Messages

1

Early Dev / Re: Auto Fire: A turn-based roguelike car combat RPG

« on: October 07, 2022, 08:14:22 PM »

Something you never hear about in game development is the challenge of capturing footage for a trailer or some amount of publicity.  Few games, particularly those with any kind of randomness or procedural generation, look 100% perfect at every moment during development.  Even if there aren't bugs, you're trying to take a slice of time, a single image, where the game shines as what you envision it to be.  It can take weeks and weeks and at the end of the process you feel a strange mixture of pride in what you have created and despair over all the things you have left to do.



So over August and September as I've been catching snippets for use in the Seattle Indies Expo, I got a face full of the driving experience at times when I wanted to feel the Drive Magic.  However, as you drive and shoot there are stalls (put in there intentionally) as the game resolves projectiles and impacts.  That sort of turn resolution is pretty common in tactics games, it lets you see the results of your attack (or attacks against you) and process the result before moving on.  I originally set the system up that way because "that's what Roguelikes usually do"

However, the frequent halts during my drivin' and skiddin' started to bug the crap out of me, especially when there were a lot of enemies nearby. Of course I don't pause the game when something happens offscreen, but when there are a lot of enemies it can happen often, especially in the arena where enemies were attacking each other.

So, to the experiments!  I decided to try a couple things:

• I removed the projectile pause entirely and let attacks just resolve while the various vehicles moved to new positions. 
• I adjusted the speed at which the turn played out based on the player speed, so turns (including those of opponents) just play out faster when the player vehicle is moving at higher speed.  Turns at 25 MPH play out faster than turns at 100 MPH.

The results were interesting.  Keep in mind that this is still 100% turn-based.  The only thing that has changed is how turn results are represented.

https://youtu.be/LNrce4pa7y8

You can specifically see the lack of a delay when the player fires machineguns and rockets.

Yes, the result needs a bit of work, specifically:

• Bullets don't yet "lead" their targets so they are striking behind the vehicle.
• Some slow weapons like rockets that take longer than a typical move duration (generally between a quarter and a half second) need to be converted to take multiple turns to reach their destination.
• (...but hey that's gameplay, y'all!)
• I still need to make sure combat resolution is as readable as possible, such as:
• Armor impacts and damage numbers are still getting obscured.
• The armor side that gets hit isn't as obvious as it should be
• And of course, special moves will still need to stall the game, but that's fine for something that doesn't happen often.

However, in all it did improve the overall feel of driving and smoothness.   This was a worthwhile experiment and I'm all in on making sure the game feels great and still has a clear turn-based combat resolution. Not sure where this will lead, and I know that a certain segment of the audience will want to be crystal clear on what's going on in combat, in the same way that another segment will want to cut loose and skid around fluidly.  Possibly I'll leave a toggle for the roguelike turn resolution if the player wants that (should be possible).  

More to come as the game continues to evolve and improve!

2

Early Dev / Re: Auto Fire: A turn-based roguelike car combat RPG

« on: August 01, 2022, 05:09:44 PM »

Some great new updates to Auto Fire this month.  The UI got another level up with some improved screens and a more lived-in look.  You can now go to the citadel and help those people out, building renown with that city.  Citadels are a little more solid in their representation also, with one of only a few corporations keeping control of the populace across the country.  Finally, the visuals took an uptick with better lighting, new desert terrain visuals and cleaned up foliage.  The time to check it out is now!



https://vertigames.itch.io/auto-fire

3

Early Dev / Re: Auto Fire: A turn-based roguelike car combat RPG

« on: July 02, 2022, 10:51:16 PM »

It’s been a long time coming, but Auto Fire is back in action with a bunch of updates and improvements!

There has been a major UI revision for just about all of the supporting screens and menus. Consumable gear was added so you can manually heal up in the field if you have the right items. There is a significant and growing tutorial that pops up how to play the game as situations present themselves. (And yes, you can turn them off in the settings!) More is in the works, including the long-promised arenas, hope you enjoy!

As always, check it out at https://vertigames.itch.io/auto-fire.



