EA24

The Early Access Build 24 was released on May 21st, 2021.

The main focus for EA24 is the overhauled Citadel level. Almost everything in the level has been updated, intended to give the level a nice flow and several ways of attacking the central citadel. Major changes have been made to the areas outside the citadel, such as adding bunkers for the defending team. The defenders now have access to airplanes via the takeoff platform suspended over the citadel wall.

EA24 also updates the two official airplanes, both visually and their flight handling. Both aircraft have received a new model with an updated, more informative HUD. The attack plane now carries more ammo than before, intended to make hit-and-run attacks a little easier to pull off. All airplanes, including modded ones can now land by holding throttle down and flying close to the ground. This will extend the landing gears and activate airbrakes which slows the aircraft down and lands it. There have also been some minor changes to the flight model intended to make aircraft feel more nimble than before.

The map editor has also received an update intended to give give the maker more control over the lighting and feel of their map and bring out some extra creativity to custom maps.

This update also contains a ton of fixes and improvements to the game play and AI. See the change log below for details.

## Change log

### Citadel

* Removed bridge between the two defender outposts outside the citadel walls, creating two separate attacker lanes.

* Split the attacker's first spawn into two separate spawns, one for each side of the river. The bridge connecting the two sides of the attacker spawn is still there so it's possible to cross to the other side easily.
* Added suspended takeoff/landing platform for airplanes at the citadel.
* Added 2 attack planes for defenders.
* Removed helicopter from defenders.
* Added attack helicopter to attacker spawn.
* Attackers now get one APC and one tank.
* Added bunkers and several anti-tank and machine gun turrets for defenders.
* Added one anti-air turret on the east bunker.
* General improvements to village area, giving it more structure.
* Redid the HQ building and tower in citadel.
* Added various stone and supply props to citadel for cover.
* Added rocks and trees to break up sightlines outside the citadel.

* Added vis occluders to Citadel trees

### Attack Airplane, Bomber

* Updated HUD with speed/altitude/gear/brake indicators
* Updated the heading indicator HUD elements to make them a little more clear and less obtrusive.
* - All airplanes (including modded ones) can now land by holding throttle down while being close to ground. This will automatically extend the landing gear and allow you to land.
* - Overhauled the handling of the attack plane.
* - Balanced attack plane weapons, giving it more ammo but slightly less damage.
* - All airplanes can now airbrake by throttling down when close to the ground.
* - Updated bomber turret to use the new stabilized turret, making it way easier to hit targets.
* - Both official airplanes now have landing gear suspension.

### AI

* Restricted squad clustering (IE when vehicles would slow down to cover nearby infantry) to only occur when close to enemy capture points, or if the cluster is taking fire.
* Fixed a bug where AI would not halt when firing long range shots while in vehicles.
* Updated AI Airplane swerving, so bots are less likely to crash into the target they are currently engaging.
* Added reload assist to bots in airplanes so they reload their weapons while doing U-turns in order to engage a target.
* There is a small chance of infantry bots chasing after a nearby target if it goes out of sight. This never applies to bots in the player squad.
* Made it slightly easier for bots to lock on with target locking weapons.
* Fixed an issue where bots could sometimes lock on to targets behind them.
* AI will now have slightly worse aim directly after taking damage.
* AIs shooting from cover are now slightly less accurate directly after uncrouching
* Aircraft pilots will now only bail out if they are close to a valid infantry navmesh.
* AI will no longer use turrets that aren't facing an enemy capture point. If the defense strategy is set to "always man turrets", all turrets will be manned anyway. Additionally, anti-air turrets will always be manned.
* Improved AI order generation based on neighbors, now bots will never use land vehicles or walk when attacking a neighbor that is set to water only, even if that point is technically reachable by land
* Fixed a bug where the AI would not target enemies correctly with mounted turrets
* Fixed a bug where AI would sometimes shoot through walls/cover while crouching
* Improvements to AI cover usage when defending flags.
* Reduced risk of AI friendly fire through explosions when they are using cover.
* If AI accidentally misfires an explosive projectile, friendly fire damage will be reduced.
* Bots now prefer cover points with ceiling protection (As that protects them better against explosions, mortars, air to ground attacks etc. To take advantage of this change, a new navmesh must be generated.
* Bots will now keep track of targets for a few seconds, even if they temporarily go out of sight:This always applies to high priority targets (such as a vehicle capturing a flag, or a target assigned by the player).
* Bots on turrets will keep track of targets if they are of their preferred target type.
* Bots in airplanes will always keep track of targets. This makes them more aggressive and use their weapons way more.

