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Armor, Penetration, and How This Changes All Vehicles

23 Aug

With the next main branch patch (currently available on the tester's branch), major changes to how armor, penetration, and vehicle damage is handled are being implemented.

A lot of this has been a long time coming, and building out and balancing the training missions was the final straw that broke the camel's back for this. The way vehicles act when fighting each other should be as easy to intuit as possible. Various quirks in the ways that vehicles were balanced, and the mechanics they used, were getting in the way of that, and producing unexpected results.

Armor

Broadly speaking, the effect of armor has been dramatically increased. What was once a scale of 0-2, is now a scale of 0-10. It can go even higher if necessary, but all vehicles you'll find will operate on this 0-10 scale. To give some reference points:

0: Completely unarmored. Applies to all aircraft. Currently no vehicles fall under this categorization, but things like convoy trucks and SAM sites will occupy this category. Unarmored vehicles take full and unmitigated HE damage and AP shots never ricochet off. Explosions of any kind are extremely deadly to anything unarmored.
1-2: Lightly armored. All APCs fall under this. The armor serves mainly to provide some light protection against pure HE damage. All bullet based weapons will still penetrate 1 armor, though a 2 armor APC will provide some light protection against machineguns.
3-7: Light Armor (e.g. ZSU-57-2) Medium tanks. Aircraft cannons are only moderately effective, requiring AP to have a chance to damage, but it can still be done in a pinch if you have gun ammo to spare. Explosive damage is reduced. Cluster bombs or ATGMs are recommended. Most tank have a decent chance to penetrate medium tanks.
8-10: Heavy tanks. No aircraft gun can penetrate these tanks, requiring cluster bombs or ATGMs to destroy. Medium tank cannons will have some difficulty with this, about 50% penetration rate.

Damage and Penetration

The way damage is dealt has been retooled. Impact damage is now treated as AP (Armor Piercing) damage while splash damage is now treated as HE (High Explosive) damage. These two damage types interact with armor in different ways.

Armor Piercing

Armor piercing damage is binary. It either does full damage, or it does zero damage and the shot ricochets. If the penetration equals the armor value, then there is a 75% chance to penetrate, with the penetration reaching 100% if the difference between penetration and armor is 5 or higher. If the penetration is less than the armor, then it scales down to 0% penetration when the difference is 5 or higher.

Basically, the more penetration a shot has versus the armor, the greater the chance of it penetrating instead of ricocheting.

High Explosive

High explosive damage is simpler. If the explosion has a penetration value that is equal to or greater than the armor then it does 100% damage. This is mostly important against unarmored targets such as aircraft and trucks, which take the full damage from an explosion.

When an explosion encounters armor it uses a multiplier calculated from the difference between the armor and penetration. The most important thing to know is that tanks are very resistant to explosive damage, trucks are totally unprotected, and most APCs are lightly protected. Some example numbers:

0: 100%
1: 80%
2: 40%
5: 16%
9: 8%

Ricochets

Ricochets have been something I've been wanting to add to the game for a long time. When vehicles get hit by an armor piercing round that doesn't penetrate, it instead ricochets off the vehicle.

Many new visual effects have been added to the game for ricocheting cannon rounds, to make the difference a little clearer. Ricochets have a lot of sparks, and a smaller flash/explosion and smoke.

This also applies to the terrain. Bullets that hit the ground at a shallow angle will ricochet off the ground in a cool looking shower of bullets. HE rounds require a shallower angle to hit the ground to ricochet, and the likelihood of a ricochet happening on terrain depends on the material that it hits.

