Changelog - Feb 19, 2009 - May 3rd, 2009

[lamster]

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May 3rd, 2009

Improved rendering of large fonts

Fixed recoil bug, assorted non-gameplay bugs

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May 1st, 2009

Altitude officially released!

Adjusted difficulty of training missions

Fixed a few bugs

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April 28th, 2009

Bot AI greatly improved

"Tutorial" replaced by "Training" -- includes 5 new training missions and a 'skirmish against bots' option

Added helper dialogs for router/firewall issues and to show when Altitude's master server is down

Bomber
Grenades - increased cooldown by 5%, reduced splash radius and damage, increased direct hit damage (non-direct hits do 50% less damage, direct hits do 5% more damage overall)
Flak Tailgun - reduced splash radius and damage (direct hits do same damage overall)

Biplane
Heavy Cannon - reduced range by 7%, reduced max-pierced-targets from 4 to 3

Explodet
Mines - decreased lifetime by 10%
Thermobarics - testing different effects - unrecoverable stall replaced with angular momentum twist
Remote Mine - blast radius increased by 3%, damage increased by 6%

Miranda
reduced time to max charge by 2%
cleaned up collision boundary on bouncy-shot projectile (overall slightly smaller, but rounder and produces more consistent bounces)
increased 0-energy weapon charge-up rate by 25% for energy consistency
Laser - reduced range by 33%, reduced duration by 15%, increased total damage by 15%
Afterburn-Teleport - reduced energy usage by 5%

lots of bug fixes

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April 8th, 2009

Bomber
"Smart Bombs" replaced with "Bombs" - replaces tailgun with dumb bombs

Miranda
Laser - no longer pierces planes
Reverse - fixed bug that could cause Miranda to lose energy or stall when reversing at low throttle
Weapon charge-up rate is halved when Miranda has 0 energy

In time-limited TBD, if both bases are still standing when the timer runs out, the team whose base has the most health wins

Lots of bug fixes

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March 31st, 2009

Changed HUD -- throttle/health/energy are now above your plane, active perks in the bottom right
goals: make it easy to find your plane in a crowd, increase accessibility of HUD bars

Added Logo Screen and Title Music (will solicit feedback on music options soon)

Added Tip System

Added "Color Blind Mode" under Options->Graphics -- overrides team colors to Red/Blue

Added initial "Stats" UI -- see how many hours you've played (in game, non-idle) since we added the experience system

Rearranged unlock levels so that the red perks are more evenly spaced (in general: reds unlock earlier, blue/greens slightly later than before)

Miranda-Reverse
increased cooldown 10% (0.6 -> 0.66 seconds)

Miranda-Red "Time Anchor"
anchor is now always the same length, not dependent on speed (cannot activate until base length achieved)
anchor jumping now resets Miranda's speed
fixed bug that could cause Miranda to point the wrong direction after anchor jumping

(Cosmetic) Changed Miranda afterburner-teleport energy indicator so that it's more obvious when the energy is consumed, and replaced afterburner flames with (placeholder) charge indicator

Lots of bug fixes

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March 24th, 2009

Improved ping-kick calculation for connections with occasional, but unproblematic, packet loss

Server list now supports "favorite" and "bad" markings; servers with friends are highlighted green; supports and saves filters
favorites, friends servers sorted to top; bad servers sorted to bottom

Add friend button [Available from main menu -> Friends] now shows "recently played with" user list

Miranda-Red "Laser"
reduced beam length by 8%
reduced total damage dealt by 5%
increased duration by 8% (this is a nerf too: must hold laser on the enemy longer to deal full damage)

Miranda-Reverse
linearized(generally reduced) speed boost for reversing (boost is the same as before at very low speeds ... no boost at normal cruising speed ... slight reduction in speed at >cruise speed)

Miranda-Red "Time Anchor"
slightly increased cooldown and energy usage

Bomber-Red "Smart Bombs"
slightly decreased time to acquire lock / bomb deploy time
slightly reduced turning radius
added lock graphic so that target knows a smart bomb has been fired at him

