[EA SITREP #14] Little Guys & Other News, Coming Next Week!

Note & credit: Action screenshots were provided by players on the game’s Discord - today featuring Durandal, Chill, CptXile, Foxman, Joshreacher, Kaiju&Tanks, munchlol, Nessie2000, Poodle007 & Tygamer63!

Hello there, old and new fans of Task Force Admiral!

We had a busy week in the dev shack and in the discord, as we pushed a few new little features which shall reach you next week, while we are trying to survive tough temperatures as France seems to be aflame all around us.

Yes, no A/C meant that we had to work at night just to be able to do something and not have machines overheat. But the little time we did enjoy did not go to waste, as you will see below.

Them Lil' Guys

Ok, here they are. And that's pretty cool

We'll be rolling out the little guys in the next patch, after a few adjustments made during beta testing. Note that only Yorktown (and only her, CV-5) gets them as of now, as part of the debugging process, considering their implementation does require some work for each ship (the paths cannot be copied-pasted so easily from one ship to another without creating issues).

Once we make sure that they don't break anything, create performance issues, etc. At the end, everybody should get them in due time.

Although they're not especially performance-hungry, they can still be deactivated in the options if you're running a potato, or simply don't like them to be around.

Until you get them in your own hands, here are a few more shots of them boys in action, captured by our Kickstarter supporters.

The animated deck crews are complemented by several static crewmen, that will come add some more flavor overall, so as to make the decks and the walkways a bit more life-like. They will thus join us and add themselves to the existing gun crew, who will also receive some extra love soon with the addition of the chaps operating the smaller guns.

Fighter Alert!

Have you ever wondered if you were about to miss the joy of watching your little guys intercept a snooper or an incoming strike?

We have added a new functionality to the game, that will now update you and pause itself whenever an intercept instance is about to take place against an enemy scout or an incoming strike. It's a pretty raw but very à la Pacific Air War feature, so it feels right at home.

The dialogue box will allow you to either jump into the cockpit, focus on the friendly aircraft in 3D external view, or simply ignore the alert. So far the feedback has been good, and we will probably roll it out next week without much more ado. Note that it will be toggleable with immediate effect in the settings.

This, yet again, is part of our larger effort to make TFA more accessible. In that department, I am happy to say that progress has been made and the first prototypes of the tutorial videos by Wolfpack345 have been made. These will be an excellent basis for the future interactive tutorials and the contents of the manual, of course. More on that next week.

Of Order Wheels & Ordered Walls

We had a small UI project on-going, in order to replace the current classic menu with a more modern wheel system. We started with the options on the map, which should come in handy and concentrate all functions and orders around a single entry point.

It's still a bit jerky and we're not quite sure it is going to stay the way it is. We are also seeing how practical it is to leave the older system for those who like it better that way. Time will tell. This might not be released immediately so as not to break everything or make people shout. But we have great hopes for this one, as a part of our overall GUI optimization.

Our artist(s) also had some progress on the building atlas for our South Pacific scenes, that is pretty much ready. They will come to add some atmosphere to places such as Tulagi, Rabaul, Port Moresby and the like. New ships seen last time were also fully integrated in the game, and ready to rock for our next scenarios. Altogether, not a bad week.

Discord & Modding – Quick Reminder

Reminder about the modding discord here, where Matlock3462 will entertain you with his experiments (see screen above):

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE BUORD DISCORD

And as you know Task Force Admiral also has its own server. For any in-depth, direct support for technical issues, please do pay our tech support section a visit.

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE OFFICIAL TFA DISCORD

Thank you all once more for your kindness & your friendship, and for sticking around. Cheers and take care :)

With Love,

The TFA Team