Our latest alpha release is a big one! We have two new models, two mapping updates, gameplay progress, and plenty going on behind the scenes. First, let’s go over the new models. We’ve got the repeater, which means that of this release, all human building models are finished! As for the alien team, we have the spiker, a brand new defense structure that acts as a living proximity mine. For our maps, Antares has received a significant overhaul with a new detail pass, and Forlorn has seen another large graphical update, with both maps heading towards a stable state soon.

Gameplay has the spiker, as previously mentioned. We’ve also improved performance when facing rocket pods and turrets, as their targeting calculation has been refactored to be more efficient. Rocket pods now have a lock-on delay, their firing rate has been halved, and their damage has been increased by a third. Engine-side, we’ve been working on preparing NaCl for a tentative public release of the new VM system next month. We presently use NaCl server-side, but this will now run for clients too, completely replacing QVM with NaCl. The sys_rewrite branch has been merged into NaCl-cgame, and the new VM system is playable, but it needs some final tuning. You can expect a more detailed update on this soon!

Now, for the commits made over the course of this release cycle:

• ca49aed Add spiker and placeholder spiker code
• 3a3985c Fix spiker config files.
• 62d1b7e Adjust spiker body, bounding box and creep sizes.
• 560b40c WIP on the spiker.
• beac6fe Add missing spiker.missile.cfg, update spiker shader name.
• 3b3820c Use spike model for the spiker’s missile.
• 7807154 Update changelog.
• 5d62ba3 Use proper missile model for spiker.
• 47f1d02 Update changelog.
• d62a54d Allow missile impact PS to spawn in flight direction.
• c696712 Split special casing in MissileImpact into seperate functions.
• a36e72c Update packaging.
• fb122dc download-pk3.sh –cdn ⇒ use cdn.unvanquished.net.
• e6339b1 Avoid undefined behavior from dereferencing an invalid pointer
• fd88764 Improve turret and rocketpod code; Give rocketpod a lock-on delay.
• d15cbcb Half rocketpod fire rate, increase damage by a third.
• 5753ad8 Remove temporary flag from g_debug* cvars.
• d9701ae Remove everything related to hunkusage.dat
• 7a79841 Implement new repeater model.
• e11a5b2 Use vfork instead of fork to avoid potential out of memory errors
• 5ad7609 debian: fix JPEG dependency by adding libjpeg-dev as preferred alternative.
• 406f155 Option for specifying the path to the NaCl helper binaries.
• d06d460 Remove the encryption of usercmd sent to the server
• 9ffbdfe Don’t always show spiker debug output.
• c78576e Use placeholder effects for the spiker.
• 0555894 Adjsut spiker price, threshold and description.
• 1143cde Fix socket handle getting overwritten with vfork
• 909d5c5 Fix from Ensiform for event overflow during startup and loading
• 8b46c65 Remove identClient from userCmd_t
• 2194259 Arch Linux: Use server.lanOnly in server configuration.
• 798acc7 Refactor missile PS/TS handling.
• 90d554e Improve turret and rocket pod performance.
• f864b5e Clean up NACL_RUNTIME_PATH and add a message to show which pk3 a VM is extracted from
• 203bd2c Make spiker idle anim looped.
• f80af98 Don’t clear keys upon changing UI focus. Also, change UI focus last.
• a7a803f Change order of buy validation logic for weapons and upgrades
• 51a5765 Set element to be empty instead of returning when returning clips if holding a ckit
• 0dfccf5 Update librocket
• 94d6cd9 Fix a few warnings
• 438b50a Set overmind animations
• 8b5cacc Make dedicated only server commands useable again.
• acc664e Make OM anim loop
• 5fe5c7b Revert overmind animation changes.
• df666ab Only enter turret pre-blast state when about to blast.
• fc7a576 Prevent map models from appearing at missile impact point.
• f2cdc58 Small cleanups in server code
• b7665b5 Remove remaining reference to vm_game
• f937155 Blind fix for demos not loading paks
• 608018e Fix pk3 loading in demos
• 60de58e Only load extrapaks for demos
• e3dcb6a Increase Bone limit to 256.
• b637775 Fix typo in VirtualMachine.h
• 3808960 Add kill message for the spiker
• 716d93a Version bump to Alpha 36
• 967c4fd Change the -> a in spiker kill message