Well, that was horrifying! Apologies for the down time and massive waste of time. I had tried to convert everyone's saves from basic text files to an SQLite database, which took a long time, but it turned out to be the wrong solution in the end. Back to the drawing board on solving this text file horde.

Beta17 is ready to go regardless, I'm officially proclaiming the content in the rewrite is now caught up where v1.2.7.7 left off.

See for yourself below:

New Weapon: Riot Shield

I am proud to introduce a brand new weapon, the Riot Shield.
If you missed it, you can get all the details in my previously uploaded video:

It's a defensive 'Nade weapon which is effective against slow and powerful weapons such as explosives and shotguns.

New Weapon: Buzzer

The controversial Buzzer has made it's glorious return. It has experienced a massive rework, but I have no idea if I made it better or worse. Meta or quality wise. I guess I'll find out, probably the hard way!

Instead of bouncing, the Buzzer's sawblades will now crawl along surfaces and damage anything in their path. The Buzzer does not have a lot of ammo, but once your sawblade slows to a stop you can pick them up again for reuse, almost similar to the Tomahawk. Sawblades can also do headshot damage, but only while airborne.

The Buzzer also features an alt-fire which allows you to spin up the sawblade before firing. Not only can you use this as a makeshift melee weapon, but firing the sawblade while its spun up will also strengthen it's launching power.

New Weapon: Blaster

Here it is, the Blaster. The Blaster has also been reworked, both in gameplay and visually. All firing modes have been changed, which you can swap between using alt-fire. The first, default firing mode now follows a sine wave pattern, and can be fired endlessly like its predecessor.

The second firing mode retains it's shotgun-blast theme, it has fewer projectiles that do more damage and fire in a uniform spread pattern.

The final firing mode launches a large, explosive projectile with a heavier drop speed. It's considered an explosive projectile, including all the consequences of being such.

The Blaster now has an ammo pool in the form of rechargeable energy. The spread and explosive firing modes will use up ammo, however the Blaster will recharge ammo when not in use. The first firing mode does not use ammo, but will cease recharging while being fired. Recharging will continue while either holstered or dropped on the ground, you can also recover energy through ammo boxes and other ammo restoration means.

New Weapon: Gas Launcher

The forgotten Gas Launcher has returned. The Gas Launcher's original purpose has stayed the same, but also features a new alt-fire similar to the Blaster where you can choose which type of gas grenade to fire. The first type of grenade is classic, poisonous gas. Yum!

The next two gas types are Heal and Nitrogen. Similar to the Heal Grenade, the Gas Launcher will expel healing clouds which heal anyone in it's vicinity. The Nitrogen grenades will predictably freeze foes who pass through it. The last grenade type is "BATON", which emits no gas and is just the projectile by itself. Each grenade type (except heal) will do a little damage on impact, however the Baton grenade will do extra and can also deal headshot damage.

Using the 2 grenades in your magazine, a great way to slap someone's shit is to freeze them with Nitrogen, then headshotting them with a Baton round to perform quadruple damage. But it would be a good idea to carry along a finisher weapon.

New Weapon: Taser

The little Taser is back and ready to take S-tier. It can be used to stun and disarm multiple enemies in it's projectile's path from short range.

The Taser hasn't actually changed all that much except for some visual enhancements and that it's infinite ammo has been replaced by just having a lot of ammo instead.

New Powerup: BFG

Last but not least, and the unofficial last weapon of this update, is the terrifying BFG (Big Flippin' Gun). It too has had a rework, mostly to be able to separate itself from the Chain Gun, as I didn't want a powerup weapon to share the same downfalls of needing to spin-up.

Instead, it has powerful double 'anti-air' style cannons which fires less but deals a whole lot of damage. It has kept it's rocket and muleslapper weaponry, which are now separately fired by using alt-fire so you can control the chaos you cause a little better for yourself.

New Map: Throne Room

Throne Room has been added, which is the lair of the evil cosmological horror The Man. It's a symmetry-heavy map with a lot of empty airspace to boost through.

It has retained most of the same layout, which I cleaned up the symmetry for. It also features some lava pits that have moving platforms, so watch your step.

New Map: Arctic City

Arctic City, one of my favorite maps, is back in rotation. It's a map I've visualized to have 3 stories; the rooftops, the insides of each base and ground level.

I made some small structural changes and I removed the blizzard foreground non-sense so no more annoying visibility problems. And yes, poor sequels to horror movies exist in the Boring Man universe.

New Map: Arena

Do you feel that? It's as if a place of chaotic energy has reopened. That's right, Arena is now available. It's a smaller map that has had similar changes like Warehouse, where it's been made open-air to give players more breathing room. Instead of the bizarre stadium theme, I've changed it to a more peaceful mountainous area.

I also added some pressure plates for each side, which will open trap doors underneath each base. Be careful to not fall off the sides, lest you fall into the boiling geothermal water pools.

New Map: Varia City

Varia City has been added, which is the final competitive map ported over from v1. An unsymmetrical map similar to Dyson City, USC's side is lower but still shares the same building structure.

