Quake Champions PTS Update for August 21st 2024. SG, LG, & NG Changes. Lockbox has a pit of Death Now! New Skins!

Good Afternoon Quakers! We have received a couple updates over the past few week to the PTS Public Test Server. Our Next Update to Live servers is expected to be on Thursday September 12th 2024, and start to Season 24. The Shotguns, NailGuns, and Lighting Gun have received a slight updates. Lockbox has been reworked to have different item placement, and pit of death where LG used to be, but now is where New Railgun is. You shoot the “Blue Buttons” on the walls to open the pit. If someone falls in the will instantly die to Ring Out. Destroying Friendships has never been so fun! syncerror is aware of some people experiencing performance problems this patch please report these, and all bugs in the official Quake discord.

2024-08-21 1.24.RETAIL.163137/164891 Latest Update

Sound Updates

Performance Optimization – Removed ~~all remaining~~ pitch shifting from two dozen sound events, mostly occurring in mg, ng, and tb sounds.
Resampled some of the legacy 22k sound sources to 44.1k
Added q2 hyperblaster hum to ambient
Increased volume of q2 hyperblaster flyby
Increased volume of ion ripper shots
Phalanx shot & reload sounds are no longer tripled
Adjusted third person footsteps, reducing the volume of the new bass kick element

Phalanx Particle Cannon Tri-bolt

Geometry updated
Animations updated
Sounds updated

Ion Ripper Rocket Launcher

Projectile effects updated
Sounds updated

Weapon Updates

SSG range damage bonus cleanup & values adjusted. It now has the same pellet count & pattern as the starting shotgun, and all remaining damage is earned via the range bonus mechanic.

Map Updates

Cursed Soul – Lighting pass
Lockbox – Reverted to the old static mh platform

Misc Game Updates

Tribolt fx optimizations
Rocket & Nail projectile code & asset cleanup

2024-08-19 1.24.RETAIL.163137/164337

Tribolt client shot actor cleanup
Tribolt fx optimizations
Tribolt water balloon fx optimizations

2024-08-17 1.24.RETAIL.163137/164066

New Stuff

Added PHALANX PARTICLE CANNON Tri-bolt from Quake 2 The Reckoning (wip)
Added ION CANNON Rocket Launcher from Quake 2 The Reckoning (wip)

Sound Updates

Marked unnecessary first person weapon sounds as ambient for Gauntlets, Q4 SNG, and Q2R Tribolt (PPC). These will now be affected by the Ambient Volume slider and from the silent-walking ambient stun.

Weapon Updates

Tribolt – Cleaned up authorative local predicated shots code
Nail projectile sized reduced from 0.1375 to 0.1 (5.5 to 4u radius)
Super Shotgun – Increased close range damage bonus full guaranteed distance from 3 to 6.4 m and max fall off distance from 12 to 19.2 m
Super Shotgun – Fixed hit beep tones for new pellet patterns
Lightning Gun – Reverted rof to 48ms (from 50).
Lightning Gun – Reverted LG knockback to 8 (from 7.5).

**Add the Quake Champions PTS to your Steam Account**

The PTS is a Public Test Server that many games come with. It is completely optional to be part of the PTS, and does require an additional download to take part of. The purpose of the PTS for us as Quake players is it allows us to preview upcoming skins, arenas, and gameplay changes in general before they are added to the Live Game servers. It also doubles as bug testing. In fact all bugs, or issues in the PTS should be put in the official discord in the “public-test-server” channel. If you can you should try and find a buddy to test with. Two heads are better than one. You can find people to party with in the “party-finder” channel.

If you want to access, or rather download the PTS you can do this on the Steam client quite easily. In the Quake Champions Steam store right about the play game is the text box about the the Pubic Test Server. Just to note though like other PTS downloads you are usually downloading the entire game plus the new additions, or changes. The PTS download for Quake Champions is currently just over 30 Gigabytes. Keep that in mind if you want to participate. Things that you accomplish in the PTS version DO NOT transfer over to the main game. That said you can also demo stuff in the PTS that you may not own yet in the main game.

Lastly, the PTS is not a representation of what will hit the Live servers at any time. As the values can be changed | reverted, or removed at any point during the PTS update period.

*When first launching the PTS your game may “compile” for a few minutes. Do not worry as this is completely normal.