Vehicles Rebalanced

Finally, the vehicles have all seen big changes to their weapons, armor, and HP values. Rather than just describing how vehicles have been adjusted, I think it's easier to explain the motivations behind this and what the rebalance is meant to address:

Vehicles were too similar to each other when it came to how the player treats them. I.e. you don't really think of a tank as any different from an APC or AAA.
It's difficult to add new weapons with their own meaningful pros/cons when vehicles were so squishy that it didn't matter what you used against them.
Vehicles were balanced on a different scale than the aircraft, leading to weird incongruities between how ground and air weapons worked.
Tanks should be a much bigger threat to ground vehicles than they currently are. In certain situations, the player should feel like they have to intervene in order to save certain ground units to complete an objective.
There's a queue of vehicles to be added, and it's difficult to differentiate vehicles when there was no granularity to the armor system, and so little variance in HP.
The next map is going to be much larger, and the density of vehicles over an area will be going down. I wanted to make individual vehicle encounters more meaningful to compensate.

The new values, shown above, are all in response to these reasons.

The role of tanks on the battlefield, which is to smash APCs and other tank platoons, is now greatly emphasized, and from the player will require special consideration. In particular, I wanted a T-80 or M1 to be a big deal, and units you either want to support to allow them to do their work, or take out ASAP before they clean up a front line.

This also means tanks, in particular the top tier heavy hitters, will be much less common overall, and new vehicles, mostly softer targets, will be introduced to fill out the vehicle roster.

The rescaling of weapons to the new vehicle armor and HP values fixes a long-standing oddity with the game, where tank cannons and machineguns would barely scratch aircraft. Since they were designed to hit the relatively weak vehicles, they did very little damage in order to prevent vehicles from killing each other too quickly. While machineguns still aren't too dangerous (mostly due to their lower rate of fire and worse accuracy), a tank cannon hitting a plane will be an event.

Damage and Penetration Tester

One last thing! When developing the new damage and penetration mechanics, I made this little test program so I could quickly experiment with values and get an idea of how vehicles would perform against each other. The damage/penetration simulator can be download here[drive.google.com].

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0.15.1.1 is available on the Tester's branch!

15 Aug

This patch adds the third training mission, demonstrating capturing of bases using APCs. To drive this, and to have the mission teach players about how to deal with tanks, this came a whole host of new mechanics relating to bullets and armor, and a massive rebalance of all vehicles and air to ground weapons!

There will be more posts in the near future about each of the new features, before the patch hits the main branch, detailing out what changed and the rationale behind them!

