Welcome to the first 0.11.0 WIP update! We’re starting where we left off in our "What’s Next" this week with the improvements towards controls and input mappings. Moving forward, players will now be able to map their inputs to two-buttons-press for controllers. That might not sound excitin…
This looks promising. I’ve actually played the game both with a gamepad and a keyboard and mouse, and to be honest, I’m still not sure which I prefer just yet. Once I start my new playthrough I’ll probably figure out once and for all which one works best for me. I tend to play my shootemups with my PS4 controller, though.
(Good Lord, I really need to go back and finish Code Fairy …)
It’s taking me way too long to finish up a particular blog post I’m working on so I’m going to post it in three or four parts. Later on I’ll compile them into a full article.
This has been a hot topic, and for obvious reasons. My take on it comes after testing a whole bunch of different LLMs, art generators, and voice synthesizers.
A quick note before we jump in. As part of the point I want to make, I enlisted a couple of the AIs I regularly use, GPT-4 and Claude to help outline this article. They also have something to add, but more on that later.
Rise of the Titan
It’s everywhere now and it feels like it happened literally overnight: ChatGPT and DALL-E, Claude, Midjourney, Chatsonic, NovelAI, Autogen, this that and the other thing. The scary part is that you can generate fully realized copy or artwork with these in an instant. The more reassuring part is that most AI is as bad at drawing consistently good hands as most humans, and just as likely to spit out your own questions phrased slightly differently than someone who’s only pretending to listen. Hmm, I wonder how that happened.
What we’re currently shorthanding as ‘AI’ is progressing so fast, it’s nearly impossible to stay on top of it all. Something revolutionary probably slipped right under the radar and we’re not going to realize just how important it was until farther down the road. Now, we’ve got a bunch of people panicking about the potential AI has to replace humans altogether. Or … you know, the classic blow us all to smithereens line of reasoning.
As someone who has to do other people’s jobs for them because they’re not meeting management’s expectations and therefore can’t do my own job, and consequently having to watch day after day as my own work piles multiple meters off the ground, I couldn’t care less if half my coworkers suddenly turned into bots running GPT-4V.
Phoenix ranting on Break
Anyway, I want to weigh in on the AI issue for the record and talk a little about it, the good, the bad, and the downright hilarious. When all’s said and done, I believe that the AIs we’re using today are powerful tools that will help those who are willing to embrace them achieve their goals much faster than they would have been able to otherwise. For others, impossible goals could now become possible, and some people who wouldn’t dare to dream of entering the creative world will now have the means to.
This is more of an introduction than anything. I’ll be really diving in from part 2 onward.
One of the most annoying things about fleshing out these World War II inspired factions is that there isn’t enough territory in the setting to go around. I mean we’ve got America, the UK, Germany, France, Japan, etcetera. There are only a handful of habitable worlds, though. That said, there’s another thing I’d like to touch on another time. It’s the reason my Aeon setting is limited to the Sol System. Back to Space Engineers though!
I was thinking that the Kaiser faction would be a literal empire and not just a relatively large militarized group of colonists. This is where the ‘subfactions’ would come in. Think of Vichy France for example. The Kaisers would have conquered other colonists to reach their current size. This does two things for me. One, it lets me incorporate other factions without having to make them independent forces, and two, it allows me to make ships from other factions in the same style as their host faction.
Two really important ships that come to mind are the Dunkerque and the Jean Bart, which I’d like to make in the style of Star Blazers. For that, they’re going to need to be at least related to the Kaisers.
Anyway, those are just my thoughts and I figured I’d jot them down while I’m on my break.
M.A.S.S. Builder – What’s Next 0.11.0 – Steam News
First of all, before anything else, we must announce that we’re shifting our development engine to Unreal Engine 5 for the next version. Now now, we must ask that you don’t panic and assume the game is going into a development hell of reworking on each and every part of the game. That won’t happen.…
Onward
You can just tell how used to quick and negative reactions VD has gotten. Most gaming studios have to deal with that at some level, and it says a lot about them that they don’t brush it off or overreact to it like some larger companies I know.
Unreal Engine 5
So they’re switching up the game’s engine. That’s not a small thing, even if it’s going from one version of an engine to a newer one. They’re right to try to head off people’s fears that M.A.S.S. Builder’s heading for development hell. VD doesn’t let us down often, so let’s go ahead and let them do their engine upgrade. It’s a win-win for the players, even if it takes a little while to hit release.
