Cleared Hot News

Hello faithful wishlisters, I have some big news: We have a publisher: Microprose!

Microprose has published well known games like Civilization, Xcom, and Falcon 4.0, and recently have been publishing a lot of flight + action games.

[h2]Announcement Trailer[/h2]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h3]What this means for you[/h3]
The game is getting additional support, through development, launch, and after launch. So basically, the game will be better, and you can have a higher confidence in it.

[h3]What this means for Cleared Hot[/h3]
We get a lot more help, which allows for us to focus on the game. Microprose will help with funding, marketing, press outreach, translation / localization, along with some dev, art, and moral support.

[h2]New Content[/h2]

[h3]Enemy Strafing Runs[/h3]
We added a new enemy jet that does strafing runs on your position. It is especially challenging for our new mission where you need to carry some explosive containers back to your base.

You might want to change directions...

[h3]New Jungle Biome[/h3]
We redid the jungle biome with our new terrain system, including a dense tree canopy.
It's nice to see some more green

[h3]Quadcopter Prototype[/h3]
Why? Because on Saturday I drank two coffees and said f*ck it, I wonder if I can add a drone to the game. Maybe it will appear in a special mission or two. Yay or nay?

I can hear this gif

[h2]25 Years In The Making[/h2]

Signing with Microprose completes a story that started 25 years ago, when my mom bought me Falcon 4.0 and a joystick that BestBuy had mistakenly priced at $20.

Twelve year old me read that if you learned how to fly in the game, you could fly a real F-16. This gave me a feeling of agency in my kid-life that I had never felt before.

Well, I got home and the game didn't run on our PC. Aaand my vision sucks. Spoiler alert, I'm not a fighter pilot. But, I still read the manual and the feeling of agency stuck with me. I think a lot of us felt empowered by video games when we were young: they provided a challenge that we could tackle on our own.

So, it feels pretty f*cking crazy to be signing with Microprose, 25 years later. And you know what, I have all of you to thank for that (and my mom). Without your interest and wishlists, this would not have happened. Seriously, this is life changing for me. So thank you!

- Colin "cfinger" and the Cleared Hot team

Hello Pilots,

Since we last spoke, we've been hard at work on creating air drops, supply crates, using a new terrain tool.

Oh and if you're missing the gifs in this update, you have Steam to thank. I can't upload gifs larger than 1.2MB right now. So I guess we'll do a youtube video instead.



We were playing around w the idea that rescuing NPCs should give the player some kind of reward. At first, we tried just spawning health or ammo crates on the ground.

But then I realized that isn't the Cleared Hot way. We have physics.



[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Thank god for that physics pillar.

We updated the Ammo crates, and added a new Health crate to the game. We also added some UI indicators, that give the player info on what's in the crate.





Over the last months, I started to notice how clunky it was for our artist, Mane, to modify the terrain. It was a procedurally generated, which works great once you have it set up, but if you want to move a hill over by 10 feet... forget it. You have to regenerate the whole terrain.

This made it especially difficult to adjust levels for gameplay reasons. So on a whim, we decided to take a couple days to investigate a new tool and see if it would be better. I was pleasantly surprised.

You use "Stamps" to define terrain features, or vegetation, and it updates in real time.

800kB gif... you can't stop me, Steam

After experimenting, we replaced the terrain in our current Desert scene. It went really quickly, and gave us some more variation in surface and how we textured the ground.





I've learned that the quality of art you get from artists is directly proportional to the quality of their tools... Plus, iterating quickly is something all of us want (devs, 3d artists, sound... etc).

The screenshots from the Apache update already show the new terrain, with mountains in the background.


As always, thank you for your support. This game wouldn't be getting made without your interest and wishlists, so thanks.

I've been interacting with people who joined the email list, thanks for all your kind / excited emails. We're not far from starting to do some beta testing. More on that soon.

- Colin "cfinger" and the Cleared Hot team

Today, we announce the REAL Apache. For those that don't know, the previous Apache announcement turned out to be a Cobra announcement. Oops.

And let's just say, it slipped by totally unnoticed.



Thanks to Semper Scrotus and Major Borngusfluunduch8694, nothing gets past you guys :D

It was just a test to see if you were paying attention. Anyways...




As compared to the Little Bird, the Apache is:

• More powerful (heavier main cannon, more advanced missiles)
  
• More armor / can take more damage
  
• Accelerates more slowly
  
• Longer cannon and missile range
  
• Flies at a slightly higher altitude (but this can be controlled)
  

The best thing is, it actually feels a heavier in-game. This is why I love having physics based movement in Cleared Hot. You just increase the mass, and maybe the center of mass, and it instantly feels different.


I hear you already, Seargent Scrotus- "but wait, there's only 2 seats in the Apache, why are 3 NPCs running towards it?"

[h2]Anything is a seat if you're brave enough[/h2]

I was updating the passenger system for the Apache when I started wondering, has anyone ever sat on the outside ledge before?



To my suprise, this has been done in real life. I did some research and went to the discord for feedback.


Feedback received.

Whoever drew the short straw can throw down a little return fire themselves.



[h2]New Missile: AGM-114 Hellfire[/h2]
This is the base missile on the Apache, and does more damage than the standard Hydra missiles on the Littlebird. The missiles start out at a slower speed, but accelerate as they fly.



Getting the missiles to hit directly where they were aimed didn't come "out of the box". Most everything in the game is physics based, so flying fast and shooting a missile would result in a different missile path than firing it when not moving.

