Hope everyone had a good holiday season and that you were able to enjoy time with your loved ones.
Been a busy last few months with many some unfortunate setbacks, but luckily, I have some content and improvements that you will enjoy. My largest concern and need of feedback is how things perform in this update. Much of the work has been rewriting code to be more efficient and performant and from what I can tell, has worked well. Additionally, it would be helpful to receive insights as to what types of scenarios you enjoy the most and what you'd like to see going forward. I tried to have some variety in the new scenarios being released today, so I'll be curious to know what is best received by you.
There is still a lot to do, but main things on the list going forward are (1) more scenarios, (2) Vehicle overhaul, (3) infantry animation improvements, and the (4) Ho Chi Minh Trail map - along with new appropriate vehicle models and anti-air assets. I'll plan on having another update at/near the end of January with more scenarios, but that most likely won't include much more than that (planned life circumstances are stealing dev time). I'm hopeful I'll have the vehicle overhaul done by the following update in February, but there are some dependencies that may prevent that from being released... but I'm hopeful.
The general vision of the game has certainly evolved since the beginning and even at this point doesn't have an absolute clear direction, but the short-term goal is to get a lot of new scenarios out for each map to give a solid base of gameplay for the game. I'm not sure if it will make sense to spend the amount of time required to create a formal campaign or other complicated game mode, but that will depend on how things turn out over the next one or two updates.
I will mention, the goal was to just work hard to the 1.0 release, but because of popular demand, I've reverted back to smaller, more consistent updates. The "developer has abandoned the game" sentiment can't handle longer development periods, so I'll make that adjustment.
As usual, I appreciate the support for the project. Been a fun project to build and it has allowed a great community of people to come together. I'll continue to chug away day after day and hopefully the project will shape into something we all enjoy. Be sure to let me know if you have comments/suggestions in the steam discussions or in our community discord.
Thanks!
-Sklor
Changelog
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue that prevent airburst rounds to influence enemy AI.
- Fixed the issue causing AI infantry to 'push' vehicles around.
- Fixed an issue causing the DHSK pickup to not be able to see targets to its front.
- Fixed an issue causing the AC-130J HUD not to show the weapon/munition info
Visual Effects Updates
- Made visual and performance improvements to vehicle destruction.
- Implement effects pooling to improve performance with large numbers of effects.
- Improved the airburst impact effect for both the 30mm and 105mm. (Think these look pretty awesome now)
Gunship Updates
- Improved the visibility on older gunship variant sensors (not so blurry).
- Rebuilt the gunship model and texture to reduce overhead.
- Added the ability for gunships to be damaged, audio sounds, and a rough cut "gunship going down" scene when destroyed. (More to be done on this; will have different scenes for each gunship variant)
- Added functionality to flares and added new audio sounds.
- Visual damage can now be seen on screen when gunship takes damage.
AI Updates
- Decreased the range Vietnam era enemies can engage.
- Added new anti-air threats: (1) Infantry Igla MANPADS, (2) Static DSHK machine gun, and (3) ZU23 anti-aircraft gun.
- Reworked the AI's ticking code (like checking for line of sight, etc.) to be much more efficient, but as usual this has created some strange bugs in their targeting. This will be fixed ASAP.
UI/Menu Updates
- Made menu texts larger to be easier to read on smaller screens.
- Created a new standard debriefing menu that is displayed after a scenario. (see Known Issues below on this)
- Adjusted the size of the subtitle textbox in the HUD.
- Objectives in-game can now be seen in the pause menu.
- Added the 1920x1200 resolution in the display settings as requested
Map/Scenario Updates
- New Map: Afghanistan Mountains
- Updated old maps with newer static meshes.
- New Scenario: (Vietnam Outpost) Ambush Breaker.
- New Scenario: (Vietnam Outpost) Outpost Defense.
- New Scenario: (Afghan Mountains) Aerial Ambush.
- New Scenario: (Afghan Village) Precision Strike.
- New Scenario: Tutorial
Other Updates
- Rebuilt the projectile class to be much more efficient and performant.
- Rebuilt some of the infantry models and textures (more coming on this) to reduce overhead.
- Rebuilt how shrapnel damage is dealt to have more consistent results (think it feels much better with this now).
- Improved how airburst rounds work to align better with expectations.
- Zombie Rush: Zombies will no longer increase in health for added difficulty.
Known Issues
- Sometimes AI may target seemingly nothing.
- Infantry still may collide with vehicles and cause physics interactions.
- Debriefing menu can has some wonky stats; still working on this.
- Flares currently are unlimited.
- Visual screen damage from the gunship taking rounds can only be seen on the U and J variant (forgot to add to the others). Will be patched in to include other variants as soon as I can.