Landinar: Into the Void
Flight model overhaul, part 1 [devblog]
The next months we will be focussing on our first major update: the flight model overhaul.
Background
Let’s start with some background: when we started pre-production on Landinar a few years ago, we had the idea of creating a semi-realistic space sim, proper Newtonian flight model included. During development this quickly changed and the whole “realistic” part was mostly thrown out in favour of fun arcade gameplay. The engines, however, never really got the memo.
The result is that the engines in the game all feel rather “meh”. There have been quite a few players asking what the difference between engines is, which one is the best, and why you’d ever want anything other than your starting engines.
Current state
A ship’s mass is determined by the size and the amount of stuff you cram into that size. Currently, the difference between a small corvette and a large cruiser is… Minimal. Additionally, while we have 6 engine parts in the game, spread over 3 categories, and their stats do differ slightly, the biggest difference you notice between a Small Chemical and a Large Ion engine is its placement size and trail color. As a result, having two Small Chemical engines often seems better than one Large Ion. This doesn’t feel right, and makes little sense in the context of the game. Time to fix this!
A question that’s come up a few times is “What the hell are the Side Thrusters for? I thought they’d allowed me to, you know, thrust to the side!”. I’ll try not to get too technical; currently, the side thrusters add torque to the ship’s rigidbody (the game object used for physics calculations), allowing you to rotate faster. This means their use is rather limited and only really useful on (very) large ships. Again, this doesn’t feel quite right.
Another often heard request from people is the ability to “drift”; that is, to be able to keep your velocity in one direction while turning the ship around completely.
We hear you, and so the flight model is the focus of our first major update!
Big vs small
First of all, we’re going to do more with mass and thrust. Small engines will only produce relatively little thrust; enough to accelerate small ship reasonably quickly, but on a big ship it will feel severely lacking. On the other hand, a large engine will feel quite right on a large ship, but on a small ship the huge amount of thrust would be overkill (and placement requirements would make it fairly hard to actually fit).
Making the differences between engine sizes greater means a large engine will feel much more powerful than a small one, and thus more satisfying when you’ve finally saved up enough cash to buy one! Exact end results are to be determined as all of this of course needs to be balanced, taking into consideration placement size, price, and of course ship and engine statistics.
Afterburner overhaul
Besides making size variations more interesting, we’re also looking to make the difference between a chemical, plasma and ion engine more meaningful. To do this, we are overhauling the afterburner mechanics by giving a unique ability to each type!
Plasma engines will get a very different afterburner ability: Burn (all?) fuel instantly for a short “jump”. Essentially, you’d move your ship VERY fast for a very short period of time. This should allow skilled pilots to dodge incoming fire and close the distance to an enemy before they can react and get out of range. Of course, some enemies would also have this ability…
Chemical engines will stay pretty much the same: Burn fuel for a speed and thrust boost. This may now sound a little boring, but with the other changes we have planned for this update this should actually result in a significant difference in the way you’ll fly your ship!
For Ion engines we’re currently thinking of giving them a passive boost to cruise speed rather than an active ability. This would make Ion engines the preferred type for exploration and long treks outside of transport lanes, with the tradeoff being that they’re perhaps not the best choice for heavy combat. We think this would fit thematically, because after all, legend has it that some aluminum bird was able to do a certain run very quickly… 😉
More new mechanics and additional parts
We’re currently experimenting with several new mechanics and associated parts. Stay with us, for over the next few weeks we will dive into things like gyroscopes, brake boosters and inertia dampeners!
Of course, love to hear your opinions! What do you think of the plasma “jump”? What would you want the Ion engine’s ability to be?
Let us know on Discord or the Steam community!
And to quote a personal Scottish internet favorite: “Fly safe!”
Build 0.1.6.77 - New camera mode, quick start and fixes
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EDIT: Looks like we accidentally set the wrong build live, oops! Should work now...
If for some reason it still won't load, you can revert back to .75 by selecting the "old_build" in Steam betas.
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New features:
Added A quick start option to the new game menu. This will skip the intro/tutorial mission.
Experimental Camera mode:
You can now press the left alt key to get a new camera mode. Camera will go to a position between the ship and the mouse cursor. We'd love to hear your feedback on this!
Changes:
- Fixed some save games not loading.
- Fixed loot with 0% chance still spawning.
