Hey Pilots,
This time, we’re doing something a little different: a look back at what we were working on earlier this year. The footage you’ll see in this Dev Blog is from a less polished stage of Couch Planes, but we thought it’d be fun (and hopefully interesting!) to share how things have been shaping up behind the scenes.
Matchmaking & Dedicated Servers
We know how important smooth online matches are, so we’ve been hard at work setting up dedicated servers and matchmaking.
The matchmaking will prioritize matching players of similar skill level into a match to make sure that everyone is having both an equal chance and a good time. We also made sure that matches that already started, but are no longer full, get filled up with new players. If a player joins a match that has already started they can observe the current race until its over and the next one starts where they then get to play themselves!
Turbo Rocket FX
A party game isn’t complete without over-the-top action, right? We’ve upgraded the visual FX across the board — from drift to flow shader and added a turbo rocket FX to make the fun look (and feel) even wilder.
During development we noticed that due to a bug the drift FX of player 1 would also be applied to all other split-screen players. It was very tough to circle this one down, but we hope to get to the bottom of it, soon!
Another thing that we noticed is that the more we refine our visual materials like the river flow shader, the more we need to rework existing maps with the improved visuals. This results in multiple passes over and over on the maps and consumes quite a bit of time. We hope that as we build the game over time, we will also become more aware of pitfalls like this and to improve our workflows for maximum impact!
A Brand-New Map (MAP 6!)
And finally… we’ve been crafting a brand-new map. This was the first iteration of the tropical island map that you can now see in our trailer!
This is just a glimpse into how Couch Planes has evolved over the months. Sharing these earlier stages with you feels important, it shows not just where we are now, but how far we’ve come.
This is just the beginning. Thank you for being part of this journey, your support and feedback mean the world as we keep building Couch Planes together.
👉 Watch the full Dev Blog video and let us know what you think!
See you in the skies,
– The Skylab Interactive Team ✈️