1. Tiny Combat Arena
  2. News

Tiny Combat Arena News

Version 0.9.0.5 is available on the Tester's Branch!

Hello! The finished version of the old prototype targeting work is finally in. I wanted to get this into the patch before it goes live, since the difficulty in targeting high threat targets is one of the game's most common criticisms.

[h2]The new Targeting[/h2]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
As you move the targeting crosshair around (hidden when looking forwards), a selection of 6 targets will be specially highlighted. Pressing the target button, the radar will cycle between these targets. Most importantly, this selection is prioritized by threat, so AAA like Shilkas will be targeted before a tank that is not a threat.



Anti-aircraft vehicles also now have a unique targeting icon to make it easier to pick them out.



It's worth mentioning again that the targeting is based around the screen center, allowing you to target by looking at something. When off-boresight, a small crosshair will appear in the center of the screen to give you a reference point to aim with.

[h2]Changelog:[/h2]
New Features:
- Added key (Shift-H by default) to toggle visibility of Arena symbology while flying

Improvements:
- Targeting logic creates a group of selectable objects
- Target button cycles between this group of objects
- Selectable objects are prioritized by type so that threats are targeted first

Bugfixes:
- Fixed bug where errors could be thrown by bullets when leaving Arena mode
- Strela classified as SAM instead of vehicle

0.9.0.4 is on the Tester's branch!

Hello! The patch notes for this one are short, but there were some substantial under the hood changes.

Instant Action functionality has been restored. In particular, the Strike mode. The new vehicle code changed some pretty fundamental assumptions on how vehicles should work, so the Strike code needed to be adapted to work with these new systems. From a feature level, it should be identical, though the vehicles will pathfind a bit now, as opposed to before where they drove in a straight line to the target.

With this patch, the new vehicles are now on par with, or exceed all the features of the old vehicle code! If testing of this build goes well, it'll be pushed to live soon.

[h2]Changelog:[/h2]

New Features:
- Instant Action is functional again

Improvements:
- In instant action, groups of vehicles are spawned in based on the faction defined formations
- Removed ~3700 lines of old vehicle and vehicle adjacent code (no game change, but I'm really happy about it)
- When a strategic target has negative MaxSupply, the UI will not show supply at all

Bugfixes:
- Fixed group icon sometimes appearing at the origin for vehicles marked important (i.e. AAA)

0.9.0.3 is available on the Tester's branch!

[h2]What's New?[/h2]
Hello! This is a small fix, but one I wanted to get out quickly because of the performance concerns.

The Database Viewer has been re-enabled, and has now been updated to use the new vehicle code.

More importantly though, if you played more than one Arena mission, the performance continue to degrade every time Arena was loaded. The brunt of this FPS drop was ironically felt in the Main Menu screen, but either way it worried me enough that I wanted to get a patch out to address it ASAP.

[h2]What's Next?[/h2]

The next patch will focus on getting Instant Action Strike missions working again. This will require some level of redesign, or perhaps re-framing of what a "formation" is, and is used for. Vehicles spawn in and fight at the platoon level now instead of at the company level with sometimes mixed platoon types.

[h2]Changelog:[/h2]
Improvements:
- Database mode is re-enabled
- Database shows statistics for multiple turrets (see M60A1) in a nicer format
- Bullets are initialized only once on game startup
- Drastically improved performance in the main menu

Bugfixes:
- Added missing barrel to M1A1 that was preventing it from spawning
- Missile turreted vehicles don't error check for barrels
- SA-9 and SA-2 can spawn without errors again
- Performance no longer sharply degrades after every level load
- Bullet effects no longer play a SFX at the origin on game start

0.9.0.2 is on the Tester's Branch!

Hello and thank you for your patience! This was going to be a quick one-day hotfix but one thing led to another, turning it into something much more substantial.

[h2]Revised View System[/h2]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
In order to expand the things that the camera can look at, there's been a slight rework on how views are selected.