Gameplay/Content

• Some garages and repair outlets have a limited amount of gas or ordnance they can sell you.
• Consumable gear was created that can repair your internals, drop mines or smokescreens, or basically enact any normal equipment’s function.
• You can also target yourself on specific sides for armor repair gear, and the UI reflects it on your armor display.
• When you complete an encounter, the loot is generated immediately rather than waiting until you move.
• Radar is now a dedicated equipment type and slot called “Sensors”.  All cars have a default radar sensors package, but this can do a lot of different things.

Combat

• Desert encounters now include combat moments that will drive you into a fight.
• AI Updated for more responsiveness when spotting the player.
• AI consider facing when planning their navigation routes, meaning that vehicles will plot paths more naturally and loop around their targets.
• The line flamethrower can now target the ground.

Content/Tuning

• Starter car only has 1 plate of armor all around, and no minedropper.  You’ll have to buy your own upgrades to get the good stuff.
• Equipment crates now drop more items (versus from normal vehicle drops)
• First outpost in the starter sector now requires some vehicles to be killed before the boss emerges.
• Old instant repair and armor pickups removed from drops in favor of the repair consumables.
• Desert sectors should no longer have random encounters, only emplaced ones (that is, glints and smoke columns rather than just rolling dice)
• Adjusted grip recharge rate to be a bit more generous.
• Significantly more parts are awarded on the field.

Controls

• Big cleanup to allow for gamepad control of menus without losing focus.
• Made accelerating into a skid work better, should not infinitely skid if you thrust against it.
• Acceleration now waits until the next move to reduce your move’s time slice, so as a player you cannot reach max speed in a single turn the way you previously could.

HUD

• Rework of the HUD colors and aiming interface.
• Shrank the HUD components (gear, armor, social) slightly to allow for more playable space.
• Changed social feed to dark mode, because the bright display was distracting from the gameplay.
• The boss is removed from the HUD once you wipe them from a location.
• Event-based tutorial popups appear when the player experiences various events, from taking damage to skidding to picking up gear.
• The player’s challenge is now expressed with skulls, which is conveyed in the travel/gas popup to tell you what you’re getting into.
• Added a real date display that updates based on player turns.
• AL has a new look.

Menus

• Complete rework of the character and loadout screens.
• Complete rework of the repair experience.
• Complete rework of the vehicle stable, to show all stats for all vehicles.
• Complete rework of inventory, buy and sell screens to add categories and better controls.
• Complete rework of the loading dock experience to show a map where you must deliver your chosen item.
• Automap re-envisioned to use a higher quality smooth shader.
• Automap locations are now interactive and can be hovered for popup info, and they ping indicating where quests are directing you to go.
• Quest display revised to display a map telling you where you must go.
• Quest steps are now crossed off in the Quest character panel.
• Faction and skills are now shown in the character panel.
• Entirely new inventory icons, for a punchier and yet colorful look
• All item UI buttons are have a new shiny shader.
• Items now display with level badges, indicating the raw progression tier the item has.
• The loadout view shows pips that indicate when a higher-level item is available to be slotted in that location.
• The inventory view shows pips that indicate when an item is new and has not yet been examined.

Visuals

• Enemy shouts appear in bubbles both on the HUD and over the enemy vehicles in-world.
• Agents no longer echo their encounter dialogue into the social feed (it was cluttering the experience too much).
• Zoom in moments happen after the level fades in rather than zooming when you can’t see.
• New power lines, cargo containers, and other assets
• Adjusted lighting on tail lights.
• Adjusted location labels for visual appeal
• Made label ping show through world for visibility (hard to see the exits in canyons)
• Location labels do not obscure your view when you enter a zone.

VFX

• New explosion and fire VFX from toon explosion to a better stylized/realistic hybrid.  (It doesn’t block the player’s view as much)
• Revised fire oil, burning objects and flamethrower VFX
• Revised occupation VFX
• Added decals on the ground from gunfire and explosions.
• Fixed up flamethrowers on player as well as enemy flamers

Settings

• Did some fixes to how I was handling settings for those of you with laptops and unusual screen limitations.
• There is now a minimum allowed resolution (Horizontal at least 1024, Vertical at least 720)
• Graphics Settings should properly record your selected resolution.
• Music and audio should also set and record properly in the main menu.

