Hi there!

The past three months of development have been an exciting adventure. This update originally was supposed to be primarily UI improvements, but it exploded as we got help from new team members, got sidetracked with the Alien Swarm SDK, and fixed pretty much everything that arose from 0.8.4. It's a chonk of an update, but I wouldn't have it any other way!

Some New Paint, Same Ol' Momentum

Our graphics designer TraZox has been hard at work bringing our logo to a more consistent, modern design, and creating the assets (banners, library art, achievement icons, etc) for our Steam Store debut above. Those of you already in the Discord server may have noticed our new logo already, but for those who aren’t:

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We have gone with a solid black outline for the logo and simplified the blue to match the color scheme used in the new UI. Speaking of UI...

U and I, I, I, I, I~

An enormous amount of effort went towards bringing the various parts of Momentum’s User Interface to the same design style and direction, using 3 new fonts and a consistent color scheme. From heavy input of our brand new UI/UX lead, Flipybitz, we’re excited to show our current progress of UI overhauling!

New Settings Panel

It was about time that we combined the unproportional, basic Source options panel with our proportional-but-still-ugly Momentum Settings panel, forming the superior, proportional-and-expandable-and-rad-as-hell “Settings” panel.

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The new settings panel is fully proportional, from your friendly neighborhood ant’s resolution of 640x480 all the way up to 4K. It also uses the wealth of VGUI knowledge I’ve accumulated from working on this project (and therefore with VGUI) for so long. This is a standard we want to set for all of our panels, and will be slowly applying to the rest of the UI over time.

New Loading Screen

With our override of GameUI and the new design direction, we took to overriding the default loading screen panel to give more relevant information about the map you’re loading into:

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You may have also noticed a section for pro gamer tips, and that’s right! While we have a healthy stock of ~40 total tips currently, we’d love to hear more tips if you have any. What would be good advice to players just starting off playing a game like Momentum, and any of its game modes? If you have an answer (or multiple) to that, check out the Google Form for submitting more tips to us and we’ll put ‘em in the game!

New Speedometer(s)

One of our newest additions to the team, Brae, has done some impressive work surrounding one of Momentum’s important UI elements: the Speedometer.

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In full seriousness, you can now completely customize the speedometer for each individual game mode. Don’t care about horizontal speed for Surf but absolutely can’t live without it for Sticky Jump? You can do that now.

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We have also given players more control of their speedometers layout. By editing the speedometer.vdf file inside the momentum/cfg/ folder, you can change the order in which speedometers will be drawn. We plan to have more UI to make editing this file more of a visual experience, coming in a later update.

We’ve also added four new speedometers:

  • Vertical speedometer (all about that Z velocity, baby)
  • Ramp board speedometer (speed when boarding a ramp)
  • Ramp leave speedometer (speed when leaving a ramp)
  • Explosive speedometer (speed after an explosion applies to you)

Check them out in the new settings panel, under the HUD tab!

General UI Updates

The rest of Momentum’s UI, including the menu, map selector, and in-game HUD were also brought to use this new design direction. You can see a collage below:

Old UI:

Momentum 0.8.4 UI (Old)

New UI:

Momentum 0.8.5 UI (New)


While it may seem like a lot, we’re just getting started! Over the next few updates, we will be bringing other panels to newer, modern designs, with improved proportionality and functionality.

Tossing Some Shade(rs)

Another important step taken in this update was the complete override of the game’s standard shaders. It turns out that Alien Swarm SDK had the source to every shader, and with removing some files from the game’s main bin folder, we were able to get the game to load our custom shaders instead of the standard, hard-coded Valve-compiled shaders that are closed behind engine access.

With this change, along with Alien Swarm’s source of every shader, we are able to compile our own versions of any existing shader (like VertexLitGeneric) to add new functionality, such as adding Alien Swarm’s “Radial” based fog approach. You can see the comparison below:

Standard Fog (HL2/CS:S/TF2 fog):



Radial Fog (now default Momentum fog):

This effort was done by SlidyBat with help from Xen (testing) and SCell555 (his spectacular ShaderCompile project and general source shader knowledge). But this is not all we have planned for the game’s rendering, so stay tuned for future updates!

The Open Source Free-For-All Rages On!