This is a gameplay decision- but for now, I wanted the missiles to hit the spot they were aimed when you fired them. It also is possible that for higher damage missiles, maybe they should be a bit harder to aim. You might have to consider which side of the helo they're firing from, and your speed.

[h2]Blessed by the Youtube Gods[/h2]


I uploaded the new trailer to our YouTube channel, that had maybe 13 subscribers. I really didn't expect anything. Well, to our surprise the trailer took off. We're now at 337,000 views, which is INSANE.

I can't tell you how exciting and motivating this is for us. Thanks for all the likes and comments.

[h2]Join the Email List[/h2]

If you're just joining us, sign up for the email list here: https://clearedhotgame.com/email-list/

We will be using this list to release small playtest builds. We don't have a date for this yet, but people on the email list will get it first.

As always, thanks for your support. We are really cranking away on things and can't wait to share more with you soon.

- Colin "cfinger" and the Cleared Hot team

Hey Everyone,

Today we released our new trailer! There's a lot of new content in this one. Grab the popcorn and have a watch below.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Feedback[/h2]
We want to hear your feedback! What were your first impressions? Ideas? Thoughts? You guys are our hardcore fans so we want to hear from you.


We posted a gif from parts of the trailer on /r/gaming this morning, and it has been BLOWING UP. It is a little surreal. It has been at the top of /r/gaming all day and it's now in the top 25 of r/all.

This is pretty much our best case scenario for increasing awareness of the game. I am sitting here refreshing like an idiot. I will get back to work Monday, okay.




We've updated all the screenshots and gifs on the main page, along with the descriptions and tags. I've received feedback from some of you about the text + tags, and that has been super helpful.




We're also tweeting the new trailer as part of a twitter event called #pitchyagame, which is followed by players as well as publishers. Every like + retweet helps!




You all have been amazingly supportive. Some of you have been here for over 2 years! That is hard to believe. Thank you. Making games is hard, but your support makes it way more motivating.

Lately I feel as if we're gaining momentum, especially with the help of a really solid small team. This trailer feels like an important milestone, I hope you enjoy it too. All of your interest and wishlists have got us this far, so thank you.

Colin

Hello again!

You all seemed to like the "I f*cked up" post, it got way more likes than any other devlog. I guess my takeaway is: make more mistakes :)

Seriously though, thanks- it's great to have your support.

On to what we've been working on the last few weeks.

[h2]New Level[/h2]

We've been building a new level that will be a combat heavy high action mission. As the game progresses, the missions will be more focused around combat, and we're finding that heavily defended bases make for fun gameplay.




I'm really happy with the direction of this level, we're learning a lot about how these combat heavy missions can look and feel.

Big thank you to Mane aka @m4ndrill who I managed to hire after DMing him on reddit awhile back! He's been wrangling our 3d art and lighting on this new level. I'm really happy how this level came out, I can't wait to show you more. Mane would also want me to tell you this is a work-in-progress, despite it looking amazing.

[h2]Prototyping Gameplay Directions[/h2]

I find that development goes in cycles: prototyping, implementing, testing, bug fixing, repeat. Sometimes it's helpful to prototype things without any visual assets, what people call "gray-boxing".

Now that we have a handful of enemy units, and the core of things is generally working, we're exploring a few other game design prototypes to understand where our levels will go.

I consider the 5 second game loop to be just the core mechanics: flying, shooting, dodging, landing, picking things up with the rope. Those things are all pretty solid and feel good (although we will tweak these continously).

The 2nd level game loop is somewhere between 5 seconds and 1 minute. It's using the combination of core mechanics to do something a bit more complex. It's like, understanding the patterns or limitations of enemies and using that to your advantage.

For example, Desert Strike, near and dear to my heart, had you exploit a few things:

• Approaching AA guns from behind
  
• Shooting units from outside their range
  
• Using map knowledge to approach from easier directions
  

Since we have the benefit of 30 years of game engine and CPU/GPU progress, we get to expand on this a bit. We also have physics :flex:

In order to do this we're building up some quick tools to easily make builds with these grayboxed / prototype levels. I'm a kid of the PS1 era, so I always think of metal gear solid "VR" missions, where they basically gave you some difficult prototype missions that made you perfect all the mechanics.



Right now we're building up tools to allow us to make "playtest" builds that are just prototype levels, to play between the team and our friends, as we explore some different directions the game can go.

This was my first experiment, the UBER turret.


You can survive for about 0.3 seconds infront of this thing. It is however, fast to kill. It helps to really enforce certain behavior, and it actually feels really fun to go up against difficult enemies.

Things we're exploring:

• Altitude in level design: hiding from turrets from below or above
  
• Variations in turrets: extremely dangerous but slow to turn
  
• Missiles: making it more effective to shoot them down, and other strategies
  
• Using map knowledge to approach from easier directions
  
• Making NPCs a bit less random, and dangerous if not avoided
  
• Directional damage: making the player approach from behind
  

We're also exploring different ways to defeat the anti-air turrets. This includes new types of missiles, with different strategies to defeat them. Both dodging and shooting down the missiles should be feasible.

One strategy is to just redirect them back :D



[h2]Thanks[/h2]
Thanks for reading! Let us know if you have suggestions or ideas of gameplay you want to see prototyped!

As for what's next, we'll be working on gameplay until the next update, as well as the new teaser video. Stay tuned for more updates soon, or follow along on Twitter for more content.

Colin