict
* Shield block angles now slightly easier again
* Shields can now partial sprint while holding block
* Shields stamina increased by 1 again
* Adjusted some strike & stab attack timings on various weapons, stabs now have a max. Total animation time of 1 second (windup+release), strikes 1175ms. This means weapons with strong drag capabilities had their drags nerfed, strike drags got nerfed & stab drags got nerfed heavily across the board. Mostly release \* reductions.
* Bardiche alt mode can no longer combo
* Quarterstaff strike windups increased 25ms
* Increased strike combo windups on various faster onehanded weapons by 25ms
* Repair hammers now have lower throwing damage
* Shortsword stab damage reduced against medium armor torso
* Shortspear stab damage reduced against medium armor torso (3 HTK)
* Shortsword is now faster
* Dagger is now faster
* Battle Axe strike damage against plate armor reduced (now needs a headshot for 2HTK)
* Battle Axe stab windup increased 25ms
* Battle Axe point cost reduced by 1
* Estoc main mode stab windup increased 25ms
* Estoc stab combo windup increased 25ms
* Greatsword alt mode stab windup increased 25ms
* Spear can now one shot naked heads with stab
* Halberd strikes can now one shot naked to torso & one shot light to the head
* Longsword strike damage vs plate torso reduced by 1 again (needs headshot for 3HTK)
* Arming sword slash damage vs plate headshot reduced
* Arming sword stab damage vs plate & medium reduced
* Reduced Throwing knife point cost by 2
* Reduced Fire bomb ammo count by 1
* Reduced Fire & Smoke bomb direct hit damage to 5
* Fire bomb height increased so it cannot be jumped over as easily
* Fire bomb now starts dealing damage faster after exploding
* Fire bomb now deals damage almost immediately upon entering the fire (after its active)
* Adjusted Fire bomb damage & speed - Fire bomb is now a lot more dangerous as area denial, damage over time is nerfed
* Reduced Rocks ammo count by 1
* Fixed Messer values not being the same on 1h/2h for medium armor headshots
* Maul strike windup reduced 25ms
* Maul stab windup increased 50ms
* Maul strike miss stamina drain increased by 1
* Maul strike torso raw damage increased slightly
* Maul strike can no longer combo/you can no longer combo out of maul strikes
* Maul strike increased stamina drain greatly
* Maul stab stamina drain reduced
* Maul strike miss recovery increased 100ms
* Billhook pull increased slightly
* Billhook main mode strike windup increased 25ms
* Billhook main mode slightly stricter turncaps
* Removed some excess damage on headshot 1 HTK attacks

 **Animations**

* Improved 1p hitstop animations
* Sprinting will now tweak camera fov slightly
* Removed flinch animation on death for 1p since it was just messing the deathcam up
* Fixed some flinch bugs where animations could slightly snap on two consecutive flinches
* Fixed horse flinch not working when done twice in a row quickly
* Sped up horse flinch anims
* Added headshot flinch for horses using the head flinch anims
* Improved riposte animations - now slightly more exaggerated
* Added stab release curve - makes stabs come out of windup slightly slower & speed up towards the end of release which should help with stab drags and stabs hitting too fast out of windup
* Added strike release curve - makes strikes come out of windup slightly slower & speed up towards the end of release which should help with attacks coming out of windup too fast, drags and make the attacks look more weighty (Ripostes do not have this)
* Fixed some attack animation issues in 1p that caused some minor jerks
* Fat pose now has a wider walk
* Added 1p animation sway

 **Maps**

* Tweaked exposure ranges and offsets on some maps, resulting in less over/underexposure
* Expanded Grad in preparation for Frontline (you can explore the map in local play with damage turned off)
* Grad will suffer some performance regressions due to the new areas not being optimized yet
* Small layout changes to the castle area of Grad
* Some material streamlining on Grad
* Added TDM variant for Grad
* Fixed a performance regression on maps that made use of a very expensive material mainly Contraband
* Some regressions on Contraband still remain on this patch
* Added some fun stuff to LiteMordhauTestLevel (Doors and other breakables)