The Story
I don’t know why, but hearing that they’re wrapping up the story missions relatively soon makes me kind of sad. I’d like the campaign to be longer if possible, but VD’s right:
New story missions. We’re adding 3 new story missions and will end our story there. We mentioned how we’ve the story with filler missions in the Afterwords and after deliberate discussion among ourselves, we’ve decided to stop having those and focus on completing the story missions up to the final piece of the game. This will allow us to fully work on more polishing, QoL improvements, customization contents, and multiplayer in full in 0.12.0 next year. This will also allow us to fully rescale our enemies to a better status line.
VD
Once the main story’s finished, VD can consolidate their time and resources even more. Besides, you never know, once the story’s finished, that may present opportunities in the future for more enhancements: Reworked scenes, additional dialogue, etc. They’re already implementing voice work, so there’s room for improvements in other areas of the story along the way. I’m hopefully optimistic regardless.
Jumping Back In
Anyway, those were the two big things I wanted to address. You can read the rest of the article for yourself if you like. Sometime this week, maybe Tuesday or Wednesday, I’m going to start up a new campaign for M.A.S.S. Builder (because the old one was lost with my old PC). I’ll be posting anything interesting that happens here on the blog. I need to look into some things on the site’s backend as well, since I want to start uploading a lot more gameplay footage.
This is big news, but it didn’t show up in my feed until well over a week ago. Toss in how busy I am and I’m only now getting around to writing about it.
The Beta Branch
This is the version I’m currently running and I’m planning to try it in depth sometime this week. This is supposedly the 2.0 state of the game, so I’m looking forward to blasting my way through the campaign (Prez only planes because “WSOs before foes”) and having another go at the conquest mode.
User Generated Content
Now this is the hidden gem in the 2.0 news from PW. The game’s already quite moddable, but imagine something more streamlined for actually using them like the Steam Workshop. Even I might get directly involved at that point. This isn’t just for skins like in Ace Combat 7, either. New slots for completely custom aircraft would be a literal gamechanger. Imagine starting up the game and then playing a few missions with a Valkyrie or a Viper MKII … or even a Cosmo Falcon!
Seriously looking forward to this if PW fully implements it.
Details
Most of the rest of the post is patch notes and an important reminder that PW’s intended to be a game-game, and not like all these live service games that are constantly caressing your wallet with new content.
Thanks for that.
The Patch Notes
They changed quite a lot, holy crap.
PROJECT WINGMAN 1.0.4D -> 2.0.11 CHANGELOG
PROJECT WINGMAN 1.0.4D -> 2.0.11 CHANGELOG
WEAPONS: -UGB-L blast radius doubled from 90m -> 180m. -UGB-L ammo count doubled. -UGB-S blast radius doubled from 45m -> 90m. -GBS blast radius doubled from 45m -> 90m. -CBU16 blast radius doubled from 45m -> 90m. -BML-U projectile count has been reduced by 1 (this was not a balance decision this was a bug) -BML-U should now launch correctily with the orientation of the player aircraft. -Railgun rounds now penetrate through most objects. -Bombs now have a 10m activation detection radius. -Bomb behavior has been significantly altered. -Reworked bomb drop behavior. -Gunpods are now classified as a dumbfire multi purpose weapon in the weapon selection screen. -ASM is now classified as a multi-purpose weapon in the weapon selection screen. -Fixed an issue where bombs would occasionally spawn misaligned to their hardpoint. -Fixed an issue where missile and bomb racks would appear in virtual HUD view.
GAMEPLAY: -Added Camera Padlock tracking speed switch. Users can now switch between a faster camera speed or the standard camera speed the game shipped with when holding the targetting button to track an enemy. -Adjusted the interpolation speed post AoA maneouver in “unlocked” camera mode. Should result in a smoother transition after the maneouver. -Significantly increased combat effectiveness of both Diplomat/Hitman 2 and Comic/Hitman 3 -Player death sequence has been updated. -Added controller force feedback when in clouds. -Slightly adjusted afterburner force feedback effects. -Added NEXT indicator for the next targettable unit in the target list sequence. -Reduced the update rate of target list so it can select new targets more often rather than going back and forth between 2 targets. -Slightly adjusted where “center” is for the next target system. It should now more reliably target what’s currently the perceived center of the screen. (Which is actually slightly lower than true center of the screen.)
RENDERING: Clouds 2.0 -The cloud and sky system has been completely overhauled! Allowing us to have much more control over the artistic direction of the skyscape and drive our skies further. It’s still a largely work in progress so feedback is appreciated! -Added an additional cloud resolution setting labelled [EXTREME] resolution. (Caution, potentially slow on some machines) -Cloud resolution setting has been slightly overhauled. The following settings now correspond to the following resolution. Due to the change of the default scaling, you may notice a reduction in performance due to the setting going up a tier. -Low -High -Very High -Extreme -Adjusted overall brightness of the game.
