Version 0.9.307 Update
[h2]Videos[/h2]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Changes[/h2]
[h2]Notes[/h2]
With every new island comes a lot of hand crafted detail. While some of the island generation process is procedural, many objects that you see must be adjusted by hand to obtain the perfect appearance and with each adjustment comes an optimization cost of roughly 30-120 mins, so that you the player don't have to look at floating rocks underwater or slow framerate with lots of seaweed.
The new delivery area is particularly challenging because it will likely require a helicopter capable of moving containers (new parts). If you are delivering many shipping containers, it may involve a larger vessel with a helicopter. In combination, it will be a complex and fun delivery.
I have been trying to fix a multiplayer bug where for example a client may be locking onto a pirate vessel that is also being attacked by another player. 99% of the time this seems to work fine, but sometimes clients can lock on right when another player destroys the pirate vessel (or some other unknown factor occurs, hence a blind fix). This was / is not something I am not able to reproduce and it seems to fix itself if you attempt to lock on again. I have now changed the way that this code is structured in hopes that this edge case will no longer be possible.
Previously helicopter rotors calculated and applied force based on the position of the rotor and torque based on the center of the vessel. Now, more accurately torque will also be applied relative to the placement of the rotor meaning that if your rotor is further back you may get more torque. These changes may also make it easier to steer at high speeds (you will still get tunneled by drag if you are going faster than the rotors can overcome with torque). This applies to both main and tail rotors. For smaller designs, like gyros they may become more sensitive to input making them more maneuverable, larger helicopters will similarly be easier turn. These forces are tied to the throttle, so if you are turning to fast you need to reduce your throttle (but not so much that you fall out of the sky!!). Part of the reason for these changes is that the new helicopter parts encourage placing rotors way further back then other designs making the need for more accuracy obvious.
For the turbine engines on the new rotor, I toned down the pitch / sound a bit because it can be a bit aggressive for gameplay. In reality it is very loud and just muffles everything, but that makes for annoying gameplay.
The heavy lift rotors can lift roughly ~20 tons. Using this rotor with lighter aircraft (less than 8000kg) will likely be too much lift. Heavy helicopters should be made out of thinner steel and some aluminum or thicker aluminum.
When impacting the water there is now a distinction between attempting to land and flying into the water at full speed, one of which will most likely result in an explosion now even with heavier vessels that may have previously been immune. Before, when landing on water the game would try to cut you some slack with the velocity of the impact so you can land easier. However, this results in being able to crash large heavy jets without exploding so now it will only give slack when it sees you are trying to land.
You cannot secure a container with a steel cable if it is already bolted/secured normally. You cannot secure / bolt a container if it is already secured with a steel cable. Securing containers with cables can only be done short distances. This prevents the changes of weird desync issue with physics. You can only attach one steel cable per container, which means no stacking with cables.
Non-retractable landing gear that can disable steering will likely not register as green vs red to indicate state. This is because the overall state is determined by whether or not landing gear is deployed, so fixed landing gear (heavy lift) will always be green.
The mounted crane uses less fuel because it is smaller and contain less moving parts. Functionally speaking, it also uses less fuel because it is likely attached to an aircraft with a pilot keeping it steady and lots of movement to accomplish the same task as normal cranes, just makes it more usable.
Remote crane controls will only connect to one crane per part. Multiple cranes will attempt to wire remote controls if available in the order they were found. The controls will function as a driver seat if there is no remote crane present.
The magnet lift will ignore the fact of whether or not your vessel contains metal. Attempting to use the magnet on vessels that are larger/heavier than your vessel can be extremely dangerous. The game will prevent you from attempting to pick something up that is 10 times heavier. But will allow something slightly heavier for things like picking up heavy boats with helicopters that you should be able to lift. Multiple magnets cannot be used to pick up the same vessel. Attaching a magnet to the current vessel will not work. A vessel currently being lifted by a magnet cannot attach the vessel currently lifting it to another magnet. It is extremely difficult to both fly a helicopter and use the magnet lift in singleplayer. It is almost certainly something that requires 2 players. If you are carrying something with the aircraft crane you need to give it slack so it can bounce around a bit, otherwise you will crash and/or explode. You may be able to pick up really heavy stuff with the aircraft crane due to the elastic nature of the cables, but this will likely result in explosions. Flying with the crane deployed is extremely dangerous in general, one wrong move and the crane can bump into the aircraft and cause an explosion. You must go slow and be very patient. If you are going faster that 10-20kts, you are probably going to explode. If you must carry something long distances, you may want to lock the magnet lift with a steel cable to the helicopter.
