Hey lads,

So the long-lasting 1.2 is finally upon us! Quite a few changes have occurred!

We'll be going in to beta for this one to ensure things are stable as a lot of things have changed under-the-hood.

 


Custom Rulesets:

Let's go through a bit of history.

Over the years people have given great passionate feedback about their balancing concerns. This has been both exciting to see and also a very fine line to walk as everyone has a different perspective.

We started with just one "Reflex" and modified the game accordingly. After a while we split Reflex into two rulesets, "casual" and "competitive". This allowed us to have a "casual" version for new/casual players while keeping the high end play wrapped up in the "competitive" mode.

After some time with this setup we wanted to try out different balancing options. We didn't want to just change the "competitive" ruleset around often for two reasons: it was used for competitions, and we wanted a standard known Reflex. So what we added here was an "experimental" ruleset which we could change more quickly without affecting things, and it would allow us to iterate faster with the community.

This worked rather well, but it took up a lot of time. We only had a very small team, and it was easy to be spend a full day or more balancing / testing things. And while we were going through this, people wanted quicker turn-arounds, and different groups of people wanted to try different options. We needed another solution.

From here, we went to "experimental plus". This idea of "experimental plus" was to allow the community to modify the games "experimental plus" ruleset themselves. We had different feelings about this. Allowing the community to try/test rulesets was fantastic, it was near-instant turn-around, and different groups could try different settings as they pleased. At the same time however, we were concerned people might break the game doing silly things. So we limited the "experimental plus" builds to a small group of players who were giving the most gameplay feedback. We kept it to this group only as the games presentation means a lot to us, we want to be seen & experienced in the best and most consistent way.

So this catches us up to recent times. 

What's happened recently is the experimental plus build was obtained by quite a few people and they started tweaking the game as they desired. On one hand this was great to see and it had more people playing! On the other hand it was dividing the community and complicating the user experience with the requirement of special builds and servers. Ultimately it feels unfair as not everyone gets to play with it. We had some discussions / decisions to make. The last point release disabled the experimental plus build, and we continued our internal discussions.

We had a lot of feedback in the discord which was great. We also had a lot of internal discussions about this. To us, modifying rulesets is people wanting "modding". While full modding is out of scope for us, it is an interesting way to look at it.  At which point we pivoted and started to consider delivering the system in that fashion.

So what did we do?

Going with this new thought, we've integrated custom rulesets directly in to the game. You can now create a ruleset_fred.cfg in your game/ folder, and set a whole lot of variables in it to define your ruleset. This will allow you to "callvote ruleset fred", and correctly present ruleset "fred". Any client can connect & will have the ruleset correctly applied on their client. Rulesets will appear in the server browser so it's obvious what you're joining in to. We have also exposed the stakegun to the game constants, so people are able to play with this if desired too.

The official matchmaking servers will continue to run the internal "casual" and "competitive" rulesets. But this will allow the community to update / refine their own rulesets & experiment as they have desired.

 

New Weapon Skins + Curated Workshop:

We have planned to add curated workshop support to Reflex for a long time. With 1.2 we have achieved this! Players can now create their own skins and submit them to the workshop to be voted on and ultimately added to Reflex. We've added an in-game forge where you can tweak & see live updates of your custom skin. Please check out the documentation provided here for how to create your own:

http://www.reflexarena.com/documentation/forge/ 

We're greatly looking forward to see what the community comes up with!

To prepare for this, all (non melee) weapons have been further optimised, uv'd and had full art passes in readiness for community skins. We have also added dozens of official weapon skins to be collected.

As seen in other Steam titles, curated content that makes it into the game has the opportunity to earn the creator money from marketplace sales. We're also considering selling community group items directly on the store to help support their efforts.

 

Purity checks / sv_pure:

Purity checks essentially ensure people are running non-modified assets on their client. Such assets could include modified sounds, lua scripts, damage counting widgets, particle effects etc. The goal of this is to ensure an equal playing field for all parties.

This is desired for high level play as obviously it is an unfair competition if one player is playing the stock game, and another is playing the game with lighting disabled + damage counters + armor timers + mega airhorn sounds + etc etc. 

So the big question is how should Reflex handle this. Internally we've discussed & tried quite a few different options / solutions.

We started off with a solution which would simply prevent you joining the game if the server was set to pure mode and you had custom addons. This functionally worked but it required players to manually uninstall all their addons, which completely fails on usability.

