This release is mainly about tweaking a few overused units. Venom is slightly worse at stunning to counteract the overstun change, and other Spiders were buffed to compensate. Lobster now gives the enemy a little more time to react and Magpie should be easier to scare away. Terraform is also UI-nerfed again Missile Silo, as the Force Fire UI now warns you about unintended terrain interactions.

The engine was also updated, and it should stick this time as it was found to be quite stable in testing. The big feature is the adoption of quaternions for unit animation (just in the backend, no API changes), which makes units move and aim more smoothly. Missile trails are also much smoother, replacing the old jagged lines. These changes were blocked behind the game-side graphics update of a few months ago, and the work is ongoing. For example, this release includes a new shiny Likho texture by brunocb.

Balance

Lobster launch is slightly delayed and can be interrupted. It also costs slightly more, but at least none of these nerfs are to launch range.

• Cost 340 -> 350
• Reload time 14s -> 18s
• Time from initial upwards launch to sideways impulse 0.16s -> 0.4s
• Dead or disabled Lobsters no longer complete their launches from beyond the grave.

Magpie loses its exceptional health efficiency but gains a little damage efficiency (scary!)

• Cost 220 -> 210
• Health 900 -> 740

Venom is slightly worse at stunning, to the point that three are required to completely lock down a unit.

• Reload time 1.13s -> 1.2s
• Overstun time 0.5s -> 0.3s

Hermit deepens the Cloak-Spider ability exchange.

• Now heals at 10 hp/s after 10 seconds of not taking damage.

Redback is tougher and is better at aiming.

• Health 900 -> 980
• Turret swivels 50% faster.
• Range 300 -> 310

Tarantula gains damage to compete with lighter and faster anti-air.

• Damage 270 -> 310

Thug has a better weapon.

• Turret turn rate buffed by 20%
• Reload time 4s -> 3.9s
• Projectile speed buffed by 2.4%
• Damage 170 -> 180

Skuttle deals slightly more damage on near misses.

• Area of effect edge effectiveness 0.3 -> 0.4

Claymore is better behaved at sea.

• Fixed a bug that prevented it from aiming directly behind itself.

Flail leans into its weakness as it seems slightly too good since its buff.

• Reload time 5.2s -> 5.4s

Mariner becomes one of the more efficient constructors.

• Cost 200 -> 170
• Build range 330 -> 350

Ultimatum is slightly cheaper and harder to find.

• Cost 2500 -> 2400
• Decloak radius 120 -> 110

Amphibious water regeneration is no longer active when flying over the water.

Interface

• Queued jump commands now activate as soon as a units stun or disarm wears off. Previously the command could be delayed by up to half a second. This means that Pyro will always be able to find a split second in which to jump away from a pair of Venoms.
• The Force Fire area of effect preview now indicate when a vertically launched missile would hit terrain (Impaler, Trinity, Missile Silo etc).
• Added size settings for healthbars ingame under Settings/Interface/Healthbars (thanks therxyy).
• Units no longer lose experience when they damage units that were previously killed on the same game frame. For some reason this mostly affected Jugglenaut.

Graphics

• Updated Likho texture to take advantage of the new tech (thanks brunocb).
• Missile trails are no longer jagged.
• Unit animations are now smoothly interpolated between frames.
• Tone down Ripper roughness to restore some ambient brightness (fixed since v1.13.12.3).
• Thug model is no longer slightly off-centre.
• Toned down the slow component when mixed with EMP and disarm, to make EMP and disarm easier to see.

Modding

• Multi-unit piece attachment monstrosities no longer have a 1-frame delay when updating child positions. I.e. the subtle issue demonstrated below is fixed, and will scale to deeper trees of attachment. Just saying...
• Fixed potential bug with Engineer Blueprint blocking normal build options. The main game happened to avoid triggering it.
• Fixed massively overslowed units drawing the disarm effect.
• Fixed an issue with combining static and dynamic model rescaling (thanks XNTEABDSC).

Fixes

• Fix status effect bytepacking (floatpacking?) so slow + fire != disarm (fixed since v1.13.12.3).
• Being "stunned" by being in a transport no longer draws the EMP effect (unless the unit also has enough EMP damage to be stunned).
• Another attempt at fixing post-jump Jugglenaut, Detriment, and Recon Commander skating.
• Fixed Lobster-launched units sometimes leaving tracks on the ground below them near the end of their trajectory.
• The Tank Plate unit portrait now matches the unit.
• Fix crash when Draw on icons is not enabled (thanks Helwor)
• Fixed a small visual issue with terraform point rendering.
• Fixed Claws sometimes showing a radar dot shortly after death.

Zero-K aims to give players a sense of strategic freedom, but too much freedom can hurt. The strategic triangle is a model of strategy that helps avoid the problems with freedom.

Read it here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/334920/view/518611248440410918

The Huge Graphics Update of last week was a huge success and only introduced a few minor issues. This update fixes the ones that we are aware of.