The obnoxious sandstorm has also been removed, with its replacement being a desert night look. I've also added more visual detail, such as the little fruit market in the middle of the map

New features: Lore, Stats & Achievements

Lore, Stats and Achievements are now available.
You can read about the details in a previous post I wrote.

There are 60 achievements as of now, and we'll see about adding more. Stat recording starts as of this update, as there were several bugs that would skew your stats plus now that most weapons are in your stats won't end up so lopsided.

Picking up lore articles and unlocking achievements will grant you small amounts of XP, however the XP you get is not influenced by triple XP events. This is so you don't really have to worry about 'saving' your achievements or lore like a weirdo in order to maximize miniscule XP gains.

New Survival feature: The Beacon

Quite a bit of content has been added to Survival, however all of it branches from the addition of the Beacon. The Beacon is a large device placed somewhere in each match, it's is a new way to beat Survival much faster.

Similar to the Bar, the Beacon will only open during the break period. By supplying it money, specific weapons and specific vices, you can 'activate' the Beacon in order to skip to the final wave at any point in the match. Of course it can be used in Hardcore Survival as well. The Beacon requires quite a bit of resources, so to motivate players into investing into it, your team can unlock beneficial effects with each phase of construction completed.

I'll spoil the first phase, when completed you will be able to summon helicopter support from the bar, which will carry it's own chain gun to rip through enemies. Helicopter support will hang around for a specific set of waves as long as it has fuel, no matter how long they take to complete. Once it runs out of fuel, it will return to base for refueling and can be immediately be called again but at a higher price. Be wary however, as if it's destroyed then it will take some time to be able to be called again. I wonder if helicopter deployment is only exclusive to the USC.. surely not?

And what of this mysterious Beacon? Where did it come from? What does it want? What happens when it's completed? Skipping to the last wave sure saves a lot of time, and it certainly isn't the average player's first rodeo in defeating such a wave. We can't be getting off that easy, could we..?

New Weapon Skins

• Added new Blessed skin: "Bamboo"

• Added new Blessed skin: "Glass"

• Added new Blessed skin: "Zombified"

• Added new Blessed skin: "Teufort"

• Added new Boring skin: "Coastline"

• Added new Boring skin: "Haunted"

• Added new Seasonal skin: "Hot Chocolate"

Weapon Balance

• Increased Fire Uzi accuracy

• Removed Fire Uzi damage fall off
  -- The Fire Uzi has been hanging around as low tier for a long time, and thought it could use a boost. Hopefully this won't make it annoying

• The Light AR alt-fire is now easier to perform

• Light AR alt-fire no longer deletes ammo when failed
  -- Players complained about the Light AR's alt-fire being difficult to use, often leaving it completely ignored. These changes will hopefully make it more forgiving

• Increased Lightning Gun ammo

• Heavily reduced Light Rockets headshot damage
  -- I am somewhat reversing the changes made to these weapons from beta15a due to complaints, but not quite all the way. I still firmly believe LRs should have some extra damage output, and that Lightning Gun users should still need to deal with ammo problems. However these past changes should be a lot more subtle.

• Reduced Potato Masher's ammo
  -- Potato Masher's long distance turned out to be more powerful then thought, and people seem to have preference for no bounce when I thought of it as a nerf for the most part. Reducing the ammo will also allow lesser used 'Nades with an ammo of 3 to stand out more, such as the Molotov.

• Increased the Wrench's damage

• Wrench can now headshot
  -- I thought it was high time the Wrench became a formidable melee weapon. And yes, these changes implies the introduction of a certain artifact skin for the Wrench. Good luck finding it.

• Tranq Rifle can now fire underwater
  -- As an air rifle, the Tranq can technically be used underwater. It could always use buffs as well.

• Boomerang throws are no longer randomized
  -- As a precision weapon, this should help your Boomerang throws feel more consistent, and less reliant on RNG.

General Changes

• Magic is now compatible on the Drone

• You can now hold down the Nade key when performing a Hadoken in any scenario to aim the projectile

• An icon will now display on vice pick ups when you have Hotwings in your inventory

• Normal/Hard bots can now use the bar in Survival. They will give up waypointing to it if it appears inaccessible in 2-3 waves, so I view updating custom maps as optional. (I didn't really update mine)

• Lightning gun now supports bullet color

• Bullet color now carries across dropped weapons

• Hovering your cursor over server settings in the pause menu will now display more information

• You can now skip the unlock animation for weapon skins

• ‘Strict Spec’ renamed to Spectator Mode, added Broadcast setting which will disable strict spec for players on the Spectator team

• Added new experimental setting: ‘Nade Throw Delay

• Added new experimental setting: Slowed Doubles

• Added new console commands:

  spawnbigboss
killbigboss
beaconstart
setallvice
incteamscore
setteamscore

Boring Editor Changes

• Added Background Changer object to Boring Editor

• Added Conveyor Belt tool to Boring Editor

• Added new ambience sound to Boring Editor: Blizzard

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