Here’s the full 0.8.5 changelog, consisting of 606 commits that 9 total contributors worked towards:

Added

  • Zones folder for holding zone files (538)
  • Added mom_sj_particle_trail_enable in order to toggle stickybomb trail visibility (631)
  • Added SJ settings to the game settings panel (632)
  • Added mom_mapfinished_movement_enable to allow for movement during the map finish UI (633)
  • Added a warning when running on non-standard tickrates (641)
  • Added the ability to detonate stickies with the pistol out (654)
  • Added mom_ghost_online_sticky_alpha to change the transparency of online player’s sticky bombs (654)
  • Added shooting sound effect when an online ghost shoots sticky bombs (654)
  • Added mom_practice_warning_enable to warn players who enter practice mode while in a run that they will resume the run from their previous location (658)
  • Added mom_hud_mapinfo_show_status for zone label and mom_hud_versioninfo_enable for version label (658)
  • Made players emit rocket launcher firing sounds online (663)
  • Added an appropriate whitelist for commands issued by point_clientcommand (679)
  • Ahop gamemode movement (768) (782)
  • Added sticky armtime proxy that changes the blue glow on the stickybomb to fade in when during arming (692)
  • Added “feeling lucky” button to the map selector (697)
  • Added a time comparison on the map finished panel (705) (784 )
  • Added toggle timer sound convars (722)
  • Added airborne_only flag to func_nogrenades (725)
  • Added PBR parameters MRAO scale and Emission scale to PS30 version of PBR shader (743)
  • Added new fonts - Bebas Neue, Noto Sans, Source Code Pro, and credited them in FontCredits.txt (746)
  • Added necessary flags for buttons that can be +use’d and are also non-solid, as in some CSS maps (772)
  • Can now hold +jump to prevent being teleported in practice mode (783)
  • Console search features (enter a space to search cvars/ccommands) (796)
  • Vertical speedometer (798)
  • Ramp board & leave speedometers (800)
  • Entity glow effect (801)
  • New consolidated Settings panel (805)
  • Explosive speed speedometer (813)
  • Backported Alien Swarm’s postprocess_controller entity (815)
  • Added a 1/10000 chance for a wild wild western rider on your rockets (820)

Fixed

  • Fixed paint doing damage to buttons when using +paint with other weapons out (635)
  • Fixed the map finished panel status messages not being reset when using mom_restart or mom_reset (640)
  • Fixed keyboard bindings not displaying or updating properly in the options menu (643)
  • Fixed hud and game text being activated by online ghosts (645)
  • Fixed lobby menu sometimes not accepting mouse input (650)
  • Prevented spectator mode and player changes when showing the map finished panel (651)
  • Fixed the sticky launcher’s charge rate only being reset in start zones if it was the active weapon (653)
  • Fixed sticky bombs from firing before mouse release when charge is disabled (656)
  • Fixed sticky launcher sounds cancelling each other out (654)
  • Fixed sticky bomb using different physics models based on the model it’s given, causing custom sticky models to behave differently (654)
  • Fixed stickies shot in practice mode to do damage when the timer isn’t running (654)
  • Fixed stickies persisting even when a player goes into spectate in a lobby (654)
  • Fixed r_drawviewmodel to not require sv_cheats (658)
  • Made leaderboard panel close properly when it is closed by another event such as watching a replay or viewing a profile (658)
  • Fixed ducking and water in RJ/SJ to make it more familiar (658)
  • Fixed the “Blank” color having 1 alpha which caused supposedly invisible hud elements to show slightly (658)
  • Disabled trigger debug text and bbox by default with developer 1, it can be enabled with mom_triggers_overlay_bbox and text_enable in dev builds (658)
  • Fixed run comparisons comparing against runs of differing track number (660)
  • Fixed weapons spawning in the floor which prevented them from being picked up by the player (665)
  • Fixed map info & leaderboards not showing author(s) if map info is not looked at (670)
  • Fixed rockets not firing while attack2 is held (680)
  • Fixed TF2 models having burn effects (681)
  • Limited mom_map_download_queue_parallel to 3, since only 3 maps can be actively downloaded at a time (688)
  • Fixed jump heights not being affected by sv_gravity (691) (768)
  • Fixed chat’s filters button not properly showing (693)
  • Fixed P2P connections being accepted from blocked players (693)
  • Fixed weapons casting shadows while in spectator mode (696)
  • Fixed some missing PCF files for missing particles (714)
  • Fixed replay map checking to be case insensitive (716)
  • Fixed crashes related to resolution changes (716) (726) (773)
  • Fixed leaderboards attempting to update while not in a map (716)
  • Fixed PBR default values (735)
  • Fixed softlock when chat is opened and cl_drawhud is 0 (738)
  • Fix PBR flashlight on brushes (749)
  • Fixed black outline around paint decals (756)
  • Fixed giving weapons in the main menu/credits (762)
  • Fixed bloom / tonemap being more intense than in CSS (767) (792)
  • Fixed escape key clearing comboboxes when toggling between main menu/settings and the game (777)
  • Fixed sorting by favorites/library on the map selector defaulting to sort by name by removing them. There are already tabs for favorites/library. (785)
  • Fixed map finished panel not being closable when replay file can’t be written (794)
  • Stopped stage enter/exit velocity on speedometer from showing on stage re-enter. Stops it from showing again when failing a jump on RJ/SJ gamemodes. (797)
  • Removed weapon lowering functionality (820)
  • Fixed sticky charge meter and crosshair not hiding when leaderboards were open (817)

