Sky Rogue
Alpha 26.1 Released!
Alpha 26.1 Changelog:
=============================================
- Fixed save bug where tech advancement sometimes didn't get save and you'd be several tech levels behind when restarting the game.
- Launching an aero whose loadout you never changed while launching (namely in co-op or after returning to the carrier) should no longer lock up the game
- Moving the cursor past the bottom of most menus should make it loop around backto the start, and vice versa
- You should no longer run into the next tech level costing "9999"
- Fixed issues with aeros and airships tilting in weird ways when killed
- Minimum altitude for AI increased
- Co-op: if one player dies but the other doesn't, you no longer see the restart prompt
- Modding: If you have a custom aero that can't be loaded, there should be an error message popup which tells you.
- Mac OS X: the dock is now hidden when running the game fullscreen
Alpha 26 "Rolling Scissors" Released!
Changelog:
WEAPON UPGRADES:
- None of your loadouts are lost when you die: you can immediately start the game again with the same loadout. This also means you can set up your favourite loadout for each aero once and never be forced to do it again.
- No items are lost when you die
- All money is lost when you die
- You can use money to buy upgrades at the Aerolab
- Upgrades are lost upon death
- Tech and tech points are unchanged: you keep all tech points you earn and all tech that gets researched.
NEW STUFF:
- DRAKON - Heavy Fighter
- AAM-S Meteor - short-range missile that has no lock-on cone restriction
- GB-1 Yumi - guided bomb
- GUN-TWIN Twin Vulkan - twin cannons that can be equipped in the primary slot
- A few more Steam acheivements
TWEAKS
- Tech choices are not limited to a random draw of 3: you can research anything you have the prerequisites for
- Added a slight ease-in and ease-out to all flight controls for better feel
- Bombsight lock-on time reduced
- Pressing A / Spacebar in the fighter chooser will proceed to the loadout menu (press B / escape to confirm your choice): pressing down still works but it's proven to be unintuitive for new players.
- Free Flight will open the same pre-flight carrier menu as the main game (for the sake of consistency)
FIXES
- Reinforcements spawn properly again!
- Defense turrets really shouldn't be spawning in buildings anymore... tell me if they are!
- Using Aerododge while not choosing a direction or doing so in quick succession should not cause it to malfunction
- Autotarget will not target things you can't lock-on to if you're using an air-only or ground-only weapon
MODDING:
- You can set the position of the cockpit camera for your custom aeros by adding a transform with the name "cockpit" and parentID 0
Alpha 26 Upgrade System Playtesting
The new permadeath works this way:
- None of your loadouts are lost when you die: you can immediately start the game again with the same loadout. This also means you can set up your favourite loadout for each aero once and never be forced to do it again.
- No items are lost when you die
- All money is lost when you die
- You can use money to buy upgrades at the Aerolab
- Upgrades are lost when you die
- Tech choices are not limited to a random draw of 3: you can research anything you have the prerequisites for
- Tech and tech points are unchanged: you keep all tech points you earn and all tech that gets researched.
There are also some fun new weapons and the new DRAKON Heavy Fighter that are not completely finished, but are finished enough to include in the playtest.
I'd really like it if people tried out this new system before we fully commit to it. People already on the "indev" branch will automatically update to this version and just need to play the game. Everyone else will need to switch branches if they're interested.
You can play this branch by doing the following:
- Right click on "Sky Rogue" in the games list
- "Properties"
- "Betas" tab
- Choose the "indev" branch from the dropdown
- Close the window
- The game should auto-update to the latest version on indev
Please note that the current indev version has not been thoroughly tested, so if you run into any major issues you can just switch to the main branch.
Despite the way money works now, because of the way it's tracked and saved you should have all your old money if you switch back to the main branch.
Alpha 25.9 Released!
=================================================
- Pressing Select / Tab will now cycle through Chase, Cockpit, and Flyby cameras instead of just Chase and Flyby
- Reorganized save game files in preparation for Alpha 26
- New BARRACKS ground target
- The button for Splitscreen Co-op will be disabled if you don't have two controllers plugged in
- F8 key: toggle the HUD for better screenshots
FIXES:
- Weapon stats display correctly on all loadout menus again
- Fixed a longstanding bug where the very last tech level would cost 1000 points, this was actually unintentional
- The tech level progress bar counts up much more quickly at higher levels
- Fixed issues with gun button
- INCOMING warning should not get stuck on the screen if you are being attacked while landing
- Colliding with AWACS should always kill you
- Mod loading very slightly optimized
TWEAKS:
- More Payload for Zulu: 190 -> 200
- More Avionics for Vector and Raiju: 190 -> 200
- AGM-FF Firestorm graphics updated
- Bigger explosion effects tweaked slightly
- Airships have multiple damage trails since it looks cooler
- If you have Beginner Controls enabled, an indicator appears on the HUD to remind you, just in case they're on by accident
Alpha 25.8 Released!
- Beginner Controls: a new option before the tutorial as well as in the Controls menu for if you have never played a flight sim or flying game and can't handle the normal "direct" controls, or if you really just prefer "point-n-fly" controls.
- "Fire Gun" button: L3 / Left Alt by default. You can bind a button to fire the first available gun on your aero (going clockwise on the weapon wheel)
GAMEPLAY:
- Added Kondor and Zulu squadrons as mission targets
- Some enemies have specials (just flares for now) and will use them
- Options menu has been reogranized into more submenus because it's getting crowded
- "Require Lock-On" Option: When enabled, guided weapons will not fire unless locked on to a target.
- "Swap Roll / Yaw" Option: When enabled, using mouse controls (for example), pressing A or D will roll, and moving the mouse left or right will yaw.
- "Look Sensitivity" Option: How quickly the camera rotates when you move the right stick or hold down the right mouse button.
