Caution: This update will discard all player progress. Post incomplete but will be expanded tomorrow
Introduction
Hello all! At last, I present to you Aggressor 1.1.6: New Horizons. As much as I'd like to make this into a massive post right now it's getting late so I'm keeping it short. What you need to know is that the main reason for the long wait was a core revamp of game systems which proved necessary to support the various new gamemodes and gameplay mechanics that are on the horizon, coming to the game within the next few months.
State of 1.1.6
The game now has an experimental mission builder which should be used with great care, considering it is still in active development and not foolproof. You can play around with it but don't press the wrong buttons in the wrong order.
Instant dogfight is still the main gamemode you'll be interested in for now since there is still just one campaign; flight school. Had to scrap all the old missions, just 2 thankfully, since they might as well belong to a different game now. The AI now uses a decentralized model allowing me to make it much more complex without creating too much obfuscation. The biggest change of all though are the controls, which now use Rewired. Rewired is an advanced input system with support for many more types of flight sticks and modules.
Gameflow
Instead of choosing your nation continuously throughout the play session, you now set this on
a one-time startscreen that determines player nation for the entire game session. Much of this flow is defined by various data files that are now stored in the flashpointstudios folder (previously flashpointgames). You may delete the flashpointgames folder as it is no longer in use.
Progression
Aircraft are no longer progress locked in the instant dogfight gamemode and any future quick-action gamemodes will follow this rule. The campaign however will still feature the same currency system for acquiring weapons and aircraft. I've designed some interesting mechanics for this that will be explained in the follow up.
Many less sinificant but still interesting features have been sneaked into this update during it's long
development, an example would be the missile cam shown above that is activated by holding down the fire button.
Changelog
Further details will follow tomorrow morning as I expand this post. For now, here is a list of some prominent changes/fixes:
- Flight model changed
- 3D crosshair
- Core data structure changed to accommodate future gamemodes Frontlines and Aloft and speed up
content addition
- Complete controls revamp with full rebinding using Rewired
- Missile guidance improved
- External flare module
Extra control settings panel added for input smoothing and other properties not found on the
rebinding screen
- Added landing gear for all aircraft
- Aircraft naming convention changed
- Added Skypedia
- Added experimental mission builder
- Game volume fixed
- Cockpits for XF-5E, F-86AF, F-86FX, P-51N, LA-11FN, Fang, YA-15, MGI-15 and MGI-17
- Flight School campaign overhaul
- Clear Sky campaign
- Complete UI and menu navigation revamp
- Added various AI aircraft
- Parking brake
- New maps
- Droptanks
- More missiles
- Different VFX bombs, missiles, explosions, part explosions, part fires and more
- Added flares
- Rain
- Added singlemissions/simple campaigns gamemode
- Instant dogfight revamp
- MiG-21PD VTOL jet
- Select/deselect engine controls
- Complete weapons system and targeting overhaul
- General-Purpose AI (GPAI); revamped, more easily upgradable AI
- Various new liveries
- Camera system revamp
- Various extra camera features (MSL CAM, ACTION VIEW, etc)
- Various entities
- Removed add cash button
- Added 2 menu soundtracks
- Various optimizations
- New post-FX (motion blur and chromatic abberation)
- New settings panel with live tweaking of values
- Manual trim
- Auto-trim system, settings included
- Parking brake
- Loadout presets
- Hangar overhaul
- Sound overhaul, increased volume range.
- Better overall visual quality
- Increased pilot kill probability on cockpit hit to 1 in 50. (previously 1 in 100)
- Midair collision sound effect
NOTES
- Minimize G-forces when retracting/extending landing gear to avoid malfunction
- Do not set parking brake at speed over 5 knots
- The mission builder barely works
- A handful of controls in the mission builder still use the old system and cannot be changed for now
- Use procedural world preset in the mission builder at your own risk, generation algorithm will change
in the future.
Known issues
- Large aircraft landing gear problems.
- Occasional failure to fire when missiles of varying type are attached to an aircraft - Fix in patch 1.1.7
- Mission builder: cannot open another mission after mission already opened. Exit and enter mission
builder again and then load the new mission.
- If using a joystick or any other module for throttle/trim, make sure the remap throttle and/or remap
trim are disabled in the controls panel (not the rebinding panel)
- Some aircraft like the XP82 have a tendency to roll to one side
- Cannot delete flight/triggers in mission builder
I'd like to hear your feedback in the discussions, I will be more active on here from now on as opposed to the previous months, when everything was constrained to the Discord.