After a lot of development work spanning half a year, and a period of thorough testing on the Experimental Branch, the long-awaited 1.5.0 Milestone update has finally been released to the public.
Changelist
For those who have previously explored the Experimental Branch, some aspects of this public release may appear familiar. However, it should be noted that various improvements and new features have been added.
- Added: Surtur environment. 3 times bigger than all other Liftoff levels combined!
- Added: 4 official racetracks for Surtur.
- Updated: new in-game interactive tutorial.
- Updated: switching to a different game mode, track or race within the same environment in single player will reload the game instantly, without going through a loading screen.
- Added: a couple more Steam achievements.
- Added: test your track and race right from within the track editor.
- Added: a new track item to place the player character position on the track.
- Updated: in the multiplayer lobby, your times are displayed first now in the leaderboard ticker, followed by the top 3 pilots.
- Updated: The game engine received an update. This should include some fixes regarding input latency on Linux while using Vulkan rendering.
- Added: A.I. opponents for The Green Race 06.
- Added: Popup warning when a game shortcut is made outside of Steam. The game now checks whether the connection with Steam has been successfully made and warns the user otherwise.
- Updated: multiplayer service plugin to reduce small memory allocations.
- Updated: the Short Circuit environment to include the Pitlane tournament winner's names on the paddocks.
- Updated: the track editor now provides more feedback to user actions (e.g. popup when saving) and shows proper warnings when leaving when there are unsaved changes.
- Updated: when walking around in the track editor or in free flight, you can adjust the movement speed by scrolling up/down to get across maps faster.
- Updated: the trigger boxes now have a highlight at its outline when touching other objects.
- Updated: the memory footprint has been greatly reduced by loading assets more on a need-to basis rather than always staying in memory. Several textures and audio files have also been updated to require less memory. This reduces the memory pressure by a total of ±2GB.
- Updated: the level loading process to perform less full-level scans to find certain objects. This should reduce loading times.
- Updated: on Apple Silicon devices, Liftoff will now run natively instead of through the Rosetta translation layer.
- Fixed: several audio sources in levels would not be correctly linked to their audio volume setting.
- Fixed: a memory leak caused by track items and race checkpoints not being cleaned up properly after leaving a level.
- Fixed: issue where a toggle would incorrectly appear in the freestyle score screen.
- Fixed: the drone HUD of the DJI drone would still be displayed, even if different drone setup was enforced.
- Fixed: not being able to sign in to the multiplayer when the splash/startup screen was skipped.
- Fixed: the Liftoff Pro level value would not display correctly.
- Fixed: a game crash when trying to open a gift box.
- Fixed: a memory leak with lingering server calls.
- Fixed: when finishing a race or freestyle session, the player's flight drone might sometimes be visible in the background.
- Fixed: loading screen messages might sometimes not display properly.
- Fixed: when starting Liftoff on different displays, it might sometimes start with a resolution of 0x0. This should not happen any longer.
- Fixed: the Liftoff Pro credentials file can sometimes get corrupted. This would prevent the player from signing in.
- Fixed: throttle issue that could result in inverse thrust.
- Fixed: when switching to walking in free flight, some drone settings were reset (camera angle, flight mode).
TLDR
The release of Update 1.5.0 represents a significant advancement for Liftoff, featuring the largest map yet with mountain ranges and an active volcano. Additionally, the update includes a comprehensive new tutorial, enhancements to track building, as well as various fixes, optimizations, and overall improvements for players to enjoy.
Check out this amazing video from our long time community member BlueCheeseDK, showcasing his Surtur experience.
Disclaimer: In case you experience issues with this release, a Liftoff legacy branch has been made available that refers to the last 1.4 version of Liftoff. You can access this version through the Beta options for Liftoff in your Steam games library.