Deadstick - Bush Flight Simulator News

Hey bush flyers,


It's our end of month wrap up and we've got a bunch to share with you. In our latest development Milestone we've started working on procedural weather changes (very excited to share this with the community), tweaks to the reputation system, updated the map UI and began concepting side missions.


Let's get straight to the thing you've seen in the title and clicked in for, playtest news.

Now, we don't have a playtest date yet. However while we continue our work on the development of a first playable later this year for Deadstick we wanted to open up sign-ups, this is so we have an idea of who wants to get hands-on ahead of launch to provide us very valuable feedback!

You can sign-up for the playtest by heading over to the Deadstick store page and hitting the 'request access' button. Don't worry you won't miss out when the playtest does become available, we will post about it EVERYWHERE and Steam will notify you :)

The button looks like this on the store page 👇




So what have we shown this month?


As usual, please note that all of this is work in progress in-game footage/images.


We shared a hangar tour and gave a sneak peak as to how you can upload images and place them on your picture wall.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

An early look at cargo deliveries, this is an example of an early game cargo delivery. We've seen a bunch of the community say great things about the center of gravity and weight chart.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Meet a first look at airports, Lawless, Graves & Cook (and a bonus Cook at dusk 🌇)



Is there something you'd like to see? Let us know in the comments!


-Mythwright

Hey bush flyers,

We've been sharing even more progress of Deadstick! In our latest milestone we've started to populate the entire environment with airports (which we can hopefully show you in the coming months🤞), and expanded the job system factoring in pilot reputation, cargo weight, item amount, load fragility and urgency as a precursor to planning out career progression.

Here is a recap of what we shared in April with our community.

We gave a first look at damage to the plane by throwing cargo at it...the cargo launcher may be a fun addition in developer mode, but maybe not in the final game 😅

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We shared a very early look at customisation of the plane and some of the things you'll be able to do to your vehicle. Yes, a bright neon plane is totally acceptable.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

And we gave a first look at the ongoing work to upgrade the detail and rendering of environments.



And finally, we have be working on a new logo and key art for Deadstick, this has now been updated across all our socials and steam page. Let us know what you think!



We'll see you next month for another developer update! Don't forget to join our Discord, wishlist Deadstick and stay tuned for news about future playtests.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/771800/Deadstick__Bush_Flight_Simulator/

Is there something you'd like to see? Let us know in the comments!


-Mythwright

Hey bush pilots,

There has been steady progress in our development and recent milestones have brought us progress on things like; Pilot Reputation, Job Complexity, Improved Landscape, Weather systems and Runway surfaces, Remote bush airstrips and so much more.

We'll remind you that all of our screenshots and video footage shared is work in progress and should change over time. Which we are sure you'll begin to notice as we share more and more.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
We spent some time stress testing the foliage amount, is 3 million trees enough? Turns out it's not and we expect we'll need 30+ million trees over the full map.



Weather from inside the cockpit. If it rains, snows or is super foggy, someone needs to complete those cargo deliveries, right?

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
When bush flying you expect to see some incredible views, and the Aurora Borealis is just one of them. 🌌

We'll see you next month for another developer update! Don't forget to join our Discord, wishlist Deadstick and stay tuned for news about future playtests.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/771800/Deadstick__Bush_Flight_Simulator/

Is there something you'd like to see? Let us know in the comments!


- Mythwright

Hey bush flyers,

It’s now 2025 and we are at full throttle with development of Deadstick, our goal is to make Deadstick a believable world of wonder with interesting points to discover as you progress through the game. So in our first community update of 2025 we are focusing on day/night cycle and want to share some sneak peeks at the work we’ve been doing around the scale of the game.

So let’s start with the size and scale of the map. We have been planning out where mountains, lakes, valleys, and rivers are located ahead of our next step, populating the world! Things like trees, foliage, rocks, and rivers etc, will be added and we’ll be sharing snippets within our dev logs and social media channels soon. So, yes, if you think the world looks a little sparse, you are right and we’ll have updates for you in the future around this…🌲



The screenshots we have to share today show another crucial element of the believable world, a fully simulated day / night cycle. The Sun tracks from East to West during the day and then at night a star skybox is in place, with the moon simulated through an 8 phase cycle. Waxing from new moon to full moon then waning back to new moon over a number of in game days. At night in the wilderness the moon, accurately reflecting on to the terrain surfaces, is the main source of light. The phase of the moon combined with weather conditions will need to factor into any decision to take on a flight between dusk and dawn.



Temperature is also an important simulation element, impacting the performance of the plane and making icing another risk to factor into gameplay decision making. The scale of the map allows for distinct biomes with different temperature profiles and the day, night cycle will also factor into this, so you can expect colder temperatures at night and the highest temperatures at midday.

If there is an element of Deadstick you would like to know more about, please let us know in the comments.

Thanks for reading, and we'll be back with another update soon!

Please do not forget to follow us on our social channels:

Deadstick Discord Bluesky X TikTok Facebook Instagram YouTube

- Mythwright

Hey bush flyers,

Last month we shared some images of how our work in progress hangar was looking, and today we are here to share a further update on this.

We want to show the difference that upgrading the game to Unity 6's HDRP has made and explain how we got here.

Then


Now


Utilizing Unity's HDRP physically based materials (PBR) we are able to really improve the overall visual quality of the scene. Using this pipeline the lighting is affected by different surface materials giving us a more realistic experience. Compared to traditional materials, all PBR channels support textures which gives the material more information about how to interact with light. It breaks down each of the materials physical properties and simulates how each would interact with light in the real world. For example, a wood material would have a high diffuse and low reflectivity. PBR materials also use a shading model that is simulated from how reflection and refraction work in the real world.

Then


Now


To further improve the overall quality and detail inside the Hangar, we have also remodelled and upscaled the textures for each of the props, decorative assets and the structure. Lastly we baked the lighting into the scene with global illumination, this enabled us to simulate how light bounces off surfaces and affects the surrounding environment - as opposed to being limited to just the light that hits an object directly.

Then


Now


Thanks for reading, and we'll be back with another update soon!

Please do not forget to follow us on our social channels:

X Bluesky TikTok Facebook Instagram YouTube Threads


- Mythwright