- Fixed Chemrock Shipyard roof and floor not switching correctly.
- Fixed Cockpits not claiming tiles correctly.
- Fixed Parts not including wall check when placing.
- Fixed Wing guns not claiming tiles correctly.
- Fixed Load next scene crash.
- Updated the unity postprocessing to a newer version. fixes some graphics bugs.
<3
New Build 0.1.6.75 - Changelog
Build 0.1.6.75
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EDIT:
THE NEW BUILD REQUIRES YOU TO START A NEW SAVEGAME
Loading old saves might work, depending on which missions you did and which ships you've built, but no guarantees.
Alternatively, you can continue your old save using the old_build branch through the steam Betas tab.
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Changes:
- Fixed Libuscha shipyard player ship now spawns correctly in the drydock.
- Fixed Libuscha shipyard station map.
- Fixed on enter cockpit crash.
- Fixed portraits in strongpoint station.
- Fixed input settings not overriding used keys.
- Fixed passenger ragdoll going space kraken.
- Fixed passenger seat not able to eject the second passenger.
- Fixed passenger seat positions.
- Fixed save/load not clearing template status correctly.
- Fixed some incorrect spelling.
- Rebalanced the Large fuel Storage.
- Added a warning screen when the game can't save files to the hdd.
- Added to main menu screen
- Added loading bars. (not yet everywhere)
- Added a fence in strongpoint station. (can't fall down anymore)
- Added auto translations to the input screen.
- The game will now be paused in the ingame main menu screen.
- Marriage and Miners - Richard Bora will now board your ship as proper cargo when you offer to ferry him. Don't throw him out of the airlock!
- Marriage and Miners – Richard and Ashley now acknowledge their love for each other when you reunite them
- Marriage and Miners – A pointer directing you to Chemrock Station should now be present
- Frozen Assets - You can now fail the mission if you commit to being neutral, instead of the mission forever remaining in limbo
- Joyride - Walter Beulen should now accept his son’s fate if you hand him over to Sloan first
- The Shell Game - Upon meeting Tsukiyama "the Shell Game" will become active and point towards him
- The Shell Game - Tsukiyama now properly requires you to beat him three times in a row to collect his prize
- Space 101 – Added some coloured text to improve emphasis on transport lane mechanics
- Space 102 – You can now ignore Arlen and Angelica without breaking the mission
- Space 103 – Angelica should now mention you’re to meet her OUTSIDE the station
You can still find the old build (.72) in the old_build branch in Steam betas.
One day after EA launch - Impressions and priorities for the coming time
So what's the plan now?
As we somewhat expected, there are plenty of bugs to fix.
Our main priority right now is to get all the major crash and save game bugs sorted so everyone is at least able to play the game consistently.
After that we will focus our attention to go after the smaller issues. Many of these are little things in dialogue trees resulting in NPCs doing weird stuff or missions objectives not resolving correctly.
Fixing these small issues will likely change (or possibly even break) your save games though. So we prefer to fix as many of these small issues in one large update so you don't have to start a new save every time we fix a small bug.
Only after we have (most of) the issues fixed we'll start introducing new content. We've already had a whole load of awesome suggestions from you with many interesting ideas (please keep them coming!), and we have plenty of ideas ourselves. There's certainly no lack of things we could (and want to) add to this game!
So what about a timeline? It's hard to put concrete dates on things as unexpected problems can always occur (especially with nasty bugs!)...
Having said that, I expect we'll have at least one (or maybe two) update(s) for you this week that address some of the most pressing issues.
Meanwhile, do keep posting screenshots, questions, suggestions, bug reports and anything else you want to share with us. We read (almost) everything, and try to reply to as much as we can!
Oh, and if you haven't already done so, please join us on Discord where the community is also very active!
<3
Minor Fix and Localisation
We have a new build with some small fixes for you!
Changes:
- Added (placeholder) French and Brazilian Portuguese to the language options.
- Fixed the ability to rebind movement keys.
- Made some small fixes to several dialogue trees and missions.
You may need to restart Steam for it to show up. You can still access the old build by selecting the "old_build" in the "betas" tab in Steam application settings.
Localisation
We have received quite a few requests for (better) localisation support. Please note that currently localisation is still very much a work in progress, and the ingame translations are machine translated placeholders.
We'll make an announcement regarding our plans for localisation soon(™).