Audio

• Vehicle audio uses Realistic Engine Sounds package and adjusts and shifts gear based on speed.
• Use audio mixer to duck car audio when waiting between turns.
• A new stinger or tutorial popups and specific informational moments.
• Revised boss music slightly to stutter less, and use a continuous loop sometimes for quality’s sake.
• Audio is set properly on startup from the prefs now

Bugs

• Fixed several bugs with how bosses dole out their quests and get resolved at the end of a combat.
• Fixed several screens where their text didn’t align properly.
• When returning to a previously visited map, we handle the population correctly.
• Fixed speedometer flashing visuals to properly flash at the end of a turn.
• Made reverse skidding work better, it had some really bad behavior.
• Entering combat in the field (via random encounter) now works properly.
• Buying and selling at the citadel now properly supports stacks of items.
• Repairs now work properly, you can’t get free repairs if you are near zero resources.
• Small visual fixes and typos
• Impassable outpost entrance now fixed (the outpost generator wants a larger palette to place protective walls)

4

Early Dev / Re: Auto Fire: A turn-based roguelike car combat RPG

« on: May 29, 2022, 07:31:28 PM »

Been a long time but the game is still in the works.  Trying to a get a long-delayed release out with massive visual and UI cleanup, consumable use and a deeper set of equipment.

5

Early Dev / Re: Auto Fire: A turn-based roguelike car combat RPG

« on: February 18, 2021, 09:03:13 PM »

Another update is inbound!  This one is focused on revising the world generation methods for more interesting and playable maps.  This lay the system foundation for new types of biomes and better overall map layouts moving forward.  You'll see the biggest example of this with the walled outpost maps, which are entirely revised and much more look the part.

There were also a lot of stability and quality of life improvements along the way...  You can shoot mines!  Car control and skidding interact a bit better, armor repairs cost less parts.  There was a bug with missions that people who liked to haul cargo ran into.  For keyboard and gamepad players, the dialogues should not lose their selection (which required you to touch the mouse if it happened)



Check it out and get your vroom-vroom-pew-pew on!

6

Early Dev / Re: Auto Fire: A turn-based roguelike car combat RPG

« on: February 14, 2021, 11:24:58 PM »

Long time no post!  Auto Fire rides again!

OUTPOST REVISIONS
Check out the results in action right here!

Something that is really enjoyable, believe it or not, is refining ways to generate cool maps. To see the result of a mad pile of code and some assets turn into something you can play can be a bit addicting. I've certainly got a lot to do for entirely new content, but since I was working on creating new types of maps, it was worthwhile to look back at how I was generating outposts.



Auto Fire uses a few different generators, one for rolling terrain, one for piecing together city blocks, one for populating hand-crafted levels... Originally I had been using the straight terrain generator that I use for battlefields and the overworld maps... a method of laying out blobs of varying terrains using Voronoi regions. If you're unfamiliar those may sound froo-froo-fancy but for grids they are almost embarrassingly simple: Throw a bunch of spots down on the map that have a particular terrain type: mountains, clearing, rough terrain, etc. Test every tile on the map and mark it as part of whatever spot it is nearest. Add some noise and various other properties of each spot/region, plow roads to get you from place to place and you're pretty far along. It's at least enough for stuff like the overworld, where the specific terrain isn't so important.



For outposts, however, that was only part of the equation… I needed walled areas, I needed an “inside” and “outside” area. I wanted buildings to make the interior more interesting. I managed to piece together features like the walls and special setpieces like water towers and little dwellings. In the end the placement of buildings were random, which created a lot of unbelievable areas and many dead-ends… a curse for a driving game where speed is king.

The buildings were also single-tile affairs… This scale mismatch was deliberately set on early in the game’s development for cities, but have since been changed to a double scale that allows buildings to be more interesting and for roads to have more width in cities.

What I realized is that I had a really refined measure of control in cities, with varying width roads, support for passability and large crafted areas, and just overall a less random feel.



