Jet Lancer is a game that is meant to evoke a feeling of being on the razor's edge. We want every victory to feel like it was hard won, and every defeat to feel like it was only barely out of reach. It is our goal that all players can feel themselves growing as pilots while they play through Story mode and New Game Plus. Today we're going to talk about the in-game options to tailor your experience.
Jet Lancer's Accessibility Options
The Landscape
Before we dive into things let’s have a brief recap of Accessibility in games.
The Dawn of Video Games
In the beginning there were no options. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Then, the first options emerged- difficulty settings, subtitles, inverted controls, and cheat codes.
A While Ago
More recently accessibility options across the industry have expanded to include things like colorblind modes, remappable keys, full customized captioning, and HUD color changes. Even more recently, games like Celeste have pioneered significant steps toward making games more accessible and inclusive than they ever have before allowing you to opt-out of specific gameplay mechanics and reduce game speed.
Now
As Jet Lancer evolved from a prototype to a fully fledged game, we wanted to be sure that we weren't putting unnecessary and unintentional barriers that prevent people from enjoying the game. We will continue to add options to Jet Lancer in the future, but we wanted to give a brief rundown of everything we have implemented already.
The Visual Options
We have a relatively standard visual settings suite here.
Screen shake: Reduce the amount the screen shakes when taking or dealing damage.
Text scroll speed Speed up or slow down how fast text populates. You can also hit a button to fully-advance the text in one go.
Reduce Flashing Effects: This removes a number of screen-wide flashing effects included in Jet Lancer for those with concerns regarding seizures and migraines.
Gameplay Options
Then there are our Gameplay options. These choices are all implemented at the time of this writing, though we may make some minor adjustments between now and launch.
Multiple Input Methods: We have support for Controllers and Keyboard and Mouse.
Remappable controls: Jet Lancer has pretty significant control remapping options.
Invincibility: Sometimes you just want to get in there and blow stuff up. With this option enabled you will not take damage, so you can focus on dishing it out. We also have an option to reduce all damage taken by 50%, if you don’t want to crank it all the way up.
Evasion Window: This option expands how much time you have to dodge incoming projectiles. At its highest setting we even give you a little bit of wiggle room after you would have been hit to avoid the damage!
Anti-Fatigue Control Toggles: By default, your Minigun, Thrusters, and Afterburner are all inputs you have to hold down to utilize. Now we've implemented a toggle for them so they can be turned on or off with a single press.
Deadzone Adjustment: For fine tuning your jet’s sensitivity.
Multiple Steering Options: Steer with one of two movement types.
(Sorry for the small gif! I promise this menu is much larger and easier to read in game!) [table] [tr] [th]Shooter Type: Jet will rotate and point in the direction you you aim at.[/th] [th]Arcade Type: Jet will rotate left or right for as long as you press the control stick regardless of its current orientation.[/th] [/tr] [/table]
Wrapping Up
Our goal is and will continue to be that anyone can jump into Jet Lancer and find challenges we’ve designed for the game (instead of fighting their input devices instead!). We’re excited that we’re in the home stretch of getting to share this with you all.
And that’s that for the time being! If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about the options we talked about here please feel free to leave a comment below! We’ll be back soon with an introduction to something else we’re excited to share with you, the Characters.
Over and out.
Jet Lancer Launch Update
Hello Pilots,
As we approach the end of the year we wanted to share an important decision we've made. To make sure that Jet Lancer is the best it can be we are moving our launch to 2020. We’re as excited to share it as you are to play it and we are confident that Jet Lancer will be worth the wait.
Thank you for all your support so far and your patience while we bring Jet Lancer in for a proper landing. We have some big news for you in the new year and we can't wait to share it.
Over and out,
The Jet Lancer Team
DISPATCH_03: Behind the Scenes of New Game+
It’s time we told you the truth— Jet Lancer doesn’t end at the credits. Like many games out there today, Jet Lancer will feature a New Game+ mode which allows players to play through the game again facing new challenges along the way. However, New Game+ for Jet Lancer is far from being the same game but harder, it’s an integral part of the overall experience and we wanted to talk with you about how we’re thinking about its implementation. Welcome to DISPATCH_03: Behind the Scenes of New Game+
Scope
Scope creep is an easy trap to fall into, doubly so when it’s regarding features and elements that we’re passionate about. As a core team of two, we have to consider what we can realistically undertake since each new element compounds on our development time. So we asked ourselves a couple questions: How do we create awesome new gameplay experiences using the tools we have already made? How can we add greater complexity and nuance to Jet Lancer’s combat without starting on brand new items from scratch? And then from there we set ourselves a goal: We were going to make a challenging experience that builds upon the difficulty curve established in a first playthrough. Luckily for us, New Game+ is a great opportunity to do exactly that! Using the systems we had already built let us assume that players would have some level of familiarity which let us get a little more clever and complex. So while you’ll be seeing some old enemies, they’ve got some new tricks up their sleeves.
Difficulty
We always had a really specific idea of it’s design in mind. Instead of making the game harder just by increasing basic enemy stats like health and damage or just throwing more cannon fodder at the player, we wanted to bring fresh experience to the table, utilizing existing campaign mode as a base to push variety and difficulty further.
In New Game+ enemy pilots receive AI improvements, making them more aggressive and fun to fight against, and we’ve upgraded their jets with expanded attack patterns, making them deadlier and more unpredictable in combat.
On top of some brand new boss fights in New Game+, existing bosses are equipped with more aggressive AI and new attack patterns. When we were initially designing Jet Lancer we tried to push everything to the maximum, but that meant that some of the ideas we had turned out to be a bit too much and created unwanted difficulty spikes during a first playthrough. New Game+ allowed us to save those original ideas, while having a more balanced and well-rounded difficulty curve throughout the first campaign by tweaking each boss to fit into the story mode’s difficulty progression.
