Today is an important day!
Given everything that the games industry has endured the past couple of years, and of which seems will continue well into 2024, I am fortunate enough that I get to make this announcement.
Frontiers Reach has officially been picked up for publishing by TheGamePublisher.
When I first started work on FR back in late 2020, I was renting a room in a friends basement in North Carolina after my college roommates packed up to move out of state to be with their families. I would eventually join my family in Arkansas but I was still working out some things before making the move. Eventually I ended up in Colorado to help a friend, and then out to Illinois to help another friend before moving back to Arkansas in mid 2023. And I continued to develop the game throughout.
I've learned a lot since 2020. A lot about making games, working on code, doing artwork, networking with people across the globe, the list goes on. Additionally I've gotten the opportunity to work on projects of varying scale and importance as during this time I've kept up working a day job.
With all that said it has been my aim to establish Blind Alien Productions as a studio creating games with a unique visual flare and gameplay concepts not often explored; if at all. Between the Frontiers Reach series of games that I've been planning for the better part of a decade and those titles not yet announced to the public, the future is bright so long as I and the other BAP team members keep the ship upright and moving forward. And with this new relationship in place I've been able to get some much needed feedback from a small group of testers and have a path forward in getting this game and future titles out to a wider audience.
Now for the patch notes!
MAJOR CHANGES
REWIRED Input System
- A completely new system for managing control inputs has been added to the game with the previous system being completely removed. This new system is much more robust and even allows for setting up custom controllers like toggle switch boxes. The goal here is to give the player greater control over how they setup their inputs.
New Cockpit Art
- All existing starfighters have been updated to include the latest and greatest artwork with special attention given to bolts and riveting.
New Glass Shader
- A new glass shader has been added to the cockpit for each fighter that includes smudging and scratches on the glass. This new rendering method also includes overhauled rain effects on the glass which will change direction relative to the motion of the player's starfighter. Some additional work will be done on this before it's where I'd like it to be.
Tweaks to Targeting Algorithms
- Both target leading and gun trailing targeting methods have been updated and are now deadly accurate. The Aim Assist difficulty feature has benefitted from this greatly and should now help less skilled players to complete missions when turned on alongside target leading.
Major Performance Improvement
- Refactoring of code and tweaks to the physics engine have yielded a nearly 30% increase in overall framerate on my hardware as well as greater consistency in frame rates. Still unsure how exactly this will pan out on other machines.
Mission Tutorial Additions
- A number of additions have been made to in-mission tutorial hints that should help to better explain how the user is expected to interact with the game. This includes a tighter integration with the REWIRED Input System to display key and controller bindings when appropriate. Additionally there is now a tutorial message log in the pause menu that will store tutorial messages that were previously displayed on the screen. This will allow players to pause the action and review tutorial steps whenever they choose.
Main Menu Tutorial
- The main menu now has a tutorial that is available when the player creates a new character. This is initiated with a button in the bottom left hand of the screen and will walk the player through the basics of navigating and interacting with the Heliosiren.
Main Menu Cleanup and Formatting
- Modified numerous UI elements to affect better readability. Everything from coloration to sizing has been tweaked in some way to make the entire thing easier on the eyes.
Mission Briefing Formatting and Editing
- All main story mission and side mission briefings have undergone formatting and editing for better readability. Voice over performance to be added later when capital enough is secured for recording.
MINOR CHANGES
- Fixed a bug that was causing enemy ground vehicles to drive in the wrong direction during the tutorial mission.
- Added a new sound effect to simulate debris hitting the hull of the player's starfighter when flying through the explosion of another fighter.
- Fixed the EM Field countermeasure behavior so that it will function properly.
- Fixed a bug that could cause cutscenes to not play when triggered.
- Fixed a bug where the loading screen would not trigger at the end of a mission.
- Modified how the pause game functionality was working to ensure it would not interfere with some processes of the game.
- Simplified and cleaned up distance readout on target tags.
- Cleaned up wording and backend for general controls settings.
- Added the ability to swap roll and yaw control on mouse flight.
- Fixed some RCS thrusters not firing when roll functionality was engaged.
- Changed loading screen images.
- Removed Screen Space Global Illumination (was too grainy).
- Changed sound effects for 20mm and 30mm cannons.
- Fixed aliasing on some textures.
- Instant Action mode no longer has a respawn limit.
- Fixed damage decal placement on F-42 Mermidon
- Modified hull damage sound effects for better audibility.
- Updated TrackIR integration.
- Added a toggle to the config menu for TrackIR look control.
- Fixed camera shake not working (must disable TrackIR in the settings).
- Removed time limits from missions since player has fuel and respawn limits.
- Fixed a bug that could cause some control settings to not be applied on respawn.
- Fixed a bug where the player could get stuck in the hangar when they should have had a mission ending.
- Countermeasures type is now accurately displayed on the cockpit instrument panel.
- Fixed a bug that caused the killboard to be resized improperly.
- Tweaks to how lift is calculated for movement at lower throttle and speeds.
- Tweaks to AT-15 Shepherd to affect better handling.
- Tweaks to engines and how they are affected by the selected engines equipped.
- Added 4 new paint patterns.
- Adjusted sizes on paint pattern textures to reduce their memory footprint.
- Refactored code for faster performance during key points i.e. respawn and loading.
- Finishing a WARMAP mission will now send you back to the WARMAP after closing the killboard.
FUTURE CHANGES
There are 2 key areas that I aim to get a better handle of for the game as I begin prepping for the home stretch on Frontiers Reach. First and foremost is that of terrain. In the past year I've learned that Unity's terrain tools are horribly inefficient for use during runtime and that in general developers are encouraged to convert their Unity terrain into regular old mesh objects. As such I've been able to hunt down a means of doing this so that not only will the game get a much needed performance boost, but also a nice bump in detail and quality of the terrain mesh. Below are two images comparing the current terrain to the target terrain.
Current terrain in its arguably low poly glory.
The target for the new terrain.
The second major change is going to be particle effects. This is another area that if executed properly should increase both visual fidelity while also increasing performance as it will involve moving away from the old CPU reliant particle system in Unity to a more robust GPU reliant particle system that Unity has provided with their new VFX Shader Graph.
CLOSING
While it's back to work to finish out the third and final chapter of the game before moving onto workshop features I should like to hint that there is a new feature that is being worked on behind closed doors. Something I've had on my mind for the better part of year that a recent release in the games industry has encouraged me to go ahead and move forward with. And this is something that I've had someone volunteer to work on.
If you remember when Frontiers Reach was just a large portfolio project, then you'll remember my original goal. While that goal was more or less sidelined, I've continued to find people who are interested in pushing their limits and who are willing to contribute.
I will dispense with the details in the future.
For now, I'll see you on the frontier!