Update 1.14: The Variety Update

Hello all,

Today we are bringing another big update to GunColony!

Square and center in this update is a new spawn and shooting range experience as well as remastered PVP and Competitive lobbies. Other additions include Minecraft 1.19.4 support, the return of ALL remaining removed-for-balancing weapons, over 20 new modifications, and a new Counter-Strike 2 inspired smoke grenade mechanic!

This is called the Variety Update both because it adds a lot of different things, and because many of its additions are  themed around adding more variety and fun choices to gameplay.

Note: this is not a joke update, but the joke update will come very soon.

NEW SPAWN

Hotline_101, dxc, CrishTheCreator, Hobo, and pale1 have worked hard to build a new spawn for GunColony.

This is our new permanent spawn with an improved design and aesthetics. It contains a tightly-packed main spawn area where you can join all of our gamemodes, an improved newbie shooting range, a long range outdoors shooting range, as well as a scoreboard area behind the spawn.

Features:

• All gamemodes and important NPCs are accessible close to the spawn location
• A much bigger GunColony sign with two cool flanking planes have been added, which totally don’t have any targets that give you XP or anything
• A staff wall has been added to the back of spawn!
• This new spawn should bring greatly improved performance for players compared to our previous permanent spawn
• The Mob-Arena Quick Join NPC now directly sends you into a match, rather than opening a GUI menu which was somewhat redundant to the Map Selector GUI
• The newbie shooting range has been greatly improved and now comes with several hologram tips that help new players learn the basics of how GunColony works
• Added a Map Selector NPC to the newbie shooting range instead of just a sign, now that new players can join any Mob-Arena map in progress
• Reduced the level requirement to join PVP from 8 to 5
  • Reduced the level requirement of newbie Mob-Arena maps as well
• Added NPCs to customize your guns and loadouts to the shooting range
• There is still a “secret” pit underneath the slime NPC for the Lab arena
  • That lab map must be special, it seems to keep getting total overhauls hmm…

NEW SERVER LIST MOTD

We have updated the server Message of the Day (MOTD) to take advantage of RGB colors added in 1.16. We expect all players to be using 1.17 or higher versions now, so everyone should be able to see these changes. This new format aims to be more concise and minimalist but also communicate some details of the latest update.

Since our ongoing development focuses heavily on content and gameplay development, rather than monetization features which are commonplace in other servers, we feel that displaying some cool examples of new gameplay features in each update will suit the identity of GC much more than showing a basic update name such as “The Variety Update”, which we did in the previous MOTD.

The “+12” number after the update notes is simply the number of lines of the in-game update hologram that are not shown in the MOTD. This number should show off the fact that there are a lot more new features in a GunColony update than what can be communicated in one line.

You can also see a new graphic when hovering over the server player count:

NEW LOBBIES

The PVP and Competitive lobbies have gotten a visual overhaul! They now have a more distinct visual style and use blocks from newer Minecraft versions.

MINECRAFT 1.19.4 SUPPORT

We have added support for the latest Minecraft 1.19.4 version!

• Minecraft 1.19.4 has fixed the vanilla bug introduced since 1.14 that caused movement to be jittery when aiming down sights.
  • You will no longer need the MovementFix mod when playing on GunColony with Minecraft 1.19.4.
  • If you previously did not use the MovementFix mod, then we highly recommend updating to Minecraft 1.19.4 to enjoy smoother movement when aiming down sights.
  • The smoother movement should be especially noticeable when jumping or flying with an Elytra.
  • Since the bug has been fixed in vanilla, this also means that we will be able to bring back recoil to hipfire in the future without worrying about laggy movement.
  • It is perhaps fitting that this GunColony update is numbered “1.14” given that it is also the Minecraft version that introduced this bug in the first place.
• Supporting 1.19.4 was a smooth upgrade and we thank the ViaVersion plugin for making this possible.

SMOKE GRENADE MECHANICS

The smoke grenade has received a new mechanic inspired by Counter-Strike 2, as well as other improvements.

• Smoke can now be temporarily cleared by bullets and explosions, meaning that shooting through smoke temporarily allows you to see enemies in a narrow area behind it
• Explosions will clear the smoke for a longer duration
• Explosions at the edge of a smoke grenade’s radius will only clear part of it
• The total number of smoke clouds is now slightly lower at 80, but each smoke cloud lasts for a longer duration at 20 seconds (the entire smoke grenade lasts for about 24 seconds)
• The delay between individual smoke clouds being generated is now greatly reduced to 0.05s
• More randomness has been added to the speed of smoke clouds to provide greater coverage of the smoke’s interior

RETURNING WEAPONS

All remaining weapon have returned to the game! Most weapons have been rebalanced to highlight their strengths and encourage a greater weapon diversity in GunColony. We aim for there to be a unique reason to use every weapon returning in this update, by differentiating them in terms of Supply cost and clear strengths and weaknesses.

