Clicking on a xeno or zombie shoots at that xeno or zombie, not the tile it was standing on when you clicked. You can fight while lying down at a quarter of the usual force. Blood got a big rework: pools grow with how much has been spilled and merge into one puddle, they bend the floor under them the way rain puddles do, and they don't break at chunk lines any more. Relief lighting reaches floors, the inside of the Huey, the layers below you and the rain puddles. HDR output for displays that support it, plus a DECAL MEMORY setting. The Huey sits above the rest of the mix so you don't lose the rotor in a firefight, and getting crushed under a landing Huey no longer leaves you in a black screen with no ghost.
Shooting
- Clicking on a mob's sprite shoots at that mob. Before, the shot went at the tile under your cursor the moment you clicked, so anything moving had already left it. The bullet is aimed at wherever the mob actually is when the shot leaves, scoped or not, same as CM13. There's still no guarantee you hit and the game won't highlight who you're aiming at.
Fighting while down
- You can punch, swing and bash things while lying down, at a quarter of the usual force. Disarming and knocking on glass still need you standing. A gunner lying down who clicks something next to them bashes with the gun the same as a standing one does.
- The PRONE chip shows for anyone lying down, including people with no legs who never toggled rest. It goes red when you can't get up (no legs, or strapped into something that keeps you down) and lists the melee penalty.
Blood and decals
- Blood pools grow with how much blood has landed on the tile instead of being a fixed disc of dots that only got denser. Neighbouring pools fill into one puddle with a single raised lip, so a soaked tile reads as a puddle rather than a cloud of dots with a bumpy middle.
- Blood and acid pools bend the floor under them like rain puddles do, and the relief lip follows the distortion.
- Blood stops breaking at chunk lines. Each chunk only knew about its own blood, so a pool crossing a chunk edge lit a line along the edge and couldn't merge with the pool on the other side.
- A standing bleeder drips a streak in the direction they're facing, a lying one leaves a pool.
- How much blood a mob sheds when hit is per creature. Skitters shed almost none, facehuggers are down to a drop, larva a quarter of a human's, drones and royal guards half, queens and zombies three quarters. Xeno death splatters retuned to match.
- Blood, acid and soot colours, opacity and relief depth retuned across a dozen passes.
Relief lighting
- Floors take relief from their own detail (grain, grout, grating) with no lift at the tile edges.
- The inside of the Huey and its hull and roof shade under the lamps, a daylit cabin shades from the sun coming through the windows, and a hull in the air shades from the sky.
- Layers below you take sprite and decal relief, they were lit flat before.
- Bullet holes in walls raise a rim under the lamps.
- Rain puddles glint toward the lamp instead of the same flat pale band everywhere, with the highlight sitting on the puddle rim.
Huey
- Things inside the cabin clip to the cabin floor instead of poking out through the hull. Mounted guns are the exception and draw whole. An open doorway keeps the closed door's outline in the clip so someone standing in it isn't cut off where the door would be.
- Only the first and middle doorway tiles on each side take a weapon mount, the rear two refuse it and the build ghost tells you why.
- Mounts sit 22px outboard of the hull, were 24.
- Huey sounds outrank the rest of the mix and there are 96 real voices instead of 64, so the rotor and cockpit beds don't drop out when a firefight fills the mixer. Gunshots get 32 voices (was 16), gun handling, casings and bullet impacts widened too.
- A body lying on a cabin tile is picked where it draws (tipped and lowered), so you don't drag the corpse under you onto the seat and get told the pilot needs training. The own-sprite-first drag rule from last time is reverted because it made a folding cade under you impossible to drag.
Display
- HDR output for scRGB and HDR10 displays. HDR toggle, HDR FORMAT (Auto, scRGB, HDR10), HDR PAPER WHITE (default 200 nits) and HDR PEAK BRIGHTNESS (default 1000 nits) in the video settings.
- DECAL MEMORY video setting, Low, Normal and High (85, 127 and 170 MB of blood canvas), default Normal. The layer you're looking at claims slots first, so when it runs out a layer below you goes flat, never the one under your feet. A chunk going flat was the likely cause of blood whose colour spilled but whose relief cut off at a straight line.
- Quitting with HDR on crashed every time.
- Settings rows stop short of the scrollbar so it doesn't sit over the LANGUAGE chevron.
- Spanish strings for the display mode rows.
Death
- Getting gibbed under a landing Huey left you in a black screen with no ghost and no respawn until you relogged. A destroyed body ghosts you on the spot it died. An all-gibbed team ends the round like an all-dead one, and the ERT can reach gibbed people.
- Someone killed in a no-respawns phase whose corpse was later destroyed could reconnect and airdrop back in through loadout select. Refused with its own message.
Fixes
- Hiding other ghosts in observe mode only worked part of the time, the parallel staging path drew every ghost regardless.
- Ash embers and flecks move with the ash cloud's camera parallax while you pan instead of sitting still on the ground under it.
