Sorry to hear you are having trouble. After the issue occurs again, can you provide us with your game's log file and a DirectX diagnostic file (via pastebin.com or dropbox or something similar)?
The game log file should be located here:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SimplePlanes\SimplePlanesData\outputlog.txt
To get a DirectX diagnostic file (windows only):
Go to windows start menu -> Run -> type "dxdiag" (no quotes) and hit enter -> click the 'Save All Information' button.
Looks great! Regarding your 'disco water', I think you may be experiencing some z-fighting. There isn't much precision in the z-buffer at great distances so two objects trying to render to the same spot will fight with each other. One thing that might help is steeper terrain drop-offs underneath the water. Shallow water will result in a lot of z-fighting in the game.
@Mod There are several mods that have very similar issues. Unfortunately, I didn't catch the issues until we had already committed on moving forward with the Unity upgrade. Really, really sorry about that... I think your mod appeals to a lot of players though, it would be a nice one to have working when we come out of beta. If you still have the original Unity project, I'd think it probably shouldn't be anything more than downloading the 5.3.4 version of Unity and rebuilding the existing mod. If a rebuild doesn't fix the issue though, let me know, as that would be a much more serious problem than I currently realize.
@Jolteon So I really, really, really hate to do this to you... but we don't allow children under the age of 13 to create an account on our site per our privacy policy. You can still play the game obviously, you just can't have an account on our website. We have to do this due to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 to be in compliance with US law. Sorry....
Its some bug fixes and whatnot that we had done for the mobile release that had not yet made it in to the Steam release. Its only on the public beta branch at the moment but we will probably go live with it later today if there are no issues. I intend to post a changelog announcement on Steam we it actually goes live.
This is hopefully fixed in the latest public beta we released earlier today (On Steam - should already be fixed for mobile). We will probably go live with it later today if no problems arise.
I can't really disagree with anything you are saying... you are absolutely right. The team has talked about doing something like this before, but there is always tons of stuff to be done and not enough time to do it in. We love our modders and would love to see the modding community thrive, but there hasn't been a whole lot of action there overall... so it can be hard to justify spending a decent chunk of time implementing something like this when we could be doing things that would benefit a much larger audience.
I suppose you could make the chicken & egg argument here though... how is the modding community going to grow without proper exposure... One thing we would like to see is the Steam Workshop really take off. Technically it is still in beta. We've been talking about possibly taking it out of beta soon and trying to get the modding community on Steam going. We've been a little hesitant to bust it out of beta due to only having a handful of mods on there, some of which we seem to have broke with the latest update (very very unfortunate...).
If we see modding really starting to take off and breathe new life into the game, it would start to make more sense to invest more of our time in to mod related stuff. The site changes you suggested could potentially happen... but there are no plans to do so right now.
@kikasshes hmmm... ok, thanks. I'm surprised to hear that the issue still happens on medium shadow settings. It looks like its an issue with the plane casting shadows on itself, which shouldn't happen on medium quality. The self shadowing has been an issue on some devices ever since we moved to Unity 5 though. We have an S6 and S7 here at the office and both have messed up shadows at high quality (we also have an S4, but no S5... what luck..). Setting the quality to medium usually avoids the worst of the trouble though. I'm assuming the shadows worked fine for you before the beta on this same device? What is your airplane reflections setting when you see this issue?
I can't reproduce the issue with the guns... you are seeing them fire automatically when they are tied to an activation group? Do you have an example plane that demonstrates the issue?
@BeryllCorp Ok, no worries. Thanks for letting me know. We are always worried about changes to the physics when we release new updates. Glad it was not a problem in this case. :-)
@BeryllCorp I've been looking in to the missiles... I'm not sure why you are seeing differences since the last version. I can't find any code or configuration changes related to the missiles that has changed since then. They appear to act as I'd expect. The long range missiles have always been considerably less maneuverable that the shorter range missiles (and somewhat faster, which makes the problem worse).
@RocketLL @BeryllCorp The 'r' value is there for legacy reasons. What you probably want to modify are the 'm' and 's' values. These represent metallic and smoothness values for the material. The first chart on this page helps explain the effect of these values.
As for the missiles... we aren't sure. Nothing was intentionally changed. We will be investigating it, thanks for the heads up.
