Hi all,

Here's Sprocket's largest update yet.
Thank you all for being so patient.

This update is fully backwards compatible, so old designs will be updated and be (mostly) fine.

Freeform Designer

The new approach allows more faces to be added, infinitely increasing the possibilities.
Through this, you can create pike-nosed, cast and Sherman hulls, round turrets and just about anything else you can think of.



As a result (no extra effort), multi-turrets are now possible. Due to the fact you can only have one gunner, extra turrets will be aesthetic until this limit is raised (scheduled for multi-cannons).



Superstructures work more naturally now, extending out of the hull instead of fixing the turret. This makes their mass and space more accurate (lighter and roomier), and stops internal walls from limiting gun depression.
Turrets are now placed like regular attachments, able to be positioned and rotated using the new placement tools.
Armour gradients (thickness changing gradually across a plate) are also possible.

Additions

• Added a new way of designing hulls and turrets, known as "Freeform" mode.
  
• Added tools for moving, rotating and resizing parts. Holding duplicate while dragging on these will duplicate and perform the action on the copy.
  
• Added new cannon sound effects, one for low, mid and high calibers.
  
• Gun laying drives can now be damaged and destroyed. When fully destroyed, the cannon will be locked in-place (but can still be fired).
  
• Context menu. Selecting attachments can now display a design screen, allowing much more in-depth design of attachments. Mantlet design is now accessed through this, instead of through the gun mount designer.
  
• Crew role, engine and fuel tank icons are now displayed with their respective positions.
  
• Introduced first undo/redo support (default undo:Ctrl-z redo:Ctrl-y). This currently only supports hull/turret editing and attachment positioning, with support for others coming over time.
  
• Saving individual hulls and turrets now saves everything attatched to them.
  
• Added a button to destroy all parts attached to the selected hull/turret.
  
• Added placeable versions of the previously generated-only fenders.
  
• A notification is now displayed when converting a design between eras.
  
• Crew members are now automatically moved to where their required components are. e.g. Placing a cupola will move the commander to the hull/turret you placed it on.
  
• Added a subtle film grain effect.
  
• Increased the flexibility of the GUI, allowing for dropdowns. Most designers have been updated with these, giving the designer a more sleek look. This allows for more options and info without adding clutter.
  
• The 'Essentials' guide in the designer can now be hidden by clicking on it.
  
• Generated front fenders can now have their length adjusted.
  
• Added 3 new camouflage patterns.
  

Fixes

• Paint job selection now shows when flat and paintless options are selected.
  
• GUI toggling is now disabled in the main menu, stopping loading into scenarios without a GUI.
  
• Decals now start with the selected graphic, instead of needing to be placed, selected and changed.
  
• Fixed issue with shell penetration, sometimes causing applique armour to be ignored. This was most noticeable on large parts, like mantlets.
  
• Fixed the mount of the AT gun behind the barn on "Silent Border" staying behind when the AT gun is moved.
  
• Fixed a mistake in track mass calculation, resulting in tracks being twice as heavy as they should be - tracks are half as heavy now.
  
• Stopped slider jitter from rounded values.
  
• Improved recovery of the designer when something goes wrong when pressing play, it shouldn't softlock the game anymore.
  

Changes

• Re-wrote how compartments are handled behind the scenes. This fixes a few issues like inconsistent mass and volume when loading blueprints.
  Overall this should prevent many bugs and speed up all future additions.
  
• Updated old hull/turret designer to work with the new freeform designer, the old style is now refered to as "Generated" mode.
  Took some time to polish and simplify it by removing the hull sponson slant, as well as the front and rear strips.
  These would only complicate things now, since they can easily be re-added in freeform design.
  
• Re-wrote the post-penetration model.
  The fragments created from penetration now bounce around the inside, damaging anything they hit. Previously fragments didn't bounce.
  They may also go out the other side of the vehicle, meaning more penetration isn't always better.
  You might notice:
  
  • More of a middle-ground between fully working and destroyed internals, there will be more partially working cases.
    
  • A larger difference between high and low caliber cannons. Lower calibers hit fewer internals, higher calibers hit more.
    
  
  Due to the increased number of fragments (with damage being spread across), big absorbers like fuel and transmissions will now absorb fragments better.
  
• Disabled track blocking of placement, since it was inaccurate and frustrating.
  
• Changed paint rendering method, allowing camouflages to continue across edges and parts, without seams. This does come at the cost of some distortion, more noticeable on flat sides.
  
• Rebound armour view default hotkey from 'a' to 'v', 'a' is better used for selecting/deselecting all in the hull/turret designer.
  
• Changed turret and cannon acceleration display to the time taken to get to the maximum speed.
  
• Lowered ammo rack capacity slider limit from 300 to 100.
  
• Armour view now has a checker texture, helping to see surface direction.
  
• Disabled the fender designer, as it can no longer function with the new compartments. Fenders on old designs will be converted into placed fenders.
  Placeable fenders have been moved to the "Structural" tab in the crew section.
  This will be replaced with a new approach to fender generation in the coming updates.
  
• Increased base damage of cannons by 50, meaning a crewmember (100 health) hit by the smallest cannons wont be able to walk it off anymore.
  
• Significantly lowered the mass of HVSS suspensions.
  
• Lowered paint saturation slider limit from 200 to 100%.
  
• Armour thickness slider is now rounded to the nearest 5mm.
  
• Internal fuel tank capacity slider is now rounded to the nearest 20L.
  
• Decreased armour density from 8000 to 7850kgm^3, everything will be slightly lighter.
  
• Minor GUI improvements to designer, victory & defeat screens.
  
• Increased the size range of many parts.
  
• Raised the minimum scale for hatches. They can no longer be scaled to a size a human couldn't realistically fit through.
  
• Disabled collisions on many parts. These may come back when it serves a purpose other than to annoy you.
  
• Engine rpm sliders are now rounded to the nearest 100.
  
• Increased the distance the world border can be seen from.
  
• Track design now hides disabled options better. e.g. Interleaved roadwheels and grouping are mutually exclusive, so now one is hidden when the other is enabled.
  
• Shells can now ricochet off the ground, into an enemy if you're lucky.
  
• Made Czech anti-tank hedgehogs more effective at jamming themselves under tanks.
  
• Removed the attack and defend AI orders, these will go back in once they work better.
  
• Shell visuals/tracers now visually match their caliber better. Most noticeable on larger calibers.
  

Stabilization took longer than expected back in 2021 Q4, many roadmap goals were missed.
The roadmap will get an update, pushing everything not covered in this one forwards. It'll rearrange some orders too.

I realize there was slightly poor communication on this one, I'll work on that in future major updates.
Several smaller updates on the way next!

- Hamish