patch notes
0.44.0

Gameplay:

New Implementation:

Penalty System:

• The penalty taker and the goalkeeper have to move their respective shape to an area on the goal. If the shapes overlap, the goalkeeper makes a save. The timing of the shot input from the attacker will affect the size of the taker's circle, as will the Penalties attribute.
  
  Penalty UI is a temporary interface designed solely for testing purposes and does not represent the final version.

Physical Tackles & Auto-Shielding for ball carriers:

• Players can dispossess other players via physical interactions like pushes, and higher Strength players do this more effectively. This reduces the number of stumbles when disposing players and makes possession switches more fluid.

We have some exciting improvements to this going forwards too!

Reworked Collision System:

• Rework collision behaviour to behave more like humans colliding, making the game more physical in nature. Stronger players are now more noticeably strong, and players can "push" other players around more.
• Interactions between players now feel more lifelike. Defending is more physical, allowing players to nudge or push opponents off the ball during challenges.
• Tackles are now more closely tied to the collision system. Successfully taking the ball from an opponent will often result in physically pushing them aside.
• The difference between heavier and lighter players is now more pronounced during collisions.
• Stronger players will have a clear advantage in physical confrontations.

Improved Goalkeeper:

• Goalie tweaks at different stat levels to balance them against shots.
• Goalie misc improvements: can enter air duels & auto-win them, avoid taking free kicks too far from the goal, fixed lock-on bugs.
• Tweaked goalkeeper behaviour to be slower to react to shots at close range and improved diving behaviour.
• Goalkeepers can now enter aerial duels correctly and will reliably catch the ball in aerial duels.

Adjustments & Improvements:

• The range at which a player can dispossess an opponent automatically now scales with speed.
• Improved blocking behaviour to look more natural and also ensure that blocked shots cause less danger to the defending side.
• Improvements to bot behaviour, including set piece behaviour and tackling behaviour.
• Lowered optimal charge level for shots from close ranges to ensure "tap" shots in the box are more effective.
• Improved AI bots so they stop getting stuck in actions and improve their tackling behaviour.
• Added variation to pass animations
• Polished the trap animations.
• Users can now claim an advantage by releasing all controller input.
• Improved passing options when attacking through the AI actively seeking out triangle spaces.
• Increased jump reaction time to stop defenders being able to immediately jump to intercept air balls, particularly crosses and lofted through passes.
• Added curve to lofted through pass trajectories for more visual variation.
• Improved the fake shot by updating behaviour of the touch when faking to provide more separation between ball and player after the fake shot.
• Improved Slide Tackle collision checks to avoid the ball phasing through a sliding player.
• Improved lofted through passes to ensure they only disperse short based on stat, which removes the case of lofted through passes being played far too far ahead.
• Improved interception behaviour to be more natural, such that a player facing the wrong way will be less likely to steer and intercept the ball.
• Improved through pass selection behaviour.
• Allow triggered runs and triggered support to be activated while receiving passes.
• Reduced sliding behaviour when activating second player press.
• Reduced sliding when players steer toward the ball.

Design Adjustments:

• Increased max auto-release distance for shots from 700cm to 1650cm.
• Tweaked through pass receiver selection values.
• Adjusted acceleration and agility multipliers for low-rated players to make them able to move more freely.
• Lowered min. shot power for all shot types.
• Increased min. shot power based on charge %.
• Slightly increased max dispersion for all shot types and stats.
• Set initial values for penalty system.
• Decreased min. distance (to ball holder) for secondary player press from 5m to 2m. Stat temporarily doesn't have an effect on the min. distance.
• Increased block impulses versus incoming ball speed.
• Decreased max distance for Second Player Press to 2m from 5m.
• Increased max height agility multiplier from 0.8 to 0.9
• Increased both off-ball and on-ball minimum agility turn deceleration multiplier from 0.6 to 0.8, which makes lower Agility players perform better.
• Increased both off-ball and on-ball minimum acceleration multiplier from 0.7 to 0.85, which makes lower Acceleration players perform better.
• Increased minimum charge percent shot power multiplier from 0.1 to 0.3, meaning low charged shots are more powerful.

UI/UX/Audio & Quality of Life:

General UI:

• The visuals in the menu have been updated to align with our ongoing transition to a new design.
• Changed button UI colours.
• Updated footer button colours.