Extending this, we had Reflex hot loading/unloading assets as you join sv_pure servers / normal servers. This way the user can have all their addons installed, and it just hot-unloads them all for sv_pure servers. This was good, and we took it further by hiding sv_pure and associating it with the competitive ruleset.

While functioning, this ran into further issues, where now the user has to maintain two HUDs. Their "normal" custom one, and a stock HUD. While implementing solutions to this, things really didn't feel right.

A lot of what makes Reflex unique is customization. People love their custom huds, sounds, weapon packs, extra addons. The majority of these addons add to the game without pushing past the bounds of giving an unfair advantage. Just forcibly disabling all addons really fights directly with what Reflex is all about.

At this point we discussed other solutions such as white listing (which was rejected as it's going to turn into a nightmare - both technically and socially). We discussed simply blocking certain assets being modified only in sv_pure. But really none of them fully work.

At the same time, we didn't want to break all the addons in the workshop + force people to update things.

So that pulled us back to the drawing board, we had a solid thought about what Reflex is. Really what it offers right now is great. Rather than coming along with a sledgehammer and totally changing things, we can take smaller steps to remove things people are doing we disagree with, and keep the entire ecosystem people have grown to love still functional.

So the decision we came to was to prevent modification of several assets we deem core to the game. These include weapons, sounds etc. Armor, Mega respawn & fade sounds will be locked down, as part of this we've tweaked and increased the mega expire sound volume, as yeah it's been a little too on the subtle side.

We recognise that a large portion of the community has been playing with reduced particles for a while now, and while we're not totally fond of it, it is very popular (top in addon workshop), so we'll be leaving that one alone for now.

Also, we've restricted access to lm_clear inside the level editor as it was made for the level editor, NOT the game. To combat the "darkness" people are complaining about, we've increased the upper limit on the gamma slider. 

We'll also be hiding damage done (per weapon) during match to combat damage counting widgets. 

Ultimately, we want Reflex to be a fair environment to compete in, but we need to be careful to not to remove what makes Reflex unique.

 

 

- Change log -

 

Cosmetics:

• Luchador Head
• Lunk Head
• Knight Head
• Horned Head
• Goat Head
• Knight Torso
• Knight Legs
• Knight Arms
• Speed Legs
• Tech Shield
• Barricade Shield
• Berserker Shield

Skins:

• Radiant Burstgun
• Winter Camo Burstgun
• Polygonal Burstgun
• Black Honeycomb Burstgun
• Neon Grunge Burstgun
• Radiant Shotgun
• Winter Camo Shotgun
• Polygonal Shotgun
• Black Honeycomb Shotgun
• District Shotgun
• Radiant Grenade Launcher
• Winter Camo Grenade Launcher
• Polygonal Grenade Launcher
• Black Honeycomb Grenade Launcher
• Scorcher Grenade Launcher
• Radiant Plasma Rifle
• Winter Camo Plasma Rifle
• Polygonal Plasma Rifle
• Black Honeycomb Plasma Rifle
• Neon Plasma Rifle
• Radiant Ion Cannon
• Winter Camo Ion Cannon
• Polygonal Ion Cannon
• Black Honeycomb Ion Cannon
• Unit Ion Cannon
• Radiant Rocket Launcher
• Winter Camo Rocket Launcher
• Polygonal Rocket Launcher
• Black Honeycomb Rocket Launcher
• Carbon Rocket Launcher
• Radiant Boltrifle
• Winter Camo Boltrifle
• Polygonal Boltrifle
• Black Honeycomb Boltrifle
• Prototype Boltrifle

Mapping/Meshes:

• Abandoned Shelter (DP4) has had an official art pass
• tyre
• pallet
• garbage bag
• traffic cone
• more cable variations
• standard signage font
• bench

Code:

• Implemented new menu flow
• Implemented crates
• Implemented skins
• Implemented forge
• Implemented custom rulesets
• Thumbnails now baked in game rather than generated on load (to reduce VRAM usage)
• Implemented texture streaming, r_texture_memory_stream_cache controls cache size seen as "Texture Stream Cache" in settings

Custom rulesets:

• Added ability to load separate .cfg file for each ruleset (eg ruleset_frag.cfg)
• gconst_ cvar's now always exposed and attached to active ruleset
• callvote ruleset will report on client list of available rulesets
• Added gconst_stakelauncher_enabled cvar
• Added ruleset column in server browser