- Using a gamepad, you can now exit the carrier screen using the B button, then pressing A on the resulting prompt. Formerly you always had to pause and press select to quit, which wasn't obvious.
- When a gamepad is plugged in, keyboard controls will still work for menus
- You can rebind menu controls. If you lock yourself out of menus, you can always use the mouse to fix the problem.
MODDING:
- Aeros can use the stats of built-in aeros as a template. This means, for example, that if you've made something that looks like an interceptor, you can give it the same stats as the Vector or Raiju. Instructions are in the official modding guide.
- .aero.json "skinName" property: Aeros can specify a default skin that's automatically loaded with the aero, so players don't have to manually equip the skin you provided. The name follows the format: "skin_{.png name without extension}", ex: "Space Police.png" has the name "skin_Space Police"
- If a custom aero can't be loaded, it will not break the loading of other aeros of skins. If you don't see your aero appearing, please copy and paste the contents of your ".aero.json" file into this to help you find the error: http://jsonlint.com/
FIXES:
- Upgraded from Unity 5.1.0 -> 5.1.3, which may fix some crashes
- The locked mouse no longer uses the hexagon icon, but uses the hardware pointer. Recent versions of Unity let me lock the cursor inside the window, so the option still exists but it just uses the hardware pointer. The software-driven hexagon cursor would sometimes move erratically if you ever experienced framerate issues, so this should fix any weirdness related to that.
- When the cursor is hidden or shown is controlled more tighly now, so if you were for example playing the game in Big Picture mode and got annoyed with the mouse cursor showing up during flight even though you're using a gamepad, it should no longer happen.
- If the AI flies too far off the map, it will try to fly back to the island
- AI which patrols (AWACS, Kondor, Zulu) actually does so properly instead of flying in circles
- Mods are only loaded at startup to reduce loading times. Free Flight will, however, reload mods every time you enter it just like before.
- Minor optimizations in some cpu-hungry code
TWEAKS:
- Climb performance for all aeros increased slightly (like before, interceptors have slightly higher performance than others)
- Interceptors have a 25% higher ceiling (+500 units)
- AAM-MR Javelin speed increased 10%
- AAM-IR Diamondback speed increased 10%
- ACE enemy evasion tweaked so there are windows where they won't actively try to evade missiles. This actually makes them more aggressive!
- "Cosmonaut" and "Wespe" skins (now "Hive Drone") are now built-in skins
Alpha 25.7 Released!
FIXES:
- Co-op control issues that made the mode practically unplayable have been fixed. If you experience any issues, try turning on the "XInput" option in settings. Co-op still requires two controllers to work
- People experiencing freezes / crashes related to save data corruption, you'll get an informative "bluescreen". This is to avoid overwriting your save data, which may or may not be substantial.
Alpha 25.6 Released!
Alpha 25.6 Changelog:
- Co-op progression should be working properly now
- There is an "XInput" box in the options menu. As it says, it requires a restart of the game.
Enabling the option will fix the problem with two Xbox 360 controllers sharing throttle inputs.
It will PROBABLY fix the double-button issue with Xbox One controllers.
I encourage everyone having input issues to try enabling it and see if it improves things.
TWEAKS:
- Increased AAM-MR reload rate
- Decreased AAM-IR avionics cost
- Decreased MIRV reload rate
- Flares launch in a much wider pattern and trigger sooner, so they should be more useful
- Reinforcements will ignore an invisible enemy limit so they more reliably spawn
- Quick-switching weapons by tapping the "switch weapons" button works better and doesn't disrupt flight
- Therefore, the weapon menu will take a few split-seconds longer to appear
FIXES:
- VSync setting should work again (use -force-d3d9 if for some reason it doesn't)
- AGM-FF missiles aim a few meters higher so they don't run into the ground so easily
- Launching the game when the save file or options file is corrupted for some reason should not prevent you from starting the game
- When loading skins, the ".PNG" extension won't be accidentally included when it's in all caps
- Some non-Steam players were having issues launching the game
- Mods should work for Mac players
- When landing in-mission, or in co-op or free flight modes, navigating to the Aerolab menu when there's no tech researched will no longer cause the game to soft lock
Alpha 25.5 Released!
- Steam Workshop items should appear in-game
- The location of mod files has changed, please consult the modding guide for details: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=495393634#
TWEAKS:
- Island size increases slightly in later levels
- Mission objectives will spawn farther away from the player
- There is a short grace period before any enemy will target you
- Aeroboost has infinite uses but much longer cooldown
- SAM turrets shouldn't appear on Mission 1
- FRIGATEs will likely have SAM-LRs in later islands
FIXES:
- AWACS escorts were too numerous; they are now the same size as normal patrols
- ACE enemies should no longer stall and crash when attacked with MIRVs
- "INCOMING" warnings should no longer get stuck on screen
- Raiju should no longer be gigantic on the Research menu
- TOROs are hostile again
Alpha 25.3 Released!
- Mouse sensitivity is now adjustable in the Options menu
- Fixed default mouse sensitivity being too high
- There is now a "Low Graphics" option in the Options menu if your graphics card (such as Intel) has trouble with shadows or AA
Next up: A tool to let you upload skins / aeros to the Steam Workshop, and any bugs I can manage to fix.
Alpha 25.1 Released!
Alpha 25.1 Changelog:
- It's the first minor version!
- Menu buttons will interact with the mouse again
- You can navigate the menu with WASD again
- Escape key will back out of menus or pause the game if already at the top level menu
- The Aerolab menu is grayed out if you don't have any technology
- Some players were not getting shadows due to incorrect default quality settings. There is now only one quality setting, what used to be known as "Radical".
- There's a pretty animation showing how much of your hitpoints you've lost when you get hit