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Tiny Combat Arena

@tinycombatarena.bsky.social

94 followers 1 following 29 posts

Tiny Combat Arena is a stylized and approachable combat flight simulator featuring a versatile VTOL jet! Buy the Early Access game on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1347550/Tiny_Combat_Arena

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · Apr 16

Hello, this is going to be the official development account for Tiny Combat Arena! Follow here if you want to see updates and random progress-posting on the game.

Screenshot from Tiny Combat Arena. An AV8B strafes some tanks on the ground. Dirt is flying everywhere from the explosions and empty shells rain from the plane's gun.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 15h

Fields in the Germany terrain with the updated trees and scatter rendering.

Screenshot of Tiny Combat Arena's finished new terrain with the updated trees and scatter rendering.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 5d

0.17.2.3 has been released for Tiny Combat Arena. It contains a hotfix for the Unity security vulnerability that was patched this morning.

Tiny Combat Arena - 0.17.2.3 - Steam News

Patched Unity security vulnerability

store.steampowered.com

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · Jul 2

The #StopKillingGames EU Citizens' Initiative is the best shot we'll likely get at a pro-consumer outcome. This is NOT just an internet petition. Only 200k more signatures means the EU Commission MUST take action.

If you live in the EU, please consider signing!
eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#...

European Citizens' Initiative

Give your support !

eci.ec.europa.eu

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · Jul 2

I play a lot of retro games. I'm spoiled by the fact that you just install a game and play. For the next generation of gamers, this is becoming increasingly untrue with even singleplayer games like The Crew being rendered inoperable due to mandatory server-side connections.

An increasing number of publishers are selling videogames that are required to connect through the internet to the game publisher, or "phone home" to function. While this is not a problem in itself, when support ends for these types of games, very often publishers simply sever the connection necessary for the game to function, proceed to destroy all working copies of the game, and implement extensive measures to prevent the customer from repairing the game in any way.

This practice is effectively robbing customers of their purchases and makes restoration impossible. Besides being an affront on consumer rights, videogames themselves are unique creative works. Like film, or music, one cannot be simply substituted with another. By destroying them, it represents a creative loss for everyone involved and erases history in ways not possible in other mediums.

Existing laws and consumer agencies are ill-prepared to protect customers against this practice. The ability for a company to destroy an item it has already sold to the customer long after the fact is not something that normally occurs in other industries. With license agreements required to simply run the game, many existing consumer protections are circumvented. This practice challenges the concept of ownership itself, where the customer is left with nothing after "buying" a game.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · Jul 2

Since release, Tiny Combat Arena has been designed to be able to be played 100% offline. This means with no connection to Steam whatsoever. If Steam isn't detected, the game will save all its settings locally, and Steam APIs and features are bypassed/forwarded to local versions.
#StopKillingGames

The STANDALONE on the bottom left of the main menu shows that the game is running in standalone mode, and will run everything saving files locally and without any connection to Steam. Even mods can still be loaded and run locally, without Workshop.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · Jun 26

See the full changelog on Steam:

Tiny Combat Arena - 0.17.2.2 Hotfix - Steam News

Fixes the broken sounds on the main branch, along with adding units to the camera infobar when using external views.

store.steampowered.com

Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · Jun 26

Hotfix 0.17.2.2 is on the main branch, fixing the newly broken sounds that only happened on the main branch. Units have also been added to the external camera bar, and match the HUD Units setting.

Screenshot from Tiny Combat Arena showing the AV8B flying above an island. The info bar at the bottom of the screen reads
HEADING: 215 AIRSPEED: 444 KT G: 1.27 ALTITUDE 2022 FT

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · Jun 26

It essentially mirrors the plane's, same as the HUD, but it needs to "remember" what units to use if you look at something after the player dies. This has the unfortunate downside that before the player spawns, you can't know what units to use, so it just defaults to Imperial in that case.

Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · Jun 26

While working on it, I remembered why I didn't do this earlier. The info bar at the bottom is totally unrelated and unaware of the player, so for technical and design reasons I had to make a call on what the "authentic" setting should do.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · Jun 26

Minor new feature that's part of the hotfix releasing later today is the info bar at the bottom now displays in the correct selectable units.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · Jun 24

Read the full news post on Steam here:

Tiny Combat Arena - 0.17.2.1 is now available. Engine update, plus optimizations for future terrain. - Steam News

The engine update is finally live. As was mentioned before, this is mainly a technical patch, but it does bring the selectable HUD units and moving cockpit parts to main.

store.steampowered.com

Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · Jun 24

0.17.2.1 is now available on the main branch! This is mainly a technical patch, updating the engine for optimizations to the new terrain. However it does include the oft-requested ability to change the units that appear on the HUD, and cockpit animations for the AV8B.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · Jun 13

0.17.2.1 has been released on the Tester's branch. This should (hopefully) fix all the sound sourced issues that cropped up from the last update. If there's no major issues with this, it'll be pushed to the main branch soon.

Screenshot from Tiny Combat Arena featuring BMP-1s, ZSU-57-2s, and T-62s driving down a road.

Reposted by Tiny Combat Arena

Skyward Flight Media @skywardfm.com · Jun 13

There's something satisfying about annihilating T-72s in Tiny Combat Area, absolutely amazing feeling. #flightsim #lowpoly

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · Jun 7

There might be a light at the end of this tunnel now.

Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · May 23

It did not go all well. There's a pretty serious FMOD bug. As good as I think FMOD Studio is, the Unity integration has given me so many extremely difficult to debug and solve problems that endlessly frustrate me. It's why I almost NEVER touch the game's audio. FMOD is incredibly fragile.

Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · May 17

If all goes well, this will be on the main branch shortly. Read the full changelog on the Steam news post:

Tiny Combat Arena - 0.17.1.1 Testers Patch Notes - Steam News

Updates the game to a new game engine version, adds selectable units on the HUD, and moving parts in the AV8B cockpit.

store.steampowered.com

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · May 17

If all goes well, this will be on the main branch shortly. Read the full changelog on the Steam news post:

Tiny Combat Arena - 0.17.1.1 Testers Patch Notes - Steam News

Updates the game to a new game engine version, adds selectable units on the HUD, and moving parts in the AV8B cockpit.

store.steampowered.com

Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · May 17

0.17.1.1 has been pushed to the tester's branch. This doesn't make too many changes, but this updated the Unity engine from 2020 to 2023. This touched much low level code in the game, so I want to keep it simple for this patch. The update was important for optimizations to rendering on the new map.

A bunch of buildings in the new map of Tiny Combat Arena being destroyed.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · May 13

The F-14 has been handy in testing out the selectable HUD units, because the work has involved touching code for how the DLZ, Radar, and Threat Warning Display show their numbers. The long range gives me a lot of numbers to work with.

Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · May 13

The 60 second flight time of the AIM-54 Phoenix.
Mods by Viperu Zeiro and nuclearstonk

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · May 1

Thought it'd be fun to animate the flight stick, but then one thing led to another and another and another so now:
Flight stick, throttle, nozzle lever, pedals, gear lever, and gear indicator lights all have animation based on what you're doing.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · Apr 30

Today I learned the AV8B cockpit never had a joystick in it. This entire time I could have sworn it did.

3D memepoly model of an AV8B cockpit. Notably missing is the joystick.

Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · Apr 25

The last time I updated TCA's Unity versions (and it was between LTS versions too!) it broke a load bearing bug with regards to the LineRenderer that the bullets used for tracers and it ended with bullets getting a decent refactor to get them working again.

Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · Apr 25

Migration to 2023.2.20f1 seems to be complete. Still need to do some more testing to make sure exciting new regressions haven't appeared, but so far so good. Even mods still load correctly, which is something I was a bit worried about since their asset bundles would have been made in Unity 2019.

Tiny Combat Arena screenshot featuring a cockpit of F-14A by ViperZero

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · Apr 25

The scene is called "HangarMode" so it's probably what would have happened when you press that Hangar button. I don't think it was ever functional, because I have no screenshots or video of it. At the time, TCA was going to have turn based metagame thing, that I wasn't able to get working well.