Purity checks:

• Asset system will now (silently) ignore assets that are modified but not allowed to be
• Assets in internal_skins/weapons/* are not allowed to be modified
• Prevent megaspawn & megacooldown sounds from being modified
• Prevent armor pickup sounds from being modified
• .ttf fonts can now hot-update
• .wav files can now hot-update

Game:

• Updated megahealth expire sound
• Accuracy / stats are now hidden from players during game
• Increased r_gamma range from 1.4 -> 3, to 1.4 -> 4
• r_lm_clear / r_lm_build now only available in editor mode
   

Known issues:

• Rare error in Menu.lua when opening last crate
• Visual clarity addon is being blocked when it shouldn't
• RL has visual issues in preview with r_mesh_quality 0
• Speed legs cause issues on ragdoll/gib

We've had a lot of great feedback and extensive testing over the past previous months. We'd like to extend thanks to Rama and crew (sorry if you're in the crew and not named specifically, we have no way of knowing everyone involved, but we appreciate you just the same! Even just for playtesting (update!: here's the list of everyone!! https://reflex.fun/special_thanks.txt  <3) for his work with his ruleset and hosting custom servers to make that all happen. The progression and documentation through all the iterations as well as theory behind all the changes are really what made it a comprehensive write-up. This is the result of months upon months of testing across a variety of skill levels. For the full write-up please see: https://reflex.fun/ruleset
This is the gameplay changes moving forward and will obviously be part of 1.2, but we're providing this portion early so it can be used in competitions people are running.

We loved being able to provide everyone in the community with the experimental plus ruleset, which internally we called more of a "sandpit" to let people play in. This was explicitly stated to be an exclusive testing and development circle in order to reduce noise and dilution among the community. Somebody has taken a massive shit in the sandpit and as a result it has now been removed.

Reflex monthly cup melees have also been added and awarded to the winners. Congratulations to everyone involved with this cup, both the players and organisers/admins!

Hello humans! (and other species so we don't offend)

We've put together a bunch of hotfixes for you. There's more under the hood that accompanies these as usual, but you get the idea..

 

Code

• Carnage pickup sound is heard again (now clamped to 4 seconds -- ours is 3.7)
• cl_playercolorX is now blocked when not in menu
• cl_player<inventory> cvars are now blocked when not in menu
• Player name now flood protected
• Drop in support now preserves existing player states in arena games
• Fixed issue where in arena1v1, game would end if a playing player left (while there were queued people that could come in next round)

 

UI/Widgets

• Added: MapAutoSave widget! Intervals and backup counts configurable in options
• Replay editor: now properly stays visible in edit mode
• Replay editor: can no-longer select spectators in replays
• Accelmeter: added race mode/training mode only options
• Proving grounds now includes on/off/both options (so now you can queue for both proving grounds and standard map pools)

Hi person(s),

Wen is now.

Here's your log of changed things.

 

Art

• Effect optimisation: burst impact, increased spark gravity, reduced number of sparks by 20%, better spark orientations, reduced spark length, increased spark width
• Effect optimisation: rocket explosion, redcued number of sparks by 33%, reduced spark lengths,  better spark orientations
• Effect optimisation: blood particles duration now 1.5 seconds (was 2.0 seconds)
• Removed ribbon trails off plasma eject cases
• Shell casing duration reduced from 10 seconds to 5 seconds (making it a max of 10 casings laying around per person for 5 seconds of sustained fire)

 

Cosmetics

• Modified Jaguar head to reduce clipping
• Added Plague head
• Added Bunny Head
• Added Turtle Head

[forums.reflexarena.com][forums.reflexarena.com][forums.reflexarena.com]  

Maps

• Furnace (dp5) has had an art pass
• Fixed name for Stage 1 Combat
• Changed name for Stage 2 Combat to follow the same convention
• Aerowalk update: now in sync with workshop version for match making (previous clip fixes)