• Fixed a texture detail issue that made units slightly pixelated and a bit harder to distinguish at medium zoom levels.
• Tweaked outlines to be a bit more visible when zoomed out, by default.
• Fixed status effects clipping into undamaged nanoframes. The status effect shader thought that nanoframes should be deformed, but they are not.
• Fixed grid hotkeys missing from most build menus.
• Added Colemak keyboard layout preset (thanks allentiak).
• Factories now open automatically when completed.
• Amph and Spider now have to wait 1s to open before starting production, to match other factories.
• Fixed the lighting on a few more maps.

This update overhauls the tech behind drawing units, wrecks and map features on your screen. This has many advantages. To start with, it allows for more and better looking fancy unit rendering effects, many of which are showcased in gif form below. It should also be less performance hungry on most hardware since it makes much more use of the GPU.

The deeper impact is that the new tech (physically based rendering) gives artists more tools to make units look even better. Tweaking textures to work with the new tech is an ongoing process, and one that would be much improved by the help of a volunteer artist or two. Another task is that of improving the lighting on many maps. Units are now more responsive to the sun, and tweaking it is just a matter of moving a few sliders around.

Most of this work builds on efforts within BAR to push the visuals of the engine forwards, with special thanks to ivand and FLOZi for assistance with adapting and improving it for Zero-K. We also want to thank the testers and contributors that helped add features and find technical issues prior to release. Finally, thanks 64-Bit Dragon for putting together the video below.

Visuals

New and improved status effects!


Fancy nanoframes and swaying trees! The nanoframes are highlighted near 99.9% to make abandoned construction harder to overlook.


Units start getting wrecked before they die!


Trails for pew-pew lasers (thanks Thorneel)!


New cloak effects!


Relatively modern physically based rendering to expand the artistic palette!

Also:[list]

• Units cast shade on each other.
• Boosted contrast adaptive sharpen slightly.
• Toned down bloom.
• Disabled screen space ambient occlusion by default as it is not worth the performance cost.
• Adjusted the textures of many units and the lighting on many maps, but there is still more to do.

Features

• Improved the radar shadow preview widget and enabled it by default. It is now more accurate (thanks Helwor) and takes structure terraform into account.
• Units stop and wait when a nearby friendly transport tries to pick them up.
• Constructors in friendly transports are considered idle when the transport is idle, and pressing the idle constructor button selects the transport (thanks strategineer).
• Constructors in enemy transports are no longer considered idle (thanks strategineer).
• The idle constructor button flashes briefly when a new constructor becomes idle, configurable under "Settings/HUD Panels/Quick Selection Bar" (thanks strategineer).
• Added tooltips for endgame awards (thanks strategineer).
• Factories no longer inherit the retreat state of their builder by default.
• Added maximum zoom option to the COFC camera (thanks therxyy and kcin).
• Added clickthrough settings for the command panel and quick selection bar, found in "Settings/HUD Panels" (thanks strategineer).
• Added an option to show unit icon on the command panel, found in "Settings/HUD Panels/Command Panel" (thanks strategineer).
• Added Workman keyboard layout preset, found in "Hotkeys/Grid Hotkeys" (thanks strategineer).
• Tidal generator placement no longer uses the wind icon to denote income (thanks strategineer).
• Made it harder to unwittingly disable shaders in lobby settings.

Mapping and Modding

• Units and map features can be given normal maps by setting customParams.normaltex. Eg normaltex = "unittextures/bomberheavy_normals.dds".
• Model tex2 is now interpreted as a PBR texture. Red is emissivity (for lights and engines), green is metalicness, and blue is roughness.
• Unit textures can now be overridden with customParams.override_tex1 and customParams.override_tex2. Eg override_tex2 = "unittextures/m1r0.dds".
• Shielded units can set customParams.shield_fxs_type = "chicken" to render a chicken shield (thanks XNTEABDSC).
• Added a toggle for the metal spot placer mapping tool to Settings/Toolbox.
• The startbox editor now has a tooltip that tells you where it the startbox file.
• Added a tickbox under "Settings/Graphics/Sun, Fog & Water" to set a default sun angle and pitch.
• Developer mode detection also looks for devmode.txt.txt.

Fixes

• Hacksaw no longer wiggles around while under construction.
• Non-line jump commands to groups of units now only spread units to passable terrain.
• Fixed slightly misapplied Ronin texture (thanks garfild888).
• Fixed Gnat gun being slightly detatched from its body. (thanks garfild888).
• Fixed unit information window crash on Funnelweb space click.
• Fixed Mace sometimes having trouble leaving the factory.
• Fixed Duck range not resetting properly when exiting deep water (thanks strategineer).
• Removed excess technical details from unit spotter markers on AI units (thanks strategineer).
• Fixed resource bar text truncation with large font sizes (thanks strategineer).
• Shifted the default garbage collection rate more towards stability.
• Removed leftover terraform points on planet Ungtaint.