What's new in Battle of Tau Ceti 0.4.4 Alpha
Sep 4, 2014
- The round begin timer starts longer but gets reduced for each player that joins.
- When a round begins, the sectors are no longer regenerated.
- When a round is reset, it reloads a whole new map instead of just generating new sectors.
- Player ships now freeze at the end of a round.
- Bots now choose sectors based on resources and are more likely to jump to the enemy home with larger ships.
- Darkened scoreboard background to make it easier to see.
New in Battle of Tau Ceti 0.4.3a Alpha (Aug 14, 2014)
- Empty gunner seats no longer fire after switching seats if the fire button was held
- Binding right click now works
- Esc key is now permanently bound to show the Menu (primary) to fix cases where the menu was rebound and not retrievable in game
- Added ship name to HUD
- Added current resources to HUD as well as colorized resources in ship menus to make it stand out a bit more
New in Battle of Tau Ceti 0.4.2a Alpha (Jul 31, 2014)
- Contains updates to weapon netcode to improve the feel and responsiveness of combat
New in Battle of Tau Ceti 0.4.1a Alpha (Jul 16, 2014)
- Fixes:
- Firing missiles/rockets no longer pushes your ship around.
- Fixed bug that was breaking the game at the end of a round.
- Found and fixed long standing bug that caused the game to crash!
- Game camera no longer bugs out if spectating collector while it deposits resources.
- Turret kills now are appropriately attributed in the kill feed.
New in Battle of Tau Ceti 0.4.0a Alpha (Jul 10, 2014)
- New Features/Fixes:
- New resource model!
- Sectors now have a resource rating: Poor, Moderate, or Rich with corresponding amount of asteroids.
- Special sector types are now limited to normal, dust cloud, and gravity well (always a poor sector).
- Collectors now pick up/deposit 1, 2, or 3 resources depending on the quality of the sector and players who target them can see how much they are carrying.
- Reloading has been added so if you have (for example) one guided missile left you can reload instead of being forced to fire it to have two loaded.
- Tracking mines have been sped up so frigates should no longer be able to outrun them.
- Repair structure no longer resets your Repairbots ability and will only heal ships that haven't just taken damage.
- Unspecified bugfixes!
- New Infrastructure:
- BoTC now has it's own Master Server/Facilitator. This allows players to connect to each other by giving servers a place to register and players a place to search for active games. This includes facilitating connections through NAT/routers to make getting into games easy! Previously, the game had been relying on the Unity development Master Server (generously provided by them) which I have no control over (nor should I) and could not guarantee its reliability.
- I am now running a 24/7 dedicated server! Players shouldn't be forced to run their own servers to play and that's not how the game is intended. Having this server should give players a common place to play that is reliable with consistent performance and free up their local resources. All that said, this is the first step and I'll still be trying to gauge how an always on server performs. It will likely need tweaks over time and it may require restarts.
- Netcode Overhaul:
- Once I set up my remote server, it became very clear to me that the current network performance wasn't holding up. With a lot of research and experimentation I went ahead and began to gut how the game works in an effort to make the game work and feel the way I know it needs to. I'm happy to say that, after literally breaking everything in the game internally, I was able to piece it back together but much improved. Piloting is now smoother than ever and while it's not going to be perfect right away it's already a massive step forward and will only be getting better!
New in Battle of Tau Ceti 0.3.2.1a Alpha (May 21, 2014)
New in Battle of Tau Ceti 0.3.2a Alpha (May 19, 2014)
- Completed VOIP Integration - Voice chat now goes to teammates instead of everyone and will show the names of which players are currently speaking.
- Separated turret controls from pilot controls so they don't have to use the same keybinds.
- Changed key binding to allow for the same key to be bindable to multiple controls.
- Incremental Netcode Improvement - extrapolation code was broken (now working) and removed some unnecessary network traffic for players using a turret.
- Removed ability for frigates and capitals to ascend/descend.
- Added ability to strafe (left/right) for corvettes.
- Fixed bug where Bots controlling turrets of an Artillery Frigate would not fire.
- Fixed camera bug for players using Artillery Frigate turrets.
New in Battle of Tau Ceti 0.3.1a Alpha (Apr 30, 2014)
- Fixes/Improvements:
- Normalized turning(pitch/roll/yaw) speed across all inputs so no method (mouse/gamepad/joystick/keyboard) turns faster or slower than another.
- Increased turning speed of fighters and corvettes - this should make it more fun giving pilots more control over the faster ships.
- Added timeout to Create Server screen so if you fail to reach the Connection Tester you will still be able to create a game (though others may have difficulty connecting).
- Fixed Repair Station not out-repairing a hull breach and increased the radius it will repair ships from to give players more of a chance of recovering.
- Hull breaches no longer damage you while hypering. Again, to give players a better chance of getting to safety.
- You should no longer get points from breaching you’re own hull.
- When taking over bot controlled ships as pilot, the former bot will no longer still be able to activate your ships ability.
- Changed third person mode to use a free-look style view. It will lock turning controls (but you can still control thrust) and allow you to rotate the camera around the ship. The previous third person camera didn’t offer much of a different view and I agreed it was necessary to allow the players to look around.