VISUAL FX: -Adjusted rain opacity on the canopy. Greatly improving visibility in cockpit view while its raining. -Improved snow weather effects. -Improved missile smoke particle effects. -Improved aircraft destruction smoke particle effects. -Adjusted and optimized several explosion particle effects. -Debris mesh has been fixed for both Airships and Air units. -Debris particle orientation for airships has been fixed. -Particle orientation for gun impacts now align correctly. -Improved water splash particles. -Added a special afterburner category for the VX-23 which conforms with the nozzle shape of the VX-23. -Fixed F/C-16 engine size smaller than the nozzle opening. -Gun firing smoke no longer appears in virtual cockpit. -Afterburners no longer appear in virtual cockpit. -Landing gears no longer appear in virtual cockpit. -Lightning strikes now should consistently appear under cloud cover. -Gun impacts now should work properlty when hitting ship hull and airship hull. -Railgun and railgun trails now emit light. -Improved rain particles. -PW-Mk.I Monarch uses no longer have mini cordium inerter built into the engine. -Adjusted gun impact particles. -Reduced falling wreckage material glow. -Adjusted rain effects on player aircraft. -Adjusted default values of lightning spawners. -Adjusted lightning particles to have supporting lightning step leader. -Improved Countermeasure flare VFX and behavior. -Transport/AWACS now can use flares as a visual effect. Although just like regular fighters, it’s only there as visual flair(heh). -Aircraft destruction effects has been slightly adjusted. -Aircraft destruction effects now has a more gradual onset. -Improved ships fire effects. -Adjusted ship sinking rate upon destruction. -Improved aircraft fire effects. -Fixed an issue where weapon racks would receive decals. -Fixed an issue where Motion Blur would occasionally distort during world origin shift. -Fixed an issue with EUFB particle orientation when viewed from above. -Fixed an issue with the Cordium explosion in Mission 1 being see through. -Improved radar visibility. -Missile smoke no longer follows head rotation.
VIRTUAL REALITY: -Separated video settings between when the user plays in VR or on regular screen. Saving the settings depending which display option is used. -Rain canopy effects has been slightly reduced in VR for improved visibilty. -VR now defaults to Round Robin occlusion. -Subtitles in VR now only rotate on one axis instead of second. This will prevent users from constantly “chasing” the UI element they want to see. -Subtitles now adjust to size with the HUD size options in the Interface settings.
UI: MENU INPUT OVERHAUL -Menu input has been overhauled. A new set of “Menu” bindings has been added to the game and should provide a much more tactile and responsive menu interactions. -Gamepad mouse style navigation has been permanently disabled. -Upon startup, the game will reinitialize several default menu bindings. It shouldn’t conflict with any of your other bindings. -Fixed an issue where certain aspect ratio would fail to display the Debrief screen properly. -Fixed an issue where certain aspect ratio would fail to display the Briefing screen properly. -Added reconnaisance data to the hangar screen for better loadout decision making incentive. -Added an indicator whether an aircraft has a WSO available or not. -Legacy UI element sizes made more consistent with the New UI element sizes. -Legacy UI now should scale correctly depending on the UI scale setting. -More elements in Legacy UI now uses the screen space projection as opposed to the world space projection which now includes -Gun reticle -Horizon Indicator -Velocity Indicator -Cockpit UI -Files/Codex primary info section font has been changed for something more readable in general. -Mission images has been added to the mission select screen. -Bomb prediction widget now turns red when it detects a target. -Fixed an issue where lock on elements will get stuck on screen upon firing missiles. -Lock on indicator size is now much more consistent with the target size UI element. -Made UI transitions much more consistent with the rest of the game.
CAMPAIGN LEVEL ADJUSTMENTS:
FRONTIERS: -Adjusted weather sequence. -Adjusted level lighting. -Fixed an issue where a skin is applied incorrectly to some aircraft in the level.
WAYBACK: -Galaxy no longer follows you since it’s not consistent with the dialog he says. Now he flies directly to Rowsdower.
NO RESPITE: -Greatly increased ground visibility by reducing contrast and increasing sun intensity.
RED SEA: -Adjusted overall mood to be closer to a twilight sunset. -Adjusted the speed of the friendly and enemy vessels in the area to emphasize the chaotic and desperate nature of the engagement. -Adjusted player spawn position. -Adjusted lighting. -Fixed an issue where mission would end earlier than intended because airships would not be included in the target pool.
TRACKIR: -Added TrackIR support. (Thank you Nicholas Chalkley!)