Changelog

New Features: - Bullet can ricochet off of terrain + Gravity handled on a per-bullet basis + ExplodeOnImpact bullets ricochet at shallower angles than AP + Threshold for ricochet off ground depends on hardness of surface - Groups spawned from strategic targets can be "primed" to attack a specific target - New armor and damage mechanics to add variety to vehicles and weapons + Munitions (bombs, missiles, etc.) use a simple penetration >= armor check against armor + Completely new calculations for how HE damage is reduced by armor (see tool) + Penetration is now checked against for a chance to ricochet (see tool) + Ricochets against vehicles do not happen on bullets where "ExplodeOnImpact" is true + Penetration check for impact will still happen on impacts even if "ExplodeOnImpact" is true - Ammo belt functionality added to aircraft + Selected ammo type displayed next to gun ammo count in loadout dialog + If no ammo belt is defined for aircraft, guns call back on their defined bullet + Arena UI shows gun ammo and belt in the loadout preview box + AI use average gravity of ammo belt for air to air gunnery + Gun piper max range cue is based on average in ammo belt + Gun piper A-A aimpoint calculations based (also used by AI) on average gravity of belt + Gun piper A-G aimpoint calculations based on average gravity and max range of ammo belt + Added "Select Ammo" button to loadout dialog, hidden when no ammo belts are defined + Selected ammo type displayed next to gun ammo count in loadout dialog - All damageable objecs have a specifically defiend attrition cost - All vehicles and aircraft default to 1 attrition cost - Added "Capture" training mission + Capture Kogasa with M113 convoy + Protect the convoy of M113s against the medium tank T-62 Improvements: - Arena mission objectives and flags are serializable - Arena missions can set camera height - Targets store a "size" - All buildings now have their size prescribed in the prefab and at build time - Adjusted weights for the pathfinding to favor roads more when out of combat - Temporarily(?) disabled wrecks blocking the navmesh to prevent bridges from getting blocked and improve navigation - Vehicles are smaller for navigation and collision avoidance purposes - Tweaked the effect of roads on vehicle movement + Road movement boosts acceleration (50%) and turn rate (100%) + Road speed bonus reduced 50% -> 25% - Updates to vehicle targeting + Visually based targeting checks for line of sight + Targeting handled from top of vehicles rather than centroid + Vehicles will no longer turn around and drive away from targets that get too close - Radars now check for terrain line of sight - Loadout dialog slightly widened - Arena mission selector shows a "recommended" aircraft, ammo belt, and loadout - Many new impact effects specific to AP shells for autocannons and cannons - Attrition Display now visible during an Arena sortie - Added options for Always Show or Auto Hide for the Attrition Display (defaults to Always Show) - Better logging when bullets have missing or incorrect effects - Updated Mk20 description and tactics in database Bugfixes: - Many buildings now correctly contribute to the navmesh - Fixed/added navmesh to the rest of the islands - Major navmesh improvements to the big island - Fixed cliffside near Shou not having a collision mesh - Missile launchers will now reload when empty and out of combat - Strategic target capture and disable objectives are functional again - Fixed null reference when landing at random spot on the ground - Damageable parts (e.g. wings) no longer each deduct 1 attrition when destroyed - Fixed Attrition Display not initializing correctly after respawn Balance: - Big balance pass on almost all vehicles and weapons to use new armor and penetration values - In general: Vehicles have a lot more HP, and are more armored - In general: Effectiveness of gun against armor is reduced - In general: Munitions are much more necessary to destroy armored targets - In general: Tank cannon accuracy and effectiveness greatly increased - M113/BTR70/M113/M48/SA9: HP increased 50 -> 100, Armored increased 0 -> 1 - BMP1: HP increased 60 -> 100, Armor increased 0 -> 2 - M1: HP increased 200 -> 500, Armor increased 1 -> 9 - T80B/M1A1: HP increased 200 -> 500, Armor increased 1 -> 10 - M60A1/T62: HP increased 100 -> 350, Armor increased 1 -> 5 - Shilka: HP increased 75 -> 125, Armor increased 0 -> 1 - ZSU57: HP increased 75 -> 220, Armor increased 0 -> 3 - M2/KPVT: Penetration increased 0 -> 1 - 2A28/M68: Deviation reduced 2.0 -> 0.5 - 2A20: Deviation reduced 2.0 -> 0.2 - M256/2A46-2: Deviation reduced 0.5 -> 0.1 - M256: Fires new 120mm NATO round - 73mm HEAT: Impact damage increased 50 -> 100, Penetration increased 0 -> 1 - 105mm NATO: Impact damage increased 50 -> 150, Penetration increased 1 -> 8 - 120mm NATO (new): Impact damage 250, Penetration 15 - 115mm USSR: Impact damage increased 50 -> 160, Penetration increased 1 -> 7 - 125mm USSR: Impact damage increased 75 -> 275, Penetratio increased 2 -> 15 - GAU12 on AV8B has 3 ammo belt options: Mixed, High Explosive, and Armor Piercing - GAU12 HE round has 15 splash damage and explodes on timeout - GAU12 AP round does 12 AP damage with penetration of 3 and has a longer range and flatter trajectory than HE - Attrition training mission defaults to HE ammo belt - Big balance pass on all A/G munitions to bring them in line with the stronger vehicles - Mk20 splash penetration 2 -> 10 - Mk20 splash damage 25 -> 100 - Mk82, Mk82SE splash damage 100 -> 200 - Mk82, Mk82AB, Mk82SE impact penetration 1 -> 10 - Mk82, Mk82AB, Mk82SE impact damage 200 -> 500 - Mk82AB splash damage 100 -> 250 - Mk83 impact damage 400 -> 800 - Mk83 impact penetratin 1 -> 13 - Mk83 splash damage 200 -> 400 - Mk84 impact damage 800 -> 1600 - Mk84 splash damage 300 -> 600 - AGM65D impact damage 200 -> 650 JSON: - Added "InitialCamHeight" to the Arena definition - Aircraft now have a "Size" property similar to vehicles - Added "AmmoBelts" array property to Aircraft loadout definition (see AV8B loadout for example) - Added "PlayerAmmoBelt" to set default ammo belt for plaeyrs in Arena Mission definition - Added "Attrition" parameter to vehicle and aircraft definitions to define attrition deducted when destroyed

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0.14.1.4 is now Available!

