Almost everything I've been working on lately has been back end to support the upcoming training campaign, which will introduce each of the mechanics of Arena one by one and take place on the new island map. The Arena mission handling got refactored a bit, along with a global event system, to handle the basic scripting necessary for the Arena training missions.



In the parallel to this, one of the things that has been on the backlog for a while has been updating the TrackIR plugin and fixing a couple head tracking related bugs.

Official TrackIR Plugin

The absolutely ancient TrackIR plugin I've been using for almost 10 years has finally been updated to the latest, which brings native support for the game in the TrackIR software. The unusual pitch ladder movements when head tracking was used have also been addressed.

Steam Screenshots

Another small line item that was on the backlog for a long time was having photo mode actually take Steam screenshots. This works as would expect, with the default behavior being to take a Steam screenshot if the game is currently being run through Steam. Two new settings have been added to the game to force the old behavior of locally saved screenshots, or disable Steam screenshots entirely.

Behind the Scenes

The new map is quite large, with the base geometry for it now being down. Expect mountains and valleys to fly through. It's still extremely WIP, so keep that in mind with this very WIP preview image.



The first campaign mission is very simple, just taking off and landing in a couple airbases around the island map, but since the game right now only has events for purely "Strategic" stuff like base capture, this has caused some coding fun to expand the event system to make for more robust mission objectives.

The bulk of the remaining work on the game will be on building out the Arena and Arena missions. The training campaign is still subject to re-organization but this is the rough outline of not just the campaign but also Arena's feature-set.

Changelog

Improvements:
- Strategic Target visuals no longer Z-Test
- Updated TrackIR plugin to the latest over the original 10 year old plugin
- Game will be recognized as "Tiny Combat Arena" in the TrackIR software
- Photo mode automatically takes Steam screenshots
- Added setting for local screenshots to be saved only when Steam is not in use, or always
- Added setting to enable/disable Steam screenshots
- Shutter effect in photo mode happens only after a photo has been successfully saved

Bugfixes:
- Occasional freeze caused by TIR on startup no longer happens
- "Use head tracking" setting works as expected
- "Use head tracking" setting can enable/disable TrackIR mid-flight
- TrackIR no longer resets every time settings window is opened
- "Reload TrackIR" keybind works as expected

Balance:
- AltitudeEfficiency set to the following values to make dedicated fighters better at high altitude
+ AV8B: 1.0
+ F-5/MiG-21: 1.2
+ F-5/MiG-23: 1.5

JSON:
- Added "AltitudeEfficiency" parameter to the engine definition for aircraft
+ Value of 1 is normal, >1 mean engine suffers less engine degradation with altitude