Tiny Combat Arena News

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

Hello! It's been a month since the last release. I try to keep a monthly release schedule but this month's work has ballooned into something large enough that a release at this very moment (even on the tester's branch) is not possible. However, there is good news and progress that I'm very excited to share.

In summary, vehicles are in the middle of a large refactor to fix blocking issues preventing more interesting maps, but has expanded to include big optimizations for guns, bullets, and their visual effects.

[h2]Pathfinding[/h2]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
The above video shows ~500 vehicles doing pathfinding on a map that is (theoretically) 100km across, at 200 FPS. Vehicles have never, and could never, drive across a bridge like this before.

The core feature I was interested in was pathfinding for the vehicles. At first, I was planning on writing this myself and applying it only at the formation level. However, a friend pointed me to the Unity pathfinding package. I was skeptical because of my previous experience with Unity packages, especially those marked experimental, but this proved to be shockingly effective and easy to use.

After some quick prototyping, I found out that this could not only be used for pathfinding, but as a replacement for the current, and very expensive vehicle physics. Put simply, rather than vehicles running their own kinda strange physics, they can instead just follow the navmesh which is a "good enough" approximation of the map, bypassing the need for expensive ground clamping and physics calculations.

With the integration of proper pathfinding, not only does this mean that vehicles can correctly path their way around mountains, buildings, and airfields, but their performance is dramatically improved. There were some very big scares in the implementation particularly with regards to the game's floating origin, but those hyper-critical issues have been resolved enough (navigation takes place in something like a parallel universe 😂) that this is a way forwards.

Worth mentioning too is that this also addresses many old reported issues of vehicles such as their shaky movement when going over uneven ground.

[h2]Gun/Bullet optimizations + Externalization of Data[/h2]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
In the process of updating the vehicles, I accidentally ended up doing that turret/bullet refactor I've been dreaming about. Bullets are pooled in a much smarter way, which in particular effects AAA, and all the many little bugs they had (such as disappearing tracers) are now fixed. This was a pretty deep rabbit hole that has resulted in new particle effects for most of the bullet based weapons along with new and improved sound effects, especially for bullet flybys. Please keep in mind that several effects are still WIP, since right now the tanks are using machinegun impacts.



This rework also allowed bullet data to be loaded from JSON like everything else. They can be edited by anybody, it's easier for me to make new ones, and most importantly, no longer rely on hardcoded and unmodifiable prefabs.

[h2]What does this mean going forwards?[/h2]


As anybody who has seen me talking about this on the MicroProse Discord would know, I am really excited about this.

[h3]1. The game can hit its vehicle targets[/h3]


The current arena demo, which featured ~120 vehicles, was already at the tipping point of what I was comfortable with performance-wise. There wasn't room to go bigger from there. My original target for active vehicle counts has been around 500 vehicles. While that isn't Falcon 4.0 numbers of vehicles (thousands...), I was never going for that. An upper limit of ~500 units on the map sizes I intend the game to have affords both the scale and "living battlefield" feel that I'm aiming for.

One of my primary goals for Tiny Combat was for the player to feel like they were instrumental in winning a larger battle taking place on the ground rather than isolated dogfights in the clouds. This is one big step closer to that.

[h3]2. Much more interesting maps[/h3]


The new pathfinding code comes with many new features I am so excited about, some of which I wasn't expecting to ever be solved. Bodies of water such as rivers and lakes can block unit movement. Vehicles can correctly drive over bridges. They will prefer to drive on roads when possible, and avoid driving over the runway! They can even drive through tunnels. Oh yeah, and they aren't restricted to flat ground anymore.



One of my biggest anxieties with the game has been map design and terrains. A combination of technical and design issues has made terrains the most difficult subject for me to approach because of both specific technical limitations regarding the game's style, and how vehicles could possibly be incorporated into them. Even something as simple as a base being on higher ground than another base was pretty much off the table until now, let alone having the AI navigate around mountains, through ravines, and over bodies of water.

A great weight has been lifted from my shoulders with this, allowing me to focus more on producing interesting maps, scenarios, and content to fly around (and through 👀) without isolating ground vehicles from the action. There's some dream ideas I've had for maps since the project began that are now possible and I thank you all for sticking with me through this journey. There's still work to be done before this can be re-integrated fully into Arena, but it's getting close.

Hello, this is a small patch meant to address some issues found after the last release. None of these are critical, but they were low hanging fruit. Since the next patch will involve some pretty heavy lifting, I figured it was worth putting out a hotfix rather than having these wait on a big and unrelated patch.

Balance:
- Minimum radius for splash damage calculation now 33% from 25%, increasing the lethality of all splash damage

Improvements:
- Mk82, Mk83, and Mk84 have small, medium, and large explosion visual effects respectively
- Explosion crater size pulled from JSON data files

Bugfixes:
- IR missiles can no longer lock onto buildings
- Chaff/Flares reloaded when rearming/refueling
- Vehicle dust trails no longer disappear the instant the vehicle is destroyed
- Fixed error caused by missile seekers tracking an expired flare

[h3]Snakeyes[/h3]


A new bomb has been added to the game, the Mk82 Snakeye. These are high-drag bombs designed for high speed passes at low altitude. Their slow fall speed allows you to leave the blast area before they detonate on the ground or on a target. The new bombs can be found in a new loadout named "High Drag Bombs".