External (F2), Chase (F3), Flyby (F4), and Weapon (F6) now only function to select cameras on the currently viewed object. Pressing F1 will always take you back to the cockpit of your plane and reset the viewed object to yourself.

Meanwhile, Vehicle (F7) and Aircraft (F8) can be used to cycle between all active vehicles and aircraft, setting them as the new viewed object. All the external cameras work on anything viewable, though the Weapon camera applies only to aircraft.

You can do the flyby camera on vehicles too, even if it looks a little silly.

[h2]Improved Targeting[/h2]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

A prototype of a tweaked targeting system has made it in. The target that you will target next will be enlarged to the same size as a selected target, but not with the opacity of a selected target. This gives you some indication of what you will target next, as well as makes it more clear how the targeting system works.

When off-boresight, a small crosshair will appear that you can use to more clearly target something. Off-boresight targeting was already a feature, but I think most didn't know about it because the targeting logic was so opaque.

[h2]Flying Below Radar[/h2]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Surprise new feature: you can fly below the radars of the Shilkas to avoid fire. This is probably temporary for this specific Shilka variant, since they are supposed to be horribly scary to try and kill at close range, but this is now a feature that can be applied to anything with radar. Keep in mind though that for the time being, this feature is only in use on the AAA radars. A pass on air to air combat, which will include refinement of the radar mechanics (and missiles), is still upcoming.



I'd also like to take this time to remind people that there is a radar altimeter under the normal barometric one which appears at low altitude. To fly under the Shilka's radar, you'll want to be around 150 feet AGL or lower!

[h2]Defensive Posture and Scenario Balancing[/h2]


The previous patch had little regard to balancing put into it, so some corrections have been made. The largest of which is that vehicles can now adopt a defensive posture. When defending, vehicles will place themselves near a base, but position themselves such that they'll block an avenue of attack. Some vehicle groups have been reassigned to defend, while new defensive groups have been added to other bases.

This alone will help to curb a lot of the difficulty as the AI (anti-aircraft in particular!) won't be so hyper-aggressive at attacking bases. All the AAA are now defensive as they were originally intended to be. It's been lightened in the middle of the map, but the final objective still has two groups of Shilkas to contend with.

Vehicles will also now avoid wreckages, which can result in some interesting scenarios where a road gets so cluttered with wrecks that the vehicles will start to avoid the road entirely.

[h2]Some thoughts on balance and difficulty[/h2]
I actually really enjoyed the previous patch's balance! While I understand it was difficult, what it really showed me is that not only can the game scale in difficulty but it scales in the way I originally intended it to. The mission was still winnable, but it required that you be on top of what was happening on a strategic level, and to make very key and pointed attacks with specialized weapons to cripple fronts. As some guy once said, you have to read the tide of battle.

Since AI travel along roads (though they might avoid them now if they get too bombed out!), you could totally cripple an offensive with a well aimed cluster bomb run. Destroying the Shilkas was of utmost importance, and with some fancy flying you can get close enough to gun them down, or plink at them from a distance with Mavericks if you prefer. If you didn't, they would be knocking at your doorstep and there's nothing you can do, making their destruction (or of their source) a top priority.

On some level, I'm a bit sad to be slightly nerfing the Shilkas and making the mission easier, but in due time there will be a campaign and multiple missions for which these things can be designed and balanced around. It was so encouraging to see that all come together in my recent playthroughs of the game, and I can't wait to start adding larger and more robust maps.