CONQUEST: -Reunified Conquest implementation with the main game. Now it’s no longer a separate instance. -Fixed a critical issue where modifiers would not load when continuing a save file. -Fixed a critical issue where airships would occasionally fly outside the map boundaries. -Fixed an issue where player skin doesn’t load upon loading a game. -Fixed an issue where bloom would display incorrect values during Conquest runs.
ADDITIONAL FIXES: -Updated Credits Text. -Fixed a coordinate mismatch for Presidia. -Fixed an issue where not having the window on focus upon startup would crash the game. -Fixed an issue where the intro sequence would not skip properly causing rare cases where the player stays on a black screen. -Fixed a location mismatch for Briggs range in the briefing for mission Clear Skies. -Fixed lava field glow showing through clouds on some levels. -Restored Vibration/Force Feedback on Afterburner input from early demos. -Fixed an issue where colliding with turrets or ground units defies laws of physics and stops the aircraft on the spot. Player aircraft will now correctly destroy itself as nature intended. -Fixed an issue where Ship units do not report their velocity to attached units thus throwing off missile and gun prediction paths. -Adjusted the amount of time airship destruction cracks to appear. -Airships will now crash into the landscape in a more graceful manner. -Fixed an issue where airship smokes do not align with the falling trajectory. -Fixed an issue where cloud shadows on some level do not dissapear. -Reduced the amount of cloud flicker in VR. However the issue is not fully fixed yet. -Increased the brightness and frequency of building signal lights. -Cannon projectile hit radius now compensate to see whether the object is destroyed or not. Doing a strafe run now should no longer result in bullets being “caught” on already destroyed objects due to their hitbox. That being said, it is only a hitbox reduction so it still will hit if the projectile is close enough. -Adjusted Hangar camera field of view. -Adjusted nozzle material in the hangar screen. -Fixed an issue where some landing gear models are still visible despite the gear being extended. -Fixed an issue where a highway element would not have its collision properties applied. -Missiles no longer phase through airships when the airship is destroyed. -Improved NPC Carrier textures. -Various particles and sound effects should now correctly die out when the player dies. -Slightly improved cockpit visibility during rain. -Fixed F/C-15 misaligned flaps. -Telemetry check interface should correctly fade out in the game settings page. -Fixed an issue where hangar models would sometimes use a higher LOD on lower settings. -Disabled Screen Space Reflections due to HUD occasionally being reflected in SSR. -Adjusted “blue” HUD color for better visibility. -Fixed audio concurrency issues where music and UI elements wouldn’t play properly. -Motion blur should no longer activate while changing camera. -Fixed an issue where certain weapons would fly sideways from the hardpoint. -Adjusted Cockpit HUD bloom intensity. -Adjusted Velocity HUD bloom intensity. -Adjusted Horizon HUD bloom intensity. -Adjusted Enemey Indicator HUD bloom intensity. -Increased the volume of Lock on sounds. -Fixed an issue where crawling text would occasionally flash the completed state. -Fixed an issue where crawling text would fall back with the timings of the text fade in and fade outs. -Smoothed out mouse controll rolls. -Smoothed out AI aircraft rolls. Should prevent wobbles while fighting the player. -Dialog sequence should no longer interrupt each other when a new sequence is starting. -Adjusted pitch ladder behavior. -Cockpit HUD altitude and speed notches should now correspond to the correct selected measurement values. -Overhauled weapon selection appearance in cockpit mode. -Removed random “turbulence” in mouse flight and in AI flight. Made it look glitchy rather than aerodynamic. -Fixed an issue where some thunder sounds ignored volume sliders -Fixed several instances where the pilot models were clipping into the instrument panels. -Fixed shadow banding on the player missile lights. -Improved sharpness of cockpit instruments. -Reduced the brightness of MFDs to not take focus away from gameplay UI. -Reduced the brightness of some colored instrument panels to not take focus away from gameplay UI. -Fixed an issue where Airships do not properly loop their waypoints. -Fixed an issue where railgun circular booms do not appear on lower settings. -Generally improved visibility at high altitudes. -Reduced altitude limit to 10000m -Optimized various shaders that had a high cost. -Optimized various particles that had a high transluscency cost. -Optimized various UI elements overdraw. -Removed any unecessary GPU calculations for some particles. -Switched over the overall post processing tonemapper to use a film tonemapper. -Fixed an issue where players can “speedrun” the game by pressing the SKIP button during end of mission sequences. -The player now may only unpause the game using the main pause key in the main pause menu. -Fixed an issue where the Railgun particles would detach itself from it’s parent too quickly causing shifts in its appearance during origin rebasing. -Adjusted button colors in Telemetry Check. -Enabled