FekLeyrTarg
Rear Admiral
Wow, those look really great. I'm looking forward to the update. 
Wing Commander Flat Universe
- Thread starter Maslas
- Start date
Mekt-Hakkikt
Mpanty's bane
Maslas
Rear Admiral
Thank you very much for your support, we don't really know if we made it to the top 100 yet but we have a hunch that we are somewhere there close.
Anyhow, we couldn't have made it with out your help and that is the reason that we keep our development hot.
See you on next update!
MaslasBros
Anyhow, we couldn't have made it with out your help and that is the reason that we keep our development hot.
See you on next update!
MaslasBros
Maslas
Rear Admiral
Another year has passed and we are still here with clear horizons. We are progressing in steady moves and for every and each peace that we put in the FlatUniverse puzzle we are one step ahead to our destination. This year, once more, you proved your interest and motivation for our work and these facts cannot be disregarded easily.
Thank you for your confidence and never forget. The utter goal is to...
Have Fun!!!
Stay tuned, 2015 is here.
the MaslasBros.
Thank you for your confidence and never forget. The utter goal is to...
Have Fun!!!
Stay tuned, 2015 is here.
the MaslasBros.
Maslas
Rear Admiral
Hey Whip,
I've got a little secret for you... but you must promise that you'll keep it between us. Very soon, there is an upcoming update and the turret AI is completed. You will see by your self that it will be easier to shoot them down.
Stay tuned and keep your mouth closed.
I've got a little secret for you... but you must promise that you'll keep it between us. Very soon, there is an upcoming update and the turret AI is completed. You will see by your self that it will be easier to shoot them down.
Stay tuned and keep your mouth closed.
Maslas
Rear Admiral
Whip,
From today you may turn off the silence mode because the Flat Universe 0.6.5 is released.
Every Wingnut may go and grab his copy from the home of WC FlatUniverse, Daedalus station.
Don't forget to visit the destiny's way section and download the latest schematics and the updated reference cards.
Some of the most interesting features of the latest update, are:
1. New patching system. No more downloading and decompressing huge packages. Just start FlatUniverse and our server will update your copy with the latest version.
2. Two new exciting ships have been added. Raptor and a Shuttle.
3. New animated Take Off sequences from Daedalus station.
4. Fly around our spectacular home system, "Destiny", on a freeflight mode.
5. Now you can select your own missile loadout.
6. Missile Decoys are now available. No more, extensive use of afterburner to avoid missiles.
and last but not least
7. Finished turret AI. Now you can kill it before it kills you. A test flight will convince you.
And as always, we need your feedback! Your opinion counts more than you can imagine.
Have Fun!!!
the MaslasBros
From today you may turn off the silence mode because the Flat Universe 0.6.5 is released.
Every Wingnut may go and grab his copy from the home of WC FlatUniverse, Daedalus station.
Don't forget to visit the destiny's way section and download the latest schematics and the updated reference cards.
Some of the most interesting features of the latest update, are:
1. New patching system. No more downloading and decompressing huge packages. Just start FlatUniverse and our server will update your copy with the latest version.
2. Two new exciting ships have been added. Raptor and a Shuttle.
3. New animated Take Off sequences from Daedalus station.
4. Fly around our spectacular home system, "Destiny", on a freeflight mode.
5. Now you can select your own missile loadout.
6. Missile Decoys are now available. No more, extensive use of afterburner to avoid missiles.
and last but not least
7. Finished turret AI. Now you can kill it before it kills you. A test flight will convince you.
And as always, we need your feedback! Your opinion counts more than you can imagine.
Have Fun!!!
the MaslasBros
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Excellent News! Congrats guys!
For your mac release could you use a compressed .dmg disk image instead of .zip. It's more of the convention.
As oppose to doing it in Disk Utility, you can do it with this command in the terminal
hdiutil create -volname nameWhatever -srcfolder /path/to/folder/flat-mac -ov -format UDZO nameWhatever.dmg
For your mac release could you use a compressed .dmg disk image instead of .zip. It's more of the convention.
As oppose to doing it in Disk Utility, you can do it with this command in the terminal
hdiutil create -volname nameWhatever -srcfolder /path/to/folder/flat-mac -ov -format UDZO nameWhatever.dmg
Maslas
Rear Admiral
Thank you for your kind words and more than that we are happy to get some feedback from a Mac user. We know that dmg is the standard packaging file for MacOs and we intent to use it. In other words thank you for the tip. Could you please be kind enough to inform us about your Mac model and in what graphics quality you've tested the game? We gonna collect this information for benchmark reasons.
Is it just me or is anybody else having trouble navigating to the download section? Excited to try it out, but... can't...!
Hey Klavs,
I guess you just discovered an anchor mistake in our webpage. If you scroll down in the same page you will reach the download section. From there you can select the package of your taste. Thanks for mentioning I will see to it first thing in the morning.