Cities are constructed using 8×8 blocks (which was 4×4 back when buildings were single-tile) that are crafted to hold a 2 or 4-lane road connector or a 1-lane alley (either left or right side). Each block has one or more exits, and a bunch of places where optional exits can be punched through if the system needs to create extra loops.

So why not do this with desert maps? Walls can be made this way of course, but we don’t want a desert map to look like Manhattan… Luckily there are a ton of tricks to keep roads from being straight and buildings falling in irregular patterns. This generator set used 4×4 tiles and almost entirely 1-lane roads, which can meander within a block like a Carcassone tile to keep things from looking too precise. One set of blocks can be used for the inside of the walls, and another for the lighter desert features outside. Everything’s great except that terrain needed to come back into the fore.




And so it did! Parts of the terrain generator came over to the block generator to give the map a more natural appearance… considering it was largely giant squares. With it we got terrain rendering thanks to Microsplat and some pretty nice grass from Advanced Terrain Grass. Our road-plowing routines guaranteed passability and some other code helped give the driveable spaces a little bit of vertical rise and fall.

So “why now” might come to mind… “You’ve had outposts for years now, so what’s the big deal about revising them now?” Fair question. The main reason is my recent investigation into new map types: Industrial parks! Dueling arenas! Race tracks! I have some examples that I’ve hand built with assets I have, but I want to get those generating also… and this same method will work for all of them.

Highways are also a culprit, because they are okay maps, but the road is arrow-straight and can’t really incorporate curves. With my current overworld system I can’t draw two-lane roads without using this block method. Also, a road that curves gently like a highway or race track is best laid out on an 8×8 tile… or even a 16×16. These things are all possible in our brave new world!



That’s the big news of February… a new build will be coming out tomorrow. Excelsior!

7

Early Dev / Re: Auto Fire: A turn-based roguelike car combat RPG

« on: December 07, 2019, 07:36:37 PM »

Been a while again since I'm juggling some contract work. I'll trim my update to the bone.

Things are lively on the Auto Combat Zone Discord mainly because of the Car Wars 6th Edition Kickstarter, which is pretty exciting if you're a fan of cars shooting other cars. I'm all right with my project taking a back seat as the community gets amped for a new release of a game I first played 35 years ago.

Content

Lately I've been adjusting my focus towards cleaner content generation... by that I mean missions and encounters rather than map variance and weapon variety. My current quest system seems... fragile... right now and I need a more compelling arc to the player. That means less of a soup of basic sandbox missions but more of a crafted arc.

To remedy I'm probably going to go a little too far in the crafted direction, by laying out my overworld sectors a bit more deliberately and creating an easier method for predefining some of the more story-driven quests within. I originally had a campaign map of 10x10 overworld sectors (each with multiple combat zones within) and I brought that down a little to 6x6 so that I can pull the player through a bit easier. Adding sectors back in later should be easy, and I'll still need all those generated quests to glue together the rest of the content.

On the upside, I've created highway maps that connect each sector together, so when you head north from overworld sector 2,3 you have to brave the open road to reach the next sector. Right now that's pretty bare bones, but the goal is to both make some really hazardous runs, and to ultimately support Convoy Missions which are the lifeblood of Mad Max and Car Wars' storytelling. Maybe even some Eastbound and Down haha :-)



I also leveled out the difficulty and base it off a health, damage and loot table with a level 1-20 scale. Enemies have a "difficulty band" that they appear in based on the area, and an adjustment to their stats within that band (e.g. 0.6xhealth, 1.8x damage, loot level +1). This isn't "leveling to the player" (which is one of my least favorite features of certain RPGs) but rather keeping me sane by using a set of tables as an anchor for balancing. It also means those stats I have to balance with aren't buried in the vehicle definitions like they were.

Gameplay

To add a little more emphasis on shooting and driving, we have some delayed action effects now. The first place it manifests is in guided rockets that take a few turns to reach their destination. This was a little quirky because of the team-based turn updates that are part of the system right now. Rather than each move being interleaved, the player executes a full turn of moves (for example, 3 moves if they are moving at a speed of 3), then the enemies do all their moves (based on their vehicle speeds). This means the rockets use the same stop-start logic. It reads a bit funky but I think it still works.



