Hello! Patch 0.8.3.2 is now live on the testing branch.
The cockpit switch audio was something I wanted to sneak in before I made the final patch release. Most actions the player has now have associated audio with them. It's easier to hear if you turn on the cockpit filtering (which deafens out the window audio as it would in reality) and turn up the new sliders for internal internal audio.
The Threat Warning Display also saw some minor visual revisions, and filters out friendlies now to reduce clutter. If you'd like to re-enable this though, it can be done in options, along with hiding friendlies from your radar display.
The public patch release will be up in a couple days if things go well. If you'd like to get on the testing branch, see this post from the Steam forums.
Comms Check
Originally I had said that I would only do news posts related to patches if they were big ones, but in hindsight that wasn't a good idea. I've been keeping tabs on community discussions and it's definitely not clear to Steam users (where the game is sold) what's being worked on and what the status of the game is. To that end, I'll be making Steam patch notes for every patch, regardless of if it's on the testing branch or not.
I have other thoughts regarding how to best communicate what's going on and what's coming up, but I'll have more to say about that that once this patch is on the public branch and I can focus on the next big task.
Patch notes
New Features:
- Added chaff/flare counter inside the AV8B cockpit
- Added chaff/flare counter to the Threat Warning Display
- Icon size for both Radar and TWD can now be adjusted in settings (defaults to 75%)
- Option added to hide allies from the TWD and Radar
- TWD HIDES allies by default, radar SHOWS allies by default
- New audio levels available for tweaking in settings: Missile growl, interior engine, warning tones, cockpit effects
- When performing actions such as flaps, targeting, etc. various switch sounds will be heard for audio feedback
Improvements:
- Pressing the nav mode hotkey while in nav mode leaves nav mode
- When leaving nav mode by selecting next weapon, the last selected weapon will still be selected
- Wording of range on the threat warning display and radar changed to clarify that it's miles
- Slight change to the threat warning display design
- Lower cloud layer is lower and more numerous
- High cloud layer uses larger Clouds
- Support for arbitrary number of cloud layers (no player-facing change)
- Ranging logic shouldn't put contacts at the very edge of the Radar/TWD anymore
- Minor stylistic updates to the radar display
- Audio sliders now snap in increments of 5
Bugfixes:
- G text updates correctly in third person camera stats
- Switching weapons while in weapons camera will update the camera text correctly
- Fixed bug where bomb fall line could appear when looking 90 degrees off the nose
- Threat warning audio no longer plays after death or sortie end
- Threat warning audio can be heard and correctly updates regardless of if the HUD is visible (e.g. third person)
It's worth mentioning that compared to the public branch, this is in addition to features added in 0.8.3.1. The main features of that patch were the weapons camera, audio for the threat warning display, the new Snakeye bombs, and some rebalances to make AAA more dangerous.
The full notes for that are listed below:
New Features:
- Added four-stage weapon camera, default key: F6
+ Before launch: camera gives a view of the currently selected weapon under the wings
+ After launch: camera follows weapon from third person to the target
+ Before impact: camera cuts to a flyby to show the impact
+ After impact: camera follows what was hit by the munition
- Once weapon camera starts following a weapon, the normal external/chase/flyby cameras work on it as well
- Added Mk82 Snakeyes and High Drag bomb loadout
- AAA now hooked into sensor system and uses radars to detect and lock targets
- M163 and Shilka now have radar hardpoints their radars are mounted to
- Added NAV mode accessible by holding the "select next weapon" bind, or with the new default keybind: `
+ When in NAV mode, HUD reads NAV, and all weapons are safed
+ When in free flight, aircraft defaults to NAV mode
- New "select previous weapon" keybind added (defaults to mouse scroll up)
Balance:
- Proximity fuze on AAA bullets increased from 1 to 10
- Blast radius on AAA bullets increased to from 10 to 15
- "Fulda" houses have greatly reduced HP (100, 200, 300 for 1, 2, and 5 respectively)
- AAA is more accurate, but less precise
Improvements:
- Unity updated to 2020.3.30f1
- Reduced minimum allowable setting for camera smooth speed to 1
- Smoothed switch between padlock camera and cockpit camera
- Slight optimizations for all viewable objects
- Stores are now viewable with the camera system
- Cluster munitions "fake explode" so they can be tracked easily with a camera
- Indicated airspeed displays only positive value
- Updated credits with new music and sound contributions
- Center of mass offsets from destroyed wings greatly reduced (experimental change!)
+ Should make the plane act less weird after losing a wing?
Bugfixes:
- Cockpit view shoulder peeking matches smoothing settings
- Camera no longer pans across the seat when looking over shoulder at opposite sides
- Fixed chase camera producing incorrect audio when the look at target has died
- No more "ghost page" in multi-selector dialog when exactly 10 items appeared on a page
- When a cluster bomb explodes near a building, the log is no longer spammed with warnings
- Removed unused hangar mode scene
- Fixed tracers going weird on origin shift (known issue: tracers can disappear for a single frame during origin shift)
- IR growl no longer continues after player death
- IR growl can no longer be heard in third person