After about one whole year in development, we're pleased to announce the biggest update on ACF-3 so far:

Improved ACF Menu Tool

The flagship of this update, both the ACF Menu tool and the spawn menu inside of it were rewritten from scratch.

The menu has been stylized and reorganized in order to keep every bit of it on its own section (About the Addon, Settings, Entities and Fun Stuff), so no matter what you need to do, everything will be as tidy as possible.

We also put a great focus on making the list of options on the menu consume the least amount of space as it is possible, so whenever you select a new item, the previous section you were using will be collapsed automatically.

It's good to note the keybinds have changed a little bit. Of course, that was considered so if you have the toolgun help enabled (Context Menu > Drawing > Draw Toolgun Help) you'll be able to see each possible action on the current menu option.

Entity linking with the menu tool has been improved aswell. You can now select multiple entities by holding Shift and pressing Right Click on every single entity you want to link. This will allow you to link multiple entities, which will be painted green during the selection process, to another in one go. Although, the linking option is only avaliable on the Entities section of the menu and maybe some options on the Fun Stuff section.

As for developers, we've added a lot of functions and hooks to almost fully control what you can do with the new menu tool, from the addition of new sections and items on the menu to even control the actions from the tool on each menu item.

Improved ACF Copy Tool

We also took the time to update the Copy tool, which will now be able to copy and paste information from pretty much every single compliant ACF entity.

Since it uses the same base code as the new Menu tool, a small menu has been put in place to show a tree with all the copied information from each class, even allowing players to toggle each field of data.

Another interesting feature added to it is the ability to spawn entities if no entity was hit. A new entity from the selected class will be created using the active data from the tool.

Piledriver Entities

While not actually a piledriver by definition, this was something that was vastly requested by many players on our Discord server (in fact, one of them even paid $15 to Fiverr Jesus to request it)[cdn.discordapp.com]. Despite it was only available on one of the big ACF servers for quite a short period of time some years ago, a lot of people asked for them so we pretty much had the obligation to add them at some point.

This entity is really important for us since it's the first piece of scalable weaponry on ACF-3 so far, which has set the grounds for the future of every single other entity, as our plans are to allow full scalability on every single one of them.

Improved Rack and Missile Mechanics

On the ACF Missiles' side, we decided to improve both racks and missiles a little bit with a few interesting mechanics and changes.

Since racks can load multiple munition types at once, we decided to give players the ability to decide which hardpoint they want to fire by adding a Missile Index Wire input to them. If you don't use this input, the rack will just cycle through each hardpoint as usual. You'll also be able to know the next missile to be fired by using the new Missile Wire output on racks.

Something that always seemed to be quite annoying was the fact the delay between firing every missile was determined by the missile itself instead of a hardcoded delay or something similar. That's why we've also decided to add the Fire Delay Wire inputs to all racks. Players will now be able to decide the delay between every missile launch, ranging from 1 second as default to 0.1 seconds as the bare minimum.

As for the people who has requested drop launched missiles or internal bay support, wait no more. Some racks will now have the Motor Delay Wire input that'll allow players to delay the missile's motor activation for up to 1 second. Be advised, this is only available for Air-to-Air and Anti-Radiation missiles.

In order to get more people to start using the torch tool, we decided to make racks the first entity to suffer effects from being damaged other than small debuffs. Whenever a rack gets damaged, there'll be a chance one of the hardpoints gets jammed, preventing whatever munition loaded on it from being fired along with producing sparks. Racks with exposed munitions might even drop them. Players can fix their racks by repairing them with the ACF Torch SWEP.

Missiles also got some more effects when damaged. Before, missiles would just explode whenever their armor got penetrated. But now, missiles also have a small chance to explode when being damaged. The missile might also lose its motor or guidance when damaged. For HEAT missiles, the heat cone might get damaged aswell, leading to them just acting like a HE missile on impact.

Further Improved Computers

Some time ago, we released the improved ACF Computer entity, capable of acting like a rangefinder and laser designator. However, we have decided to divide this entity on four different types of computers, each with a really specific use.

