The last playtest update!
Why release an update the day the playtest is supposed to end? Well, I’m extending the playtest until Wednesday the 25th, until around midnight Eastern Time (Thursday 26th, 4am UTC). Your feedback and bug reports have all been so valuable, and the game has already improved dramatically thanks to your input. I’m very excited for the launch in one week!
The full changelog is below, but I wanted to call out one issue that I have a plan for, but haven’t implemented. I know many players are having issues with their flight sim peripherals. I remain dedicated to supporting these devices and will have this fixed as soon as I can. But the solution is a major change under the hood to how I handle inputs. It shouldn’t be too difficult, but I want to do it right and give it the time, care, and research it deserves. I don't want to rush out a huge change to a core part of the game right before launch. I’ll be dedicating time after launch to getting this working as soon as I can. Making sure your flight sim hardware works properly is an extremely high priority for me.
There are also some crashes and optimizations that will take high priority after launch as well. I want Lakehopper to be a well optimized game. I want to tackle any major performance problems early, and balance optimization and bugfixes with new features and content.
Lakehopper launches in a week, at 1pm Eastern Time, 5pm UTC, on Monday, March 30th. It’s been an intense month, and this is only the beginning. To everyone who playtested, submitted bug reports, feedback, screenshots, you have my sincere thanks. I’m excited to show you what the future of Lakehopper looks like.
Changelog
Major Changes
Water physics and plane tuning
Reduced torque caused by the inertia of the motors.
Aerodynamic torque remains unchanged. The way this is calculated is directly connected to the power and thrust requirements of the engines.
Further tweaked water parameters. The new params strike a nice balance that feels realistic. If uncontrolled, porpoising will still occur. However, preventing this oscillation only takes setting the takeoff trim to nose up, combined with a tap or two on the elevator to cancel out the oscillation. Thanks to everyone who gave feedback on this!
Tweaked the plane’s Inertia Tensor, which controls how much force it takes to rotate the plane. The plane is now slightly less pitchy and has a very slightly slower roll rate. This improves stability on the water in a way that feels realistic.
Water Rudder
Many of you have asked for a water rudder. There was actually one active the entire time. However, it was only working with Q and E. This has been fixed and the fake/simulated water rudder now works with keyboard, gamepad, and rudder pedals.
It also now works on Nest Lake as well. There was a bug where it was only active near sea level.
I tweaked the mechanics of this water rudder so it doesn’t turn the plane when it’s not moving forward, and also works correctly in reverse.
Why call it a “fake” water rudder? Many flying boats, especially multi engine flying boats, do not have a water rudder of any kind, and they really do steer on the water only using differential thrust, running the engines at different power settings.
Individual lever default keybindings are:
Throttle Up/Down: 9 and O (letter), 0 (zero) and P
Prop Up/Down: "-" and [, = and ]
If you’d like to control the plane in an authentic way, without this fake/simulated water rudder, there’s an option to disable it in the control settings. (The plane is actually more nimble with differential thrust than the water rudder.)
I also added a tweak to make the standard air rudder more effective at low speeds by taking into account airflow from the props. The elevator already did this, but it has been extended to the rudder.
Improvements
Added a controls prompt in the lower left to prompt players to relevant controls like the binder, zoom, tools, etc.
Let me know if more or less should be included here.
I’ll be adding an option to turn this off in a future update.
Optimized the main menu to have minimal static scenery, rather than loading terrain according to settings.
Reduced the default graphics settings to enable some players to successfully load the main menu and reach the graphics setting menu.
Added a “None” clouds setting in the graphics settings. This disables cloud rendering entirely. IF YOU ARE EXPERIENCING VISUAL GLITCHES THAT TURN THE TERRAIN BLACK OR BLUE, TRY CHANGING THE CLOUDS TO “NONE”. Let me know if this fixes those glitches, as it may indicate an issue with the volumetric cloud shader.
Increased the ripples at Nest Lake to improve water surface visibility.
Tweaked the position of the player when a new game is started. Scenery had been moved and everything was off center from the previous position.
Bugfixes
New Jobs are now added 10 minutes after the previous jobs were accepted to make sure there are always new jobs at each destination. I tried this before but there were issues that have been fixed.
Fixed an issue where VSync was still not on by default.
Fixed a bug where delivery package labels were not being updated with the proper package count.
Fixed an issue where packages on a hand truck while in a delivery zone would be delivered from the hand truck, causing those slots on the truck to lock out. Packages must now be removed from the hand truck to be delivered.
Fixed an issue where the item ghost for packages would collide with the delivery boundary while being held, preventing packages from being dropped in the right spot.
Fixed an issue where the hand truck would try to move outside the delivery regions when packages were attached. This is part of an intentional system to avoid glitchy collisions, but it was being too aggressive with what it decided to move away from.
Removed the ability of the hand truck to “inverse attach” i.e., attaching the truck to a package on the ground. This was likely to clip the hand truck under the ground.
Removed the ability to create a game save with no name. If no name is entered for your save, the game will instead create a save named “save_” followed by a timestamp. This was causing unloadable saves to be created.
If you created a save with no name, you can find it (on Windows) in the C:\\Users[Your User Name]\\LocalLow\\PhotonGames\\Lakehopper\\Saves folder, and change the filename so it has an actual name like “save.sav” and it should be loadable.
Fixed an issue where engines did not clear their config after being detatched from the plane and would only respond to their original configured controls.
When engines are detatched while running, they will now stop spinning while held or dropped on the ground.
Thank you again, everyone. Happy skies!