Thanks for the support. I appreciate feedback. If you have good or bad things to note or ideas for features, feel free to make suggestions (much easier to change something while its in dev 
).
I hope to have a new build up this friday. There have been many additions 
2 Likes
There is one downside: I crash your beautiful planes all the time!
Apart from this, to me, the game looks perfect.
3 Likes
The new release is up. I didnt get everything in I wanted this week.
What did make it:
- Updated cockpit dashboard
- Title and Menu screen - still needs alot of work
- First mission implementation - incomplete - weapons and ai behavior to be completed.
- Meta data exporting from Blender into maps (not visible, but makes dev much easier). Will allow custom maps, possibly user developed.
- Improved general rendering - tweaked shader normals and so on.
Known Bugs (there are lots):
- Threats point the wrong way and dont turn properly. - fixed
- If you set speed to 0 the horizon meter goes white. - fixed
- Pause doesnt pause threat objects - doh. - fixed
- Threats not removed from mission if you go to free play. - fixed
These are the bigger ones I hope to address today and release an update. I hope to get weapons on Mission 1 all working today. If not, it will be in next weeks release. Im going to start releasing every Saturday.
Hope people enjoy it. Will be more fun when you can shoot down the threats! See if you can find them in Mission1
11 Likes
A little update. Added a nice “fly in” from the mission view to the cockpit.
Working on weapons and AI atm. Hopefully a mission or two by the end of this week.
9 Likes
I saw this on Twitter and immediately thought of your game:
4 Likes
Very nice. I love the dithered graphics - love it
Has almost a playstation or early PC feel. Nice…
@britzl - so this is really weird. I was talking with a mate on the weekend, and I used to work with a sim group that made a pretty cool engine called TITAN IM. http://titanim.net/
Anyway, my mate works for Calytrix and they bought TITAN IM (Effectively). And… the ex-owner of TITAN IM then bought MICROPROSE - guess who is publishing the game you posted above!! sooo freakin weird.
Tiny Combat Arena | MicroProse
Its a small world… it does look good fun.
3 Likes
Pesky little mig. AI pusuit working well.
Weapons and mission should be ready tomorrow (Assuming life doesnt get in the way ).
Will put a new release up tomorrow regardless.
10 Likes
Well. I broke everything. Doh. I refactored the general state management of the system (which was needed) but it means I now have a very broken build. Its probably added a couple of days. The benefit of the refactor is that its very easy to add new game flows and entities (of all types). This is kinda a good thing, because it means:
- addition mission 2 with the ddg
- addition of cruise missile mission
- The nimitz carrier can move around … it wont initially… but it can!
It has delayed the weapons testing - I may still get mission 1 in over the next couple of hours, but its unlikely.
Thats coding… Release probably around Wednesday… but I might push it to Friday (I have to build a large shelf in the shed next week… uggh).
3 Likes
Ok. Finally back to some semblance of normality
New updates (which will be up online tomorrow):
- Missiles in and firing. Collision to be finalised tomorrow.
- Weapon control and management.
- More tweaks to the 3D models, and the Mig and F18 flight dynamics - the Migs still cheat badly
- Various debugging facilities (will be removed once some features are complete)
Things not working:
- Targeting (might be in tomorrow - possibly not)
- Mig destruction (also may make it)
- G forces number is not right
- Heading horizon can go real wonky.
- If your frame rate is low, the flight model will have a fit. Im looking at ways to make this much better (a more consistent fixed update mode for the physics)
- Mission still incomplete.
I have been playing around with bullet3d for collision. I may use it, I need to see the impact on the frame with a full mission running.
Heres a quick vid showing missile firing and missile control. Note - the missiles are set to only 300kts speed (so I can see them ). They will accel up to mach 4 like the real things.
Uggh. I just noticed the missiles are firing from their opposite positions!! Doh. Another bug to fix.
6 Likes
Still not where I want to be, but many new features added. Im going to have to pause this for a couple weeks while I spend some time on the exporter. I have put up an new release (and executables).
New improvements:
- Added targeting
- Arming and firing missiles has been improved
- Mig29 has been tweaked - they are still too good. To test Mig29 press the ‘b’ key to activate one of them. They will end up on your six, and they are almost impossible to shake.
- Added improvements to HUD.
- Added warning lights - stall is working (dont get below about 105 kts)
- Gforces should be fairly accurate now.
- Collision with carrier is kinda working - technically you could land on it. But the arrestors do nothing
Things still to complete:
- bugs… a few annoying bugs.
- Collision and tracking for missile - code is in, but need to finish off.
- Landing strips - need to add airports and landing capability.
- Mig29 missiles - Im not sure I want to give them some … they will be really hard to beat
- More improvements to f18 model - inertia is still too messy.