12 Jun

0.14 is now available on the main branch of the game! This features the first couple missions of the training campaign, which is being used to finalize all the Arena features and polish the game for the 1.0 release.

In case you missed it, check out this previous news post on the Arena runtime to get a breakdown for the most important new features and content this patch contains.

Damage Model Updates

This patch fixes a couple long-standing issues related to the damage model. The most notable new feature to come out of this, is the introduction of critical parts. To fix some related AI bugs, many parts on aircraft are now marked as "critical". When one of these is destroyed, the AI pilot will attempt to maintain control of the plane, but when they figure out they can't, they'll eject.

Between this change and the rest of the damage model fixes, it's now possible to destroy planes without completely obliterating them or setting them on fire.

Game Stuck At Splash Screen Bug Update

This is an issue which impacts only a very small subset, but it is game breaking enough that I want to get as many eyes on this as possible. If you were somebody whose game would get past the splash screen, and the error log was showing the below error, a workaround has been implemented.

[FMOD] Initialization failed : Output forced to NO SOUND mode : ERR_OUTPUT_INIT : Error initializing output device.

The game should start up now, but if you were receiving this error, there still won't be any sound. This is a difficult bug that I've been unable to replicate, and even FMOD support themselves don't know much about this since they can't reproduce it. This likely has something to do with FMOD not being sure how to handle specialized audio hardware, and at least one person has figured out a way to fix this on their end. See this thread for more details.

Map Progress

Here's some early shots of villages and towns will be populating the European map. Tools have been written to help in generating the towns to speed up development. As always, this is WIP and subject to change, but I'm really happy with the progress being made and look forward to its completion!

