A new frame, a Straw Bale revamp, Freestyle mode, optimization, improvements and bugfixes, and so much more. The length of the changelist underneath shows why this is considered a Milestone update, and that just lists the top-level changes. We've worked hard to get this out to you and are more than excited to hand it over to you. Enjoy!
Changelist
- Introduced the Straw Bale revamp: improved visuals and additional areas.
- Changed Straw Bale thumbnail and menu background.
- Increased maximum height in Straw Bale from 75 meters to 200 meters.
- Added new Freestyle game mode.
- Added trick detection as an option in Freeflight and Race mode. (Game options)
- Added player profile. (as a first step to introduce player progression)
- Added Khole frame.
- Updated tournament rules display.
- Fixed exploits for updating tournament leaderboard.
- Fixed loading panel of tournaments lobby not showing up.
- Added a Liftoff Pro account sign-in panel in all scenes in the game and in the pause menu.
- Updated terms of use for the Liftoff Pro account.
- Added menu where the player can change is password when signed-in.
- Resetting a password or requesting to resend a verification mail now shows a meaningful error message when failing.
- The game will try to automatically reconnect to the server during a live tournament session when the connection fails.
- Renamed the Liftoff Pro League account to Liftoff Pro account.
- Fixed issue in room creation where community tracks and races under the same workshop item would not be selectable for multiplayer.
- Added some quality-of-life to the menu's where tabbing to the next element behaves more predictable.
- Fixed some memory leaks in the game and did some memory optimisations.
- Updated back-end connection system to the newest version.
- Updated network security. Many critical messages are now encrypted.
- Updated network traffic efficiency.
- Updated the music player to now show at the top-left of the screen and updated the sliding animation.
- Updated the content manager to be more robust and a little faster.
- Fixed issue with the tournament banners not downloading correctly.
- Fixed issue with the gamma correction of the tournament banners.
- Fixed the golden bar animation that indicates the tournament winner.
- Fixed issue with deleting/unsubscribing from community tracks or races.
- Disabled the text-ticker in the level selection screen until a race is actually selected.
- Updated the authentication process where a user's current Steam account is also validated on the server.
- Minor bugfixes.
Introducing the Khole
One and a half years in the making and thanks to an amazing collaboration between Underground FPV and FU-RC.com, The Khole is born and now available in Liftoff too!
The Khole is a really unique frame and we are excited to have it in the game. An intense process of variable laminate thickness moulding is used to create this beauty. They have built on the Industry leading reputation & design of the Kore frame and have introduced all the specifics that pilots wanted to make the Khole the beast it is. To give you an idea of the process the Tungsten moulds for the Khole took close on 6 months to make. A solid block of Tungsten was carefully cut and finished off by hand to give ultra smooth finishes to the Khole.
This is what it looks like in-game:
Freestyle mode
How would you define the heart and soul of freestyle? Is it pulling of amazing tricks? Daring tumbles down a narrow corridor? Or is it all about flow? Weaving and gliding through the air. Maybe it's all of the above? Getting to the meat of the freestyle experience is going to take time and many different iterations. With this release we are taking an important step towards simulating the freestyle FPV experience in Liftoff with the addition of a Freestyle mode. One environment. 60 seconds. Pull off tricks to earn points and increase your score multiplier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5-2oDXRrrk
This first release of freestyle mode features:
- A handful of tricks to sink your teeth in.
- Sustained tricks like dive and upside down that will rack up points for as long as you can sustain them.
- Modifiers that will increase your point total. Took an action cam with you? Did a powerloop while flying through a narrow gap or nearly missing a wall? That'll earn you extra points.
- Less points for trying the same trick multiple times in a row.
- The ability to have tricks recognized by the system in all modes (including freeflight) so you can practice your freestyle game without a time limit
Getting freestyle right is hard. That's why we need you. Getting the system to recognize the tricks is an important step but difficult one to pull off. Sometimes you'll get a false positive. Sometimes you're certain you pulled of a trick but the system might not have recognized it. Maybe you'll find an exploit to rack up an insane amount of points. There's a lot of different variables that can mess with the trick detection and we feel getting the current version in your hands is the best way to course correct. This is a first draft. We are by no means finished with freestyle mode and are comitted to improving the freestyle experience in Liftoff.
Happy freestyling!
Straw Bale revamp
As explained in detail on our blogpost dedicated to Straw Bale (read it here), we have revamped one of the most iconic environments in Liftoff. It no only looks better, its also way bigger: the perfect place to do some free-styling. ;) Here's an overview video showing of the revamp:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh_8itiZ-SA
Introducing player accounts
For the last few months we have been working on a huge new gameplay system we call "Player Progression & Rewards". This system will reward you for your achievements in-game and will allow you to unlock all kinds of cosmetic items to further personalise your drone setup. This is a complex and layered system that will be introduced in steps. Milestone 0.11.0 introduces the first stage by adding player accounts to the game. Creating a player account will always be completely optional, but will be required to make use of the progression and reward features in the future. Many of you already have an account since it uses the same systems as the Liftoff Pro League.
In this update you'll find the player account In the top-right corner of the main menu. This is your main hub for all your Liftoff account related options. When signed in, click on your player icon to bring up some additional options. In future updates, this account panel will display your progression in Liftoff.
As a way of stress- and beta-testing, player progression is already active in the background where we'll be monitoring the balance of the experience rewarded and the load on our server. Note, when the system leaves the beta-stage, all progression data will get a reset, but we'll make sure to share those interesting results with you.