The Asteroid Update - Hotfix Build 85423 & Release build 85138

Hotfix Build 85423 - 8/5/15

Bugfix/polish:
Fix for Galactic War crash when playing old saves

Asteroids! Now spawning in a system near you!

We've been working on these for quite a while and are happy to announce that Asteroids are now available to add to your systems in PA! They have been added in a few of the existing systems (including ranked), so keep your eyes open for the telltale Asteroid belts and enjoy a new way to annihilate planets!

This update also includes a ton of bugfixes, polish items, and AI tweaks for you to play against, as well as new feedback added to make placing buildings much easier!

Take a look at the full notes below, and we hope you all enjoy the new additions to the game!


Asteroids are here!
Players are now able to place Asteroid belts in their systems
The asteroid belt spawns in small asteroids at a predetermined timing that can be set by the system designer
An alert plays when an asteroid appears in the system
New planet crash effect! Planets now explode when they collide with one another
-This means that the player no longer targets a spot on the target planet
-This also means that all commanders on the planet are the first to die and die at the same time
Planets in motion go directly to the target after first going around the sun once
Asteroids have been added to the Roc, Styx, and Medea systems. The Roc system has also been added to the list of Ranked systems

Improved feedback while placing buildings
-Build previews now show the placement bounds as a square light
-The preview will change yellow if placing the building will block a metal spot
-The preview will turn red if building is placed in a spot it cannot be built on

Balance changes:
Reduced AA Missile splash damage
- Commander decreased from 25 to 10
- AA Vehicle (Spinner) decreased from 20 to 10
- Air Defense (Galata) decreased from 20 to 10
- Missile Ship (Stingray) decreased from 25 to 10

AI changes/fixes:
Fix for the AI using the wrong value when making a planet wide patrol order on a gas giant
Fix for crash due to bad data in AI unit map
Fix for AI trying to create an artillery platoon when a Unit Cannon is built
Fix for AI failing to build if the factory it wants to start with cannot be built due to the spec not being available
AI should waste resources less often
Added support for AIs to have multiple personality tags
Fix for a bug where the AI would not build an advanced vehicle fabber on planets with an enemy on it
Fix for a bug where a fabber would not be built right away on a planet where the AI had an orbital fabber
Fix for AI not setting up initial army presences correctly
Improved AI econ handling
Fix for AI fabbers constantly starting and stopping assisting
Fix for bug in planetmanager that could cause the AI to not create a new base for a spawned in unit when it should
Minor AI build condition update
Fix for AI crash during sim shutdown
Minor AI build item change
AI will try to stick to the same enemy as a target unless a significant reason exists to change
Minor AI platoon behavior modifications
Fix for AI orbital radar platoons
Added stuck detection to the diband behavior of AI platoons in an attempt to keep them from getting lost by the AI
AI should do a better job of scouting other planets
Fix for AI crash that can occur when an AI is defeated
Fix for AI micro and keep at range distances
Further improved AI attack from range behavior
AI can use asteroids
AI can now handle combat on smaller planets better
AI will launch asteroids at other asteroids, under certain conditions
AI unit cap no longer affects Nukes and Anti-Nukes
Fix for an issue where the AI would not fire nukes in mutli-planet games
Fix for an issue where the AI would send an orbital radar to another planet and it sits there doing nothing
More fixes to the AI platoon distance calculation
Fix for the bug where the AI sometimes would build Nukes/Anti-Nukes and then not have them ever build anything
Minor AI econ balance change
Fix for AI personality_tags having no effect
AI should expand to other planets a bit faster
AI will build more ion cannons
Fix for crash in AI if a transport died immediately after unloading a unit
AI can build Ion Cannons with advanced fabbers
Improved the AI's orbital game a bit
AI perf improvements
AI will let its metal storage fill up a bit more before using the wasting metal build items
AI will be a little more precise when building recon satellites for other planets