Changelog

New Features: - First 2 missions of the "Prelude" campaign meant to demonstrate/teach all Arena mechanics - Arena attrition mechanic where destroying units reduces the "tickets" available for a side - New objectives using attrition mechanic - Attrition bar to display Attrition mechanics when in Arena map view + Illuminates when attrition damage is done + Has a "combo" visual when lots of damage is done in a short time - Event system to drive mission design and objectives - New Arena runtime and objective system - Completion of objectives and mission completion handled by runtime - Added BMP-1 - Added "Critical parts" which trigger ejection from pilot - Added ingame objectives display for the Arena game modes + Automatically opens on sortie start, when objectives completed/failed, and auto hides + Can always be viewed from the pause menu + Added new setting for objectives display to auto hide (default) or always show Improvements: - Objectives right justified in Arena mission selector - Font size reduced for the arena mission selector - When objectives are completed, a HUD popup appears - Arena map camera dragging more responsive - Arena menu displays objectives with display names - Spawning for vehicles in Arena handled through hand-placed spawn points - Added spawn points to all strategic targets on old and new Island maps - Objectives display in Arena Map UI revised to make failed objectives states and stars earned more clear - Audio speed of sound increased 2x -> 3x - M113 and BTR70 moved to the Mechanized subcategory in the Database - Reimplmented an optimized raycasted ground clamping for vehicles - Added distance readout to the nav mode strategic target markers - Expanded the island tour description - Losing a wingtip in AV8 reduces RCS roll authority - Losing both wingtips in AV8 causes complete loss of RCS roll authority - RCS damage can be caused to specific control axes - It's possible to destroy aircraft from pilot ejecting from damage instead of fire Bugfixes: - Vehicle icons restored when in Arena view - Tweaked navmesh to reduce chance of vehicles getting stuck - Updated Sand Island (WIP) navmesh to fix hole in it - Fixed NRE when switching to vehicle camera before a vehicle has spawned - Vehicles no longer hover above ground or drive under ground - All engine instances can be destroyed by damage - Right engine is destroyed by right side damage on F-4E instead of left - Control damage is no longer multiplied by >200X - Game shouldn't get stuck on splash screens in exceptional audio related circumstances, but there still won't be any sound + See https://steamproxy.net/app/1347550/discussions/1/4328601356343965480/ Balance: - Reduced gun tracking against air targets for BTR70 and M113: 50 -> 25 - Lowered attrition requirement for blue tickets from 20 -> 15 - Most Wings and elevators on all jets listed as critical - Tweaks to MiG-23 damage model to better match visuals - Reduced image of wing damage from AV8 elevators 2.0 -> 1.0 - F-4 outer wings roll damage increased 0.1 -> 0.2 - Swing wings - Raised blue tickets from 21 to 25 in the Attrition training mission JSON: - Added "DisplayName" to Objectives definition - Replaced "PrimaryObjectives" and "SecondaryObjectives" with unified "Objectives" in Arena mission definition - Objective definitions expanded + Value: Used by the ticket goals as the reference value + IsOneShot: Once the objective is completed, it can't be failed + IsFailing: Used for objectives which are completed by default, and change to failed if their condition fails (e.g. BlueTicketsMoreThan) + IsPrimary: Required to complete the mission + SetFlagOnCompletion: Sets a flag on completion - Added new GoalTypes + RedTicketsLessThan, RedTicketsMoreThan + BlueTicketLessThan, BlueTicketsMoreThan + AircraftArrive + UnitArrive + AircraftTookOffFrom + AircraftLandedAt - Added "IsInvincible" to StrategicTarget definition, preventing it from being disabled from damage - Removed "RCS" as a value for "Control" in the "PhysicsDamage" entries - Added "RCSRoll", "RCSPitch", "RCSYaw", as values for "Control" in the "PhysicsDamage" entries - "Control" value defaults to "None" instead of "Pitch" - Added "IsCritical" to the "DamageablePart" definitions

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0.14.1.3 is now available on the Tester's branch

22 May

For modders:For modders: The RCS value in the Control parameter for the DamageablePart has been removed, and replaced with new values. See the changelog below for more details.

Changelog

New Features: - Added "Critical parts" which trigger ejection from pilot Improvements: - Losing a wingtip in AV8 reduces RCS roll authority - Losing both wingtips in AV8 causes complete loss of RCS roll authority - RCS damage can be caused to specific control axes - It's possible to destroy aircraft from pilot ejecting from damage instead of fire Bugfixes: - All engine instances can be destroyed by damage - Right engine is destroyed by right side damage on F-4E instead of left - Control damage is no longer multiplied by >200X Balance: - Most Wings and elevators on all jets listed as critical - Tweaks to MiG-23 damage model to better match visuals - Reduced image of wing damage from AV8 elevators 2.0 -> 1.0 - F-4 outer wings roll damage increased 0.1 -> 0.2 - Swing wings JSON: - Removed "RCS" as a value for "Control" in the "PhysicsDamage" entries - Added "RCSRoll", "RCSPitch", "RCSYaw", as values for "Control" in the "PhysicsDamage" entries - "Control" value defaults to "None" instead of "Pitch" - Added "IsCritical" to the "DamageablePart" definitions

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0.14.1.2 is now available on the Tester's branch

15 May

This patch is mainly to fix some issues with vehicles moving around on the map. The navmesh has been updated, and ground clamping has been re-added to the game, but with new optimizations.

For performance's sake, vehicles used to drive directly on the navmesh. When the maps were guaranteed to be totally flat, this looked just fine. However, with terrain, the navmesh is necessarily coarse enough that imprecisions are actually noticeable, causing hovering vehicles, or vehicles that appeared under the ground.

To fix this, ground clamping has been re-implemented, and thanks to previous optimizations this time the performance impact is minimal this time is minimal. Like the rest of the movement, the rate at which the clamping updates is less frequent the further from the camera the vehicles are. The rotation is also pulled directly from the navmesh, which is close enough, skipping the math necessary to level the vehicles on terrain.