@SimpleTechAndResearch We've been having trouble with bluetooth keyboards and IOS. I am actually in the middle of investigating it. Not looking overly promising thus far... We've got our bluetooth keyboard working just fine on Android though.
@WalrusAircraft The physics material for the racetrack wasn't setup correctly before, and that was fixed so cars might handle a bit differently on it now. Unfortunately, there are still issues with sliding on the track. @AndrewGarrison would be the better one to ask about it, he is the wheel-master.
@WNP78 I'd be surprised if mods built using the newer mod tools and Unity 5.3 will load on the current release version of android. I think Unity made some changes to the asset bundle format (used by our modding framework) that might be incompatible with older versions (current android release was built with Unity 5.1). I love seeing people make mods, especially for both PC and Android, but you might want to set Android on the back-burner for a couple weeks until we can get the update out the door. Once we get the Android beta out the door, you shouldn't have any trouble getting this mod to run on that.
@WNP78 Still no luck with the Steam workshop? Do you see any additional information in the game's log file after a failed upload? C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SimplePlanes\SimplePlanesData\outputlog.txt
@Skua Hey, thanks for the quick action yesterday, you guys are great! We've been talking about the issue this morning and we might be making some tweaks... We don't bring out the IP ban often, but for situations like this, I wouldn't hesitate. We can always un-ban the IP if we think we've made a mistake. In my opinion, if IP information indicates that it is highly likely that the garbage is generated by an alt account of another user or someone they know at the same address (friend/sibling/etc), I'd still hand out the IP ban. I'd hesitate on banning their actual account without definitive proof though (unless incidents continue to happen).
We will also look in to some kind of post limiting to help prevent a similar issue in the future. Also, yesterday evening, Andrew said he implemented the ability to auto-remove all posts of a user when banning them (checkbox on the ban page I think, haven't tested it myself). Something that would have been incredibly useful yesterday.... sorry about that.
Once again, thanks for the hard work!
@WNP78 Regarding the mod not saving sometimes... is this reproducible? Are there certain steps that you take that always result in the mod saving or not saving? If you have a project that consistently reproduces this problem, I could take a look at it if you are willing to upload a zip somewhere I can download it.
@WNP78 That isn't something that can be used via Resources.Load. It was set up to be used via the editor and unfortunately it doesn't live in the modding API. This means your only option for trying to use it would be to use some reflection to find that type and create a component from it at runtime to add to a game object. Not too tricky, but then you'd also need to do some reflection magic to setup up some private serialized fields on the component before it can be used.
@WNP78 Some mods may need to be rebuilt with Unity 5.3. I've not found a consistently reliable workaround yet. Its unfortunate, but since there are so few mods out right now, there won't be a better chance to move things to a newer version of Unity, so we made the move. As for manipulating alpha channels, that is out of my area of expertise... not really sure, but I hear photoshop can do it.
As for the terrain reflectivity... I believe the standard shader uses the alpha channel of the terrain textures to specify smoothness. The smoother the surface, the more reflective it appears. You can update your terrain textures to not have such high values in their alpha channels or you could set the terrain to use a different shader.
@BoxGlow @Stingray @Mod GOG will be receiving all the same updates that the Steam version receives.
My bad guys, got trigger happy with the ban hammer... Sincere apologies to @dogspit.
@GreyHawkIndustries LOL, now you are banned!
:-)
Edit: my bad @dogspit... I got trigger happy. Sincere apologies...
Sorry to hear you are having trouble. After the issue occurs again, can you provide us with your game's log file and a DirectX diagnostic file (via pastebin.com or dropbox or something similar)?
The game log file should be located here:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SimplePlanes\SimplePlanesData\outputlog.txt
To get a DirectX diagnostic file (windows only):
Go to windows start menu -> Run -> type "dxdiag" (no quotes) and hit enter -> click the 'Save All Information' button.
Looks great! Regarding your 'disco water', I think you may be experiencing some z-fighting. There isn't much precision in the z-buffer at great distances so two objects trying to render to the same spot will fight with each other. One thing that might help is steeper terrain drop-offs underneath the water. Shallow water will result in a lot of z-fighting in the game.