[h2]Full Changelog[/h2]
New Features:
- Vehicles can be viewed using F7 and Shift-F7 (See Improvements)
- Vehicles will avoid and drive around wreckages
- Small cross is visible in view center to help with targeting
- The next object to be targeted has its target box enlarged
- Minimum altitude mechanic under which a radar cannot detect a target, or will lose a lock
- Shilka/M163 have a minimum detection altitude of 50 meters/~150 feet AGL
- Added defensive mission for vehicles
- Defensive vehicles will position themselves between an adjacent hostile strategic target and their own
- Support for named vehicle groups

Improvements:
- Vehicles will avoid airports a little more (but will still drive over them if they think its quicker)
- Default cockpit horizontal FOV is now 75 degrees at 16:9
- Vehicles are more spread out and will try not to clump up as tightly
- View system redesign to allow for more robust cycling between objects
- External, Chase, Flyby, and Weapon are view types and do NOT cycle between viewables
- Next/Previous Vehicle (F7/Shift-F7) cycles the viewed object between vehicles
- Next/Previous Aircraft (F8/Shift-F8) cycles the viewed object between aircraft
- Removed bindings for Previous Externa/Chase (Shift-F2/Shift-F3)
- External/Chase camera can't look under vehicles

Bugfixes:
- F2 camera no longer cycles to ground vehicles
- Fixed invalid vehicle spawn after Kogasa Arms Fort was captured by USSR
- Vehicles ride rougher when off-road and smoothly when on-road (logic was reversed)
- Groups of 1 no longer get stuck and unable to issue commands
- Target location for vehicles when moving will be in the correct formation
- Armored units will move to a new location when their target base has been captured
- Armored units should no longer cluster around the center of the target base
- Vehicles no longer change target every second
- Vehicles correctly prioritize targets again (e.g. tanks targeting tanks)

Balance:
- M163/Shilka max range reduced 4km -> 3km
- M60s from Kogasa and T80s from Ichirin are now defensive
- Murasa Shilka groups reduced to 1 and now defend the base
- Added 2 groups of defensive Shilkas so Toramaru

0.9.0.1 is on the Tester's Branch!

Hello! This was a long time coming and represents some very major milestones in the game's development. For a quick recap of what's been happening, read check out the previous news post regarding vehicles.

Until all features are restored, these new features are restricted to the TESTERS BRANCH of the game. Due to recent code changes, ONLY ARENA IS ACCESSIBLE IN THIS BUILD. Instant Action and Database have been temporarily disabled. For more information on how to access the tester's branch, see this Steam news post.

In addition to the features mentioned in the vehicles Steam news post, another major change and addition is how vehicles are spawned into Arena.

[h2]Groups and Supplies[/h2]


Vehicles are now spawned in groups rather than the gigantic and cumbersome formations. This gives more flexibility to how they move around the battlefield, and helps to spread the units out a bit more. Battles are a lot cooler to watch now!

Strategic Targets now have supplies and scenario defined group limits. Each base can support a certain number of groups of certain vehicle types. Strategic targets will automatically "build" new groups to hit their unit cap, and will replace groups that have been destroyed. Building is not instantaneous, though for the moment it is very quick.

Building vehicle groups costs supplies! Each group has a cost associated with it and if the strategic target expends all of its supplies it can no longer build units. Destroying units matters way more now that bases have supplies. If you destroy enough of their vehicles to run it out of supplies, those vehicles are gone forever. It makes vehicles much more valuable than before.

[h2]Testers Branch means there will be bugs![/h2]
As stated above, ONLY ARENA IS ACCESSIBLE IN THIS BUILD. There's also a few things that are going to be a bit rough in this build, as the vehicle changes are not quite done yet.

  • The Arena UI is currently very busy. The way strategic targets are represented, along with much of the Arena UI, will be getting a pass once the vehicle work is finished as it is in a placeholder state.
  • Balance is going to be pretty wonky. Right now the mission is designed more around testing features than being very balanced. Many vehicles, tanks in particular, got some pretty big stats changes, so how they fit into combat has shifted.
  • The AI for vehicles is about halfway there. The capture AI shouldn't all try to converge on one point, and the attack AI should do a better job of seeking out targets. The AI should also spread out more when in combat rather than clump up on the roads. These are all known issues and are planned to be fixed.
  • Vehicles with machineguns (AAA and APCs) are actually a lot more accurate than they should be, due to some unimplemented code, but I kind of like it.