Containers will not move with vessels picked up by the magnet unless they are secured. This is because of the existing behavior were you can't have them on lifts. I have added a backlog item to support it.
Saved stacks of 64 ropes will self correct eventually. This will likely result in error messages related to item counts and large stacks disappearing.
Attempting to drag right after activating item dropdowns for amount, use, drop etc. will now prevent dragging. Previously this was allowed but it blocks default button behavior that allows you to cancel your click by dragging the mouse away instead of clicking, but starting the drag closed the context menu so you would not be able to make a choice to drag vs click and it would just close if you had not deliberately clicked initially. Attempting to drag other items with the context menu open will now close the context menu and require you to attempt the drag again.
Landing gear will not function completely when on Magnets because Unity does not function completely. Wheels may be reimplemented from scratch at some point because there are other limitations with landing gear because of this "wheel feature", but it is not a high priority. Bottom line is that steering will not work on magnets, but you don't really need to steer at that point anyway.
The open game folder button will only work on windows (will be disabled) because it needs to use "explorer.exe". It will do nothing if you have not saved the game. If you have not opened the vessel load dialog and/or created any vessels, no vessels will be in the vessel folder, but you can copy some in there from another save using explorer.
There are now over 150 parts in the game!
Guides will be updated soon.
Updated large pirate base workshop item.
The price of the game is now the final price it will be for release. The game is quickly nearing the end of Early Access. If all goes well it will be released sometime early next year. Months away. Keep an eye out for sales!
Looking into adding a demo version of the game.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Changes[/h2]
- Added new island
- Added HeavyLiftHelicopterCockpit part
- Added HeavyLiftHelicopterBody part
- Added HeavyLiftHelicopterTail part
- Added HeavyLiftHelicopterTailFin part
- Added HeavyLiftHelicopterSideMount part
- Added HeavyLiftHelicopterHook part
- Added HeavyLiftHelicopterMechanicalBox part
- Added HeavyLiftHelicopterTriangleMount part
- Added HeavyLiftHelicopterLandingGearRear part
- Added HeavyLiftHelicopterLandingGearFront part
- Added HeavyLiftHelicopterMainRotor part
- Added HeavyLiftHelicopterRearRotor part
- Added HeavyLiftHelicopterDoor part
- Added StandardHelicopterSlidingDoor part
- Added SeaPlaneDoor part
- Added LadderStep part
- Added AircraftCrane part
- Added CraneRemoteControls part
- Added supported for complex parts being highlighted in build mod
- Added support for applying materials to interiors of certain parts
- Added some impact checks to crashing into water to make things explode at higher velocities
- Added interior material groups for StandardHelicopterBody
- Added interior material groups for SeaPlaneBody
- Added steel cables to runway buy shack
- Added support for disabling steering on non retractable landing gear with G
- Added camera settings to center on vessel rather than root part
- Added magnet lift to cranes
- Added read-only inventory controls to keybindings
- Added new part unlockables to campaign
- Reluctantly added a open game folder button to misc. settings
- Fixed some config issues with Alta
- Fixed a background error with clients joining rescue missions in progress.