Hope you like our progress!
kyrgiannis
1st Lieutenant
Thank you very much for the feedback. It is really helpful to fine tune the performance of the game.
We are glad you liked it. We are trying hard to inject a genuine Wing Commander feel into the game. Of course suggestions for improvement are always welcome.
capi3101
Admiral
Played the revised demo last night on my Byzantine box (Athlon II 2.9 GHz, nVidia 630a equivalent (onboard), 2 GB; played on "It doesn't go lower" graphic setting). Overall the revised demo was a lot smoother than the first demo release. Moving the camera around on Daedalus was a good deal smoother. The "log-in" sequence was still a touch on the slow side. Only part where there was serious lag at all was during the launch sequence when the Daedalus model was in view; when the station went out of view, the sequence smoothed itself out. Love the somewhat subtle X-Wing reference, BTW...
Gameplay-wise, I like what y'all have done. I was able to clear the mines in the Raptor on the first go; the Scimitar took a few tries (might've helped had I remembered which button launched missile decoys). Haven't tried the course again in the Hornet. Y'all did mention a "free-flight" mode; I didn't see how to get into that necessarily.
Gameplay-wise, I like what y'all have done. I was able to clear the mines in the Raptor on the first go; the Scimitar took a few tries (might've helped had I remembered which button launched missile decoys). Haven't tried the course again in the Hornet. Y'all did mention a "free-flight" mode; I didn't see how to get into that necessarily.
Maslas
Rear Admiral
Hey Capi,
Thanks for the detailed feedback. I guess with a non-onboard graphics card you could get a smoother result at "good" quality. Let's just say that our game is more graphics-card-thirsty than CPU-thirsty. As for the launch sequences, you've got that well. They are a fusion of both Privateer and X-Wing.
Before you select a mission from the terminal, just follow your way down to the hangar and aim for the Shuttle. It will give you an option for "Free Flight".
Thank again and enjoy flying!
Aginor
Vice Admiral
Ok, I tried the newest version. Here's my report, I hope it is useful:
Overall:
I like it, it is much more fun than the earlier version.
I haven't flown the Scimitar this time yet, but I won all three missions flying the Raptor and the Hornet.
I think the balancing of the shields could still be improved, IMO they are still very weak. and do not allow any errors.
IMO the Hornet should be able to take one missile without dying (shields down, half armor down, second missile on the same side kills), the Scimitar two (one shot kills the shields only, the second the armor and do heavy damage, third is kill when shields are not at max), the Raptor three (the first missile killing shields only), or some similar balancing to distinguish more between the fighters.
Specifics:
1. Gun turrets are ok now. They fire bursts, you can fly around them so they can't shoot you in a Hornet, they require quite some laser shots from a Hornet but a Raptor with full guns can kill them quickly. Perhaps their lasers are still a bit too strong.
2. Missile turrets fire pretty quickly. But I like the challenge. Maybe they should fire a bit slower, or perhaps not fire new missiles while there are still two missiles chasing the player, not sure. Later in the game when there are longer missions I think people will run out of fuel quickly when dodging missile turrets.
3. Ending the mission is a bit weird, (I guess it is WIP though). What I imagine would be a nice big carrier at the last WP, and you have to fly in from the right direction with slow speed, WC1 style.
4. I don't understand the free flight TBH. Are we supposed to to something there? Where should we fly? Since there is no map I am a bit lost there.
5. While the computer terminal boot screen is cool, it is a bit annoying. Perhaps only show it once with animation (the first time the player uses the terminal), and after that skip the animation and only show the screen.
6. Sometimes when I enter the mission the ship turns into one direction without me pressing a key. Dunno why. Alt+Tab out of the game and back in solves that.
So nice progress, Maslas Bros.! When can we fight some moving targets? A small "full mission" with three waypoints and some targets would be nice, like the first WC1 mission or something like that.
Overall:
I like it, it is much more fun than the earlier version.
I haven't flown the Scimitar this time yet, but I won all three missions flying the Raptor and the Hornet.
I think the balancing of the shields could still be improved, IMO they are still very weak. and do not allow any errors.
IMO the Hornet should be able to take one missile without dying (shields down, half armor down, second missile on the same side kills), the Scimitar two (one shot kills the shields only, the second the armor and do heavy damage, third is kill when shields are not at max), the Raptor three (the first missile killing shields only), or some similar balancing to distinguish more between the fighters.
Specifics:
1. Gun turrets are ok now. They fire bursts, you can fly around them so they can't shoot you in a Hornet, they require quite some laser shots from a Hornet but a Raptor with full guns can kill them quickly. Perhaps their lasers are still a bit too strong.
2. Missile turrets fire pretty quickly. But I like the challenge. Maybe they should fire a bit slower, or perhaps not fire new missiles while there are still two missiles chasing the player, not sure. Later in the game when there are longer missions I think people will run out of fuel quickly when dodging missile turrets.