@Mod There are several mods that have very similar issues. Unfortunately, I didn't catch the issues until we had already committed on moving forward with the Unity upgrade. Really, really sorry about that... I think your mod appeals to a lot of players though, it would be a nice one to have working when we come out of beta. If you still have the original Unity project, I'd think it probably shouldn't be anything more than downloading the 5.3.4 version of Unity and rebuilding the existing mod. If a rebuild doesn't fix the issue though, let me know, as that would be a much more serious problem than I currently realize.
@BoxGlow Appears to be a bug... sorry bout that. We've logged the issue and will be looking in to it soon. Thanks for letting us know.
Yep, its a bug. It will be fixed in the next patch. No ETA yet though. Sorry about that.
@BoxGlow Ok, thanks. We will look in to it.
Patch Notes
The last thing we need is more forum posts about this. Just let it go and enjoy the game.
@Jolteon So I really, really, really hate to do this to you... but we don't allow children under the age of 13 to create an account on our site per our privacy policy. You can still play the game obviously, you just can't have an account on our website. We have to do this due to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 to be in compliance with US law. Sorry....
Its some bug fixes and whatnot that we had done for the mobile release that had not yet made it in to the Steam release. Its only on the public beta branch at the moment but we will probably go live with it later today if there are no issues. I intend to post a changelog announcement on Steam we it actually goes live.
This is hopefully fixed in the latest public beta we released earlier today (On Steam - should already be fixed for mobile). We will probably go live with it later today if no problems arise.
What device are you playing on and what version of the operating system is it running?
I can't really disagree with anything you are saying... you are absolutely right. The team has talked about doing something like this before, but there is always tons of stuff to be done and not enough time to do it in. We love our modders and would love to see the modding community thrive, but there hasn't been a whole lot of action there overall... so it can be hard to justify spending a decent chunk of time implementing something like this when we could be doing things that would benefit a much larger audience.
I suppose you could make the chicken & egg argument here though... how is the modding community going to grow without proper exposure... One thing we would like to see is the Steam Workshop really take off. Technically it is still in beta. We've been talking about possibly taking it out of beta soon and trying to get the modding community on Steam going. We've been a little hesitant to bust it out of beta due to only having a handful of mods on there, some of which we seem to have broke with the latest update (very very unfortunate...).
If we see modding really starting to take off and breathe new life into the game, it would start to make more sense to invest more of our time in to mod related stuff. The site changes you suggested could potentially happen... but there are no plans to do so right now.
Awesome! You should post this to the Steam workshop!
@kikasshes hmmm... ok, thanks. I'm surprised to hear that the issue still happens on medium shadow settings. It looks like its an issue with the plane casting shadows on itself, which shouldn't happen on medium quality. The self shadowing has been an issue on some devices ever since we moved to Unity 5 though. We have an S6 and S7 here at the office and both have messed up shadows at high quality (we also have an S4, but no S5... what luck..). Setting the quality to medium usually avoids the worst of the trouble though. I'm assuming the shadows worked fine for you before the beta on this same device? What is your airplane reflections setting when you see this issue?
@JacobHardy64 Overlapping controls surfaces are not supported anymore... sorry about that..
@kikasshes Regarding the zebra shadows... What device are you using? What shadow settings? Does it happen at any of the other shadow settings?
@Viper28 Ok, thanks! We were able to reproduce the issue this morning and Andrew is working on a fix. Thanks for helping us track this down.
Does this happen all the time? If not, do you know how we can reliably reproduce it? Any chance you have a screenshot of it looking messed up? Thanks!
@WNP78 Very observant!
I can't reproduce the issue with the guns... you are seeing them fire automatically when they are tied to an activation group? Do you have an example plane that demonstrates the issue?
@WNP78 Awesome!
@BeryllCorp Ok, no worries. Thanks for letting me know. We are always worried about changes to the physics when we release new updates. Glad it was not a problem in this case. :-)
@BeryllCorp I've been looking in to the missiles... I'm not sure why you are seeing differences since the last version. I can't find any code or configuration changes related to the missiles that has changed since then. They appear to act as I'd expect. The long range missiles have always been considerably less maneuverable that the shorter range missiles (and somewhat faster, which makes the problem worse).
@WNP78 The auto-pilot issue should be fixed the next time we push an update to Steam. Sorry about that and thanks for bringing it to my attention.
@RocketLL @BeryllCorp The 'r' value is there for legacy reasons. What you probably want to modify are the 'm' and 's' values. These represent metallic and smoothness values for the material. The first chart on this page helps explain the effect of these values.
