- Joined
- Apr 26, 2016
- Messages
- 1,447
- Nebulae
- 6,079
Friday, June 21 at 19:00 GMT
Interaction Overhaul
This is a big part of the reason why this update took so long - the interaction system touches quite a few parts of our codebase, so overhauling it wasn't going to be an easy task. After hearing some feedback from players (along with our own criticisms) and deliberating for a bit internally, we decided to just rip the bandage and get it over with.
The new interaction system solves a lot of problems, both development-wise and for players.
- Interaction points are now visible from a distance, instead of only when you are allowed to interact with them.
- It was hard to identify interactions until you just happened to be in the right spot for them, unless we threw down a big ugly marker to show where it was.
- Feedback can now be shown if you don't meet the requirement to interact with something.
- You couldn't really know the requirements unless you happened to meet them before.
- Interactions can now perform tasks when you interact with them.
- This includes things like moving your character in the right spot to play an animation, making it look less jank.
NPC Dialogue
While the new interaction system is great, sometimes you just need to show the player a list of options to choose from. The ol' wheel works but we wanted to give a bit more context to what your choices might do, and make it look better while we're at it.
You can now chat to various NPCs around town. This currently affects mostly the "job giver" NPCs to make them seem (slightly) less like someone who's there just to press E on. Which they are, but... You know what I mean. You'll definitely see more chatty NPCs as time goes on and we introduce new gameplay features.
Progression
We've added a progression system for various activities you can do around the city. It's fairly surface level for now, but we wanted to see how players interact with it and tweak some numbers before we started adding content that branches off based on your reputation and/or skills.
With this introduction, we've tweaked the cash payouts for all the jobs. Keep in mind that some jobs might pay more with a higher rep. š
Rentals
You can now rent cars for more than just a handful of hours, making it actually worth doing! While we were in there, we decided to give the interface a bit of a polish. Remember to keep your rental papers on you while you're driving.
Placeable Emotes
After much frustration with positioning yourself to fit in those dang restaurant booths, we decided to end the problem once and for all. You can now place yourself exactly where you want to emote. No more guessing about whether or not a chair/bench/post was "sittable".
Vehicle Dashboard
The dashboard for vehicles has also been given a facelift. Buttons are now always in the same spot (instead of shifting around on the old interaction wheel). Windows can be opened and closed. Some vehicles even have extra buttons for things like sirens!
Tasks
Whipping out your phone to check the license plate of the car you're definitely not about to steal was pretty annoying, so jobs now show your current task right on the HUD.
Megaphones
Police vehicles now have megaphones to provide criminals with live commentary on their driving technique. Podiums can now amplify your voice, making the "I didn't hear ya" excuse during police meetings invalid.
Gas Cans
Gas cans now have much more use than being a simple fire starting device. They can actually fill up your car and be refilled at any place that dispenses that sweet, sweet gasoline.
MDT Formatting
Incidents in the MDT can now contain formatted text, making it easier to organize the chaotic chronicles of criminals.
And one more thing...
We recognize that nebulous is rooted deep in text roleplay, and that we should've done more to accommodate the community we've fostered over the years. While our own ambitions were to stick with voice-only roleplay, we've heard your feedback and decided to add a text-only experience to our roadmap.
We're pretty confident in our ability to provide something more unique and polished compared to other text-only servers. Our framework was designed with voice in mind, but a lot of effort was put into making sure that our code was modular enough to support the needs of a text-only experience regarding its features, slower pacing, etc.
Stay tuned, we'll be sharing more news in the near future as we work our way to the release.
We encourage you to continue posting your feedback in the bugs and suggestions forum! You can quickly join the server by clicking here, or check the server status by clicking here!
Other changes
- Added buzzers to buildings
- This allows other people to enter your building
- Added a town hall clerk
- Lost/stolen/expired licenses can be replaced here
- Added some new emotes
- Added a gavel to the courtroom
- Added an umbrella
- Made naming of emotes more consistent
- Made consumable item animations restart instead of stopping when interrupted
- Players can now remove the mask of restrained players
- Improved visibility of some HUD elements
- Road textures have been updated
- Locals are now less likely to drive into vehicles with a siren on
- Greatly increased the number of spawn locations for vehicle chops
- Improved animations for some held items
- Vehicles can now be flagged as suspicious
- Some garages now have a limit on the amount of vehicles that can be stored
- Public jobs now reuse the same vehicle given to you - make sure you keep it fueled up
- Stolen vehicles now have a random amount of fuel
- Lockpicks now degrade with usage
- Handheld radios now drain their batteries
- Reduced the price of bandages
- Allowed big hats to be visible in vehicles
- Prevented players from escorting moving players
- Items can now be quickly split into single stacks by right clicking while dragging
- Made the barber shop camera start already zoomed in
- Weapon serial numbers are now always visible
- Moved the garbage job NPC to a more visible spot
- Fixed vans having the wrong glovebox inventory
- Fixed weapons sometimes loading ammo instead equipping
- Fixed multiple players sometimes allowed to escort the same person
- Fixed the ATM dialog getting stuck on the screen when mashing escape
- Fixed vehicles sometimes not being interactable
- Fixed task vehicles sometimes not spawning
- Fixed missing crosshair for the hunting rifle while ADSing
- Fixed queued animations sometimes getting stuck when doing a higher priority task
- Fixed animations sometimes forcing you out of a vehicle
- Fixed some headwear having unintentional armour
- Fixed some weapons having a crosshair when they shouldn't
- Fixed some emotes sinking into the floor
- Fixed fines not actually going into the treasury
Reactions:
List
