February 14th 2020 by SDGNelson

4.20.2.0 update including armor, storage pouches, ghillie netting, and more!

Sorted from most to least interesting.

Highlights from the devlog.

Armor & Health

Armor now blocks damage, but only when well-maintained armor plates are attached. The current vest has multiple plate slots, however this might be simplified to a single plate slot per-armor-item to reduce inventory busywork.

Armor impacts show sparks rather than blood to indicate a hit. Each plate has a health bar which absorbs bullet damage. In a future update different bullet types (e.g. armor-piercing) will be added which interact with tiers of armor plating differently. Read plans for the armor systems here.

Some modular vests and backpacks do not have much storage on their own, instead supplemented via attachable pouches. These pouches can hold any item, but in the future there will be specialized pouches like for faster reloads or throwable items.

In keeping with tradition the first consumeable item is a can of refried beans. As-is they instantly restore full health. Read plans for the medical systems here.

Ghillie Camoflage

Initially available as shirts, pants and boots, as well as attachable netting for the Eaglefire.

Separate variants will be required for different biomes like arctic tundra and arid desert. Due to forest colors shifting with the season cycle the forest ghillie suit adapts to the local grass color to remain useful.

In 3.0 disabling the foliage and shadows grants a tactical advantage spotting ghillie-suited enemies. Preventing this in 4.0 is a high priority. Disabling the grass no longer exposes ghillies, but enabling shadows does highlight them at close range. This will be revised. For now, ghillies are almost invisible at long range.

3.0-style on the left vs 4.0-style on the right.

Weight

All items have a weight value. Carrying heavy weights slows your movement speed. This is combined from the weights of all attachments, outfits, storage and equipped weapons.

For now the plan is for weight to be a soft limit, rather than a hard limit like grid space. Instead other restrictions like only arrows in quivers and magazines in ammo pouches will be implemented.

Display text is determined from the new unit system option. This setting will also control props like speed limit signs.

Screenshots

Taking super-sampled screenshots for the blog is useful, so it has been implemented in-game as well. There is a rebindable hotkey for them, and highres screenshots are registered with Steam. All Steam screenshots are also tagged with the map location.

Engine Upgrade

The engine has been updated from Unreal 4.23.1 to 4.24.2. This merge was a big focus of January, and took longer while developing a tool for future merges nicknamed TidyUE.

Previously the entirety of Unreal's source tree was tracked in Unturned II's engine Git repository. This was 200k+ files, and slow to work with.

TidyUE strips many of the files irrelevant to Unturned II (e.g. mobile support and AR support), bringing the file count down to ~60k. It will also make it easier to analyze future versions of the engine by highlighting new plugins, new file types, new programs, etc.

Assorted

Among miscellaneous fixes and changes here are the more interesting ones: