Airship Dragoon
Update to Steam SDK 1.52
Steam SDK Update 1.51
(「ఠωఠ)「
Dragoonette Gets A Makeover
Liked the old main menu and cover image? Don't worry, they display in rotation every 5 or so restarts.
There's also been a change to how PANIC works. Previously it was fight or flee with an RNG, but now it's more dangerous as a panicked trooper will always go all guns blazing in an indiscriminate manner as first choice, should targets present themselves. If there is no one in obvious rage to attack in a beserk style, than they will decide that discretion is the better part of valour and bottle it and flee ... unless they've got lost in which case they will just sit there like a numpty.
Why do this all now? Well, Steam has a new announcement system and I wanted to see how it worked.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And last but not least, Valve released a new Steamwork SDK update, so Airship Dragoon has been rebuilt to run with the latest SDK.
Steamworks Update 1.49
Steamworks Update 1.48
Valve has been updated the Steamworks SDK, and so Airship Dragoon has been recompiled and updated to work with this. There is no change to the game, just the SDK for running it on Steam.
ːsteamhappyː
If You Don't Like The New Gun Shots Audio ...
Here's how to get the old gunshot sounds back.
1. Make sure that you have the new dowload update of Airship Dragoon (restarting steam should automatically download the changed files).
2. Run Airship Dragoon.
3. At Main Menu press INSERT key to bring up the console (it's blank)
4. type :
$pref::oldGunshots=1
and hit {RETURN} (console is still blank).
5. Quit the game and restart it.
6. ????
7. Profit! Old gunshots and lightning gun sounds are back (other new audio remains)
To go back to the new gunshot sounds, redo this but at the console type $pref::oldGunshots=0
Enjoy.
Update: New Audio, New Rain
The most noticeable change is the audio. All the in-game soundFX have been redone, giving it a slightly more sci-fi feel to gunshots and the sort. Weapons now use playlists of "round-robbins", effect sounds that differ slightly so that each sound is not exactly the same in a burst of automatic gunfire.
When one of your troopers bleeds to death, the surprise "double-tap" has been replaced with a more solemn bell (RIP trooper, thanks for your service, *loss of stiff upper lip*, *manly tears*, ːsteamsadː ).
All the audio has also been re-encoded as I noticed that some of it was of a very high bitrate that would not play if Fmod was not the default audio codec. Fmod ***is*** the audio codec by default because it comes from Ye Olden Indie Game Development Days when I had to pay good money to license it (apparently indies can now register their new games with Fmod for free).
There have been a few other small tweaks, if you have a gaming PC you'll notice denser foliage, and there is some new rain which look a lot better, I think.
Happy Dragoonening!
Aesthetic Overhaul
Particles are now animated and much more fancy. Smoke and fire are much more realistic and all impacts and explosions are now more intense, so expect more stuff flying around with much better definition.
Weapons have an additional muzzle flash to their normal spewing of smoke and non-energy weapons now eject spent bullet casings.
Trees and foliage has been remodeled "JAGGY" is out, "FLUFFY" is in.
It's still all low poly for those of you who have ancient laptops running XP.
Models in "Realism Mod" remain unchanged for those of you who like high poly environments rather than the standard low poly "abstracted" aesthetic.
There also been a few bugfixes:
Fixed a rare crash in airship pathfinding - thanks to Major Plothole for the bug report.
Fixed missing LODs for Atomic Death Ray, Flamerocket, Lightning Gun and Railgun.
Fixed shockwave orientation and changed alpha values.
Removed a number of duplicate datablock entries.
Airship Dragoon Update 1.62
This is in line with the Steam Client being update to 1.35a.
Changes to the actual game are that some particle effects have been tweaked for minor aesthetics (mainly making smoke softer), and that "Battle Mode" now has a new time limit.
During original development I had considered implementing a turn limit, but eventually decided to leave it out - well, now it's back in.
I had received reports that defensive battles could go on and on if the last surviving enemy trooper could not make it to the flag. Whilst I could not replicate this event during testing, battles are now limited to 20 turns.
At the beginning of the battle, the battle introduction screen reminds the player of this new time limit.
At the start of each new turn, the player is informed how many turns remain after the current one.
If the battle has not been won or lost by the the 20th turn, the player gets a gentle reminder about the impending end of the battle. ;)
How hitting the maximum turn limit works in practice:
Defend Allied Flag Battle: Player holds out for 20 turns to wins. Normal lose conditions.
Assault Enemy Flag Battle: Player loses the battle if they do not capture the flag or wipe out the enemy within 20 turns.
Clear Area Battle: Player wins the battle if they out-number the enemy 2 to1, otherwise player loses.
Achievement Guide
Airship Dragoon Achievement Guide