As part of this I started making a bunch more of the world destructible. This wasn't a big deal, but going through the exercise of breaking up the models I had into parts and assigning them physics properties was a good process for future adds.

Plus, driving through a windmill feels good.



Fame Building

Finally, as part of the overall "fame" experience, I brought back my old "classic" combat log and reinvented it as a social media feed with only limited gameplay information (kills, item pickups) conveyed within. Yes, the populace in the walled citadels are following the player's exploits and voting with their "likes" and slinging emojis. Your rivals and your stunt driving will tie more and more into the social experience as we go forward.

8

Early Dev / Re: Auto Fire: A turn-based roguelike car combat RPG

« on: December 07, 2019, 07:35:53 PM »

And apologies if the streams are pretty fluff-intensive.  It's still very hard for me to have the brainpower to dig into a deep system while on camera.  Sometimes simple math defies me when I'm on the spot. :-)

9

Early Dev / Re: Auto Fire: A turn-based roguelike car combat RPG

« on: December 07, 2019, 07:34:43 PM »

Thanks! I've been a professional game developer for a lotta years and I've definitely done the bare-bones thing...  My first few games were Watcom C and good ol' $A0000.  Early on in the development of Auto Fire I had a decision point where I could have stayed 2D and a lot simpler, or just go for the 3D thing with physics and all the stuff that an engine like Unity provides.  I'm a visual beast so I chose the latter. 

I'm really enjoying the combination of cars and roguelikes.  It's literally a game I've wanted to make for over 30 years.

10

Early Dev / Re: Auto Fire: A turn-based roguelike car combat RPG

« on: November 12, 2019, 05:18:08 PM »

Hey all!  I'm working hard on Auto Fire to get it in a state where it can Kickstart at the start of the new year, and you can help.  One way you can help me build awareness is simply by following @autofiregame on Twitter.  Just click the link, it's easy, and would help me out a lot!

In the meantime, one of the new features is the rocket barrage thrown by the watchtowers.  Once they sight you in, you've only got a couple turns to get your car out of the way!

11

Early Dev / Re: Auto Fire: A turn-based roguelike car combat RPG

« on: November 10, 2019, 12:00:22 AM »

I’ve been doing development streaming on Twitch lately, and it’s been pretty enjoyable actually. It’s early afternoon for me, Tuesday at 1PM Pacific, and it’s been fine. I worried about the cats disrupting things but I just embraced the cat break. I worried about boring people with some noodly code problem on camera but there’s always something I can pick up that’s interesting to work on and talk about. I’d like to think that people are learning things about game development as well, which it turns out is part of what it’s about.

I’ve saved some of these streams on Youtube, which has been good since there are sometimes concepts that I want to convey to people that are helping me out… and having a demo of its use is super-handy.

Auto Fire - Development Stream #2

In stream #2 I showed off how patches are created in-game, and punch up some in-game objects. (The first stream was unfortunately lost to the fact that Twitch doesn’t save broadcasts by default). We also got our very first Cat Break with Sammy.

Auto Fire - Development Stream #3

Stream #3 started pretty weird because I had the mic off for a good chunk of the start. In this I actually crack open the very improved Blender after only an hour of watching tutorials and use it to update and break up some models, to improve the physics impact of destruction. Then we cut loose with some rockets...

Auto Fire Dev - Rocket and cannon madness

See you on Tuesday!

12

Early Dev / Re: Auto Fire: A turn-based roguelike car combat RPG

« on: October 29, 2019, 07:26:23 AM »

There have been improvements to Auto Fire both big and small! There was a list as long as my arm of bugs and nitpicks that I discovered when showing off the game at the Roguelike Celebration. Quality of life improvements are always crowd-pleasers, and they happen to also be me-pleasers since I’m playing the game everyday.

