Another two months have passed without a post, but we’ve been not completely lazy. All draw and holster animations on the player models have been revised to make them look less clunky and awkward. In other words: they look good now. In addition to that the entities for the goal modes – the generic and special versions – are done as well. They now “just” lack some game logic to be usable in-game, but that shouldn’t be too much work.
But the main reason for this news post is our first Dev Diary video, today’s episode shows off our new stunt, the walldive. Enjoy the video.

We’ll update you with new information and/or videos as soon as we got new material to share.

It’s been a solid 4 months since I wrote those words up top about being less quiet during production without posting the least bit of information afterwards. Up to now.
Actually we haven’t been quiet over the last 4 months. Quite the contrary, we’ve been rather chatty. Just not in public. There have been several discussions, the biggest one up to now is about the planned goal modes. We want to get it right the first time and that requires thorough planning. This is all theoretical stuff and much talking (or: posting) and therefore not very actiony but we’ve come up with a plan for the feature which’ll bring a shine to your eyes once v3 is out. The good news is that the most basic form of the feature is already working, the bad news is that it’ll still take us several months to implement and close every last one of the tickets on that exhaustive ticket list. There’s also some stuff being added besides the ticket list, which usually happens when we come across things that could use an overhaul during testing. Now, what makes a news post about a game in production even more interesting than the mere words themselves? Correct, media. The goal modes mentioned above require some information on the HUD. So here’s the concept of our new HUD.

The most obvious change about the HUD is the addition of goal info. This consists of three different parts. The first one is a 3d arrow (the picture above just shows a concept) which points to where you have to go next. The second part is the name of the location where you have to go next – in case this information is available from the map. The last part is a short info text on what to do once you arrive where you have to go. Besides showing goal info we also wanted to clean the HUD up a bit. As you can see the numbers next to the health icon are gone, once the icon is all black and white you’re dead. The exact number of health left really doesn’t matter in AHL2 and if you still want to see it there’s always the chat variables. The unique item icon has been moved to the left, next to the health icon. Above it there’s room to display an extra icon for items you may carry during goal modes. Unlike in v2 both icons won’t be shown as empty panels if you don’t carry an item, they’ll just vanish when there’s nothing to display. The last change to the HUD can be seen in the lower right corner. The weapon info has been split into two parts. The lower one shows the type of ammo you are currently using and the remaining content of the current magazine. The panel on top of it shows how much spare ammo you have left.

That’s it for today. Comments on how you like the changes to the HUD are welcome either in the comments section of this blog post (no registration required) and/or our forums.
There’s also another news release planned soon and it’ll be a surprise. Stay tuned.

Just a short post today to update you on AHL2v3 – it is in production now. When we asked for suggestions you came up with a list of 78 feature requests and bug reports. After clearing out all duplicates, the bugs that have been fixed in AHL2v2 patch 3 and features we cannot implement or rejected the list is now reduced to 41 items. It is slightly too long for a news post, but you can check the list of tickets for v3 to see what has already been implemented and what’s still to come. There may be additional tickets when bugs are being discovered during testing, but the list of new features is fixed by now. Be sure to check back here frequently as we’ll be less quiet during development than we were last time.

With players returning to the servers it is now time to fix some last few quirks in Action Half-Life 2 v2. Which is why we present, kind of out of nowhere, patch 3. Find below a list of fixes, additions and changes.

Fixes:
- Fixed teamspawn code by rewriting it and thus finally making it work like it should
- Fixed friendly fire not working correctly
- Fixed remaining rare crashes
- Fixed player not being able to use any gun after having the previous one kicked off their hands by another player
- Fixed weapon staying hidden upon using switching to the last weapon after bandaging
- Fixed players not spawning amongst their teammates at round start
- Fixed players spawning at round start and once again when starting to move
- Fixed players spawning inside objects at round start
- Fixed players spawning at odd places like outside the map at round start
- Fixed players spawning in the middle of the enemy team at round start
- Fixed players spawning inside other players (no matter if friend or foe) at round start
- Fixed players dropping too far down when spawning at round start
- Fixed players being able to spawn into or dropping directly into a trigger_hurt after spawning at round start

Updates, additions and miscellaneous changes:
- Updated sniper rifle view and world model
- Reviewed weapon switch code and added code to prevent as many remotely possible crashes as possible
- Added cvar sv_mindistancetp (default: 3500) to set the minimum amount of units between to base team spawn spots to make the spawn point selection for team games more random

Thanks fly out to the server administrators Roy_wheels and Nordmann for testing several builds over the last few weeks and months on their servers “Roy’s Happy Place” and “N0rd’s EU AHL2 Deathmatch Box”. They both made sure that the fixes got tested “in the wild” rather than our testing environments here. Thank you also to the players who joined those two servers, especially to Kissamies who posted quite a bunch of bugs and suggestions on what may cause them.
With the release of of patch 3 development on AHL2 v2 is complete. Next up is AHL2 v3, which will be our next release. We’ve almost finished planning it, so watch this space for updates on this topic (actually below this post as the news on the patch will stay stickied for some time now).
One last note on patch 3: a few of the fixes mentioned above require both the server and the client to be updated. That is, if you’ve already updated your client and experience one of the problems mentioned above as fixed the server may still not be updated. And now, here are the download links.

Windows Installer

AHL2v2update3 Windows Installer on MoA server
AHL2v2update3 Windows Installer mirror provided by moddb.com

.zip version, also includes Linux server binary (just unzip in your SourceMods/orangebox folder overwriting existing files)

AHL2v2update3 .zip version on MoA server
AHL2v2update3 .zip version mirror provided by moddb.com

The last tweaks and fixed to the rewritten teamspawn grid code have been finished (and thoroughly tested). An updated server binary is now running on “Roy’s Happy Place” and should be up on “N0rd’s EU AHL2 Deathmatch Box” shortly. Both servers should be your first choice to play on (if possible) so that we can say for sure everything has been fixed in order to release patch 3. Besides the teamspawn grid several possible crashes have been fixed as well as the last occasion which may lead to hidden weapons. Please note that the latter is a server and client fix and thus may not work for you until an updated client.dll has been released.

And now, just for your viewing pleasure, some screenshots that have been taken when testing the tweaks to the teamspawn grid code as mentioned above. The teams were set to 16 players each, which is why that many spawn points are being created.

Nicely working grid on ahl2_dawg.

Another grid, nicely flowing through a hallway on ahl2_skylounge. In the background we can see where the other team spawns (left) and a grid from the previous round (right).

The game tried its very best to spawn the team at this spot on ahl2_skylounge. However, there’s just not enough room – no matter where we go.