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[GalaethGames]

awesome, great pictures! I've saved the big one on my computer, I can see 3 of my ships.
Really great game, and you've not even finished it yet!

[forsy]

awesome, great pictures! I've saved the big one on my computer, I can see 3 of my ships.
Really great game, and you've not even finished it yet!

Thanks! You say not even finished yet, I feel like I've barely even started

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I had a nice surprise to wake up to this morning. Alpha Beta Gamer must have seen this on indiedb and enjoyed it enough to do an article on their site:

http://www.alphabetagamer.com/lift-alpha-download/

I kinda wish the game was in a little better shape before something like that, but people don't seem to mind and quite a lot of people have tried it out. Some are even building some nice planes

[forsy]

Well, the dust from that article and the tigsource devlog magazine update has pretty much settled. It was fun while it lasted

Had a bunch of new downloads and plays, about 500 people. Didn't get a ton of commentary or followers from it so I'm not really sure how to measure the impact of it, but I'm satisfied with the number of newcomers. A couple people braved the editor and put together some pretty sweet rides. Here are some samples, and there are a handful more in the system that I haven't had a chance to screenshot.





Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming!

[gambrinous]

/subbing

[forsy]

/subbing

Welcome

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Still working on the next update. Getting close, about another half dozen items to finish. Mostly small stuff after tonight, but some of the small stuff can require some refactoring so it's a bit time consuming.

I had a good conversation with a close friend of mine tonight about the game and how to move forward. Most of it revolved around how much he hated the current editor and how it needed to be accessible to anyone and everyone. Nothing really new, but it just reinforced the plan moving forward. He also sucked at flying so he requested some easier controls and better feedback for that. So what, they let anyone through flight school these days?

Anyway, here is a shot of what will likely be the new main menu for the next version:



There is a scrolling message of the day on top. The logo is pretty funny. It took about an hour to get the center of gravity right along with the amount of throttle I needed to give it in order to fly upwards. At the moment it looks like it goes up but if you look off camera it flies way off to the right and crashes after 30 seconds

[failrate]

That's actually pretty appropriate.

[eigenbom]

Cool man, glad u had a bunch more people look at it!

[forsy]

That's actually pretty appropriate.

The lift logo thing? I was thinking of having some kind of contest to see who could come up with the best design for that. I have a bunch of ideas for integrating different planes and craziness to the menu system, but figured I would keep it simple for now.

Cool man, glad u had a bunch more people look at it!

Thanks! I need to find a way to set up that archive so any new people that play the game can see all the old stuff that was built from the earlier versions that no longer work

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And speaking of old versions, this new version is not quite done yet... I keep finding more and more stuff to put in it. I just want to make sure that this next version can be good for a while because I'm planning on diving into the editor next, and I have no idea how long that could take. There are still a lot of people playing the game, so I want to be sure there is enough to play with until the next next version. So, I'm adding a bigger sandbox arena to play in and several challenges. One of the challenges is called "Mount the Sky Whale". I'm sure you can figure out what that is referring to (hint: go back a page or two).

And finally, I was pointed to this "lets play" video on youtube today:

[Christian]

Come on, you know we need a GIF of that menu. I really like that idea, having the letters made of plane parts. It serves a dual purpose: shows the title in the style similar to the game, and demonstrates what the editor can do

[forsy]

Come on, you know we need a GIF of that menu. I really like that idea, having the letters made of plane parts. It serves a dual purpose: shows the title in the style similar to the game, and demonstrates what the editor can do

Ask and ye shall receive.

(click for full size)


I think it's the shadow that really sells it.

[forsy]

One of the new toys to play with in the sandbox:



They pick a random wing and make it go away. In this case the first one to go was the elevator and it ends up getting caught on the rudder which looks pretty awesome. Without that though I was dead in the air, and then they pick me apart piece by piece.

[forsy]

0.2.0 is available now.

Browser
Win32
Linux
OSX

This wasn't supposed to be ready just yet, but I decided not to sleep in order to make this happen. IndieDB put Lift on their front page featured banner rotation thing just as I was going to go to bed. I didn't want another batch of new people playing the old build, so I made it work. We'll see if I regret this decision tomorrow when everything breaks

Anyway, some cool stuff for 0.2.0. Lots of small bug fixes and user interface improvements. A proper escape menu, better controls menu, etc.

The big changes are 4 challenges added (click for big):


and a new sandbox map:



The challenges are where I wanted them to be. They range from easy to hard, although this is with only myself testing so they're probably all hard for someone new I set up the challenges to track success and failure, not only for each challenge but each plane as well. Hopefully this will help people get them done. I should have probably sorted the planes list by success rate so the best ones are always at the top, but... I didn't.

The sandbox map is not exactly how I wanted it, but it is miles ahead of the last build. Some stuff scattered about to play with, or just cruise around the map which is fun too. It's fun to buzz the water, even though it doesn't actually act like water yet.

Another thing I added was the ability to comment on each plane. This was mostly due to me wanting to respond to either the bug reports or people asking for help in their notes when they publish their planes.

And going back to the drag physics updates, I managed to integrate the first level of improvements but not the more advanced changes. That will come later.

