Leaderboards, Skins, and Flight Model Update! [VR live now too; see below!]
Team, I know I said no more big updates, but the pilots from Wardogs all flocked over for heli practice after the first beta, and they modded the sh*t out of the game and had a bunch of requests, so I couldn't help but jump back in and make some changes. They drove more sales las
[Edit: VR Update is live now too- see below for VR-specific changelog!]
Team, I know I said no more big updates, but the pilots from Wardogs all flocked over for heli practice after the first beta, and they modded the sh*t out of the game and had a bunch of requests, so I couldn't help but jump back in and make some changes. They drove more sales last week than I had in the last year, so it's the least I can do haha...
Changelog:
Leaderboards! There are now a billion different leaderboards for you to plaster your name on. They are mostly on hard difficulty and flight physics, so don't get too excited, although the Race modes only enforce hard physics, so if you're not a true Gun pilot, try your hand at one of those to get your internet (well, MHZ community) fame.
Skins! (and a new base look) All the most common colors can be selected via the in-game menu -> Pause, Options, Code Entry: enter an all-lower-case color, and your new color will be assigned. There's a couple easter egg skins too (Wardogs guys, looking at you; I didn't get any response from the devs, but it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission ;) ), as well as two earned skins, the code for which you'll need to watch for when you win under outstanding circumstances in Sim: Survival (one of them has been available for years, but I don't know if anyone's earned it).
Flight Model! Someone (I'm so sorry I can't remember who; I looked through Reddit, TikTok, and the threads here and couldn't find the conversation) pointed out that yaw seemed a bit more effective than it should be at higher speeds. I was always a little unsatisfied with the flight model, but I couldn't place my finger on it, and that is definitely one of the reasons. Yaw at higher speeds has been dampened, and retreating blade stall has been delayed to a slightly higher speed. I found the automatic yaw at higher speeds was a little too much too, so I've pulled that back slightly as well.
Difficulty: The scouts now wander much more readily on Evacuation and Marathon, requiring more time to either find them at the start, or evacuate the civilians they've "injured" throughout the round if you don't, so I've added some time there. Additionally, I've added 50% more time to the nuke timer in Survival; I found myself nearly rage-quiting trying to bug-test the leaderboards. Just a tip on Survival: those mines and their placement are super important haha...
VR-specific:
Menu navigation can only be done with your XR controller- in-game, treat it like a big finger to poke buttons with, or in-cockpit, bind your MPD navigation axes and MPD click button to have a little cursor on the MPDs. The loss of other UI input options comes at the benefit of other important buttons (trigger for example) not being consumed by the UI.
Several Tree colliders were sticking up much higher than the tree. If you were wondering about that, you aren't crazy.
Leaderboards: This is a change that will come to the regular version in the next update as well- Leaderboard times in Race mode with GPU plants ON are also uploaded to GPU plants OFF, since ON is the more difficult regime.
The chickens on The Island had messed up LODs; that's been managed. They were also invincible until you activated their 0-level of LOD (both versions), so that's been fixed too.
Minor change:
Times for race are now reported with Thousandths- which would be a big deal if it weren't for the leaderboards doing that automatically.
Thanks for all your support! It's been fun making these improvements, but don't get used to the increased activity; I just have a bunch of free time before I head on to my next fixed-wing certification in the fall ;)
-Joe