- Fixed some problems with interaction / aiming animations at high speeds
- Fixed a bug where harpoons were not cleaned up if the vessel was recovered while firing multiple times
- Fixed some flags on standard helicopter main rotor
- Fixed a bug with snow on aircraft
- Fixed a bug with cable attachments to containers that were previously secured
- Fixed some config issues with StandardHelicopterBody
- Fixed cost of cranes being very cheap
- Fixed some shadow/lighting settings on crane lift vessel lights
- Fixed a bug where ropes do not attach to network parts properly
- Fixed a conflict with using left-shift to split stacks of items
- Fixed a bug that prevented max monster meat from spawning
- Fixed a bug where you could use quick move while dragging amounts in inventories
- Fixed a bug where you can drop a stack while dragging amounts in inventory
- Fixed a bug where items are deleted when attempting to drop amounts on full stacks
- Fixed a bug with dragging and tooltips at the same time
- Fixed a inventory bug where dropped inventory item slots would not update tooltip
- Fixed a inventory bug with spamming drop and quick move item at the same time
- Fixed a UI bug with inventory actions not being blocked by amount dialog
- Fixed a inventory bug where you can drop items while interacting with inventory options
- Fixed a bug where switching to drydock from runway and allocating crew did not clear crew allocation in runway
- Fixed a bug where saved anchors do not adjust slack properly
- Fixed a bug with beacons initializing from save files where Nautikins are in the water
- Fixed a bug with aerodynamics and boats with jet engines
- Fixed some audio warnings related to saved destroyed engines
- Fixed some sort of super broken collision behavior with crane collisions and physics engine
- Fixed a bug with crew allocation when no crew is available and crew is already allocated
- Blind fix for a problem where lock on aimer can get stuck if target is destroyed exactly when locking on
- Changed some shadow settings
- Changed name of DriverSeat in PlaneBody to PilotSeat for consistency
- Changed some default values for map lighting for development purposes
- Changed the way that steel cables sync in multiplayer to support carrying containers
- Changed the way that crane mass is calculated
- Changed max ropes from 64 to 16 because 64 is too much.
- Containers can now be secured with steel cables
- Inventory quick move is now left-alt instead of left-shift to avoid conflicts
- Waving now supports fast moving vessels
- Sitting now supports fast moving vessels
- Updated setup trade route message
- Updated Tug boat engine highlighting in build mode
- Fixed harpoon part is now considered a weapon for too many weapons warning
- Improvements to rotor physics
- Standard helicopter airfoil parts are now buoyant
- Improvements to error logging for mods
- Aircraft throttle now displays 3 digits
- Improvements to vessel explosions for vessels with many parts
- Steel cables can now secure containers to vessels
- Steel cables will now allow you to secure vessels or Nautikins to the map
- Adjusted runway
- Containers will now look for a more suitable parent when securing to the map or moveable parts
- Standard plane landing gear will now allow disabling steering with G
- Various refactoring to support magnet lifts
- Prevented some code from updating while paused in single player
[h2]Notes[/h2]
With every new island comes a lot of hand crafted detail. While some of the island generation process is procedural, many objects that you see must be adjusted by hand to obtain the perfect appearance and with each adjustment comes an optimization cost of roughly 30-120 mins, so that you the player don't have to look at floating rocks underwater or slow framerate with lots of seaweed.
The new delivery area is particularly challenging because it will likely require a helicopter capable of moving containers (new parts). If you are delivering many shipping containers, it may involve a larger vessel with a helicopter. In combination, it will be a complex and fun delivery.
I have been trying to fix a multiplayer bug where for example a client may be locking onto a pirate vessel that is also being attacked by another player. 99% of the time this seems to work fine, but sometimes clients can lock on right when another player destroys the pirate vessel (or some other unknown factor occurs, hence a blind fix). This was / is not something I am not able to reproduce and it seems to fix itself if you attempt to lock on again. I have now changed the way that this code is structured in hopes that this edge case will no longer be possible.
Previously helicopter rotors calculated and applied force based on the position of the rotor and torque based on the center of the vessel. Now, more accurately torque will also be applied relative to the placement of the rotor meaning that if your rotor is further back you may get more torque. These changes may also make it easier to steer at high speeds (you will still get tunneled by drag if you are going faster than the rotors can overcome with torque). This applies to both main and tail rotors. For smaller designs, like gyros they may become more sensitive to input making them more maneuverable, larger helicopters will similarly be easier turn. These forces are tied to the throttle, so if you are turning to fast you need to reduce your throttle (but not so much that you fall out of the sky!!). Part of the reason for these changes is that the new helicopter parts encourage placing rotors way further back then other designs making the need for more accuracy obvious.
For the turbine engines on the new rotor, I toned down the pitch / sound a bit because it can be a bit aggressive for gameplay. In reality it is very loud and just muffles everything, but that makes for annoying gameplay.
