Our team is hard at work on expanding Ground of Aces, and we’re currently aiming to release the next major update in July.
Today, we’d like to give you a first look at some of the new features that are currently in development and planned for the upcoming update.
What you see here is only part of what we’re working on, and things may still change before the update is released.
Welcome to Ground of Aces: Hell Edition.
One of our goals with this update is to create more dramatic and memorable moments on your airbase, especially when you get attacked.
To achieve that, we’re introducing a new fire system. Fires can spread across the ground and buildings and affect your aircraft and other objects. So your crew will need to react to sudden emergencies that demand immediate attention.
Behind the scenes, this requires a simulation that determines how fires start, spread, and affect the different elements of your base.
Here is how it looked before we had the fire effects:
Our 2D artist has been working on visual effects and shaders to bring the fire to life. He first experimented with different shapes, but in the end, since our game uses a grid system, square tiles made the most sense.
Here you can see how the height of the shader effect can be adjusted:
The airplanes also need their own fire effects (as a reminder: these shots show work-in-progress effects):
And people as well…
Here is a screenshot from one of our programmers testing how fire spreads across the ground. You can see in the background that for the parking spot a different logic was active, which is why the entire area ended up in flames.
Of course, if things can catch fire, you’ll need a way to put them out. Crew members will be able to take on a new Firefighting task. Just like other jobs on the base, you will be able to adjust its priority for each crew member through the crew management screen. When a fire breaks out, NPCs will respond by spraying water onto the fire.
We’re still working on the visuals, including the final water jet effects and equipment models.
Testing the water jet arc. The current animation of the NPC is a placeholder.
One of our programmers has to make sure that the trajectory of the water jet looks believable at different distances:
That’s impressive, but maybe a bit too much…
Shooting water jets like lasers?
One feature that has been requested frequently by the community is finally making its way into the game: Air Traffic Control Towers.
We are still working on the 3D models and their implementation, so what you see here is a very early look at the towers.
Screenshot from our research whiteboard:
They will help your base both feel and look more like a real World War II airbase. They are also planned to be connected to new safety-related tasks, which adds another management layer to life on the airbase.
We are also working on a few other things, but for now, we wanted to give you this small sneak peek at what’s coming next.
Let us know what you think, and thank you for following the development of the game!