HUD UI:

• Added the option to show/hide player stats from the Settings menu.
• Updated replay button visual.
• Minor visual updates to match events shown in the match state widget.
• Arena HUD has been updated.
• Waiting screen now uses correct wipe animation.
• Improved text readability on the waiting screen.
• Improved behaviour of off-screen player indicator.

Challenges UI:

• Now displays the connected reward correctly in all cases.

Collection UI:

• Active filters are now displayed and can easily be disabled from the collection screen.

Audio:

• Music Reveal: selection of music tracks was updated.
• Added audio feedback to the Claim Reward UI
• The music and track selection functionality has been re-implemented to ensure seamless updates when the scoring goals.

Art:

The AMP Arena:

• Added a new arena.
• Currently available only in 1v0.

Post Processing Improvements:

• Color & Temperature tweaks.
• Increased Sharpness.
• Decreased Vignette.
• Changed the Post Process Effect of lines.

Core:

SENTEC Standalone Server

• SENTEC servers are running standalone without any Unreal code.
• Increased Performance from 0.12 to 0.01 in CPU core utilization.

Other Improvements:

• Implementation to make cross shadows work.
• Low End Optimizations.
• Optimization to the culling of the new AMP stadium.
• Client Performance telemetry.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a bug where the ball was going through the net on high ping.
• Fixed a bug where the UI in Arena became unresponsive if a player had previously participated in a 1v1 match as the away team.
• Fixed a bug where players were doing a 360 degree spin while chasing down the ball.
• Fixed a physical collision when the ball would hit the crossbar and the post at the same time.
• Fixed a bug where the goalkeeper would sometimes run a t-pose animation.
• Fixed a bug where goalkeepers would take free kicks from positions too far away from their own goal.
• Fixed a bug where the charge bar would linger over a player's head if the goalkeeper caught the ball while a character was charging a shot.
• Fixed a bug where goalkeepers attempted to make saves while the ball was out of play.
• Fixed a bug where pass or shot inputs were missed when pressing the button immediately after winning possession of the ball.
• Fixed a bug where defenders did not correctly win possession of the ball despite being close enough to it.
• Fixed a bug where players could not be switched in Squad/Collections.
• Fixed a bug where locking on from far out led to the intended action not triggering.
• Fixed a bug where scoring in the second half caused the opposition's score on the scoreboard pop-up to reset to 0.
• Fixed a bug where players did not correctly steer toward the ball after it had bounced off the post and returned to play.
• Fixed various instances of defensive auto-switches occurring when they shouldn't.
• Fixed a bug where other characters would lock on while executing a pass or a shot.
• Fixed an issue where pass receivers did not advance the trajectory despite being under pressure from an interceptor.
• Fixed various instances of missed traps.
• Fixed a bug where dispossession touches were sometimes forcefully played back toward the dribbler.
• Fixed an issue where passes or shots attempted from too far from the ball still tried to execute.
• Fixed a bug where pass input was not registered immediately after collecting or locking onto the ball.
• Fixed a bug where auto-switching occurred when the user controlling the ball holder released input.
• Fixed a bug where triggering a fake pass while facing 180 degrees from the goal caused the player to move over the ball instead of performing the intended action.
• Fixed a bug where close AI players locked onto the ball immediately after charging a shot or fake shot.
• Fixed a bug where the goalkeeper dived in the incorrect direction, committing early to one of the opposition player's touches.
• Fixed a bug where some player switches resulted in another player card moving, as if it were being selected.
• Fixed a bug where the game crashed when scrolling through challenges.
• Fixed a bug where leaving a match against bots granted progress in challenges where that game mode was included.
• Fixed a bug where the game crashed when spam-switching between languages.
• Fixed a bug where rank matchmaking while in the Arena caused the game to display incorrect rank, skill rating, and placeholder username.
• Fixed a bug where the text "Play vs Bots" displayed below the game mode thumbnail was not translated into any of the supported languages.
• Fixed a bug where users could get stuck on the GOALS transition screen.
• Fixed a bug where AI collisions from behind caused the user-controlled player to slow down while the AI players maintained their speed.
• Bots fixes: stop them from getting stuck in actions, more reliable tackling behaviour.