Changelog

Improvements: - Reimplmented an optimized raycasted ground clamping for vehicles - Added distance readout to the nav mode strategic target markers - Expanded the island tour description Bugfixes: - Updated Sand Island (WIP) navmesh to fix hole in it - Fixed NRE when switching to vehicle camera before a vehicle has spawned - Vehicles no longer hover above ground or drive under ground Balance: - Lowered attrition requirement for blue tickets from 20 -> 15

Tiny Combat Arena

Arena Mission Runtime and Why it's So Important

7 May

The 0.14 patch cycle will probably be the most important patch the game sees up through the release of the game. With it comes the Arena Runtime and Event System, which basically controls and consolidates all the Arena mechanics, as well has a robust framework for creating and completing mission objectives in game.

I highly recommend checking out the full changelog for 0.14.1.1 (currently only on the tester's branch), as there's quite a lot that's been added to the game and changed.

BMP-1

The BMP-1 has been added this patch. Their 73mm HEAT guns are low velocity and ineffective against tanks, but devastating against other mechanized units. Unlike the other mechanized units though, they have no self-defense machinegun, and so are quite vulnerable to air attack.

New Arena Mission Runtime and Event System

This is the main feature of the patch, and where the huge bulk of development time has gone the past month. The code that ran the Arena mode was spread all over the codebase, difficult to work with, and not expandable to cover the needs for the training campaign and the campaign itself.

The new set of objectives that can be programmed into missions are currently:

Attrition (Red/Blue) Greater Than
Attrition (Red/Blue) Less Than
Aircraft Arrived At
Unit Arrived At
Aircraft Took Off From
Aircraft Landed At

If this sounds like something that should have been done a very long time ago, that's correct. For a long time I thought I could get away with the ultra-basic set of mechanics I had written for the Early Access launch version of TCA, but as the game is nears internally set milestone dates, and the flight mechanics and (still WIP) content nearing their final states while the core game mode still feels as barebones as it does, it's become clear that's no longer the case. All this together has caused me to make a big shift in development priorities, but more on that later.

To facilitate the above system, a new runtime event system has been implemented into the game. This decouples a lot of code that was reaching far across the game to totally unrelated systems, and centralizes it into a single point of contact. The combination of these two things means that adding new objective types, if needed, is also far simpler now.

New Spawning System

A major difficulty that sprung up with the new map was that the old spawn system was no longer adequate. The original system was extremely simplistic, and only worked for the large flat plains that the previous map (and test maps) consisted of. Since the new terrain has water, roads, and dense bases with buildings, spawn points needed to get a lot smarter. Some simple tools have been written so that spawns can be hand-placed, and avoid the failed spawns that were frequently appearing on the new map.

Attrition

The second tutorial campaign mission demonstrates the attrition mechanic. On some missions, each side has a number of "tickets", and depleting the enemy's, while conserving your own, will be necessary to complete objectives. This is a very straightforward mechanic, but it's a powerful one and fits certain mission types.

New Map Progress

Work on the new map continues. This map will be available for 1.0 and is significantly larger than the previous map. The map doesn't correlate 1:1 with a real location, but is meant to be representative of northern Germany during the 80s.

Due to its size, a chunking system has been developed to prevent issues with collisions. We are currently working through the navmesh difficulties this creates.

Path to 1.0, and a Shift to Content-Driven Development

As said before, this patch is probably the most important patch the game will receive until 1.0 with regards to features. Now that all the underlying building blocks are in place, I'm making a very conscious choice to move from developing features for notional future ideas, to instead adding content first and then adding the features as needed.

This is something that's perhaps long overdue, and is influenced by some side projects I've tackled over the course of the game's development, as well as the game's reception. Building levels for the game, playing them, seeing what's missing, and then adding the content and features as needed has in my experience been a lot more successful than the very "theoretical" approach that TCA has had up to this point.