Some editor related changes:
- drag coefficient is exposed for non wing components. This allows for more control over certain builds, like the enterprise which has such a unique design.
- center of gravity is now restricted to the bounds of the object. This is mostly for preparation of the next physics update. Plus it should just be this way anyway to prevent really weird looking physics behavior.
- you can now use the arrow keys and throttle to simulate the planes controls in the editor
- added plane name input field to the publish menu... too many "New Plane"'s floating about

And a couple other significant changes:
- another toggle to the plane selection menu for "this version" or "compatible versions". I put this in because the old version still works, however due to the drag changes they don't necessarily fly like they originally did. Hopefully the old planes being in a different list will be enough to indicate new version and new changes?
- planes should now sit nicely on the ground regardless of how they are built in the editor.

There's more, but mostly minor stuff.

This will probably be the last big update for a while. The editor overhaul is coming next, and I'm still not entirely sure how that is going to go.

[locknic]

Really cool stuff, you've come a LONG way since I first tried this game. The menu seems to break for me when I try to open the controls though.

Also, might be a good idea to have a few default planes that are fairly stable at the top of the list?

Edit: Hmm, the menu seems to have magically started working for me now.

Edit: Muahahaha I have conquered the sky whale.

[forsy]

Really cool stuff, you've come a LONG way since I first tried this game. The menu seems to break for me when I try to open the controls though.

Also, might be a good idea to have a few default planes that are fairly stable at the top of the list?

Edit: Hmm, the menu seems to have magically started working for me now.

Edit: Muahahaha I have conquered the sky whale.

That's a good idea with the planes, I'll see if I can do that from the server side...

And no the menus were broken in a couple maps. I've fixed and uploaded new builds.

Nice work on the sky whale I was pretty surprised, I managed to go 4 for 4 when testing the challenges before doing the final builds. For the sky whale, the 5 second timer was up about 3 feet from smashing into the ground, it was awesome

[locknic]

I finally got around to constructing my first plane. Introducing.... The Custard Biplane!

The Custard Biplane is a jack of all trades plane. It has great stability, speed, maneuverability and durability. It is especially good for beginners that just want to start up the game and fly without too much difficulty. It takes off on it's own and is extremely easy to fly. Best of all, it looks and moves realistically!

What are you waiting for? Get yours today!

Need a bit of extra maneuverability? Try the Custard Biplane (STE)! This is the Sharp Turning Edition which features more control to the pitch and roll. This comes at a trade off though, as it makes the plane more difficult to fly. Recommended for experienced pilots only.

Have a WHALE of a good time with the Custard Biplane today!

All joking aside, this was the first plane I made, and I am pretty happy with it. I wanted to go for a more traditional plane look. One that looks like it would actually work if it were in real life. I also wanted it to fly stable in open areas, and be able to turn without much persuading. I think it looks pretty cool. That editor took a bit of time to figure out, and I also had quite a bit of trouble figuring out which parts to make rudders etc. But once you get the hang of it, making planes doesn't take too long.

[failrate]

That's actually pretty appropriate.

The lift logo thing?

The crashing shortly after liftoff

[failrate]

The Custard Biplane is amazing.  I'm loving the current state of the editor.  I couldn't figure out how to rotate the plane in the preview window.

[Christian]

That sniper hazard is awesome, makes for some great slow mo moments
It's cool that you're exploring all kinds of crazy ideas for hazards and challenges.

[forsy]

I finally got around to constructing my first plane. Introducing.... The Custard Biplane!

Haha, awesome post. That biplane is great fun.

Now I want to have some kind of in game currency and a way to put your planes up for sale for others to buy

The Custard Biplane is amazing.  I'm loving the current state of the editor.  I couldn't figure out how to rotate the plane in the preview window.

Wait, did you mean to say that? Not a whole lot of positive feedback around the editor, but it must grow on people since some stick with it and make all this cool stuff.

I've had a lot of thought on how to do a more user friendly yet flexible editor and I'm excited to get started on it shortly. I'll be sure to have a help screen explaining how to rotate the camera (I think it's hold right mouse button and drag right now?)

That sniper hazard is awesome, makes for some great slow mo moments
It's cool that you're exploring all kinds of crazy ideas for hazards and challenges.

"exploring" them yes, but figuring out what to actually do with them? not really. Like that sniper hazard, its fun to play around with but is there really any way to do anything meaningful with it? Once you start losing your wings your plane becomes useless pretty quickly.

I think this has been brought up before but one thing I still want to explore is having different materials to build the plane components out of. Take these snipers for example, maybe they just do a certain amount of damage. A wood wing will be ruined in one shot but an aluminum wing might lose 50% effectiveness after one shot. Having a 50% effective wing is going to be much more useful than no wing at all.

Maybe you can wrap your wing in kevlar for extra strength, but it would be much heavier so you would have to build around that.

I feel like I've said all that before.. hopefully I'm not just reposting old ideas that I haven't got around to trying yet

[failrate]

Actually, you can get shot in the wings quite a lot with bullets before they're useless.  Bullets are far more dangerous to fuel lines and the power train (and cockpit).