11 Returning SMGs:

• MP7: An expensive submachine gun that combines the ranged effectiveness of an assault rifle with the mobility of a SMG, with a standard magazine capacity of 30 rounds. Has similar damage characteristics to the P90 but is more accurate at the expense of much lower hipfire accuracy.
• MP9: A lightweight submarine gun that juxtaposes very fast reload and handling speeds with a lower hipfire and moving accuracy. Excels at short bursts but has high recoil in sustained fire.
• Thompson: A heavy, inexpensive submachine gun with above-average ranged potential but the worst mobility of all SMGs. Has 20-round, 50-round, and 100-round magazine options to either improve its mobility closer to conventional SMGs, or go in the opposite direction and effectively turn it into a pistol-caliber LMG. The choice is yours!
• Tavor X95-R 330: A short bullpup carbine firing the 5.45mm round. It is very expensive for a SMG/PDW but is effective at longer combat ranges by taking advantage of its scope and semi-automatic firing mode.
• MP5SD: A suppressed 9mm SMG that starts with a subsonic velocity unlike other similar weapons. It has a significantly greater accuracy than the MP5. While less powerful at close range, it retains its damage better than other SMGs at long range if you can manage its slower bullet speed.
• Spectre M4: A powerful .45 ACP submachine gun with its most defining feature being its 50-round casket magazine. Despite the magazine capacity, its compact design similar to the MP5K in size gives it high handling and mobility stats. However, it is expensive and inaccurate in exchange for its firepower. Its rate of fire has been increased compared to before, to 840 RPM.

• MP5KA4: A compact mini submachine gun with very poor damage range but excellent hipfire accuracy and mobility. It is similar to the Mac-10 but is considerably more balanced in stats.
• PPD-40: A Soviet submachine gun equipped with a 71-round drum magazine. While its mobility is somewhat less than other SMGs, it is an effective weapon to fight off multiple armored enemies at close range.
• Sterling: A British submachine gun rather lacking in its firepower, but it has several unique advantages newly added in this update which reflect its real-world strengths. For example, it has a 34-round magazine renowned for its reliability and a side-feeding placement, leading to a fast reload speed. It also features a unique API recoil system that lightens the weight of its bolt. In-game this is represented by a very consistent recoil with the same effect as the Ultimax 100’s constant recoil system. With these new advantages added to the Sterling, its price has also been increased to make it more distinct from the MP 40 and the UZI.
• MP 40: A classic World War II submachine gun. It is similar to the Grease Gun in having a very low price, low rate of fire, and a high headshot damage multiplier, but is chambered in 9mm instead of .45 ACP.
• MP 18: The world’s first submachine gun, the MP 18 features high magazine capacity, backup ammo capacity, and swap speed, and is intended for situations when sustained fire capability and low price is preferred over lethality in direct engagements.

3 Returning LMGs:

• QBB-95: A bullpup LMG focused on having very high mobility for a drum-fed machine gun, at the cost of relatively lower firepower and middling accuracy.
• MG3: A powerful machine gun focused on a very high rate of fire and defeating enemies with a consistent 3-shot kill in a very short period of time. It has a relatively low capacity for a LMG of 50 rounds and its price has been reduced significantly compared to before.
• Stoner 63: A machine gun that provides a unique role for locking down corridors at medium ranges. It starts with a small magazine size of 30 rounds but has access to a 60-Round Magazine previously exclusive to the L86. It has received multiple buffs to areas such as recoil, hipfire, velocity, and range in order to improve its competitiveness against other weapons with a similar price.

4 Returning Sniper Rifles:

• SSG 08: A 7.62x51mm bolt-action sniper rifle with a uniquely high jumping accuracy and fast aim-down sights speed, but low damage. Its movement speed has been increased in this update.
• G3SG1: A marksman rifle with very different accuracy characteristics depending on how often you fire it. While the maximum rate of fire is very high at 350 RPM, it is only accurate while firing slowly, making it a versatile, if expensive weapon with different playstyles at different combat ranges.
• SIG 550: An inexpensive, low caliber and relatively lightweight marksman rifle firing 5.56mm rounds with a 30-round magazine. It has been buffed in supply cost and vertical recoil, and can now also equip 40 and 50-round magazine modifications.
• Gewehr 98: A traditional German bolt-action rifle and a fan-favorite from GunColony players. Offers a deadly combination of lethal damage at long range and a fast aim down sights speed, but has the drawback of a slow rate of fire and relatively high sway. The weapon has the ability to use explosive ammo similarly to the K98k.

