The 0.14 patch cycle will probably be the most important patch the game sees up through the release of the game. With it comes the Arena Runtime and Event System, which basically controls and consolidates all the Arena mechanics, as well has a robust framework for creating and completing mission objectives in game.
I highly recommend checking out the full changelog for 0.14.1.1 (currently only on the tester's branch), as there's quite a lot that's been added to the game and changed.
BMP-1
The BMP-1 has been added this patch. Their 73mm HEAT guns are low velocity and ineffective against tanks, but devastating against other mechanized units. Unlike the other mechanized units though, they have no self-defense machinegun, and so are quite vulnerable to air attack.
New Arena Mission Runtime and Event System
This is the main feature of the patch, and where the huge bulk of development time has gone the past month. The code that ran the Arena mode was spread all over the codebase, difficult to work with, and not expandable to cover the needs for the training campaign and the campaign itself.
The new set of objectives that can be programmed into missions are currently:
- Attrition (Red/Blue) Greater Than
- Attrition (Red/Blue) Less Than
- Aircraft Arrived At
- Unit Arrived At
- Aircraft Took Off From
- Aircraft Landed At
If this sounds like something that should have been done a very long time ago, that's correct. For a long time I thought I could get away with the ultra-basic set of mechanics I had written for the Early Access launch version of TCA, but as the game is nears internally set milestone dates, and the flight mechanics and (still WIP) content nearing their final states while the core game mode still feels as barebones as it does, it's become clear that's no longer the case. All this together has caused me to make a big shift in development priorities, but more on that later.
To facilitate the above system, a new runtime event system has been implemented into the game. This decouples a lot of code that was reaching far across the game to totally unrelated systems, and centralizes it into a single point of contact. The combination of these two things means that adding new objective types, if needed, is also far simpler now.
New Spawning System
A major difficulty that sprung up with the new map was that the old spawn system was no longer adequate. The original system was extremely simplistic, and only worked for the large flat plains that the previous map (and test maps) consisted of. Since the new terrain has water, roads, and dense bases with buildings, spawn points needed to get a lot smarter. Some simple tools have been written so that spawns can be hand-placed, and avoid the failed spawns that were frequently appearing on the new map.
Attrition
The second tutorial campaign mission demonstrates the attrition mechanic. On some missions, each side has a number of "tickets", and depleting the enemy's, while conserving your own, will be necessary to complete objectives. This is a very straightforward mechanic, but it's a powerful one and fits certain mission types.
New Map Progress
Work on the new map continues. This map will be available for 1.0 and is significantly larger than the previous map. The map doesn't correlate 1:1 with a real location, but is meant to be representative of northern Germany during the 80s.
Due to its size, a chunking system has been developed to prevent issues with collisions. We are currently working through the navmesh difficulties this creates.
Path to 1.0, and a Shift to Content-Driven Development
As said before, this patch is probably the most important patch the game will receive until 1.0 with regards to features. Now that all the underlying building blocks are in place, I'm making a very conscious choice to move from developing features for notional future ideas, to instead adding content first and then adding the features as needed.
This is something that's perhaps long overdue, and is influenced by some side projects I've tackled over the course of the game's development, as well as the game's reception. Building levels for the game, playing them, seeing what's missing, and then adding the content and features as needed has in my experience been a lot more successful than the very "theoretical" approach that TCA has had up to this point.
What this means to you is to expect more frequent updates with a bigger focus on adding content to the game. For the most part, these will come in the form of the Prelude campaign missions and the supporting vehicles and features needed to build them. There is a pretty sizeable backlog of units that have already been modeled out, but need to be added to the game!
Thanks again for coming along with me on this journey. There's still a lot of work to be done until I'm ready to call the game "1.0", but with the new Arena tools and mechanics, I feel more confident than ever about completing this game.