[forums.reflexarena.com] [forums.reflexarena.com] Code

• Added Announcer - He says things about the match and things you do
• Greatly improved performance of client-side particle collision
• Added map editor sun enabled property
• Added cl_weaponcycle to UI
• Teleporter meshes now appear in the content browser
• Fixed post-fix string issue on date formatting
• Fixed issue where bridge tool would fail when two source edges (from different brushes) were identical
• Increased max length of addon description
• Fixed case sentitivity lua error when calling callWidgetDrawOptions() or callWidgetGetOptionsHeight() with incorrect case (would break Menu.lua if clicking on addon with same name as widget, but different case)
• Fixed flicker when selecting addon/widget in menu, selection is now drawn next frame (after filtering occurs)
• Added EffectSound.maxLengthAllowed var (had to rev effect file version & recompile them all)
• Added Sound::getLengthSeconds() function
• Players no-longer suicided if change to team they're already on (important for master server drop-in on team games)
• Changed MM disconnect hover info from "Disconnecting will count as a loss, and you will incur a time penalty" to "Disconnecting will count as a loss" as we don't give time penalties anymore
• Sounds in these effects are limited to max length of 3 seconds:
  • internal/items/armor/armor_green_pickedup.effecttxt
  • internal/items/armor/armor_red_pickedup.effecttxt
  • internal/items/armor/armor_yellow_pickedup.effecttxt
  • internal/items/health/health_50_pickedup.effecttxt
  • internal/items/health/health_mega_expire.effecttxt
  • internal/items/powerup_protect/powerup_protect_pickedup.effecttxt
  • internal/items/powerup_quad/powerup_quad_pickedup.effecttxt
• Shotgun low ammo warning is now at 5
• Added Gamma Slider and r_gamma
• Dropped weapons (i.e. backpacks containing ammo) are now pickup-able when you have full ammo of the dropped weapon type (and can utilize the ammo).
• Team spawns: We no-longer favor spawns that have friendly's near by. An enemy have rough-los to a spawn will now fully block it from being used.(note: If all spawns have rough-los from am enemy, it falls back to distance-bias based spawn.)
• If you disconnect mid MM game via console, it will now correctly remove you from MM queue (this also catches case when connection is interrupted)
• If you disconnect post MM game via console/menu, it will now correctly remove you from MM queue
• cl_predict_items now defaults to 0

 

Matchmaking

• Full MM ladder now shown
• Added drop in/out for casual modes
• Match history now can be filtered by player
• Doubles earns 15 CP, CTF earns 20 CP
• Losers now receive 20% CP reward
• added matchhistoryraw/ for importing to your own databases
• Competitive MM unavailable below level 15
• Added 'Proving Grounds' playlist - Thread Here[forums.reflexarena.com]

 

 Lua

•  Replay editor now hides with cl_show_hud
•  TeamHud: fixed an error due to clients disconnecting
•  Fixed issue where widget selection wasn't being applied properly
•  Added AccelMeter widget

[forums.reflexarena.com]

Bug fixes:

• Fixed issue in sound manager that would cause the game to progressively run slower over time
• HealthBar: fixed coloured bar incorrect offset

Additional note: This may have been the cause of crashing for some.

Hi Everybody!

Get your hot-fixes!

Art Improvements:

• Fixed vertex colours on colossal arms LOD
• Another pass on jumppad effects (this needs a re-work, it's still heavy on GPU)

Matchmaking Improvements:

• After everyone readies up at the MM screen, if you disconnect the game will continue without you, and you'll likely use MMR (unless your team wins for you :p)
• Moved Brazil servers to a better host

General Improvements:

• Added fall-back for edge case caused by MM server update, if you connect to MM now and are already in the "finding/preparing/connect to server state", the client will correctly skip straight to it
• Client no-longer extrapolates remote spectators

Gameplay Improvements:

• Spectator name change notification now hidden for players in MM servers when match in play
• Spectator join/leave game notification now hidden for players in MM servers when match in play
• Spectator roll notification now hidden for players in MM servers when match in play
• Spectators no-longer see team chat
• Aerowalk: fixed clip issue at RA, thickened a couple of clips, built new nav data
• When killed by world (i.e. lava), the next spawn will now avoid the last person that did damage to you (wherever they are now). Or if there is no such person, it'll avoid your dead body.
• (For the record: when suiciding (via command line, or rocket to face), The next spawn will avoid your dead body)

Bot improvements:

• Now only check player spawn points when they have an enemy die
• Now frantically want to respawn instead of waiting for respawn timer

UI improvements:

• ArmorBar widget: re-ordered slider options, added center font option (default on, off = left align)
• HealthBar widget: re-ordered slider options, added center font option (default on, off = right align)
• Unified options across ArmorBar and HealthBar widgets
• Fixed typo "specatators can not vote at this time"
• Warning about loss when hovering over disconnect icon in MM game no-longer appears after game has ended.
• Pickup timers are now provided to lua when playing a competitive ruleset replay

[lh3.googleusercontent.com]We're very excited to announce that we will be officially launching out of Early Access!

