Hello everybody.

It's been about a month! I think that's a good thing, because it felt like it was ages since 0.05a. Maybe because there has been a lot of work under the hood. More specifically, v0.06a brings a migration to the Universal Render Pipeline, tweaks to the minimap, and a reworked options menu. 

Before we get started, if you haven't seen it I had the opportunity for an interview with Skyward Flight, a media website that talks about various flight arcade and simulation games. If you're curious about how ASE got started or my previous work, feel free to check it out. Anyway, let's get into what's new. 

Bug Fixes

• Fixed AI missile evasion waypoint sending them to outer space
• Fixed Supermaneuverability mode applying a blanket brake - instead brake force is increased as aircraft rotates away from direction of travel
• Fixed various UI scaling issues
• Fixed no music when returning to main menu after finishing a mission (again)

Known Bugs

• Gun firing direction is slightly misaligned on both the MD-15 and BG-18.
• Enemy aircraft slow down unnaturally when hit with guns.
• Rocket pods have a pink texture
• When attacking ground targets, AI might crash into the ground and bounce off.

New Content and Other Changes

• Migrated entire project to use Unity's Universal Render Pipeline instead of the High Definition Render Pipeline.
  I don't know why I started ASE as an HDRP project, but I was never going to get AAA visuals out of it with my current skillset, so I've downgraded it without much noticeable loss in visual quality. In fact, I think it looks a bit better.
• Added volumetric clouds (prototype)
  The move to URP allowed me to go shopping for a cloud asset. I'm currently using OccaSoftware's Altos Sky and Cloud renderer, which seems to be working well. The developer is investing additional time into cloud fidelity and performance so expect clouds to get better looking and smoother-running in subsequent updates. If the performance hit is too much, you can adjust it in the options settings.
• Reworked minimap system
  Switched to a set of opaque sprites for the minimap in order to improve readability.  Fiddled with lunetis's original code for zooming in and out to make sure that currently locked target is always on the minimap. Added rendering order to player, non-critical target, critical target, and friendly aircraft to avoid z-fighting and other messiness. 
• Added option screen to control audio levels and visual quality
  Hopefully this is self-explanatory.
• Added controls remapping
  For the life of me I am unable to figure out how to remap mouse movement, so I've just left it hard set. Sorry, but I'll keep trying in the background whenever I have some time.
• Added ability for AI aircraft to use guns
  This uses a simple modification to the AI lock code to make sure that the target is within a very small cone off the nose before firing the gun. 
• Added slight screen shake to player weapon usage
• Modified the flight models of the MD-15 and BG-18.
• Added zoom-out when locking camera onto target, so you don't get a faceful of nose cone

This is a pretty extensive overhaul of the render pipeline, so I hope nothing breaks. There's also a lot more going on visually with the clouds now, which could increase load on the GPU. Operation Magnum Major in particular has turned into my big stress test level with a big map, big clouds, and big fights, which could pose problems for weaker computers. The quality settings I've provided are unfortunately bare-bones, but hopefully they give you the performance boost you need.

Important News 

The performance notes I talked about previously hint at a larger development challenge that is coming up. I'm approaching the limits of what my skillset can handle at this current stage in terms of optimisation and map size. ASE is unfortunately only my second project, and I wouldn't call myself an experienced developer at all. There are challenges that I've only just now started to find out about making a flight game in Unity, mainly the need for massive camera draw distances, floating point errors, and terrain optimisation. These are not simple issues I can sit down and fix in a week or so - I expect I'll need to do a lot of heavy research and development over the coming few months to make sure that Unity can handle my minimum expectations for ASE's gameplay. 

Of course, this does not mean that I'm giving up. I'm just saying that I will need to work on even bigger upgrades to the engine and game systems in the future to make sure that it can support the scale of even a modestly-sized game map. I'm likely going to start up a private experimental branch of the game to fiddle with and hopefully I can get results within a few months! But I will once again temper expectations and say we'll see how we go.

What's Next?

Even with these challenges coming up, there's still a few more things I can take care of within the current game framework. Namely:

• HUD & pause screen rework
• Dialogue
• Hangar rework
• Ground forces
• Other secret things

So there'll still be content for a few more patches I reckon. 

Thanks for sticking around for the end of the article - please feel free to send any bugs or feedback my way and I hope everybody has a safe and restful holiday break!