The computer as we knew it has been renamed to Laser Guidance Computer. It features pretty much every single thing as the old one, along with a few additions to control the elevation and azimuth of the laser. This computer can help guide SACLOS and Laser guided missiles when active.

A simpler variant of the Laser Guidance Computer has been added aswell, the Optical Guidance Computer. In comparison to its modern counterpart, this computer needs some time to properly focus on the target or aim around. It comes with a few advantages though. It has no cooldown, so you can use it as much as you want. It also shows no laser on FLIR mode, so the enemy will have a harder time trying to find you.

We also decided to add a computer for MCLOS munitions, the Joystick.
This will directly control the steering of the missile with the provided Elevation and Azimuth values, although, just like the real deal, it might be a bit difficult to control them manually

Finally, GPS-guided missiles also got their own computer, the GPS Transmitter. This computer will stream whatever coordinate was given by the player through its Wire inputs to the missile, which will update its target location every few seconds.

All of these will need to be linked to a rack, using the linker feature from the ACF Menu tool, in order to work.

Changed GLATGM Guidance

Gun Launched ATGM's were always capable, but not required, of using ACF Computers to guide themselves. We have decided to change this, so now they require either a Laser Guidance Computer or an Optical Guidance Computer to be linked to the gun that fired the missile in order to be guided, as they'll use whatever position the computer is aiming at as their target.

GLATGMs will now also have a similar view cone than regular missiles, so they'll be guided to their destination as long as they can see this spot on the map.

Improved E2 and Starfall Compatibility

We made sure most entities can now properly work with both the Expression 2 and StarfallEx libraries. If something's missing, you can always tell us and we'll try to do our best to add it.

Clientside Debris

This was a community addition, courtesy of Aversion. Debris is now fully clientside, so the only stress on the server will be the networking of these destroyed entities and the optional serverside fireballs, in case a server owner wants compatibility with addons like vFire.

We really appreciate stuff like this from players, especially since we have decided to have more contact with the community.

Several Bugfixes

As usual, there's several bugfixes in between all these changes. Since it's a really long span of time, I really can't list them. If you've been following the development of this addon, you'll know we're not lying on this one.

For Players

We've always said that ACF was in dire need of changes and improvements in pretty much every aspect, and we will change stuff if we deem it better for the future of the addon itself. One of the things we noted was that entities would save their information with really ambiguous names, something that'd be negatively reflected on the new menu, the copy tool and a few functions on the StarfallEx library. That's why we have decided to change the names in which this information is stored on entities.

But why is this relevant?

This means that ACF-3 is no longer forwards-compatible with other versions of ACF that use the old naming conventions, namely nrlulz's ACF or ACF-2 and ACE.

However, we'll make sure that ACF-3 remains fully backwards compatible at all given times, as we want people to use our addon and codebase. If there's any problems related to backwards compatibility, we'll try our best to help and solve them.

For Server Owners

A few server console variables were replaced with our own system. This means you'll need to join the server and mess with those settings again on the menu tool. Everything's under the Settings option, Server Settings item. Changes on these will be retained between restarts, so it'll be pretty much a one time hassle.

For Extension Devs

If you're part of the development team of an ACF extension addon and you used any of the function to define new entities, we're sorry to tell you these have been discontinued.

In order to make your extension compatible with ACF-3, you'll have to change or add some things depending on what your mod adds.

Old

New

ACF_defineGunClass

ACF.RegisterWeaponClass or ACF.RegisterMissileClass

ACF_defineGun

ACF.RegisterWeapon or ACF.RegisterMissile

N/A

ACF.RegisterEngineClass

ACF_DefineEngine

ACF.RegisterEngine

N/A

ACF.RegisterGearboxClass

ACF_DefineGearbox

ACF.RegisterGearbox

ACF_DefineFuelTank

ACF.RegisterFuelTankClass

ACF_DefineFuelTankSize

ACF.RegisterFuelTank

ACF_DefineRackClass

N/A

ACF_DefineRack

ACF.RegisterRack

ACF_DefineRadarClass

ACF.RegisterSensorClass

ACF_DefineRadar

ACF.RegisterSensor

Sadly it's not as easy as just replacing the function name on each entry, so for reference we suggest you to just check how things were done on the Shared ACF folder.[github.com]