Hello! Let me give a sincere thank you to everyone who has taken the time to playtest Lakehopper and let me know about bugs and feedback! As always, the best place for bug reports is in the dedicated discussion forum here:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/4209010/discussions/1/

Here’s the changelog for 0.3 RC5. There’s more to come, but I got some important fixes done that I knew everyone would want sooner rather than later. Keep the bug reports coming in!

• Major Changes

  • The game now recognizes different input devices as fully different inputs, regardless of the name assigned to each button or axis. It’s now possible, for instance, to use a joystick and throttle even if they both have an axis named “Stick X”. The game now keeps those inputs and bindings separate.

  • Water physics are improved. I improved the simulation of the “step” on the plane’s hull, which reduces drag and forces that keep the plane in the water. Takeoffs are less sluggish, and a little closer to reality. Porpoising/oscillations are a little easier to control, or at least a little different. The plane will no longer go into an unrecoverable spin on the water if you don’t use the rudder. It will still spin some, which is accurate, but won’t get stuck spinning sideways until you throttle down, which wasn’t.

  • Reduced keyboard yoke speed. With the water physics change, I found it was too easy to over correct with the current yoke speed, so I’ve reduced it. On the to-do list is to make this speed configurable, but for now, it’s a little more gentle.

• Bugfixes

  • UI Scaling on resolutions above 1080p is fixed in the settings menu.

  • Reduced default mouse sensitivity, which was too high for many players. Mouse sensitivity can be adjusted in the controls settings menu in the config dropdown. Click the wrench next to “Look” “Delta”.

  • All parts will now properly use the shader that shows when part condition gets low.

  • Fixes to the scripting that smoothly moves parts away from other parts, scenery, and the ground to avoid clipping after attaching a part or after an unbolted part breaks off a subassembly.

  • The flashlight and UI elements now turn off when the binder is opened to not block the view of binder pages.

• Known Issues

  • I’m still hunting down a proper fix for a memory leak on native Linux that’s causing crashes. I haven’t determined if it’s limited to the Steam Deck or anything running Vulkan. Save frequently if playtesting on Steam Deck until I find a proper fix.

  • Part Condition needs balancing in terms of how fast parts wear out and the rate at which their performance degrades. You may see faster performance drop off than intended for now.

  • CH Products peripherals are not recognized by the Unity input system and are causing stack overflow errors which may freeze the game for a few seconds when first plugged in.

  • There’s no way to completely clear a control binding besides resetting to default.

Happy skies!