[h2]Share your Feedback![/h2]
I'm very curious to hear you all's thoughts on how this affects the flow of the game, and what you think can be improved.

This moves the game much closer to my original goal of the player's main mission being to support and influence the ground battles, so I'm very excited with where this will go now that maps can get a lot more interesting. These new mechanics also open the door to some interesting ideas that I plan on exploring such as supply convoys to replenish supplies.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]

New Features:
- New navmesh driven vehicles
- Vehicles will prefer roads when out of Combat
- Vehicles can navigate around fixed obstacles such as buildings
- Completely new turret code for vehicles
- Vehicles can now have multiple turrets
- Completely new bullet code (used only by vehicles at the moment)
- Bullets created and loaded through JSON data, exposing them for editing
- Bullet constants file defines pools for different types of bullets and effects
- Bullets and their visual effects pooled in a new, less disruptive way
- Sensors are added to the vehicle, not the turret
- Individual turrets can now be linked to specific sensors on the vehicle
- Added error messages when spawning vehicles with invalid weapon or bullet names
- Added error messages for invalid barrel and firepoint subparts, or turrets with no barrels
- Navmesh support for "Sand Island" map
- Buildings have built in "no go" navmesh option
- Bridges default to "road" navmesh
- Vehicles now operate in "Groups" instead of massive formations
- Strategic Targets can support a scenario defined number of Groups
- Groups are "built" one at a time, and require supplies to build
- Strategic Target icons show group and "construction" related information
- Strategic Targets can be run out of supplies to prevent spawning of new vehicles
- When a strategic target is destroyed, its supplies are destroyed with it
- If a Strategic Target has - Vehicle groups in combat will slow down to fire on the move and try to avoid roads
- Vehicles further from camera run at reduced tick rates to allow for higher vehicle counts
- "IsImportant" flag used on vehicles that require full fidelity regardless of distance (e.g. AAA)

Improvements:
- Vehicle movement has been significantly optimized
- Vehicles no longer clip into and overlap each other
- Bullets and their visual effects should no longer produce intermittent stuttering
- JSON: Renamed TurretBase->TurretAzimuth and Barrels->TurretElevation
- JSON: Explicitly defined Barrel data now required for turrets
- Significantly optimized targeting calculations allow for all vehicles to use bullets with gravity
- Tank cannons now named after their real cannons
- New visual effects for all machinegun impact types (Hit, Penetrate, Water, Grass, Explode)
- Crater counts adjusted (Small 175->100, Medium 75->150)
- Machineguns can not be heard from as far away
- Cannons can be heard from further away
- Bullet flyby SFX completely redone
- Longer tracers
- Targeting priorities are now specified on the turret level
- Max range and targeting priorities of a vehicle moved to the turrets in the Database
- Dust trail effect tweaked for performance
- JSON: BurstLength now refers to how many shots per burst rather than a time interval
- Vehicles wiggle a bit when off-road to simulate suspension
- Aircraft guns use new impact SFX
- Garbage collection optimizations for the old style bullets (still in use by aircraft)
- Capturing of Stratgic Targets now happens in smooth "real time" versus one second "ticks"
- Experimental incremental garbage collection enabled

Balance:
- Fixed scaling options not applied to wreckages
- M60A1 has a functional machinegun turret on top of its main turret
- Machineguns no longer use thick bullets
- Tank shell velocity more closely matches their real stats (1500-1700 m/s depending on gun)
- M68 mounted on M1 is more accurate than the standard one mounted on the M60
- T80B has its own more powerful gun and projectile (2A46-2, 125mm)

Bugfixes:
- Planar shadows render correctly for scaled buildings (i.e. bridges)
- Bullets fired from AAA will no longer disappear when the vehicle is destroyed
- Looping gun audio works correctly for vehicles (affected M163 and Shilka)
- Ocean shader uses same depth offset as terrain
- M1A1 has a proper barrel submesh for recoiling barrel animation
- Potential fix for the elusive CAP null reference error that would shut down a flight of jets