3. Ending the mission is a bit weird, (I guess it is WIP though). What I imagine would be a nice big carrier at the last WP, and you have to fly in from the right direction with slow speed, WC1 style.
4. I don't understand the free flight TBH. Are we supposed to to something there? Where should we fly? Since there is no map I am a bit lost there.
5. While the computer terminal boot screen is cool, it is a bit annoying. Perhaps only show it once with animation (the first time the player uses the terminal), and after that skip the animation and only show the screen.
6. Sometimes when I enter the mission the ship turns into one direction without me pressing a key. Dunno why. Alt+Tab out of the game and back in solves that.
So nice progress, Maslas Bros.! When can we fight some moving targets? A small "full mission" with three waypoints and some targets would be nice, like the first WC1 mission or something like that.
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Maslas
Rear Admiral
Hi Aginor,
But off course your report is useful. By what you've reported I understand that you like our job and that fact make us really happy. But let's take your analysis step by step.
We really want to unify the world of Wing Commander into this game. In other words, there will be ships flying from WC3/WC4 era together with WC1/WC2 era. Although we have spent hours trying to normalize ship stats we have also decided that In every new ship imported in the game we will re-evaluate the stats of all of them by collecting the community's feedback. As for the weapons. I guess we could decrease the power of the missiles a little but don't forget that there are capitals to come and some of them can be killed without torpedos. Maybe we should re-evaluate the shields for all the ships. Anyhow, you keep reporting your experiences and in time the balance will come.
We totally agree with you on that. Turrets are firing IRs therefore the firing sequence is the time that it takes for an IR to lock his target. The turrets do not contain unlimited missiles. For that reason it makes sense that the AI should control it's capacity and not waste all of its missile load out on to a single target.
We have already prepared the landing sequences but we could not implement them on this update yet. On the next major update four things will be available. Navs, Goals, Communications and off course landing procedures. Can't give more details on that, more surprises are on the way.
Free flight mode, for the time being, only shows off the home base and system "Destiny" and proves that a man flying a shuttle is a sitting duck without guns and afterburner. Let's just say that you will be able to jump from system to system. Can't reveal more, my brother will kill me.
It is VERY ANNOYING! It is already arranged to be fixed on one of the following updates where the pilot roster will be ready to work.
To be honest, we have never crossed this phenomenon. But please do us the favour and tell us in what platform you made your tests (operating system) and if you have any gaming peripherals connected (joysticks, gamepads etc.). I will report it as a bug and start to investigate.
In time, my good friend, in time.
Thank you again for your kind words.
the MaslasBros
Aginor
Vice Admiral
Sounds exciting!
Some more remarks and some things I forgot:
I couldn't get missiles to work. Am I doing something wrong or are they not implemented yet? I don't see a lock-on, and I can fire all of them as dumb fires I think.
I still can't get used to the radar. I'm not sure where my problem is though. I will do some more tests.
I'm a bit torn on missile and laser range. Turrets fire before I can see them, and I can hit them with lasers at that range as well I think. In some way this is cool, but it can also be a bit annoying.
And then of course the "wide screen problem". Attacking from the side of the screen is better due to screen format. But I think that's actually a gameplay element since it encourages the player to use the corresponding tactics.
As for the input: I am using Win7x64 and I unplugged my HOTAS system, but I think I forgot to unplug my rudder pedals. Actually those might be the problem. I'll check that and report back.
The balancing: Yeah, of course. I think helping you balancing all that stuff will be fun. I remember the balancing for my Wing Commander Saga Kilrathi mod (yeah still unfinished....), WCS also includes ships of different games. It was quite interesting to do.
btw: Will there be a mission/campaign editor? I'd love to see that and try making a few missions myself.
Some more remarks and some things I forgot:
I couldn't get missiles to work. Am I doing something wrong or are they not implemented yet? I don't see a lock-on, and I can fire all of them as dumb fires I think.
I still can't get used to the radar. I'm not sure where my problem is though. I will do some more tests.
I'm a bit torn on missile and laser range. Turrets fire before I can see them, and I can hit them with lasers at that range as well I think. In some way this is cool, but it can also be a bit annoying.
And then of course the "wide screen problem". Attacking from the side of the screen is better due to screen format. But I think that's actually a gameplay element since it encourages the player to use the corresponding tactics.
As for the input: I am using Win7x64 and I unplugged my HOTAS system, but I think I forgot to unplug my rudder pedals. Actually those might be the problem. I'll check that and report back.
The balancing: Yeah, of course. I think helping you balancing all that stuff will be fun. I remember the balancing for my Wing Commander Saga Kilrathi mod (yeah still unfinished....), WCS also includes ships of different games. It was quite interesting to do.
btw: Will there be a mission/campaign editor? I'd love to see that and try making a few missions myself.