More importantly, I started setting an eye to a longer play arc than I have now. That includes laying the foundation for loot, health and damage that’s defined by a progression arc. This means that I can balance numbers globally, as well as more easily drop in enemies and items to the game and have the system distribute them more easily.

This may not affect your experiences that much just yet (aside from some new items dropping!) but I’m looking forward to bulking up the content soon.



Gameplay Improvements

• Rams are more sophisticated in their detection now! They now check relative speeds, and factor in the ram plate only when your front is colliding with the enemy.
• The relative mass and levels of the vehicle are also factored into the damage that is done.
• The Cricket’s Bootlegger now executes a stun burst upon completion! (Like it’s supposed to!)

Content

• Sectors are now set up to control the challenge within them! This gives me the first tools to really smoothly lay in progressively advanced content.
• There are now tables that control the base amounts of health, damage, fame, item value, vehicle value, and various resource drops.
• Varying the content from this baseline will help generate new content and help balancing as the content grows.
• This was waaaaaay harder than it should have been, except it’s because vehicles have a fairly involved way of installing themselves on various vehicle chassis. Players do it differently than enemies, but they all use the same basis.
• Loot tables now spawn based on the challenge level of a map or opponent as well. Items are now set up to drop in quickly via a spreadsheet, allowing content growth to be much easier!
• Part of the result of this is that there are some new tires, engines, blast gadgets, and weapons that took a few minutes to whip up. A significant improvement.

Visuals

• Adjusted the fire trail from exploding barrels and vehicles to be more flamboyant.
• Added physics objects to destructible entities.
• Fixed orientation and camera angles of special moves.
• The overworld vehicle is a tad smaller now, to better fit the other elements within.

User Interface

• Automap is (finally!!!) closed with the Escape key
• Objective Pointer improvements!
• Objective pointers now can point to things that can be killed in the map if there are more than one.
• When there are multiple objective targets, only show the ones that have been seen so far.
• Pointer flashes regularly and is pushed slightly further inward for better visibility.
• Pointer starts in the center and moves out when changed.

Environment

• Revised the feel of the ground, leaning a little bit in the direction of more detail. I don’t want it to get too busy but it was blandtown.
• Experimenting with grass, textures, some more boundary variance, and so on.
• Outposts now have some slightly more interesting walls.
• There can be breaks on multiple sides, and now the break isn’t always predictably on the south end either.
• There are some corner variants now, just to mix things up.
• The walls have a bunch more variance and they are not always rail-straight.
• Wanted a little more verticality, so I made the guard tower and water tower taller.

Audio

• Physics objects like exploding cars now have sounds when they collide with the world!
• Some sounds are no longer affected by slowing down time, because they sounded pretty dumb (like the “clink” of a dropped item)
• MasterAudio (my sound system) was logging all sounds, spewing into the text log. Turned this off, which could improve performance slightly.

Bug Fixes

• It turns out I wasn’t reading my data files in an internationally friendly fashion. PC’s with Russian language, for example, would have empty levels and no weapons. Derp. This should be fixed with new parsing improvements. Hopefully Russian computers can run the game better now!
• When attacking with a ground-only weapon or special move, don’t snap to an enemy.
• Vehicles now have their special moves and speed perks built-in as vehicle defaults. This makes them not part of the inventory and not removable.
• Fixed some targeting issues caused by weapons with a minimum range calculating incorrectly.

Other

• The Steamworks library has been added to the game! It doesn’t do much yet, but it’s a start!
• The game has been updated to Unity 2019.2.9f, and now uses Unity Plus. This means no more Unity splash screen for extra Pro Points(TM)

As always, you’re welcome to try out the current build at Itch.io!

13

Early Dev / Re: Auto Fire: A turn-based roguelike car combat RPG

« on: October 17, 2019, 09:15:59 PM »

Testing out my new hardware in the run-up to my first stream, I whipped up a quick video blog showing off the most recent changes to the build and its vehicle playstyles.  Enjoy!



And hey, yes!  I did stream for the very first time this week.  I unfortunately didn't know that Twitch didn't default to saving past broadcasts so the first session isn't viewable, but head over to my channel and give me a follow!  I promise to save all future sessions!