Here’s a little vid I made. Hope you enjoy it - please go play it!
11 Likes
Update: the exporter took over my life and poor f18 has been waiting. Dont worry… coming back. Sooon… real soon…
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Elite, F/A 18, Carrier command… the old 3D games are so so very good. And yours is really good too 
1 Like
Thanks I really appreciate that. I too love these old games (have most of those in Amiga format sitting in my cupboard ) Once I have my flix proto sorted (getting close) I will finally add 5 or so missions to this game and I really want to add mig v f18 multiplayer game play. I built my own server system specifically for it
4 Likes
Ok. Its happening. Updates to Blender exporter and F18 are happening right now and over the coming week.
Some gotchas that are definitely going to slow me down:
- Looks like since old 1.7 → 1.9.0 cameras were changed a bit. I think it was in 1.8.0->1.8.1 here: https://github.com/defold/defold/pull/8868. My hope is I can convert my camera managers to use the changed setup (this is prob a bit of work because Im doing RT camera rendering).
- Some of the extension stuff has changed, but this is relatively easy fix (I think).
- Various other minor issues with lua script startup orders oddly.
Its understandable, since its been a couple of years since I have done any large amount of changes on this. Hopefully in the coming days there will be:
- Editing facilities for making levels (might make a derivative of Defender for this
- Custom level loading in the menu
- A few completed levels (Migs, and Ships mainly).
- Landing at airports - I really wanted this, and its a chunk of work to get working well on such a large area.
Thanks for those who commented on itch and here, and onto making some updates…
3 Likes
Well. Ive spent the last two hours looking at the code saying to myself “who wrote this junk!!”
I think most of the major camera and render target issues are solved. I still have one oddity switching between an ortho map cam and the pilot view (my bug Im sure). But this is good, since it means I can now update missions and start updating various parts.
Ive decided too, I will update opensteer (f18 uses an older clunkier version I did a while back) and Im contemplating putting some of the tiny-ecs server in - it might be nice for adding customizations. Will see.
2 Likes
It’s so cool to see what and how you are building all your things. And so amazingly fast too! 
1 Like
Thanks mate. Ive been lucky(?) Ive had three months away from my main job due to various family things. So I have been able to spend more time on some of the parts. It might be why it looks like Im doing some stuff more. This one has been sitting idle for a very long time and it deserves some love
I really want to get it working in MP for COOP and VS. Then integrate it with a few others I have in mind: A10 Tank Killer, Gunship, F15 Strike Eagle and M1 Tank Platoon - favorite from my younger years on the Amigas. Thats the long term plan… anyway.
I think it would be cool to play different games (look and feel even) but in sections of the same sandbox as other classic games. … not just selecting your aircraft or tank, but its actually a diff game and could have completely different iface and feel, but immersed with other games. Anyway… at this rate I’ll be lucky to even get this one sorted
2 Likes
And its back.
With something a little special added already.
Now the whole world’s landscape is included which should make building custom missions fun. Will need a simple editor, or maybe provide in blender.
5 Likes
Ok. big apologies to San Fran and US people - I realized looking at screenie above that I misplaced my lat-lon a little bit. Oops. Thats been fixed
And heres the base world map. Minor drawbacks - its mercator, so yes, land masses and oceans will not be correct dimensions, but its a game, and I really dont want to do a spherical coord system (would be painful for custom maps too).
The map will be available in six main sections. And generally a mod/mission will need to be within one of these zones. Having bigger sections results in rather large poly counts, and these do not optimize well - one day I’ll make a vector renderer for it, but not now, this is easier.
Zones are:
- Australia + NZ + Pacific
- South East Asia, India and Middle and Eastern Russia
- Europe and Northern Africa
- Southern Africa
- Southern America
- North America
These should work pretty well.
Really want a working mission ready this weekend and custom mission code in as well.
Btw… I spent an hour flying up the coast to Seattle last night. So weird, reminded me of old Flight Simulator II on the Amiga. Oddly enjoyable trying to pick out the features
4 Likes
Welp. As usual I went down a rather large rabbit hole
I decided to do some major updates (In prep for many other things).
New features include:
- profile management (will include ranks, medals and possibly character profile select/creation).
- sky shader - not even sure this is needed. But I wanted some sort of simple gradient, then I went further and now its a basic Raleigh Mie shader, which… yeah. oh well.
- changed the launch procedure. No longer uses paused. Now have a brake (which should have had before). After many “drops into the ocean” I think thats working ok now.
- More world improvements
- Render clipping, size, and depth render issues resolved. This was mostly about the giant sizes of some of the polys in the scene (specifically the ocean ones). Reduced to sane sizes, and looks like it is working well.
This is kinda a log note. So I can track what Im up to and get some key features implemented and resolved.