Alpha 5

Hello everyone, today we're releasing our MASSIVE Alpha 5 Update!
There's a lot of new QoL changes and visual improvements, however the main focus of this update was to improve the stability of the game.
A ridiculous amount of bugs and crashes have been fixed (more on those below).

Visual Effects

New particle effects have been added to smoke grenades and explosions

And a trail of particles along with a projectile has been added to specialist's RPG. Now you can tell where you got shot from!

Tracers! These also help you to distinguish where you are being shot from.

Animations

We've began working on character animations, the scout is partially complete and there will be more to come in the future!

UI

The main game UI has been moved around, de-cluttered and given overall consistency.

A small indicator has been added to display the currently selected unit.

Tutorial

The tutorial has been split into multiple parts and re-done. Currently a simplified tutorial that doesn't attempt to tackle everything at once is available.

Balancing

• The scout's hp has been increased 8 -> 9 as  it was a bit too easy to snipe them with a specialist after the scout has used his ability.
• The officer's determination has been increased 3 -> 4  as the officer felt a bit lackluster without much to do within a single turn, however decreasing the ability costs would make him a bit too overpowered.
• The grunt's determination has been reduced 3 -> 2 as the grunt was a bit too oppressive and easy to use, this should make grouping grunts easier to punish with a heavy.

Miscellaneous Changes

A character hit-box has been added. Instead of characters taking up the whole tile they now only take up the inner segment of the tile.
This should stop a lot of weird angles where a unit is behind a wall is still able to be damaged.

Stability and Bug fixes

• Increased performance across the board.
• The master server now logs crashes properly allowing us to address all server crashes (not that it crashes so frequently anymore).
• Kick reasons when being disconnected from the server are now properly shown.
• Fixed action points flickering on and off when watching enemies use abilities.
• Capture point is no longer broken.
• Vastly sped up map loading.
• Fixed: not being connected to a lobby after creating one.
• And many, many more tiny fixes and tweaks.

Final Notes

Thank you to everyone for patiently waiting! We hope that the game is now way more approachable, stable and playable.
As always feel free to share feedback in our discord or in the comments on this post.

- EtetStudios team