Temporal Anti Aliasing for higher Anti Aliasing settings. (You can still use FXAA via Anti Aliasing Low) -Improved the appearance of shadows on lower settings. -Significantly improved targeting systems. -Mouse cursor will no longer center itself upon the start of the game. -Fixed strange loading behavior where sometimes audio would play before loading is finished. -Fixed Kings fade screen sometimes not reaching full whiteout stage before fading out. -Improved several water related particle effects. -Fixed an issue where hangar actor would occasionally dissapear when viewed at certain angles. -Flares are now disabled while landing gear is out. -You can now change angle of the VR hangar by pressing the change camera button. -Increased the render resolution of VR cutscenes. -Adjusted camera sway configuration. -Updated english localization to reduce the amount of typos present in the game. -Fixed a few scaling issues with the primary UI in the game. -Fixed an issue where the user can perform actions while the game is paused in VR. -Fixed a green dot appearing in several menus in VR (leftover from Gaze menu controller) -Fixed an issue where Conquest items would appear outside of the map.. -Fixed debriefing UI from crawling over towards the score screen. -Fixed an issue where HUD appears before the completion of a startup sequence. -Fixed mission completion state not turning green once mission is completed at a specific difficulty. -Fixed debriefing text from crawling over to the score card. -Fixed an issue where conquest UI was still ticking even when not focused. -Fixed an issue where interface setting do not reflect the new settings when the default key is pressed. -Fixed an issue where ground and air assets appear outside of map boundaries. -Fixed an issue where conquest modifiers do not appear as a list in Conquest. -Fixed an issue where hangar is still selecting aircraft via an invisible cursor in VR. -Highlighted Decline by default for the Data Processing screen. -Fixed an issue where aircraft pitching at -90 or 90 degrees would completely break the camera and force it onto a gimbal lock. -Brought CQ_Vineyard map to parity with the new ENV_Vineyard material in M04. -Removed all holes in CQ_SteppingStones -Fixed CQ_PGF altitude not adjusting properly to the new origin rebasing system. -Brought CQ_Coul_1 map to parity with the new ENV_Vineyard material in M04. -Potentially fixed an issue where dev mode and shipping dialog would differ in execution by interrupting each other. -Fixed broken subtitles. -Fixed several typos in Mission 21. -Several QA localization corrections. -Fixed an issue where you could override the number of CQ allies. -Fixed an issue where enemy units could spawn outside of the boundaries in Conquest mode.. -Fixed an issue where bomb camera loses tracking completely if it followed a weapon until end of life. -Migrated mission completion flags onto a new system. Should not require any intervention from the user and does not make the player lose progress. -Fixed an issue where chainlink fence does not have collision. -Fixed an issue where the return button on difficulty screen wasn’t selectable on gamepad for PC version. -Fixed several issues where several entities were still moving despite the game being paused in VR. This was due to the limitation of the pause system in VR not being able to do a “real” pause. -Reduced the flash intensity of “nuke” defined explosion to reduce strain on the eyes for VR users. -Fixed an issue where a Conquest area was not accessible from its neighbors. -Fixed several trees appearing inside the highway take off tunnel for the main campaign during the takeoff sequence. -Fixed conquest territory not being accessible from certain neighboring territory. -Fixed an issue HELMET RADAR IN COCKPIT setting does not restore the previous state of radar visibility. It should now refresh itself properly depending on which setting is selected -Fixed the language tab missing in the settings menu -Fixed an issue where hiring den could provide players with more than intended allies. -Fixed an issue where missile cam would completely bug out when following a weapon until its end of life. -Fixed an issue where localization menus did not have gamepad support. -Exit button should no longer be selectable in the main menu of the base game. -Fixed an issue where language apply and back buttons are the wrong way around. -Removed spoken language tab in the language section. -Fixed skip button appearing in Conquest -Fixed a strange mission appearing when skip button is pressed in Conquest. -Fixed Conquest hiring den being able to access a hidden button. -Adjusted default VR interface size values based on playtesting. -Attachment spawning in Airships and Ships are now staggered to reduce stutter. -Fixed UI appearing and dissapearing with an animation on pause. -Reduced instances where the sun is visible through the cloud. -Reduced the amount of contrast on iced water to make it easier on the eyes. -Reduced all performance overhead in the game in general. -Updated some localization files. -Fixed an issue where the enemy spawner keeps spawning.
In Closing
Since I’m starting to push back into using PR as intended, I’ll be ‘documenting’ any progress I make in 2.0, so expect more posts about it, and maybe even some gameplay in the coming weeks.
