Today we’d like to share a look behind the scenes of the development of Ground of Aces and give you a preview of some of the new features we’re working on for the next Major Update.
NPC Health System & Injury, Recovery and Aid
Injuries and the loss of life are a big part of any war story. Currently, crew members in Ground of Aces can die, but there are no non-fatal injuries and no recovery mechanics. With the next major update, we’re expanding this system with proper health points and two different injury states depending on how low their HP gets.
This system requires a lot of new logic for the NPC behavior, new animations, and new UI elements.
Our UI designer added a new HP bar to the crew member screen, and one of our programmers is working on a dynamic icon and bar that will indicate when an NPC gains and loses HP:
Another programmer is working on the logic for the recovery and aid tasks, like medics carrying heavily injured NPCs to sickbeds and taking care of them. Here's some early test footage:
Hospital Props
With a proper health system, your base will need a place for the wounded. For that, we will introduce a new build category, allowing you to set up your own (field) hospital.
You can see concept pictures of some of the upcoming new props here:
Medicine Cabinet
Divider Curtains, Night Table, Oxygen Bottle, and Rollable Tool Table
Sickbed
These props will make your medical areas not just functional but also visually distinct from the rest of the base.
Female NPC Models
The other big addition of Major Update 2 will be the introduction of female crew members.
In our research, we found that many jobs on an airfield were also performed by women in some capacity during WWII — in the case of British airbases, usually from the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). For our game, this means that you will be able to get and assign female crew members to ground jobs.
For our research, our artists analyzed uniforms and the typical hairstyles of that era:
We also looked at how comic artist Hergé depicted different women with his iconic ligne claire art style:
After researching and collecting reference material, our 3D artist worked on a full set of new 3D models with adjusted uniforms and facial features:
This GIF shows a work-in-progress of the facial features:
Tests with character randomizer:
Test of the models inside the game:
We are still working on the character randomizer and on the chances of certain features appearing. (So you don't get too many nurses with eye-patches):
The 2D portraits will also get new elements to display the female characters. Here's a preview of the hairstyle elements:
Stay tuned – the Major Update 2 is coming soon!
We are planning to release the Major Update 2 in a few weeks, so stay tuned, especially on our Discord! We will inform the Discord community when there's something new on our test branch, which is accessible via the "Betas" feature of Steam. That can be your chance to try out new features a bit earlier.
Don't forget to leave a review!
You want to see more features and updates in the future? You can help by writing a review!
It's an easy way to support the project because it helps with visibility here on Steam, and it guides new players who are checking out the game for the first time. Most importantly, your reviews tell us what is most important to you, the players.
You can write one short sentence, a paragraph, an essay, whatever you prefer: every review matters and we will read it all.
Thank you so much to anyone who already left a review; we really appreciate it!
