For the past few months we've been incorporating a ton of feedback into the largest update yet. This is a preview of what's to come for The Wastes 1.2.

First I'd like to address that it's taken quite a bit for this to come together because literally every aspect of the game as been touched. It's always sad to leave the community in the dark when it comes to updates - but very often we as developers find ourselves hyping eachother up internally about awesome gameplay opportunities only to realise that it's not as good as we thought. Making an announcement and not delivering on it can be soul-crushing and there's still TONS in the pipeline that we're working on, but it's too early to show. In the future you'll be seeing smaller, more regular updates. Keep in mind that 1.2 will release in the coming weeks and stuff here is still work-in-progress and does not represent the final update. But we'd like to give you a glimpse of it anyway just so you know that we're still alive, happy and working on our game that we're very proud of.

A rundown of some of the fixes you'll be getting:

• Crouching rewritten, fixes the jumping glitch as well as bound checking.
• Sprinting mutator is now on by default.
• Default ALT/SHIFT binds have been swapped.
• Recoil now bounces back, spring style.
• Skill Attributes will change upon respawn, not midgame anymore
• Explosives can now harm vehicles
• Vehicles can now flip over, as their centre-of-mass is now correct
• Vehicles have now a first-person-mode with fully modelled interior
• Vehicle physics now avoid corpses
• Team chat is no longer available in non-team gamemodes
• Re-rendered some weapon icons to match their new versions
• Materials/Shaders overhauled to support both GLSL and non-GLSL capable cards
• Performance improvements with partcle emitters
• Pistols now use their 'appropriate' draw animations
• ammo_container entities now give you extra ammo for your empty clip as well
• ammo_container entities now restock melee/explosive weapons that have been depleted
• New spectator overlay and respawn interface improvements
• Fixed Akimbos playing reload animations at times when they shouldn't
• Fixed chat going off-screen on looong chat strings
• Added view kick when taking damage
• Added damage indicators onto the heads-up-display
• Changed the zoom factor on most weapons that have one
• Countdown timer when timelimit is going close is now displayed on the bottom of the screen.
• Various major map fixes and overhauls

There are loads more gameplay overhauls that we can't describe here. Major changes to how bots and their pathfinding work, a rewrite of the spectating system and better compatibility with Half-Life level files and their entities. We cannot wait to hear your feedback! We've also touched every map to add a wide variety of ambient sounds and DSP effects.
Yes, car interiors are finally here. Thanks to kruddman we've got some of the sickest looking car interiors!

New Map: Operation Snowbound

tw_snowbound, Operation Snowbound, is coming. It's one of the largest (if not largest) traditional maps. It's in the final stages of development and we'll all be able to go nuts on it very, very shortly.

New Map: Compromised Bunker

Load yourself up and explore the depths of an abandoned industrial bunker, full of destroyed machinery and countless spots to surprise enemies from.

More sprays! While we're working on ways to allow people to upload and use custom sprays (with fair limitations), it's always good to have some more pre-created ones... right?
We've also incorporated a chat system for the main game and mods. There is a lot of potential to make it do a bit more than just chat. ICE/NAT-punching is something that could be done to avoid port-forwarding and dedicated servers, for example.

So, what else is new?

Tons of netcode improvements, visual upgrades for anyone with a graphics card capable of basic GLSL so that we can do fancy things such as environment mapping (that's the shiny stuff you can see in some screenshots) as well as a more polished game experience overall. I'd like to thank all the players around who've given feedback and helped to improve the game that way! You're the best.

What happened to you and the Discord Server?

I (eukara) personally don't use Discord anymore. If you'd like to get in touch please do join the Vera Visions group on Steam and join the chat there! I'd love to hang out on casual terms and talk about the game there like we used to. Just keep it nice, of course. UT2004flak Join Vera-Visions' Chat on Steam