14

Early Dev / Re: Auto Fire: A turn-based roguelike car combat RPG

« on: October 10, 2019, 09:39:02 PM »

Ohhhh man how could I have missed the Explode-o-Ram?

15

Early Dev / Re: Auto Fire: A turn-based roguelike car combat RPG

« on: October 10, 2019, 08:07:42 PM »

It's been a couple weeks since the last build, but a lot has happened due to things that I've wanted to get in for the Rogue Celebration 2019, which I'll talk about in another article.

For Auto Fire, RogueCel primarily meant that I had a lot I wanted to do in proving out playstyles.  This manifests in the player's vehicle chassis selection...  It includes speed perks (passive effects triggered when driving at 60 MPH or higher), and special maneuvers (gas-consuming all-in-one moves that launch the vehicle to a new location and affects everything around it.

As always you can check out the state of development for free on Itch!



General Improvements

• Line of Sight is more accurate and forgiving now.  You can target around obstructions and along walls effectively.
• Vehicles now automatically pick up items from the ground adjacent to the vehicle, rather than requiring the radar to be used.  It feels so much better!
• The player also automatically picks up adjacent items in the overworld!

Gameplay Systems

• Vehicles now have two new equipment slots (which are not player-editable):  Speed Perk and Special Maneuver.  This equipment will in most cases be baked into the chassis itself when used.
• Created the ability for equipment to have passive effects when installed, and remove them when uninstalled.  This will allow for special visual or gameplay things to result from triggers such as being hit, losing control, or colliding.
• A minimum speed also now exists for certain effects, allowing for things like speed perks which trigger whenever the vehicle is traveling 60 MPH or over.
• The stun condition keeps an AI (or player) from firing or controlling their movement until it wears off.  This means pedestrians stay in place while vehicles will continue forward at their existing speed (or until they hit something).
• The focus condition increases the subject's ability to hit targets and inflict crits.
• Turret fire (the F key or the gamepad triggers) now can launch any weapon or special ability.  It also won't attack the ground the way it used to.

Vehicle Upgrades

• Ram Blast (Stallion):  Speed perk that triggers an explosion whenever the vehicle collides at high speed.
• Ram Piston (Stallion):  Special maneuver that launches forward and bashes through the selected target, knocking it aside.
• Advanced Radar (Stallion):  The Stallion has special radar that has a bigger radius than other vehicles.
• Hyperfocus (Panther):  Speed perk that increases the hit and critical chance when at high speed.
• Jet Thruster (Panther):  Special maneuver that launches forward and puts the car at max speed, leaving a trail of fire behind.
• Jet Wash (Cricket):  Speed perk that stuns vehicles and foot soldiers that are passed at high speed.
• Bootlegger (Cricket):  Special maneuver that launches forward and spins the car around, ending with a large stunning pulse.
• Note: Special Maneuvers all consume gas!

Visuals

• Created new shader for the fog of war that moves more dynamically and has interesting edges.  It's an improvement over the previous mushy look because a lot of the screen is usually under some level of this fog.
• Destroyed vehicles now do not fly into the air as ridiculously far.  It was fun but you often never even saw the vehicle because it flew so high.
• Adjusted the color of the ordnance and gas can icon and model to be more prominently colored, so they are easier to spot.
• Added glinty materials to pickups to make them catch the eye better.

Content

• Adjusted the loadout of starting vehicles to match playstyles.
• Updated start screen to give more description of cars.
• Updated some tutorial text to match the new control method.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed bug with effects such as dropped items. One symptom was smoke and oil overwriting each other. This may also eliminate some of the mysterious crashes I've seen.
• Fixed a problem with firing while stationary, which remained in slomo during execution.
• Changed the ragdolls for humans and dogs to move smoothly.

Audio

• Added audio mixer slowdown when slowing down time.
• When destroyed vehicles are flung into the air, they now play sounds when falling to the ground.
• Added a techy burst sound for the bootlegger.

User Interface

• The (A) button prompt disappears when the player centers the gamepad stick.
• Targeting squares are more yellow now, rather than green.