1 Returning Pistol:

Have you noticed that one of the old removed SMGs, the FMG-9, was missing above? It’s getting added back as a Pistol:

• FMG-9: A prototype folding submachine gun based on the Glock-18. Its main feature is the ability to fold into a very small package, making it possible to carry a 33-round extended magazine in a secondary weapon. Due to requiring to unfold the weapon, it has a slow swap speed. It still retains the same lethality as it had when it was a primary weapon, but many of its other stats have been reduced to suit the secondary role. It costs 4 Supply and cannot be bought during the start of the first round in Competitive Mode.
  • The CZ75 Auto has also been tweaked to remove some of its downsides and achieve a good balance with the FMG-9.

Now that all weapons have returned to GunColony, our next updates can finally focus on adding brand new weapons to the game. Those who have dug around in our resource pack may already know what they are, so look forward to seeing these brand new weapons come to GunColony in our future updates!

Since we have such a large variety of weapon content, we will also be experimenting with different ways to unlock the weapons and dividing our weapon pool up into meaningful subcategories to provide a better progression, especially in the Mob-Arena gamemode. These mechanics will aim to be fair to all players in the overall power level, but players who work to unlock a wide range of content will be rewarded with a greater playstyle variety to excel in different situations.

NEW MODIFICATIONS

We have added a significant number of new modifications to our weapons, especially for our newly returning weapons, as well as the Shotguns and Flamethrowers.

• Slug Rounds (Shotguns): A single slug projectile. Unlike the Rifled Slugs on the KS-23, this modification does not have any rifling. It has very high damage retention at range but penalizes bullet velocity, making it even slower than buckshot rounds. It is designed to be a viable alternative to Sniper Rifles which maintain some upsides of shotguns such as low price and high kill awards, but is harder to use, especially at range. This modification is available on all shotguns that fire 8 pellets normally.
• Frag Rounds (Shotguns): A fragmentation round with very low velocity but high damage and the ability to deal splash damage. It can be effective at close range or be used as a makeshift grenade launcher at longer ranges. Available on the same weapons as Slugs. May be particularly useful when used from high ground.
• SCMITR Fletchette Rounds (Shotguns): An experimental fletchette ammo designed to produce more damage than traditional Dart Rounds, but reduces accuracy of individual pellets. Available to all shotguns that do not have access to Slugs.
• .44 Magnum Conversion (Desert Eagle): A lower caliber ammo type that reduces damage but improves recoil, ammo capacity, and mobility.
• .357 Magnum Conversion (Desert Eagle): A much lower caliber ammo type that greatly reduces damage but improves recoil, ammo capacity, and mobility.
• 50-Round Magazine (Thompson): An M1928A1 drum magazine for the Thompson. Slightly decreases backup ammo.
• 100-Round Magazine (Thompson): An aftermarket 100-round drum magazine for the Thompson, increasing the weapon cost and incurring a heavy mobility penalty.
• Canadian Magazine (Sterling): A stamped metal 30-round magazine that harms both ammo capacity and reload speed, but decreases the price of the weapon.
• 32-Round Drum Magazine (MP 18): A smaller 32-round magazine for the MP18.
• 20-Round Magazine (MP 18): A very small 20-round magazine for the MP18. It significantly increases the weapon’s aim walking speed.
• Trench Magazine (Mosin, G98): A massive 20-round magazine for your trusty WWI bolt-action rifles to survive the harsh conditions of the trenches. Yeah it’s the same capacity as the 20-round very small magazine above. It’s all relative.
• Widened Nozzle (Flamethrower): Increases rate of fire at the cost of projectile velocity.
• Tightened Nozzle (Flamethrower): Increases projectile velocity at the cost of rate of fire.
• Backup Fuel Tanks (Flamethrower): Adds 150 backup ammo to the Flamethrower at the cost of 2 Supply and a small movement speed penalty.
• Extended Tube (Flamethrower): Extends the flamethrower tube to reduce spread and increase velocity at the cost of mobility.
• Shortened Tube (Flamethrower): Shortens the tube to increase mobility at the cost of spread and velocity.
• Portable Container (Flamethrower): A much smaller 50-round fuel container to increase weapon mobility. Adds 100 rounds to the backup ammo pool, so the total ammo capacity remains the same.
• Ignition Cartridge (Flamethrower): Changes the Flamethrower to a 10-round burst mode with a 1800 RPM burst and higher accuracy but decreases overall rate-of-fire by 50%. This modification creates unique gameplay variety for players who want to be more accurate, as well as players who want to play the Flamethrower kind of like a delayed pump-action shotgun.
• Hydrophobic Fuel Mix (Flamethrower): A unique ammo modification which increases the speed at which flamethrower projectiles can bounce off walls, at the cost of direct damage.