 **Visuals & Misc**

* Fire/Smoke bomb impact FX is now properly aligned to the surface it hits
* Improved fire/smoke bomb FX
* Firebombs will now spawn charred decals to increase contrast and thus making the fire more visible on a wider range of ground materials
* Changed Fire/Smoke bomb fields to have a more circular shape
* Smoothed out Smoke PostProcess effect to be less jarring and sudden
* Fixed spectator camera not getting the right FOV
* Skirmish now deletes projectiles and smoke/fire fields on round start
* Added post process effect for being near and on fire
* Main menu now correctly assumes control of the main menu pawn which prevents look/movement, previously it incorrectly possessed a spectator pawn which could look around and move for a split second.
* Turning cloth physics on and off should now work correctly
* 50% less tilt of the head for look-at head tracking
* Deathcam improvements
* Added missing trails to Throwing Axe and Throwing Knife projectiles
* Added fire trail for Fire bomb
* Added smoke trail for Smoke bomb
* Added projectile trail to rock
* Disabled initial delay on trails
* Fixed subfields not deactivating particles correctly, this made smoke turn off fire subfields but never turned off the particle effects of those subfields
* Tunic lower chest, chainmail chest low and peasant shirt arms now don’t have individual color slots and they derive pattern and color from their parent.
* Armory now has depth of field
* Characters in armor customization now have equipment
* Slightly tweaked armory camera & facesculpt pose
* Improved eyelashes
* Improved body poses (Skinny/Strong/Fat)
* Increased step height slightly and made the perch tolerance lower, the perch made it so that you could walk outside of a platform with even both feet outside of it and still stand on it, so it's basically the angle where the character starts gliding off, not changed drastically, just so the extreme cases are avoided.
* Set up holster for throwable equipment, bows, xbow
* Fixed coat of plate holes
* Fixed baggy pants clipping bare chest
* Added a widened variant of the hood coif that can be used with more helmets
* Fitted the neck of the armet set a bit better
* Cloth collision improvements on some skirts
* Added decal fadeout to blood spurt ground decal on hits
* Decal fadeout for the big blood pools on death/dismember thud
* Renamed gothic armet Close Helmet
* Fixed changing pattern in wearable armory not updating the available colors if those changed
* Fixed a bug that wasn't setting the hascolor properly for equipment
* Set Firebomb, Smokebomb and Rock to have no color options
* Renamed Rocks to Rock, Throwing Axes to Throwing Axe, Throwing Knives to Throwing Knife (since this shows in killfeed now etc)
* Pulled up waist of Hunters Hosen
* Fixed some LightmapUVs
* Various LOD fixes
* Fixed rare crash in loading screen
* Fixed startup videos being interrupted if main menu loads too fast
* Disabled loading screen music for now until proper fix for volume is found
* Projectile impact particles and decals now orient using the actor right vector of the projectile, making them consistent with direction
* Disabled input for 150ms after possessing a character, prevents accidental inputs going off on respawn
* Fixed hitstop weapons not doing the team hitcancel when hitting teammates (was instead doing the hitstop which is similar, but not quite)

 **Audio**

* Estoc blocking sound volume increased slightly
* Rock hit sound redone to be more powerful sounding
* Added small/medium/large/huge draw sounds to equipment and set it up for current equipment/weapons
* Added killsound

 **Vehicles**

* Hitting horse now has hitstop
* Fixed leaving vehicle getting the player stuck in the ground randomly
* Fixed vehicle leaving animation being broken online
* Vehicles no longer obtain viewtarget, they no longer have camera components, all view trickery now goes through the character. This fixes bugs related to entering and leaving vehicles where the camera would jerk and in some cases go to world origin (0,0,0) for a frame or two. It also fixes the bug online when leaving/\* entering vehicles where for a frame or two, the character would appear in 3p model even though they were in 1p. Vehicle enter/leaving should now work in multiplayer the same as it does in local.
* Fixed reins on the horse armors
* Improved horse armor textures
* Added 5 new color variants to the horses and set them up making 8 variants in total now. Black, Chestnut, Cremello, Red Dun, Seal Brown.
* Catapult slope angle from 15.5 to 25 degrees, making it possible to traverse more difficult terrain
* Added catapult trail
* Fixed vehicles not properly resetting location/rotation of player when they die but player stays alive (causing broken rotation sometimes)
* Fixed catapult grounding issues where players could break grounding by going near the catapult, or cause it to bump away from them
* Ladder collision/movement reworked, it now uses the softbubble, which fixes most issues related to ladder / multiple people climbing, etc.
* Made ladder steps work better
* Reduced bump damage on bare horse and medium horse
* Light horse now loses most speed from bumps, armored horse the least
* Adjusted horse damage taken modifiers, light horse now takes 2-3 hits, medium 4-5, armored 6-8 - HTK varies depending on attack and weapon used
* Horses now all have the same turn handling (turn curve of the light horse)
* Adjusted some top speeds, medium and armored top speed is now faster
* Slowed down horse health regen tick and start delay
* Added vehicle enter/leave motions which now restrict movement / attacking etc
* Updated horse and rider movement blending so it doesn't jerk as much when sudden changes (e.g. online, or hitting obstacles)
* Fixed horse tail jitter at low fps and improved its simulation a bit
* Fixed a major vehicle bug for online play
* Horse & Rider HP Regen is now disabled on Gear 3 and 4
* Disabled HP regen on ladder
* Horse attacking now angles dynamically to avoid hitting the horse
* Adjusted offhand on horse not animating properly in attacks
* When vehicle dies, character is no longer placed on the ground, instead he remains where he was seated
* Getting on ladder/horse now properly re-equips the unequipped stuff
* Added all missing input bindings to ladder/horse
* Own vehicle now counts as friendly/teammate, i.e. has hitcancel, gets team damage reduction
* Ladder moving is now smooth online

 **User Interface**

* Crosshair should now retain its sharpness on non-standard aspect ratios and resolutions
* Added hitmarker
* Fixed assists being awarded for teamkills
* Added scorefeed
* Repositioned ammo counter
* Fixed spawn info and spectating UI appearing when watching own death
* Firebomb fire should now credit the kill to the fire bomb properly instead of RIP
* Individual kill score gain raised from 10 to 100
* Assists above 75 damage now count as kills
* Entering spawn protection will now display a different message
* UI optimizations
* Fixed target info bottom text not working for players on vehicles

 **Known Issues**

* Emote menu page number doesn’t update properly