Loopy-Red "Acid Bomb"
decreased cooldown by 40%
reduced range by 20%
increased energy usage by 33%
increased acid cloud duration by 5%
increased acid cloud damage over time by 33%
increased acid cloud damage modifier from +30% to +33%

Biplane-Red "Heavy Cannon"
increased projectile size by 20%

Experience Changes:
changed plane unlock order: bomber now comes before explodet
first few levels require slightly less XP
overall XP to max slightly reduced
round bonus XP slightly increased

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March 16th, 2009

Green - Flexible Wings - buff: planes with flexible wings now lose less speed when making hard turns

Bomber - Grenades, FlakTailgun - reduced damage by 3%
Bomber - reduced hp by 2%

Miranda - Laser - reduced energy regeneration rate while laser is active
Miranda - Reverse - very slightly increased reverse ammo cost

Server:
if you call a vote and it fails, you will not be allowed to call another vote for 5 minutes (1.5 minutes if the vote is successful)

Experience Changes:
changed max level from 40 to 60 and slightly flattened level curve
note: you did not lose experience, and the overall XP requirement to unlock most higher level stuff has been slightly reduced
added "round bonus" XP to help new players through the first few levels and to encourage players to finish rounds
coming soon: prestige ranks for those who would like to continue advancing for cosmetic rewards

Bug Fixes:
fixed several issues that could result in "Invalid IP address" message when attempting to join a server
fixed router issues that could result in "No user is logged in from your ip"
improved memory usage for servers
fixed a few minor bugs with Bomber - Smart Bombs
fixed several server crashes
fixed mouse bugs in Options->Controls bind menus

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March 10th, 2009

Server Options: added minLevel, maxLevel, tightened enforcement of maxPing

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March 9th, 2009

Altitude is now available for purchase from http://altitudegame.com for $19.95 USD. Buy now and you can continue to use all planes and perks when the open beta ends!

New perk icons

Changed explosion effect graphics: added shockwave to show exact radius of effect

Slightly reduced speed of drop-on-death powerups

Explodet
added graphic for "tracking pulse" to indicate mine targeting radius

Bomber
moved grenade fire point from bomb-bay doors to top-front nose to force aiming (rather than overlap-kamikaze) in point blank combat
slightly reduced grenade arc
increased self-damage from point-blank grenades and bombs

Bomber-Red "Smart Bombs"
reduced acceleration and turning rate
smart bombs now stop accelerating and fall when their target becomes untrackable (dead or behind smart bomb)
improved lock-acquired graphic
added lock-acquired sound

Loopy-Red "Acid Bomb"
added sound effect

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March 4th, 2009

Explodet
increased rocket acceleration

Explodet-Red "Remote Mine"
visual change only: removed chain to make it easier to differentiate from chase mines

Explodet-Red "Shrapnel Rockets" replaced with "Thermobarics"
increases rocket damage 10% (much less than +45% from shrapnel)
knockback completely removed
creates a vacuum in the detonation environment causing nearby planes to stall for 0.75 seconds

Bomber-Red "Bombs" are now "Smart Bombs"
if a lock is acquired prior to firing, will seek locked target like a homing missile

Loopy-Red "Acid Bomb"
friendly smoke now renders behind planes
reduced opacity of smoke cloud

Miranda-Red "Time Anchor"
increased cooldown

Blue "Reverse Thruster": increased effectiveness, decreased energy usage

[lamster]

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Feb 27, 2009

Changed max level to 40 to reflect final unlockable counts
NOTE: you did not lose experience -- level 40 now requires the same amount of exp 45 used to require

Loopy
increased tracking missile damage by 3%

Loopy-Red "Acid Bomb" (NEW)
"Replaces EMP with acid that reduces armor and causes damage over time."
longer cooldown and higher energy usage than EMP
gas cloud lasts 2 seconds and spawns an acid debuff on enemies that fly through
acid debuff causes 50 damage over 3 seconds and increases damage taken from other sources by 30% for 3 seconds

Miranda-Red "Time Anchor" (NEW)
"Replaces reverse with the ability to teleport to a previous position."