There are a few new weapon stats used by the new modifications:

• Hipfire Recoil Stabilization: This is similar to Hipfire Accuracy but only affects the additional inaccuracy when firing.
• Hipfire Idle Accuracy: This is similar to Hipfire Accuracy but only affects the idle accuracy and not the additional inaccuracy when firing.

BALANCE CHANGES

• G11: now cheaper by 2 Supply
• K98k: No longer has lower kill awards than other weapons (only .338 and higher caliber weapons should have lower kill rewards)
• CZ-75 Auto: Increased swap and reload speed
  • One of the main complaints of players regarding the CZ-75 Auto is its low backup ammo capacity. We feel that the low backup ammo is part of what makes the CZ-75 Auto unique. However, we have given the weapon a buff elsewhere to reward players who takes advantage of the weapon’s strengths in the right loadouts.
• Flamethrower: Increased maximum projectile range and reduced damage dropoff; reduced spread when aiming using the Iron Sights Attachment; decreased base moving accuracy
  • This should not change how the flamethrower performs in most practical engagements given that the damage dropoff already does not start until 15m, but it does allow more creative uses of the weapon such as indirect fire, which we do want to allow given its high cost. We feel that a player who builds their loadout around this weapon and uses it well should be adequately rewarded.
  • The reduced spread when using Iron Sights allows for effective burst firing. Sustained fire is still best done from the hip due to the randomized recoil of the Flamethrower
  • The decreased moving accuracy is mainly intended to make attachments modifying this stat have a bigger impact, but also serves as a counterweight to the buffs made to the weapon
• 20-Round Magazine (Thompson): now improves ADS speed a little more and also increases movement speed
• 25-Round Magazine (UZI), 20-Round Magazine (SR-3M), 30-Round Magazine (Spectre): now increase movement speed slightly
• Rat Shot Ammo: reduced damage (+40% to +30% on .22lr guns, and +15% to +10% on PPK), now removes all hit stun on players and reduces mob knockback by 50%
  • Now it will do a little less damage and it will be more skill-based to land multiple hits when the enemy has more opportunity for evasive maneuvers.
• Refined Barrel (SMG): damage range benefit reduced from +10m to +8m
• Rifled Slugs (KS-23): damage at range improved to maintain a chest shot kill potential to armored players at any range
  • Note that this will also cause a one hit kill to the lower torso for unarmored players
  • We feel that the KS-23 slugs being quite powerful at range is justified by its low rate of fire even by the standards of sniper rifles

EXPLOSIVE BALANCE CHANGES

Items in the Explosive slot have received balance changes to make them more worthwhile. This is intended to make any supply points spent outside of the Primary Weapon more competitive, so that players more often choose explosives and perks like EOD over other options like armor.

(Note that due to the explosive damage algorithm used in GunColony which takes multiple body parts into account, the actual damage amount dealt is almost always lower than the stated “max damage” especially for lower-radius explosives.)

• HE Grenade: Supply cost 4 -> 2
  • Due to its use in Competitive mode we have elected to not change the power of HE grenades to keep it close to CS:GO, where multiple grenades are required to get a kill on players. We have, however, made it significantly cheaper in PVP to encourage its use compared to the Frag Grenade.
• Frag Grenade: Max Damage 125 -> 140, Armor Penetration 90 -> 95
  • This should give the Frag Grenade a one-hit kill potential if it lands very close to players. Note that this does not affect Mob-Arena.
• Bandage: Supply cost 6 -> 2
  • The Bandage is meant to be the weakest healing item with more healing items being added to future updates. It has received a very large cost reduction to account for this. One concern is that the Bandage has a fast healing effect so players can quickly heal in cover, but this is usually not a significant gameplay issue in other games so we are giving it a try to have a fairly cost-effective healing item in GunColony.
• Incendiary: Supply cost 7 -> 4
  • The Incendiary grenade is usually difficult to aim and has a relatively low radius, so we have reduced its cost. This is also in anticipation of future healing changes which may make it easier to run through an incendiary grenade and heal back to full health afterwards.
• Molotov: Supply cost 8 -> 5
  • The Molotov was typically more useful than Incendiary grenades due to its impact detonation, but it still did not justify such a high Supply cost. Now it has the same cost as the Frag Grenade.
  • Scenarios that have a lower cost to Molotovs for one team have also received appropriate adjustments. For example, in Mannerheim, the molotov costs 4 Supply for the Soviet team and 3 Supply for the Finnish team.
• HK69A1 Grenade Launcher: Supply cost 9 -> 8, removed “zeroing” feature so the projectile now originates from the crosshair
  • Note that we expect the new Smoke changes to also give a new utility to the HK69A1 to clear smoke at a distance – fire the grenade into the smoke to clear it, then eliminate any enemies who are hiding behind!
  • These changes also affect Mob-Arena, including making HK69A1 cheaper when buying additional loadouts