As for the missiles... we aren't sure. Nothing was intentionally changed. We will be investigating it, thanks for the heads up.
@NovaTopaz No, sorry..
@MrMecha Joey's already got the trailer made. Its pretty sweet! I don't recall seeing any mechs in it though.
@SimpleTechAndResearch We've been having trouble with bluetooth keyboards and IOS. I am actually in the middle of investigating it. Not looking overly promising thus far... We've got our bluetooth keyboard working just fine on Android though.
@WalrusAircraft The physics material for the racetrack wasn't setup correctly before, and that was fixed so cars might handle a bit differently on it now. Unfortunately, there are still issues with sliding on the track. @AndrewGarrison would be the better one to ask about it, he is the wheel-master.
@SimpleTechAndResearch Yes, it should.
@SimpleTechAndResearch Not yet, hopefully soon. We've been busy getting the mobile stuff ready thought
@Xqdar What are your graphics settings and what kind of hardware are you running on?
@NumNumz @Liquidfox can you provide any links to planes that exhibit this behavior?
@JMicah4 Yes, updated mod tools can be found here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SimplePlanes\ModTools.
We have moved to Unity 5.3 (5.3.4p1 to be specific) so you'll probably want to use 5.3 for new mods.
@WNP78 I'd be surprised if mods built using the newer mod tools and Unity 5.3 will load on the current release version of android. I think Unity made some changes to the asset bundle format (used by our modding framework) that might be incompatible with older versions (current android release was built with Unity 5.1). I love seeing people make mods, especially for both PC and Android, but you might want to set Android on the back-burner for a couple weeks until we can get the update out the door. Once we get the Android beta out the door, you shouldn't have any trouble getting this mod to run on that.
@WNP78 Still no luck with the Steam workshop? Do you see any additional information in the game's log file after a failed upload? C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SimplePlanes\SimplePlanesData\outputlog.txt
Probably not today. We don't have an exact ETA. We are still trying polish things up and resolve some bugs. Soon though... soon...
@Skua Hey, thanks for the quick action yesterday, you guys are great! We've been talking about the issue this morning and we might be making some tweaks... We don't bring out the IP ban often, but for situations like this, I wouldn't hesitate. We can always un-ban the IP if we think we've made a mistake. In my opinion, if IP information indicates that it is highly likely that the garbage is generated by an alt account of another user or someone they know at the same address (friend/sibling/etc), I'd still hand out the IP ban. I'd hesitate on banning their actual account without definitive proof though (unless incidents continue to happen).
We will also look in to some kind of post limiting to help prevent a similar issue in the future. Also, yesterday evening, Andrew said he implemented the ability to auto-remove all posts of a user when banning them (checkbox on the ban page I think, haven't tested it myself). Something that would have been incredibly useful yesterday.... sorry about that.
Once again, thanks for the hard work!
Both of the old mirror options should still be there (buttons in the UI as well as configurable keybindings)
@WNP78 Regarding the mod not saving sometimes... is this reproducible? Are there certain steps that you take that always result in the mod saving or not saving? If you have a project that consistently reproduces this problem, I could take a look at it if you are willing to upload a zip somewhere I can download it.
@WNP78 That isn't something that can be used via Resources.Load. It was set up to be used via the editor and unfortunately it doesn't live in the modding API. This means your only option for trying to use it would be to use some reflection to find that type and create a component from it at runtime to add to a game object. Not too tricky, but then you'd also need to do some reflection magic to setup up some private serialized fields on the component before it can be used.
@MrTorch Have you taken a look at this? https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6218-USFX-5568
What exactly are you seeing? are you still using the beta?
Does this happen every time or only with a specific plane? Is it reproducible?
@WNP78 Some mods may need to be rebuilt with Unity 5.3. I've not found a consistently reliable workaround yet. Its unfortunate, but since there are so few mods out right now, there won't be a better chance to move things to a newer version of Unity, so we made the move. As for manipulating alpha channels, that is out of my area of expertise... not really sure, but I hear photoshop can do it.
What version of Unity are you using?
As for the terrain reflectivity... I believe the standard shader uses the alpha channel of the terrain textures to specify smoothness. The smoother the surface, the more reflective it appears. You can update your terrain textures to not have such high values in their alpha channels or you could set the terrain to use a different shader.