### Input

* Improved memory management of the input system for optimized access.
* Joystick inputs will now only bind on change in the input options menu. This makes it way easier to bind your inputs.
* Added deadzone slider that will control the joystick input deadzone.

### Rendering

* Optimized terrain rendering on the official maps. This will lead to slightly more pop-in but reduced CPU overhead when rendering.
* Baked soldier smirk into the soldier material, reducing the draw call overhead for rendering a character from 2 to 1.
* Soldiers behind the player will have their weapons culled.

Please note that if you're experiencing low frame rates with the game, try running the game without mods and see if that helps. I also recommend reducing or disabling the vegetation rendering in the video options menu. That seems to give me quite a big increase in frames per second on many levels.

### Map Editor

* You can now tweak the ambient lights for both day and night versions of a map.
* You can select a post processing preset for your map.
* Added ability to tweak sun/moon positions in the sky.
* Fixed fog not being applied and added daytime fog density parameter.
* Added skybox atmosphere parameters.
* Added water volume, allowing you to create lakes that spots that are higher than the ocean water level.
* Added ability to change the ocean water level.
* Changing these level detail parameters will now update the scene view in realtime, making iteration a little easier :)
* Pressing the night vision button will toggle night vision inside the editor.
* Added new props from the citadel level.
* Night vision can be turned on in-editor by pressing the night vision input key (default N).

### Miscellaneous

* Moved unfinished levels (Tunnel, Twin Islands) to the bottom of the map list.
* Fixed lighting on Tunnel level, although it's still pretty broken :/
* Fixed a rare bug where entering a vehicle seat would sometimes cause the screen to go black or start glowing white.
* When switching seats in a vehicle, if an AI is already occupying that seat, you will switch seat with them.
* You can now easily take over an AI vehicle by pressing use on it, even when it's already occupied. Entering the driver seat will automatically make the passengers join your squad. Entering a passenger seat does not modify your squad, so you can ride as a temporary passenger if you like. If there are no seats left, the bot you replace will be kicked out of the vehicle and create their own squad.
* Spec Ops helicopter exfil now supports custom transport helicopters (So long as it can fit your spec ops squad, otherwise the default helicopter will be used).
* All preplaced audio sources in a level will now be set to use the world mixer group. This makes them react to your sound volume setting or slow motion effect.
* Added UI scaling for resolutions above 1080p for parts of the UI. This makes it way easier to select spawn points, or click the pause menu buttons on 4k screens or similar.
* Minimap resolution is doubled when playing on >1080p screens.
* Spec ops flare now fades in/out smoothly.
* Updated post processing presets on all levels.
* Updated occlusion data on most levels.
* All official mounted turrets now use the new stabilized mounted turret script.
* Added slight recoil to the mounted turret cameras.
* Updated turret cameras and projectile impact effects.
* Fixed a bug where mortars would not hit their indicated target.
* Updated water material so it is influenced by ambient lighting (Previously only direct lighting would affect it).
* Added High Dynamic Range (HDR) rendering option in the video options.
* Fixed spec ops not starting when no primary weapon was selected
* Only projectiles fired by bots will now make flyby sounds.
* Fixed a bug where missiles without a target lock would never accelerate to the max travel speed.
* Fixed an issue where the weapon selection UI would sometimes not list weapons.
* Fixed an issue where projectiles would stop in mid air when hitting vehicle debris
* Made it easier to select the correct flag when using the squad ordering map.
* Made attack helicopters slightly faster when travelling forward, and overall a little more agile.
* Fixed a bug where the vehicle HUD would sometimes not render after entering a vehicle.
* LOD objects will no longer be baked together for ingame map maker made levels.
* Various minor bugfixes to projectiles and missiles and the missile tracking indicator
* Spec ops objective markers now have a distance label.
* Added outline to spec ops objective markers so they are easier to see with bright backgrounds.
* Fixed a bug with PlayerRecoilCamera which caused vehicles like the Tank and APC to not have recoil applied properly in first person mode.
* Fixed a bug where AI Vision Occluder colliders would sometimes cause the player to be pushed
* Exfil helicopter crew can no longer be ordered by the player using quick orders.

### Ravenscript

* Exposed parachute functionality.
* Exposed AiActorController.targetFlightAltitude.
* Exposed various airplane flags such as airbrake, altitude, gearsRetracted, isAirborne
* Added Squad.Create() function.
* Exposed various Collider classes to RS (BoxCollider, CapsuleCollider and SphereCollider)
* Exposed missile tracking and lock on status to Vehicle in RS
* AI.canJoinPlayerSquad value exposed to RS