This is it, this is everything for the story and the game mechanics. Nothing else will be added unless there is demand enough for it.
It has been almost 4 years since I started development. It's been pretty crazy all throughout and what's awesome most of all is that it's finished. This is by far the largest project I have ever taken on and have completed and I'm pretty excited just to be able to say it's done.
While this update is the last major update it should be noted that smaller updates with bug fixes and balance changes will be released. I'm not abandoning the game but I will be moving on to working on other projects. If you would like to follow those please feel free to hop in the Discord and hang out with the team and the community to stay up on what's going on behind the scenes.
Now for the patch notes.
New Player Experience
One of the most important changes coming to Frontiers Reach is a revamped new player
experience. It took quite a bit of time and multiple play sessions to gather the feedback
that went into this and there may be more tweaks that need to be made but this new intro
to the Frontiers Reach universe is designed to get you better acquainted with the game
mechanics and universe.
While the original tutorial mission will remain, 3 additional tutorial missions are being
added and Instant Action is has been split into Planet and Space modes. Two of the three new missions are hyper focused on a set of mechanics.
Basic Flight Training is for introduction to flight and the starfighter instrument panel.
Basic Combat Training is for familiarizing the player with the concepts of aerial combat.
Combat Scenario #1 is a new scenario focused on fighter combat.
Combat Scenario #2 is the original tutorial mission on Tom Uul with some tweaks to
streamline things a bit.
In each of these missions you will fly a different starfighter in a different environment with
different weapon loadouts. The goal here is get players acquainted with the idea of flying
different starfighters for different missions.
New Capital Ship Damage Models
Damage models for capital ships have always been either bare minimum or non-existent.
When Act 3 launches those days are over. Every capital ship in the game will have a new
damage model all new effects.
Major Performance Changes
Numerous fixes and tweaks to performance have yielded a significant increase in
performance across the entire game. Getting this increase took a lot of trial and error and
analysis of the game as it was running. One of the biggest problems was the sheer
amount of particle effects being used in the game in ways that were supposed to be
performant but proved otherwise. The biggest performance hit of which was engine
plumes, especially for large capital ships with lots of engines. By changing out the old
engine plumes which were run by Unity's Shadergraph for VFX with a simpler customized
solution using some old school tricks I was able to get back about 40 FPS and finally
achieve something in Frontiers Reach I have wanted since the start.
Flying a starfighter in large fleet battles.
New Engine Version
The version of Unity that Frontiers Reach is built on has been update to Unity 2023. I was
going to wait a bit longer to do this but in the pursuit of trying to get as much performance
out of the physics engine as possible I discovered that Unity 2023 increased support for
multi-threaded physics. Additionally the previously highlighted issue of Unity 2022 not
supporting Wayland on Linux should now be fixed. Wayland support was added in a much
earlier version of Unity 2023 but was still experimental at that time. The version I chose for
this update is a more recent version of Unity and should have all the issues hammered
out. If you experiencing something on Linux that seems like it may be Wayland related,
please don't hesitate to let me know as soon as possible.
Bug Fixes & Tweaks
- Joysticks of all types should now work with Frontiers Reach.
- Increased the number of options for setting up throttles to the players liking.
- Added inverse options for look controls.
- It is now possible to change the time of day through the scenario script.
- Hooked up city lights to day time controller.
- Altitude warning has been lowered again.
- Ladder and compass UI when in first person mode has been trimmed back to be less
obtrusive.
- Added sound effects for lock on.
- Added sound effects for weapon switching.
- Added new Radar Warning sound effects.
- Adjusted fog on Frontiers Reach to be less intense.
- Moved cave waypoint in Mission 1.
- Added fighter spawns to mission 3.
- Adjust spawn time for mission 5.
- Modified AI on Mission 11 set piece to ensure it works properly on initialization.
- Updated waypointer positions on Mission 13.
- Tweaks to fighter AI to keep them from getting stuck underground.
- Fixed ground vehicles going off trail on the New Karachi map.
- Increased lift factor for all fighters to make flying at lower speeds easier.
- Fix for missile lock angle allowing missiles to do 180 degree turns to hit targets.
- Fixed AI losing track on player when assigned through script at long ranges.
- Fix damage VFX on mercenary carriers.
- Added hit SFX on some destructibles on the Utsukushi Ringu map that did not have
them.
- Fixed character interactions in the galley (improvements coming)
- Fixed the cursor not working when gamepad was used on the warmap.
- Fighters should no longer get stuck under the terrain on planetary missions.
- Modified cooldowns on some tertiary weapons to keep some fighters from deploying their
entire payload.
- Modified tutorial message UI elements to keep them from overlapping other UI elements
- Toggled off idle thrusters in Bleakers Folly Station.
- Fixed Ajagar ace fighters SFX.
- Fixed some vehicles moving around maps during warmap scenarios when they should
have been immobile.
- Fixed some destructibles in warmap scenarios not registering hits.
- Fixed some destructibles in warmap scenarios not registering damage.
- Tweaks to the warmap to change how is updates the visuals as the warmap data
updates.
- Fixed an instance where the warmap would not properly display the defcon level of a
node, or would go into "Stand Down" status before it was intended to do so.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the end of the game to not load properly.
- Fixed a bug that could cause dialogue for characters in the galley to not load properly.
- Fixed several instances of destructibles on some warmap scenarios not registering hits
and/or damage.
- Fixed an instance of double loading of dialogue for the main story elements in the CIC.
- Fixed Land to Reload not working when using Mouse and Keyboard.
- Added the ability to cycle through potential targets.
- Added the ability to camera track a locked target.
- Added 2 flight modes to the game, Tight and Loose. Tight feels more like flying a
simulator, and Loose feels more like playing a game.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the NPCs to rapidly repeat their dialogue.
- Changed Unity Splash screen to dark mode
- Fixed boundary mesh not rendering.
- Fixed missing collider on commsat dish.
- Adjusted bomb sight range.
- Normalized wingman audio.
- Added a welcome screen for new players.
- Fixed Caldero landing cutscene.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the menu system to break when completing a mission if
that mission was completed using a player madeloadout.
- Fixed waypoint marker in tutorial mission #1.
- Added fighter select for instant action.
- Added the ability to skip dialogue in tutorial mission #1
- Spaced out rings in tutorial mission #1.
- New voice over for tutorial mission #2
- Updated galley conversations.
- Changed selection indicator for Galley characters.
- Touched up cannon VFX.
- Touched up destructible explosions.
- Refactored some target acquisition code for better performance.
- Increased base resolution for clouds in all levels that have them.
- Reset all primary light sources in levels.
- Tweaks to clouds on nebula levels.
- Updated graphics settings to use newer HDRP pipeline assets.