Modding support:
Puppet support
-Allows rendering purely client-side models, effects, and decals in-game
-See worldview.js for API information
-Note: Does not integrate with chronocam due to being client-side
Add JS API for accessing unit state
-Army unit list is available via api.getWorldView(0).getArmyUnits(army, planet)
-Unit State is available via api.getWorldView(0).getUnitState([unit, unit, unit])
Added a modding API for controlling server-side camera culling
Added support for specifying the world view to the time API
Added generic, world-space unit order JS API
Holodeck raycast JS API
-Allows casting rays (optionally multiple per call) in holodeck screen space against terrain, units, and features.
Added the order & build queues to api.WorldView.getUnitState output
Fix the documentation of the world-space order schema
Added WorldView.fixupBuildLocations
-Performs a build placement test, including snapping & etc as appropriate
-Fixes the units list in various WorldView.sendOrder commands
Changed the schema of holodeck raycast call results to include the currently focused planet
Added Holodeck.focusedPlanet() function call, which returns the currently focused planet
In WorldView.sendOrder, removed the requirement on location for non-location commands
Added valid stance value documentation for the WorldView.sendOrder

Bug fixes/polish:
Fix for AMD/ATI brightness bug
-Trades brightness for banding
-Use --gl-force-mrt-srgb-capable on the command line to turn this behavior back off
-It is still uncertain whether this is a driver bug or a pipeline configuration bug. It appears that there is some state that leads to improper blending occurring while filling the diffuse colors in the g-buffer.
+Sing audio! Give it a try and see what it does
Fix for loading a save where an entity was created and retired on the same tick
Fix for area patrol lag
Improved the exiting of teleporters
Speed up of distributing points on a planet for planet wide patrols for Air/Orbital units
Units without auto weapon tasks will no longer keep a list of nearby targets
Fix for crash if a projectile dies with a unit attached, and the unit triggers a death weapon
Adjusted the tick rate of the auto repair task
Fix for badge resizing and not wrapping in armory
Hovering over wreckage will no longer allow the use command to be the default right-click command
.....

For the complete list of bug fixes/polish, please visit our site here: http://www.uberent.com/pa/2015/07/31/the-asteroid-update-release-build-85138/

Don't forget to post a news item on the ModDB page.

Or Steam.

I cannot login to playfab. I restared steam and the error remains. Also, everytime I run the game, each time there is different commander displayed on the main screen.

Not more option for EU servers after this update?!

EU servers should be back up now, sorry for delay.

Great update, can;t wait to try out the asteroids,
On the downside, I still have a white-box around my cursor, hardly game breaking but a little ugly.

Keep up the good work. Cracked 500 hours on PA this week, bets $40 I've ever spent IMHO,

Playing GW on Ubuntu 14.04 with GTX 780, nvidia binary driver.

When starting a game, as soon as my commander lands on the planet, the game says "World Simulation Went Away".

This is a snippet of program output:

EntityHistory destructor called while still attached to world. This is a catastrophic failure.
Dump written to /tmp/6ea80e97-49cf-ac73-279ff458-428463f8.dmp
Crash uploaded, link developer to crashes.uberent.com/report/index/bp-4c380351-ebfa-48f3-aff3-d0f272150731
crashupload returned success

Also, you may want to whitelist the crash links, this is my third post and it won't let me include it unaltered (i removed the http://).

Mint 17.02, Mate Edition,
fglrxinfo -
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon R7 200 Series
OpenGL version string: 4.5.13397 Compatibility Profile Context 15.20.1046

Right erm... since I downloaded the patch I can't connect to PlayFab anymore with the game blaming steam and saying to restart it. I have done this twice (restart steam) and still no results... any idea why this is happening?

Edit: Okay now its connected... maybe it was because I downloaded it ahead of its scheduled time on steam? Either way problem resolved.

This is due to Steam's web API's being down. We are waiting on them to come back online and things should work again. In the meantime you can run the executable on your machine to bypass the issue and play online.

Oh right well it seems to be back now. ^^

In game they say there is a "temporay Steam outage for how we connect to online play".

If running Linux, you could try this in a terminal (works for me):

Code:

~/.steam/bin32/steam-runtime/run.sh ~/.local/share/Steam/SteamApps/common/Planetary\ Annihilation/PA

Good to hear! Looks like the API's are fixed on their end

Thank-you for the asteroids!!



Planetary Rings coming soon .....

Edit..
By soon i mean whenever it gets made . lol

This was when continuing a GW campaign (but starting a new battle) from the previous version. I have created a new campaign and everything appears to be working.

@pinbender
tiny JS bug about the focused planet:

result.planet is the index of the planet. It might be 0. That's falsy

Oops. I'll have to check on that.