Welcome to the 44th alpha release! For this one, we’ve focused on the game code.

The primary focus this month has been on gameplay modifications by Norfenstein that we have been testing at each of our Sunday development games. Some of these modifications are quite drastic indeed! We are taking a very experimental approach to game coding right now, with features liable to be added or removed at any time. In addition to this, we would very much like it if server operators ran the modifications themselves and provided us with feedback. Players, of course, are always welcome and encouraged to leave feedback on our forums. We are monitoring and testing each of these changes very closely, and more will come!

Features tested recently, and available to be tested, include:

• Removal of the credit system. Humans and aliens can buy and morph into whatever they’ve unlocked as a team, and since players can just repurchase upgrades after death, this leads into very aggressive gameplay.
• Simple momentum. As it would suggest, this drastically simplifies the momentum system so that momentum is only awarded for killing enemy players and their spawns.
• Anti-camping. This reduces the fund and momentum rewards when players are within proximity of their base structures.
• Unlocked buildables. All buildings are unlocked from the start, for both teams. Less tedium for players stuck building.
• Construct anywhere. No longer are you bound to creep or power, you can just stick structures wherever you’d like. You can also optionally allow building without a reactor or overmind.
• Build point pools. Instead of perpetually generating build points in a slow fashion, you start with a set number of build points, and drills and leeches add to the maximum number available.
• Removal of stamina. You can no longer sprint as a human, but you can jump as much as you please. Wearing armor will keep you slow. In the future, we will look into adding interesting human movement.
• Simplified locational damage. No more head, torso, or leg damage zones. There are just two: front and back, with attacks from the rear dealing more damage. Much easier for new players and dretches.

All of these can be toggled with cvars. You can find more detailed explanations in this thread.

The other update this month was in the form of the first CBSE merge. CBSE stands for Component-Based Software Engineering, and you can view it as an equivalent of the engine upgrade project, but for the game code. To put it simply, it is untangling the noodly mess of game code that we inherited, and porting it from C to C++ so that we (and others) can produce changes much more easily. In an ideal world, there wouldn’t be bugs, but we can use some more thorough testing by our players! Please tell us about any bugs that you find on our GitHub issue tracker.

You won’t need to redownload the universal zip this month, simply connecting to one of our updated servers will provide you with the right pk3. See you at our Sunday games, and don’t forget to give us some feedback on our forums!