Miranda
reverse no longer cancels forward momentum along new direction of motion
miranda can now reverse with 0 energy, however 0-point reversing provides a weaker speed boost and causes the reverse drive to take up to twice as long to reset (depending on energy used)

Green "Repair Drone"
reduced heal per second by 11%

Green "Heavy Armor"
decreased effectiveness -> effective hp changes: (Loopy 31% -> 25%, Explodet 26% -> 22%)

Blue "Reverse Thruster":
reduced energy usage by 40%

Increased duration of "show perks when camera switches targets" effect by 10%

Added Private (password protected) Servers
to make your server private, type a password into the "Secret code" text field in the server configurator

Added Ban command for server admins
bans are persisted between server restarts and shared among servers using the same launcher
"/vote kick playerId" now results in a 2 minute ban

Added "Black/Gray Smoke To Indicate Plane Damage" option in map editor to make plane smoke more visible on dark maps

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Feb 24, 2009

perk configuration is now shown every time the camera switches targets
(when dead, press C to toggle chase mode, Z/X to cycle chase targets)
placeholder text icons added for all perks

Miranda
decreased time required to reach max charge by 12%
energy regen is no longer halted while laser is active

Loopy-Red "Double Fire"
reduced angular spread on double-fire by 10%

Biplane-Red "Heavy Cannon"
reduced recoil by 40%

Bomber
increased grenade cooldown by 10%
reduced tailgun damage by 5%

Bomber-Red "Flak Gunner" (NEW)
"Replaces tracking tailgun with a high recoil, explosive, flak cannon"

Removed Bomber-Red "Mega Grenades"

Explodet-[forms other than Remote Mine]
reduced mine ejection distance

Explodet-Red "Remote Mine":
increased ejection distance
increased explosion area of effect by 12%
increased explosion damage by 20%
increased max lifetime by 40%

Green "Rubberized Hull": increased elasticity in collision calculations
damage reduction is the same (65%), but rubberized planes now bounce much farther after a collision than non-bouncy planes
added visual indicator upon wall collision

Green "Repair Drone": reduced health repaired per second (30 -> 28)

Green "Heavy Armor": improved health bonus, especially for smaller planes (health packs still recover 35% of effective hp, as always)
Loopy/Miranda: +31% effective hp
Explodet: +26% effective hp
added visual indicator upon damage taken

Blue "Reverse Thruster":
modified to increase both throttle up and throttle down rates (previously only increased throttle down rate)
reduced energy usage

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Feb 19, 2009

Decreased afterburner effectiveness while carrying big bomb

Modified Red-Bomber "Suppressor": grenade collision size -15%, removed bounce

Added Red-Bomber "Mega Grenades": bigger, bouncy grenade with single-shot/manual-detonate mechanic

Added Blue "Ace Instincts": increases veteran bonuses by 50% (each veteran bar increases speed/turning/energy-regen/damage)

Added Blue "Reverse Thruster": doubles throttle-down rate and allows reverse thrusting while stalled

Modified Blue "Ultracapacitor": increases max energy by 35% (up from 20%)

Added Blue "Turbocharger": increases energy regeneration rate by 20%

Removed Blue "Superburner"

Added Green "Aerodynamics": increases speed by 10%

Added Green "Flexible Wings": increases turning capability by 20%

Modified Green "Repair Drone": removed 'full energy' requirement, added 'resets on afterburn'
taking damage or engaging afterburners halts the repair drone for the next 2.5 seconds (down from 3 seconds)
repairs 30 hp per second (up from 25)

Modified Green "Heavy Armor": improved armor bonus, removed speed penalty
reduces damage from weapons by 20%

Modified Green "Rubberized Hull": addded knockback reduction, improved collision reduction
reduces damage from collisions with buildings by 65%
reduces knockback from explosives by 35%
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