Stormgate — Transitioning Offline, with QOL and Performance improvements

Hi all, this update is a bit of a mixed bag with our transition away from live service and some nice QOL & game updates from the community team.

Offline Transition

As a first step towards de-coupling from Stormgate's existing server infrastructure, this patch disables live service Versus and Co-op modes, and adds offline support to the Campaign, AI Skrimish, and Custom game modes to prepare for the Hathora server shutdown.

A few of us have been hard at work adding Steam peer to peer support to the game, but the netcode is not quite ready yet -- this means that this update disables multiplayer modes for a time.

We hope to deliver proper steam-powered P2P support with UGC map downloading as soon as the code is ready. UGC map makers will be able to develop and test your maps offline-only until that update. Once peer to peer is squared away it may be possible to bring back an improved version of the versus/coop ladders but no confirmed plans yet.

• Online game modes have been disabled (Versus, Coop).

• Campaign and AI Skirmish no longer require a server connection to play and persist user progress locally.

• STUB online services peer to peer implementation... Attempting to join another player's peer to peer game will result in a placeholder error.

• Removed dependency on Hathora and Pragma platforms.

• Removed startup splashes and early access dialog.

Game Updates

Performance has been improved by about 30%.

We've optimized some expensive systems that were scaling poorly with large unit counts, and are better limiting updates from off-screen components and calculations. So FPS better reflects what's actively on screen and is improved overall into the late game. These improvements are entirely unrelated to the offline transition, and are a result of optimized gameplay systems.

New QOL Feature: Ability push priority.

Now, when a unit that has been issued an ability command is on its way, it will gain temporary push priority to increase spellcasting reliability.

On the left, Hexens get pushed around by the army, delay their casts, and one input does not complete. On the right, Hexens take pathing priority momentarily in order to cast, so their abilities fire immediately and reliably.

New QOL Feature: Ability Non-Interrupt

In conjunction with the above, the Prepare, Cast and channel stages of all abilities have been set to uninterruptible to avoid accidental cancels. Pressing Stop on individual units, for most abilities, will still force a cancel if desired.

Atlas & Hedgehog Targeted Deployment and Reposition are now uninterruptible by normal move/attack commands while they're en-route, making it easier to set 'em and forget 'em. They also now display their hologram on the target location.** **

**

General**

• Fog of war now visually fades in and out quicker. This doesn't affect gameplay, only visuals.

• Previously, there was a long fade time as units gained or lost vision, which made things visually smoother, but didn't as accurately represent where current vision exists.

• Camera zooms are now smoothed! And height changes over terrain are now much smoother.

ECONOMY

• Celestial Luminite harvest rates have been adjusted to match the 10/10 saturation of Vanguard and Infernal.

• Collection Array harvest period changed reduced from 1.7 seconds to 1.515 seconds

• Recharge time for Prisms increased from 20 seconds to 21 seconds.

PRODUCTION

• All HQ's and structures that use charges to produce units have had their queue slots reduced from 5 slots, to 1 slot

• All units produced by charges have had their build time reduced from 0.2 seconds to 0.05 seconds

EDITOR

• New toggle added for uninterruptable stages: uninterruptable_ignores_stop.

• Setting this to false will allow the Stop command to cancel an "uninterruptable order", while regular move commands will not. Certain abilities like Return to Hangar are intended to not be cancelable by the player, so this flag is set to True on that ability. While others, such as a Hexen Venom Trap channel can use this to allow that ability to be canceled.

TOOLTIPS AND LOCALIZATION

• Fixed Brute upgrade tooltip to correctly reference the amount of HP and armor given.

• Updated Carnivex trait from "Vitals Leech" to "Shikari Venom" with a description of the new slow poison.

CONTROL / QOL STORMGATE REWARDS Darkthrone

• The 3 free workers provided from Darkthrone will now rally to whatever the placed HQ has decided to set its rally to. This will prefer Luminite over Therium for resources within nearby proximity of the newly spawned HQ.

Balance

VANGAURD

Scrapyard

• Cost changed increased from 50 Luminite to 100 Luminite. (Therium cost is unchanged)

INFERNAL

Fiends

• Health increased from 60 to 75

• Damage reduced from 10 to 8

CELESTIAL

Carnivex

• Base movement speed increased from 5.5 to 6.0

• Weapon attacks and Swipe apply a 25% movement speed slow for 3 seconds

Energizer Node

• Energy restoration increased from 2/sec to 3/sec

Prism

• Recharge time has been increased from 20 seconds to 21 seconds

Bug Fixes

• Archangel is now un-pushable by Magmadon Trample while Resilient in Avatar form.

• Shift-queueing Meteor Slam no longer accidentally clears the ability splat indicator from under your mouse.

• Enflamed Imps now use their all-fours run animation again

• Sentinel Stasis Drone now has 3 different size selection volumes making it easier to click-target on various units.