• Hello everyone.

It's been a while, once again. I hope everybody is doing well. I've been hard at work preparing for a band performance this Friday, doing work things and not working on ASE. But while deadlines are deadlines, some days you just have to do something else, so I have found a bit of time to cobble together this patch for the game. Let's get into what's new.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed loadout saving bug
• Fixed minimap sprite size bugs
• Fixed lock-on tied to camera bug
• Fixed various UI, animation, and other miscellaneous bugs that I can't remember

New Content & Other Changes

• Reverted missile code to the original OperationMaverick design for more accuracy.
• Replaced terrain textures with less disgusting versions.
• Added mission timers to all missions.
• Added score attack mission mechanic. 
  • Aim to reach the target score by the end of the mission to complete it successfully. Friendly units will contribute to your score.
• Added mission updates and area triggers, which are big spheres you can fly through to trigger mission updates.  Later on, more triggers will be added.
• Refactored altitude limit code to act as a mission modifier that can be applied to any mission.
• Added basic AI formations. Formations follow a formation leader, and can either fly in formation, or disperse to engage targets.
• Added 2 very basic missions to demonstrate the mechanics, a canyon run with altitude limit, and a score attack air superiority mission
• Increased MTAM flight time

That's basically it. 

What's next?

I've been experimenting with a few other things for next patch, but I'm not sure how close I am to readying them. Possibly:

• Weapon refactor (I'm aware that STDM is very wonky at close range)
• Controls remapping & better M+KBM controls

I'm also thinking I want to add a state machine to AI units to enhance their formation abilities. We'll see.

That about wrap things up for this update. Again, I apologise for the delay and general visual presentation of things. Thank you for reading this far!