Hi Everyone,

Warplane Quest Playtest - Alpha 9 is now available on Steam!

This update adds a heavy bomber plane (Handley Page Type O), dynamic weather system and much more.

Many thanks to our community member Jure Račnik who contributed a great looking model of a heavy bomber hangar to this update.

New Content

• Added new plane: Handley Page Type O (Heavy Bomber) equipped with five Lewis Guns and 112lb HE bombs. It can be unlocked by completing the "Death From Above" mission
  
• Added a heavy bomber hangar made by Jure Račnik which is now the primary hangar for player planes
  
• Added new mission: "Death From Above"
  
• Added new enemy type: Infantry equipped with Gewehr 98 which spawns in the far side of the trenches
  
• Added new primary weapon for Sopwith Camel: Twin Lewis Guns. It can be unlocked by completing the optional objective in the "Vendetta" mission
  

New Features

• Added speed boost that can be activated by pressing the SHIFT key on the keyboard or the left trigger on a controller
  
• The game now performs a hardware benchmark after the first launch and configures optimal display options
  
• Added an Auto Detect button to the display options which runs the hardware benchmark
  
• Added new display option: Vertical Sync
  
• Added option to turn off the music
  
• Added new cheat console commands: unlock all planes, add money, damage immunity, increase weapon damage, zoom camera, trailer mode
  
• It is now possible to close a modal dialog (e.g. options, missions) with the Escape key on the keyboard or the Back button on a controller
  

Dynamic Weather

• Added new weather types: clear skies, cloudy, foggy, rain, thunderstorm, sand storm, snow. Only some of them are used in the level at the moment
  
• Each mission now has a weather forecast in the mission briefing that indicates what the weather will be like in the mission
  
• In the Free Flight mode, the weather can change randomly at any time
  
• Added console commands to change weather. Type 'help' in the console to show all available weather types
  
• Added volumetric clouds to improve the look of the sky. They can be turned off by setting the effects quality to low
  

World Changes

• Made the aerodrome and main hangar larger so that heavy bombers can use them
  
• Made the caves larger so that heavy bombers can fly through them
  
• Observation balloons are no longer spawning directly above trenches
  

Balance Changes

• Twin machine guns (Vickers, Lewis and LMG 08/15) are now shooting from both barrels simultaneously
  
• Increased the damage of the Parabellum MG 14 (Albatros C.III) and Luger P08 (Fokker Dr.I) to match increased damage output of twin machine guns
  
• Increased the fuel tank capacity of the Sopwith Camel to 168l (37 imperial gallons) and increased the fuel consumption
  
• Sopwith Camel now carries 4 Cooper Bombs instead of 3 and drops 2 at once instead of
  
• Increased the probability to spawn a repair wrench after killing an enemy
  

Other Changes

• Disabled dynamic shadows for pickups, grass and some other objects to reduce GPU load
  
• Changed layout of the mission dialog to make it look less cramped
  
• Removed the anti-aliasing option as it has no effect. The game uses Temporal Super-Resolution (TSR) which doesn't require additional anti-aliasing
  
• Removed contact shadow from grass on the aerodrome
  
• Slightly adjusted the layout in the main menu
  
• Added category labels to the help widget of the cheat console
  
• Updated ground texture of the fighter hangar to match the bomber hangar
  
• Removed the gem pickup which is replaced by the new speed boost feature
  
• Removed the fuel tank upgrade as it is not intended that player runs out of fuel under normal circumstances
  
• Added maneuverability stat to the hangar UI
  
• Replaced chest and ring collect sounds with less childish ones
  
• Removed the message pickup as it serves no purpose
  
• Added triangle above ground enemies for better visibility
  
• Hit points bar is no longer displayed after hit points reach 0
  

Controls

• Mapped secondary weapon to the right shoulder key on a controller
  
• Mapped air brake to the left shoulder key on a controller
  

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where the game would crash with a Fatal Error if the Options menu was closed repeatedly in the pause menu
  
• Fixed an issue where the in-game UI would display 0 instead of the current mission progress after pausing and unpausing the game
  
• Disabled shadows for the aiming reticle, hit point bars and name tags
  
• Fixed an issue where the game would occasionally crash when flying backwards for some time and after that forwards
  
• Fixed an issue where the Le Prieur rockets would fly through enemy planes
  
• Fixed an issue where an enemy plane which was chasing the player would fly to the top of the screen and then crash to the ground
  
• Fixed some sounds still playing after turning them off in the options
  

As always, thanks for playing Warplane Quest!

Martin