What this means to you is to expect more frequent updates with a bigger focus on adding content to the game. For the most part, these will come in the form of the Prelude campaign missions and the supporting vehicles and features needed to build them. There is a pretty sizeable backlog of units that have already been modeled out, but need to be added to the game!

Thanks again for coming along with me on this journey. There's still a lot of work to be done until I'm ready to call the game "1.0", but with the new Arena tools and mechanics, I feel more confident than ever about completing this game.

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0.14.1.1 is now available on Tester's branch, featuring first campaign missions

7 May

Hello, this patch features the necessary back end work to build out the rest of the campaigns for the game, and makes the necessary significant strides to move Arena and the game closer to its 1.0 state.

There is a known issue with vehicles not ground clamping correctly on the new map[trello.com].

For a high level overview of what this patch means and future plans for the game, see this major news post.

Changelog

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0.13.7.1 has been released! Features UI sounds and more accurate VTOL behavior.

12 Mar

As work continues on the Arena introduction campaign, UI sound effects, such as for when mission objectives are completed, were needed to unblock a task, so this very old backlog item has finally been taken care of.

UI Sound Effects and UI Audio Channels

This has been a task I've been dreading for a very long time simply because it was going to be a tedious exercise. Thanks to some foresight and plentiful use of nested prefabs, it actually wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. UI SFX are one of those really minor things that add a lot to game feel, so I'm really happy this is finally done.

VTOL Nozzle Angle Changes

Another small backlog item: The nozzle thrust and rotation is now based on an engine actually rotating versus just magically being applied through input. The UI has been updated accordingly to support this. The effect is exaggerated here in the above gif, since the Pegasus nozzles rotate fast enough that you won't notice this.

Changelog

New Features: - New sounds when hovering/clicking on buttons - New sounds when a slider is manipulated - New sounds when a "big thing" happens such as selecting a game mode - Added UI and Music sound sliders to the audio settings - External audio can be heard (quietly) when in database view Improvements: - Engines apply VTOL nozzle vectored thrust based on true nozzle angle - AV8B nozzle moves 180 degrees a second - On the HUD, nozzle chevron and text shows desired angle - On the HUD, nozzle bar shows true nozzle angle - VTOLD HUD is triggered by desired nozzle angle instead of true angle - STOVL MFD reports true nozzle angle instead of desired angle - AV8B nozzle angle gauge reports true nozzle angle instead of desired angle - AnimatedParts can be overridden by engine VTOL values JSON: - Added "VTOLNozzleSpeed" to engine definition, how many degrees/second can rotate - Added "VTOLAnimatedParts" to engine definition, any AnimatedParts in this list will instead be controlled by the engine VTOL controller

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0.13.6.3 has been released, official TrackIR support and Steam screenshots!

1 Mar

Almost everything I've been working on lately has been back end to support the upcoming training campaign, which will introduce each of the mechanics of Arena one by one and take place on the new island map. The Arena mission handling got refactored a bit, along with a global event system, to handle the basic scripting necessary for the Arena training missions.

In the parallel to this, one of the things that has been on the backlog for a while has been updating the TrackIR plugin and fixing a couple head tracking related bugs.

Official TrackIR Plugin

The absolutely ancient TrackIR plugin I've been using for almost 10 years[github.com] has finally been updated to the latest, which brings native support for the game in the TrackIR software. The unusual pitch ladder movements when head tracking was used have also been addressed.

Steam Screenshots

Another small line item that was on the backlog for a long time was having photo mode actually take Steam screenshots. This works as would expect, with the default behavior being to take a Steam screenshot if the game is currently being run through Steam. Two new settings have been added to the game to force the old behavior of locally saved screenshots, or disable Steam screenshots entirely.

Behind the Scenes

The new map is quite large, with the base geometry for it now being down. Expect mountains and valleys to fly through. It's still extremely WIP, so keep that in mind with image.

The first campaign mission is very simple, just taking off and landing in a couple airbases around the island map, but since the game right now only has events for purely "Strategic" stuff like base capture, this has caused some coding fun to expand the event system to make for more robust mission objectives.