The heavy lift rotors can lift roughly ~20 tons. Using this rotor with lighter aircraft (less than 8000kg) will likely be too much lift. Heavy helicopters should be made out of thinner steel and some aluminum or thicker aluminum.
When impacting the water there is now a distinction between attempting to land and flying into the water at full speed, one of which will most likely result in an explosion now even with heavier vessels that may have previously been immune. Before, when landing on water the game would try to cut you some slack with the velocity of the impact so you can land easier. However, this results in being able to crash large heavy jets without exploding so now it will only give slack when it sees you are trying to land.
You cannot secure a container with a steel cable if it is already bolted/secured normally. You cannot secure / bolt a container if it is already secured with a steel cable. Securing containers with cables can only be done short distances. This prevents the changes of weird desync issue with physics. You can only attach one steel cable per container, which means no stacking with cables.
Non-retractable landing gear that can disable steering will likely not register as green vs red to indicate state. This is because the overall state is determined by whether or not landing gear is deployed, so fixed landing gear (heavy lift) will always be green.
The mounted crane uses less fuel because it is smaller and contain less moving parts. Functionally speaking, it also uses less fuel because it is likely attached to an aircraft with a pilot keeping it steady and lots of movement to accomplish the same task as normal cranes, just makes it more usable.
Remote crane controls will only connect to one crane per part. Multiple cranes will attempt to wire remote controls if available in the order they were found. The controls will function as a driver seat if there is no remote crane present.
The magnet lift will ignore the fact of whether or not your vessel contains metal. Attempting to use the magnet on vessels that are larger/heavier than your vessel can be extremely dangerous. The game will prevent you from attempting to pick something up that is 10 times heavier. But will allow something slightly heavier for things like picking up heavy boats with helicopters that you should be able to lift. Multiple magnets cannot be used to pick up the same vessel. Attaching a magnet to the current vessel will not work. A vessel currently being lifted by a magnet cannot attach the vessel currently lifting it to another magnet. It is extremely difficult to both fly a helicopter and use the magnet lift in singleplayer. It is almost certainly something that requires 2 players. If you are carrying something with the aircraft crane you need to give it slack so it can bounce around a bit, otherwise you will crash and/or explode. You may be able to pick up really heavy stuff with the aircraft crane due to the elastic nature of the cables, but this will likely result in explosions. Flying with the crane deployed is extremely dangerous in general, one wrong move and the crane can bump into the aircraft and cause an explosion. You must go slow and be very patient. If you are going faster that 10-20kts, you are probably going to explode. If you must carry something long distances, you may want to lock the magnet lift with a steel cable to the helicopter.
Containers will not move with vessels picked up by the magnet unless they are secured. This is because of the existing behavior were you can't have them on lifts. I have added a backlog item to support it.
Saved stacks of 64 ropes will self correct eventually. This will likely result in error messages related to item counts and large stacks disappearing.
Attempting to drag right after activating item dropdowns for amount, use, drop etc. will now prevent dragging. Previously this was allowed but it blocks default button behavior that allows you to cancel your click by dragging the mouse away instead of clicking, but starting the drag closed the context menu so you would not be able to make a choice to drag vs click and it would just close if you had not deliberately clicked initially. Attempting to drag other items with the context menu open will now close the context menu and require you to attempt the drag again.
Landing gear will not function completely when on Magnets because Unity does not function completely. Wheels may be reimplemented from scratch at some point because there are other limitations with landing gear because of this "wheel feature", but it is not a high priority. Bottom line is that steering will not work on magnets, but you don't really need to steer at that point anyway.
The open game folder button will only work on windows (will be disabled) because it needs to use "explorer.exe". It will do nothing if you have not saved the game. If you have not opened the vessel load dialog and/or created any vessels, no vessels will be in the vessel folder, but you can copy some in there from another save using explorer.
There are now over 150 parts in the game!
Guides will be updated soon.
Updated large pirate base workshop item.
The price of the game is now the final price it will be for release. The game is quickly nearing the end of Early Access. If all goes well it will be released sometime early next year. Months away. Keep an eye out for sales!
Looking into adding a demo version of the game.