Counterpact: New Alpha Released: ALPHA_APRIL_2023

Balancing Adjustments:

This is to prevent players from grabbing flags before enemies load into the map or have time to set up defenses.

Artillery Gamble's attack delay has been increased.
Lil' Clinic's Warden spawn time has been reduced.
Recourse's healing (from both its attack and Spirit's status effect) has been reduced.

New Content:

This mode sees both teams fighting over a single Security Cell (which is locked from pickup for 15 seconds at the start of a round). Similar to Capture the Flag, players pick up the Security Cell by simply touching it. However, unlike Capture the Flag, they must hold it for as long as they can, protecting it from the enemy team. The Security Cell can be manually dropped similar to an Essence Cell. While a player is holding the Security Cell, their team's timer will count down. The first team to run out their timer wins the round.
Due to the current workload and the work involved in creating a map, there is currently no existing map for this mode. However, players are now able to create maps for this mode.

Note to map makers: Though certain precautions have been taken, similar to Capture the Flag, this mode is likely to work far better on a completely enclosed map.

Bug Fixes:

When applying tools, favorited items are no longer put in front of the tool in the confirmation popup.

This bug would result in the tool not being applied or consumed, as the positioning of the items is expected to be consistent by the account server.

Spectating (including demo playback) no longer restricts the camera's bottom to the bottom boundary of the map, but instead the bottom of the standard viewable area (such as what you would normally see while playing).

This was technically not a bug, but would often give a strange appearance when the player being KO'd near the bottom of the map would result in the camera suddenly being moved upwards.

Fixed an issue where previously setting a server welcome message would cause it to appear at the start of recorded demos.

Note this bug actually caused it to be recorded in the demo itself, so this fix does not retroactively apply to demos recorded before this update.

Watching a demo now prompts a "Watching a demo" status on Steam, instead of the "Playing online" status.
Clicking between options on a list menu no longer plays the "invalid" sound.

Miscellaneous:

Over the Glowing Sea, made by StarlessElaine, has been adopted as an official map.
Shazia the Dream's default role is now listed as Offense.

This does not include any mechanical changes; this is purely for the sake of clarity.

When a flag is locked in Capture the Flag, a lock icon is now displayed on the overlay, and the background of the flag status is tinted red.
Touching an automatic win area or automatic lose area now announces who did so in the chat.
Demo playback controls have been added, and can be accessed by moving the cursor to the bottom of the screen.

Demos can be sped up (up to 8 times the normal speed), slowed down (down to a quarter of the normal speed), paused, and restarted.
The demo's runtime and current time are also shown.

Note: Due to issues with freezing, demos can not yet be skipped ahead to specific times or rewound to specific times. It is currently unknown if these functions can be effectively implemented in the future.

Players who have not selected a character for an extended period of time after selecting a team will automatically be moved back to Spectator.
The team imbalance buff no longer accounts for players who joined a team, but have not yet selected a character.
The function of the inventory's search bar has been expanded:

If an item's description inherently contains a header line (such as those stating that an item comes from a holiday event), words within that header will now be counted in the search.
Typing "KOunter", "counter", or "KO" in the search bar will now show every item that currently has a KOunter applied.
Typing "label", "name", or "named" in the search bar will now show every item that currently has a Label Gun applied.
Typing "gilding kit", "GK", or "gilding" in the search bar will now show every item that currently has at least one Gilding Kit applied.

Team-based entities in the Map Editor have been combined into a single button per entity; continuous clicks will cycle through which team these entities apply to.
Entities with a slider-based setting (heal beacons, launch areas, and push areas) no longer trigger a popup when selected; instead, the slider now appears directly on the editor menu.
The layer button in the Map Editor has been removed. Now, the slider will be enabled when placing decorative images, allowing more layers to be chosen for better control.
All map editor text has been converted to the localization system.
Spawn barriers now have a different appearance when they are solid.
The visual appearance of certain status effects have been revamped.
Darker decorations now have a white outline instead of a black outline.
All Mementos are now displayed for 2.50 seconds (the previous display time was 1 second).

"Display time" refers to the time after the Memento's spawn animation ends, but before it begins to fade out.