The bulk of the remaining work on the game will be on building out the Arena and Arena missions. The training campaign is still subject to re-organization but this is the rough outline of not just the campaign but also Arena's feature-set.

Changelog

Improvements: - Strategic Target visuals no longer Z-Test - Updated TrackIR plugin to the latest over the original 10 year old plugin - Game will be recognized as "Tiny Combat Arena" in the TrackIR software - Photo mode automatically takes Steam screenshots - Added setting for local screenshots to be saved only when Steam is not in use, or always - Added setting to enable/disable Steam screenshots - Shutter effect in photo mode happens only after a photo has been successfully saved Bugfixes: - Occasional freeze caused by TIR on startup no longer happens - "Use head tracking" setting works as expected - "Use head tracking" setting can enable/disable TrackIR mid-flight - TrackIR no longer resets every time settings window is opened - "Reload TrackIR" keybind works as expected Balance: - AltitudeEfficiency set to the following values to make dedicated fighters better at high altitude + AV8B: 1.0 + F-5/MiG-21: 1.2 + F-4/MiG-23: 1.5 JSON: - Added "AltitudeEfficiency" parameter to the engine definition for aircraft + Value of 1 is normal, >1 mean engine suffers less engine degradation with altitude

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0.13.5.4 is now available!

6 Feb

Hello! This patch cycle is once again focused on bugfixes, as a lot of dev attention has been on the next terrain, the new challenges it's creating, and other behind the scenes work.

The major changes this patch, with links to the posts in which they are discussed, are:

Revised cockpit rendering
Vertical floating origin
New audio sliders and adjustments to the audio mix

Changelog

New Features: - Added real (64 by default) and virtual (256 by default) audio channels to audio settings tab - Minimum airspeed that can be read by an aircraft is now configurable on a per-aircraft basis Improvements: - Cockpit design changed so that ONLY the cockpit is in the cockpit model, no more duplicated geometry (e.g. fuselage in both models) + "Third person" parts of the model such as the canopy bow are hidden when in first person + First pilot automatically hidden when in first person + Cockpitless planes no longer require special h andling regarding camera clip planes - AV8B model updated for new cockpit modeling workflow and removed unused vertex colors - AV8B no longer uses unique shader - Near clip plane for ALL cameras is now 0.05 (most were 1.0) - Far clip plane for ALL cameras is now 100k - When escape menu modal dialogs are open, escape will close it - Floating origin now applies in the vertical Bugfixes: - Page selectors on database mode now work - Instant action wing selector pages should work correctly when multiple pages are visible - Pressing escape during the pause menu while settings or bindings are open won't continue game - Fog and clouds no longer disappear when loading Instant Action after Arena - AI aircraft flying in formation automatically switch back to nav mode - Cockpit no longer shakes at higher altitude - "Investigate" AI behavior correctly accounts for floating origin - "Idle Orbit" AI behavior correctly accounts for floating origin - "Climb" AI behavior correctly accounts for floating origin - Arena icons no longer appear for a single frame near origin when a unit spawns - Camera text correctly accounts for the floating origin - Radar altimeter and shadows should be handled better when flying "out of bounds" - Paging for the wing selector and database selector should work correctly for edge cases - When vehicles fall off the navmesh, they instead report (with error messages) that they did, but also shouldn't call any invalid NavMeshAgents - Optimized how stores weight is calculated (was an unexpected bottleneck) - Changes to audio mix to hopefully reduce missing engine sounds - Afterburner thrust value no longer affects aircraft if no afterburner is available - AV8B MFD Cruise page minimum speed IAS/TAS now matches the Game HUD minimum speed - Landing gear can no longer be raised/lower post-ejection - Terrain raycasting better accounts for vertical floating origin - Aircraft no longer spawns underground in Arena if a new sortie JSON: - Warning shown in log when collider is missing - Added "HideInFirstPerson" list to aircraft definition (see AV8B JSON for example) - Added "Avionics" property to aircraft with sub-property "MinDisplayedAirspeedMPS"

Tiny Combat Arena

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