Improved

  • Made the leaderboards stay open when tab is released if the user has right clicked it (629)
  • Removed all cvar_value fields from resource files since defaults are set in code (639)
  • Discord rich presence improvements: show game mode on image hover & when not doing a run. (669)
  • Steam rich presence improvements: allow users to toggle it through the cvar mom_steam_rich_presence, show current status (making it more discord-like), updates without needing to be in a lobby, & shows group (669)
  • Speedometer (671) (667)
  • Message boxes now scale with resolution & are more readable (673)
  • Auto-apply momentum settings & remove the OK/Apply/Cancel buttons (676) (677) (684) (686) (689)
  • Improved entity IO for saving/restoring savelocs (683)
  • Show spectate list for other spectators (693)
  • Moved localization methods, allowing localization files to be changed without needing to restart the game (695)
  • Updated the grenade animations to not be default HL2 ones (thanks Block!) (698)
  • Auto-apply momentum options & remove OK/Apply/Cancel buttons. Added a “write to cfg” button (702) (703) (704) (707) (741)
  • Disabled mouse accel by default (730)
  • Replaced/updated shader compile (739) (745) (790)
  • New console design (747)
  • Removed PBR bloat (751)
  • Improved image resizing (754)
  • Made static menus (saveloc & ruler menu) configurable through files cfg/savelocmenu_default.vdf and cfg/rulermenu_default.vdf (755)
  • Proportional color picker with new design (773)
  • New speedometer (788)
  • Loading Screen UI (789)
  • Moved sticky charge meter/bomb count underneath speedometer (799)
  • Fog shader now uses radial-based fog calculations for more consistent appearance (809)
  • Main menu scheme to match new UI direction (810)
  • Map selector scheme to match new UI direction (811)
  • Main menu logo model touchup (819)
  • HUD elements are now hiding parts that aren’t relevant to specific game modes (820)
  • RichText (chat, console) panels render more accurately, have shift + click selection, and scroll-by-selection (817)
  • HUD based elements now match new UI direction (817)

In Other News

Half-Life Advanced Effects Support

For those of you that use HLAE, you will be pleased to know that Momentum was recently added as a supported game, so go crazy with your Momentum Mod Clan Montage Tryout Application Edit videos!

A Discord Server Transition

Our Discord server is going to go under a bit of a transition to a “Role-Unlocked” server. What this means is when new people join, they will only see a limited number of channels, namely the rules and FAQ channels. They will be required to read the rules and FAQ to figure out how to gain a role that “unlocks” the server, hopefully educating them about the game in the process to prevent very common questions from repeatedly being asked.

Speaking of our Discord, we’d love to have you hang out in it! It’s the best place to stay the most up-to-date with and ask your burning questions about the game. If you don’t want to join, that’s cool too, I guess.

Onwards, to 0.8.6!

Nick (Gocnak) K.
Momentum Mod Project Lead