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[DoorKnobHandle]

Haha thanks!

The promised BIG alpha update is very close, we promise! Here's one last teaser:

[Howard Day]

Hello! While I wait for some lingering updates to go into the Alpha that's coming out next, (so soon!) I thought I'd work on one of the parts of the Next Alpha release - the ability to land your fighter.
We're actually trying to put together the complete game loop on the next release... Choose your ship, launch, fly through several NAV points, and return to your carrier and land.
Since this is something I can work on by myself, and requires a fair bit of new artwork, I thought I'd tackle it right now.
Here's where I got last night:

It already knows which ship you're flying and shows the correct sprite, and it's very small in memory, so it's very fast to load.
The next part of this is adding the shot from inside the St Nazaire's hangar that shows your ship floating in and touching down. It's a bit more complex than this part, since there's so much more art I need to make. The front of the hangar near the landing strips hasn't been touched much, and really doesn't hold up from close range. I have all the ships with landing gear already, I just need to animate them in the correct positions.

Thanks for taking a look!

[team_q]

"You are now entering an automatic landing zone"

[TallestFiddle]

Wow, this game looks great!  Its not a genre of game I would expect to like, but after seeing everything I'm pretty excited to play it!

[Howard Day]

Eric McQuiggan: Yes! That's very close to how the landing will work - Right now points of interest (NAV points, landing zones, that sort of thing) are going to be small crosshair icons - when you hover over them with your reticle for a certain amount of time (2-3 seconds) they'll expand slightly and you'll lock onto that destination. Then you just double-tap afterburn to go into to super-cruise autopilot.
TallestFiddle: Thanks!

So, I thought you might like to see the current progress on the second part of the hangar landing. It starts with the original version that shows in the distant background of the ship selection screen - it's obviously undetailed, and I slowly fill it in over a couple of evening of time.
As of last night:

While I was working on that, I also worked on getting the landing sprites for a fighter - starting with the Boomslang.
A simple loop:


I still need to finish detailing the background, adding parallaxing foreground elements, and work on combining the ship and the background.
I should have 3-4 more nights of work on this, before I can pop it into the engine, and hook it up with the first scene... Then it's just a matter of doing the other 4 ships.
Thanks for taking a look!

[Howard Day]

Hello, again! Tonight I've got a bit more of the Landing cinematic to show - still not done, but good enough to show.

Still on the To-Do list:
Add the shadow under the fighter.
Add a shield effect when the fighter passes through the atmospheric boundary.
Add cooldown and landing jet effects to the fighter.
Hopefully the rest will be done tomorrow or Tuesday.
In the meantime - more news on the alpha! We're getting very close - as far as I know, only 2 issues remain to fix before everything is made public.
Thanks for taking a look!

[Rebusmind]

Sweet graphics, sci-fi setting, I'm in.

[Howard Day]

And the new Alpha is LIVE!
http://www.wingsofstnazaire.com
This update lets you fly 3 of the 5 human fighters. Available are the Boomslang, Copperhead, and Cobra.

Things to note are the adjustment of the the double-tap barrel roll into a tap-and-hold strafe roll, improved dynamic music, the removal of the old testing explosion spheres, Better collisions for the alien fighters, removal of player invulnerability, better enemy wave timing, better text and font rendering, and tuned weapon sound FX.

For fun, try the Gamma Burster weapons on the Cobra. Think of them as dual-mini-deathstar lasers. They will wipe out your gun capacitors, but they will kill most light-to-medium fighters in a singe sustained shot. You have to maintain beam contact, however.

There are many more minor changes, so keep an eye out!
Enjoy!

[Rebusmind]

I can't start a mission in the alpha. When I select a space ship the screen fades to black, but nothing happens. If I click again where the space ship was, the screen shows the menu again and fades to black again, as if it got stuck after choosing the ship.
(Only tested this with the Cobra)

[DoorKnobHandle]

How long have you tried waiting? We are missing a loading screen there and on slower machines it might take 30 seconds to load into the game!

[Rebusmind]

It worked when I chose the first space ship and the loading only took half a second, so I don't think that I didn't wait long enough.

[DoorKnobHandle]

Huuuh, that's weird. What OS are you running?

[Rebusmind]

Win 7 Professional

[DoorKnobHandle]

That's incredibly weird, we haven't heard that bug report yet whatsoever and can't replicate it either. Have you tried our alpha before our last update?

[Rebusmind]

Nope, that was the first time I tried it. Could it be that my Unity web plugin was outdated?

[DoorKnobHandle]

Oooh you're using the web build, yeah that could be it. But I'd advice you to download the windows version instead and play it from your harddrive, that's more stable!

[Howard Day]

More work done on the landing, tightening up animation, effect, and adding sound effects. Next to come: music, and more foreground elements when the camera pans over.
Enjoy!

[Howard Day]

Hello, everyone! I thought I'd give a bit of an update on where we stand, progress-wise.

The main thing we've been working on getting done is the actual game-play loop of: launch -> go through a series of mission navpoints -> land. To do this we needed two systems made - the first is the landing sequence/method, which we've already shown some of. The Second is a method/system for transitioning from one navpoint to another. This is what we've come up with:



The basic system is that you turn towards a navpoint, and when you turn to face it the name of the destination is printed next to it.

Once you settle over the navpoint, your navigation computer begins to lock on and generate a fastest-pace method of getting you there. After you've locked on, engaging your afterburners will transport you to that destination!

This system allows deliberate transits to different areas, but it also discourages the player from simply jumping from navpoint to navpoint in the middle of combat. You have to fly in a straight line, for at least a couple of seconds, to lock on, and that will make you chumpmeat in any sort of combat, unless you are very very lucky.

In the meantime both Jan and I are taking a break. I'm going on a two week roadtrip, and Jan has a project he's crunching on. When I get back, I hope to have this complete, and have some demo missions in the build!

Enjoy!

[Howard Day]

I'm Working on Missile locking animations for WOSN. The first on is for a Image-Rec tracking missile, and the second is for a Heat-seeker.



So the thing I'm working on now is getting the missiles to behave properly - that means that they will have different lock requirements, different usages, and generally start to feel unique and powerful...especially since you'll only have one per slot now, not an infinitely regenerating supply.

It's going to be more fun once there's a locking mechanism and the different personalities of each missile shine through. You're going to like the hitting power of the Phoenix and quick lock time, but hate the relatively slow speed and need to lock onto a heat signature. The Cyclops can be fired from anywhere, but takes longer to lock, and doesn't have as large a warhead. The Wyvern can only be locked from a distance, has a massive cluster warhead (large primary explosion, small sub-munitions) for disrupting enemy formations. It can't turn for shit, though.

Working on the Wyvern lock now, Jan is working on functional nav points and targeting, warp spawn locations, Tutorial and mission text, and general mission frameworks. Daniel is working on preparing for our first gamescon appearance, and Ben is busy drawing the in-game version of the new alien artwork Kelly (https://twitter.com/is_chimera) made for us!


(A Ctholtian Pilot)

Hoping to have more images of that soon.

[Howard Day]

Working update! Over the last couple of days, I've finished the Wyvern Locking animation, Gotten started on the code to use these animations, and Jan has gotten the power management system working. The Power management system is a seriously important gameplay item that we've just completely missed having in there for far too long.

With any luck I'll have the in-game screen captures of these systems in the next few days!