[h3]Threat Warning Display and Cockpit Switch Audio[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
You will now receive audio cues from the Threat Warning Display when:

• A radar has been detected (short beep)
  
• A radar now has you locked (constant beep)
  

This is meant to help prepare the game for the upcoming SAMs, by giving the player more tools to understand when they're in danger. This also ties into changes made to the ground vehicles to make them more threatening.

In addition to the threat audio, nearly all actions have switch audio cues to help provide feedback. It's minor, but I love the immersive feeling it gives when doing actions such as adjusting weapons or targeting.

[h3]Weapons Camera[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
A feature that has been on the backlog for a while, you can now watch munitions you've fired all the way to impact. This is a really fun way to get cool footage and see the effects of your weapons.

[h3]Balance Updates[/h3]


While the tools to detect when you're in danger have gotten better, so have the threats themselves. AAA vehicles now use radar to detect and engage targets. Their fire is more accurate, and their ammunition now uses proximity fuzes.

In general, how deadly something is should be correlated to how much warning you get. The radar directed Shilkas and Vulcans in the game right now are more on the high end of what AAA should be, so they appear visually and audibly on the Threat Warning Display. In the future there will more variety to anti-aircraft fire.

The full patch notes are below.

[h2]Patch notes[/h2]

New Features:
- Added four-stage weapon camera, default key: F6
  + Before launch: camera gives a view of the currently selected weapon under the wings
  + After launch: camera follows weapon from third person to the target
  + Before impact: camera cuts to a flyby to show the impact
  + After impact: camera follows what was hit by the munition
- Once weapon camera starts following a weapon, the normal external/chase/flyby cameras work on it as well
- Added Mk82 Snakeyes and High Drag bomb loadout
- AAA now hooked into sensor system and uses radars to detect and lock targets
- M163 and Shilka now have radar hardpoints their radars are mounted to
- Added NAV mode accessible by holding the "select next weapon" bind, or with the new default keybind: `
  + When in NAV mode, HUD reads NAV, and all weapons are safed
  + When in free flight, aircraft defaults to NAV mode
- New "select previous weapon" keybind added (defaults to mouse scroll up)
- Added chaff/flare counter inside the AV8B cockpit
- Added chaff/flare counter to the Threat Warning Display
- Icon size for both Radar and TWD can now be adjusted in settings (defaults to 75%)
- Option added to hide allies from the TWD and Radar
- TWD HIDES allies by default, radar SHOWS allies by default
- New audio levels available for tweaking in settings: Missile growl, interior engine, warning tones, cockpit effects
- When performing actions such as flaps, targeting, etc. various switch sounds will be heard for audio feedback

Balance:
- Proximity fuze on AAA bullets increased from 1 to 10
- Blast radius on AAA bullets increased to from 10 to 15
- "Fulda" houses have greatly reduced HP (100, 200, 300 for 1, 2, and 5 respectively)
- AAA is more accurate, but less precise

Improvements:
- Unity updated to 2020.3.30f1
- Reduced minimum allowable setting for camera smooth speed to 1
- Smoothed switch between padlock camera and cockpit camera
- Slight optimizations for all viewable objects
- Stores are now viewable with the camera system
- Cluster munitions "fake explode" so they can be tracked easily with a camera
- Indicated airspeed displays only positive value
- Updated credits with new music and sound contributions
- Center of mass offsets from destroyed wings greatly reduced (experimental change!)
  + Should make the plane act less weird after losing a wing?
- Pressing the nav mode hotkey while in nav mode leaves nav mode
- When leaving nav mode by selecting next weapon, the last selected weapon will still be selected
- Wording of range on the threat warning display and radar changed to clarify that it's miles
- Slight change to the threat warning display design
- Lower cloud layer is lower and more numerous
- High cloud layer uses larger Clouds
- Support for arbitrary number of cloud layers (no player-facing change)
- Ranging logic shouldn't put contacts at the very edge of the Radar/TWD anymore
- Minor stylistic updates to the radar display
- Audio sliders now snap in increments of 5

Bugfixes:
- Cockpit view shoulder peeking matches smoothing settings
- Camera no longer pans across the seat when looking over shoulder at opposite sides
- Fixed chase camera producing incorrect audio when the look at target has died
- No more "ghost page" in multi-selector dialog when exactly 10 items appeared on a page
- When a cluster bomb explodes near a building, the log is no longer spammed with warnings
- Removed unused hangar mode scene
- Fixed tracers going weird on origin shift (known issue: tracers can disappear for a single frame during origin shift)
- IR growl no longer continues after player death
- IR growl can no longer be heard in third person
- G text updates correctly in third person camera stats
- Switching weapons while in weapons camera will update the camera text correctly
- Fixed bug where bomb fall line could appear when looking 90 degrees off the nose
- Threat warning audio no longer plays after death or sortie end
- Threat warning audio can be heard and correctly updates regardless of if the HUD is visible (e.g. third person)

v0.8.3.3 is now available on the testers branch. This patch was to specifically address the biggest complaint that the weapons camera had, which is not being able to view munitions you've already launched/dropped.

This also fixes another bug that specifically happened with bombs dropped in the weapons camera. It was pretty difficult to track down, but it also lead to fixing the source of several other problems the CCIP bomb piper had so it was worth it.

For more information on the tester's branch and how to join it, please see this Steam event post.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Improvements:
- Weapons camera can view the most recently launched munition

Bugfixes:
- Weapons camera no longer sometimes looks at the wrong location
- CCIP bomb fall line no longer glitches to "no solution" for random frames
- CCIP bomb sight should be slightly more accurate