Explosive weapon modifications have also been buffed to account for the way the explosive damage code works. They were previously a little too underwhelming and a buff should improve the gameplay diversity. The intended balance is for these ammo types to be strong when used in the right circumstances but weaker than normal rounds in other situations.

• Fire Launcher: explosive damage 60 -> 80
  • This weapon has only 2.5m explosive radius, so the actual damage is typically much lower
• B-Patrone Explosive Ammo (K98k, G98): explosive damage 75 -> 80, explosive radius 3m -> 3.5m
• Sp. 39 Frag Ammo (L39): explosive damage 60 -> 70
• Bsgp. HEI Ammo (L39): explosive damage 100 -> 115
• Mg.151 HE Ammo (NTW-20): explosive radius 3.5m -> 4m
• MgX.151 HE Ammo (NTW-20): explosive damage 125 -> 140
• Pzbgp. Incendiary Ammo (L39): Incendiary damage number of ticks 10 -> 20 (effect lasts 2x as long)
• PZ Incendiary Ammo (Mosin): Incendiary damage number of ticks 4 -> 8
• Bg.44 Incendiary Ammo (NTW-20): Incendiary damage number of ticks 20 -> 30

PLAYLIST CHANGES

• Modified the Austria playlist so that it appears from 16 players
• Added Austria ProSnipe Scenario playlist
• Added Austria regular playlist (non-Scenario)

SERVER HOST CHANGES

We have changed GunColony to be hosted the Pterodactyl open source server hosting software. This software is based on Docker which should significantly improve reliability. For instance, any stuck servers will now be reliably restarted without ever ending up as a stuck process on the host computer.

If other reliability issues arise in the future, we will also be able to give some staff members access to restarting the server in the admin panel.

This was a significant change to server software as it required re-creating all minigame servers from a template. If you notice any new issues, please report them in the GunColony Discord server by opening a ticket. Note that your “login smp” data has been transfered to the new server software.

PLAYTEST MAP

Added a whitebox playtest map: Cinder by James_4007

This map will be available on TDM and TDM Random Spawns.

OTHER CHANGES

• You will now get an error message if you try to vote for the same map that you are already voting for
• The Iron Sights attachment for the Flamethrower now properly has the “Weapon Specific” tag
• Removed Compensator, Long Barrel, Lightened Bolt, Heavy Bolt, Piercing Shot, and Muzzle Booster modifications for the Flamethrower since they don’t really make sense
• Flamethrower Iron Sights modification now unlocks much earlier
• Changed the Flamethrower’s Refined Barrel to the SMG version to have a more significant impact on range
• Changed the Flamethrower Iron Sights modification’s moving accuracy penalty to a percentage effect rather than a flat effect to make it stack better with other attachments; the final amount of penalty is very similar to before
• Changed the Fire Launcher Faster Burst modification to properly state that it does introduce random recoil to the weapon
• The old staff creative world has been re-imported to the main server for builders to access their old builds

BUG FIXES

• We may or may not have broken a few nuclear arms control treaties to fix a bug where the Mini-Nuke obtained at 20 killstreak did not work
• Fixed a bug where when attempting to modify a weapon with a skin in the “Customize Loadouts” GUI, it will not work and will perform the left click change weapon action instead
• Significantly rewritten the database system to fix issues where servers may randomly freeze upon database errors
• Fixed a bug where Perks appeared when trying to apply the Universal XP Token
• Fixed a bug where some sound effects in the Flamethrower’s reload sound sequence were not heard in-game
• Fixed a bug where you could purchase Shop items while dead and they would disappear when you respawn
• Fixed a bug where you were able to purchase Shop items while your inventory did not have available slots, which would give you nothing
• Fixed a bug where the XD’s description still mentioned it had reduced damage and price when it was actually reduced fire rate and price
• Fixed a new typo in the message displayed when you don’t have enough level to join a Mob-Arena map
• In Mob-Arena, creatures that are not considered monsters in the current arena can now be hit as well. This is a band-aid fix to rare cases where mobs may be left over from the last match in arenas using the old map system after a server crash. You will now be able to damage them with guns normally.