Tiny Combat Arena News

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.

[h2]Official TrackIR Plugin[/h2]



The absolutely ancient TrackIR plugin I've been using for almost 10 years 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.

[h2]Steam Screenshots[/h2]



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.

[h2]Behind the Scenes[/h2]

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.



[h2]Changelog[/h2]

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

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

[h2]Changelog[/h2]

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"

[h2]Changelog[/h2]

Bugfixes
- Terrain raycasting better accounts for vertical floating origin
- Aircraft no longer spawns underground in Arena if a new sortie

Audio is one of the more difficult things to work on because it relies on a third party middleware, is very difficult to debug, and for various reasons is very fragile and difficult to source control, so it's always a slog whenever I adjust anything of checking back to make sure I didn't break everything. That said, there are two audio changes this patch:

1. Audio priorities have been changed around a bit to hopefully make the disappearing player engine audio less likely.
   
2. Sliders have been added to settings to raise the number of simultaneous channels that can be heard.
   

The second change is kind of a hack, but until I find a more permanent and robust solution to the reported audio problems it's the best I can do. Raising the audio channels will make it less likely for sounds to cut out or not play correctly, but there is some CPU cost to this.

There's still a couple remaining issues that are likely caused by the updated floating origin. Once those are fixed, this will be pushed to the main branch.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]

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

Bugfixes:
- 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

JSON:
- Added "Avionics" property to aircraft with sub-property "MinDisplayedAirspeedMPS"

Known Issue:
- In Arena, taking off, climbing to 30k feet, then ending sortie and respawning, can put the plane under-ground

[h2]Changelog:[/h2]

Bugfixes:
- 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