Growth and Improvement
Beneath the carbon-fiber fuselage, Jet Lancer is a game about learning and personal growth, and we wanted to reflect this both in the raw gameplay and in the narrative. We want you to be able to look back at challenges that once felt challenging to see how much you’ve improved. As you progress we wanted to show you new elements of Ash’s experience that we hope will lead to a satisfying conclusion..
We’re not going to tell you about that bit though, you’ll have to play it for yourself ;)
Thanks for checking out this update on Jet Lancer. We hope to have some more news for you soon. Wishlists are one of the most important metrics we can leverage in making Jet Lancer a success, so if you haven't added Jet Lancer to your wishlist we would really appreciate it if you did.
Jet Lancer has been in development for a long time. We're feeling nostalgic, so this week I want to show you some of the game's history, some older weapon systems, and a brief look at what we have now.
My name is Vladimir, I'm the lead designer of Jet Lancer, and this is DISPATCH_02
We started developing the “Planes game” in 2011 and back then it was quite different. It was much more of a simulation; you would take on the role of a Close Air Support pilot, fighting in combat where you felt more like a cog in the machine, trying to influence a battle by taking out key targets and helping your ground troops. Your arsenal consisted of standard CAS weaponry: minigun, unguided rockets, air-to-air homing missiles and unguided bombs. _________________________________________________________________________
So when we reimagined the project into a more arcade-oriented experience, known literally as “Planes 2” (one of many names we were using before we settled on Jet Lancer), we started with quite a similar idea. To start, you had access to 4 different weapons. _________________________________________________________________________
They all had different purpose and you were suppose to find a perfect balance between all of them for each mission at hand. The system was ammo-based, and your jet had a weight limit to ensure you pick optimal loadout for each mission. _________________________________________________________________________
It worked totally fine in theory, and the premise of playing around with amount of ammo wasn’t bad. This weapon system was in the game for almost 2 years, until one day during some playtesting I realised I haven’t used any weapon except for guided rockets for at least last 6 months. And it wasn’t just a balance issue, switching weapons mid-combat meant you have to take your left thumb off your stick for a second to reach for D-pad, which can cost you a life in such fast-paced game. That’s when it struck me: This weapon system was designed for a completely different game.
I had just grown so used to it as a known quantity that it didn’t cross my mind to change it. After that, I went and highlighted the main issues with the system as it was.
Button Bonanza: The weapon system used 6 different buttons by itself (4 weapons on D-pad, minigun button, special weapon button).
Ol' Faithful: Guided rockets were very clearly the safest bet, their reliability made up for their slightly lower damage output.
Ammo Woes: It was possible to unload your full payload in the first 10 seconds of a mission and then be left with only your minigun for the remainder.
Analysis Paralysis: Being able to access so many weapons at once made it hard to balance as a developer, and hard to weigh options as a player.
So I went back to the drawing board, and soon after had a version that is similar to what is in Jet Lancer today.
Instead of trying to balance 4 weapons to be equally viable, I divided everything into 2 slots based directly on their damage potential: rocket weapon and super weapon which would be tied to the same button. Rockets would use a tapping input, while supers would become a “charge” weapon. Additionally, I made all of our weapons cooldown based. With two different weapon slots, we were able to expand our weapon list beyond just 4 fixed weapons, but still keep “trying to find perfect loadout” part of the based design. Instead of wrestling with a weight limit, now you have different weapon options in two categories, each one having its own strengths and weaknesses. This change alone pretty much fixed all the problems we had:
Simplified controls: Now game uses only 2 buttons to control your weapons (one for minigun, and one for both rockets and charge shot)
Standard Array: Rockets are always available and are essential part of your kit, so you don’t have to make a tradeoff to use more of them.
Always Have Options: With cooldown reload timers instead of ammo, you’re never stuck with just the mini-gun for a prolonged period.
Variety is the Spice of Life: Additional weapons lets us fine tune power levels in a way where there was never a clear “best” option.
And that's how we got to where we are today! Sure, we hit some turbulence, but Jet Lancer is built of tough stuff, so there was never any worry. _________________________________________________________________________
That's it for this week! We'll talk more about Jet Lancer's future in our next Dispatch. Until then, please wishlist Jet Lancer on Steam and tell all of your friends, family, and rival pilots to do so as well! If you want to get Dispatches, beta invitations, and news even faster you can subscribe to our newsletter at www.jetlancergame.com .
And of course if you want to hang out with the Jet Lancer team (and who wouldn't want to hang out with us?!) you can do so in our Discord.
On behalf of the Jet Lancer team, this is Vladimir Fedyushkin. Over and Out. _________________________________________________________________________
DISPATCH_01: TEST PILOTS WANTED
Hello everyone!
It's been just over a month since we formally announced Jet Lancer and we're very excited to start sharing some development progress with you, starting right now.
Lately we’ve been busy getting everything prepared for a super secret milestone everyone has been asking for since the game first appeared. So, here it is!
We're excited to announce our first Beta Playtest A.K.A. Test Pilot Program! You can be the first one to test-fly the game and help us to improve it.
To receive sign-up instructions for the beta test and hear our important announcements before anyone else, subscribe to our newsletter on our official website.
This playtest will feature the first few missions and bosses you'll meet in the campaign, including this bad boy.
If you haven't wishlisted Jet Lancer yet, please do so. It helps the game a whole lot and will notify you whenever there's a new Steam announcement.
Thank you all so much for the warm reception! Your interest in the game is the fuel in our tanks and we wouldn't be here without your support. Any questions, comments, or feedback are always welcome, so don't hesitate to get in touch.
Vladimir
P.S. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter if that's your cup of tea.