The whole team at Turbo Pixel Studios wants to thank you all for supporting us through the journey of Early Access.

Season 1:
Along with the launch we will be officially starting Reflex Arena's competitive Season 1. The Season will last 3 months and comes complete with leaderboards and downloadable replays: Available here[reflexmm-149202.appspot.com]


We’ve updated the map pool after taking feedback and pre-season map vote statistics into account.


Competitive 1v1
Aerowalk, The Catalyst, Static Discharge, Ruin, Furnace, Simplicity, Pocket Infinity

Competitive 2v2
The Grave Site, Tephra, Iron Guard, Thermal Blast, Phobos

Competitive CTF
Sky Temples, Monolith, Suna Station

During the season you will earn competitive points for your wins, which you will then be able to trade for epic gold weapons. You can preview these in-game in the updated Profile section.

[lh5.googleusercontent.com][lh3.googleusercontent.com] Bots:
We’ve been working on bots behind the scenes for a while and we’re pleased to include them in this release. Check out the bots section under the TRAINING tab or host your own game to play versus them. The bots are targeted towards new players, and also players who wish to practice their aim.


Changelog:

The changelog from the last update to now is available here http://forums.reflexarena.com/index.php?/topic/4265-reflex-arena-launch-changelog/

 
We want to reiterate that launching Reflex Arena out of Early Access is just the beginning. The whole Turbo Pixel team will continue to update, create content, and add new features to the game - we are here for our community, and today we celebrate the 1.0 launch - it’s a beginning, and not the end!

We are excited to announce the release date for Reflex Arena!

https://www.youtube.com/embed/oj2TJd_6WtI

 

Many of you have been here from the very beginning. Thank you so much for being with us on the first part of our journey, and we are thrilled to launch Reflex Arena out of Early Access very soon. Check out the trailer for the official release date, the features we are celebrating, and more.

To thank everyone who has been a part of our community, all our Early Access players will receive the limited edition Golden Founder Melee Wrench in-game. We handcrafted this to say thank you, and will forever mark you as one of ‘The Originals’ before we launch Reflex Arena out of Early Access. Be sure to log in before March 8th to get your Golden Founder Melee Wrench, accessible from the Reflex Arena home screen!


[lh6.googleusercontent.com] Just start Reflex Arena before the official launch to receive your very own Golden Founder Melee Wrench!

The launch out of Early Access adds so much content and features that our community has helped shape. We will have full details soon, but we can reveal that we are adding: 

Bots: We are adding full bot/AI support to the game (hell yes!). This means a better in-game experience for new players, with more training, tutorial, and solo options for offline play. Our bot system also means that our seasoned players can sharpen skills with target practice while waiting for matchmaking. Join a matchmaking queue, and wreck bots in offline target practice while you wait for a PvP match to launch! 

Competitive Seasons & Online Leaderboards : PvP is at the very soul of Reflex Arena. When we launch out of Early Access, so begins Competitive Season One. Face off against the global community to earn your place in a new Online Leaderboard, with a new Competitive Points system.

Matchmaking Rewards: We are celebrating our new Competitive Points system in matchmaking and our competitive season launch, where the CP you earn in matches against players can be used for glorious golden weapons. This will kick off with the upcoming competition Season 1 - stay tuned for more information!

Brutal new skins and cosmetics are coming, as well as training map improvements, shiny new weapons and more are all coming in the Reflex Arena launch out of Early Access.

It’s important to note that launching Reflex Arena out of Early Access is just the beginning. The whole Turbo Pixel team will continue to update, create content, and add new features to the game - we are here for our community.

With cheers and celebration,
The Turbo Pixel Team
 

Hi everybody,

Quick point release today to address some bugs and help set things up for our next build.

There has been a lot of queries about our road map and future Reflex updates. We have some exciting plans in progress, we will making these plans known next week  
Bug fixes:

* Server now correctly reports disconnected state to master server
* Fixed party UI to now draw when it's off screen
* Optimised how internal asset lists are stored, which improves performance of script functions that look up assets by string (i.e. nvgSvg())
* Fixed issue where server list wasn't properly automatically refreshing when entering the "browse servers" menu