Greetings Pilots!

Well february has come and gone faster than I could keep tabs on and before you know it, I'm back to writing a new post. As the title points out, there is no version 0.2.3 yet sadly, and that is due to several hurdles that I'll get into detail here. But fret not, for I have managed to make progress in at least one part of the project, so let's dive right into it!

To summarize what happened, things sometimes just refuse go your way. Besides the obvious excuse that this month is slightly shorter than the rest, I was out of action for one and a half weeks as I had a nasty infection to deal with. Besides being able to watch some shows, I genuinely had no energy to continue working, and was mostly bedridden. Third reason being the fact that what I am trying to accomplish requires a ton more work, as I am reconnecting (or even reworking) several functions to fit the new look of the loadout system.

Which brings me to the good stuff. Although still in early development, there's a fully interactive hangar on the way! Whenever you buy a new ship or just plan a new loadout for a class, the hangar bay aims to replace the old, unintuitive menu from before and allows you to set you and your wingmen up easier than ever. As mentioned in my previous devlog, this means cutting down on the UI clutter, streamlining the squad and loadout editor and have an overall fancier way to represent your ships.

For newcomers, I have set the system up in a step-by-step fashion, so the first thing you do when picking free flight is to select your first spacecraft.

What follows is what I call the "Interactive phase". This is the part where you have your first ship ready for editing its loadout, while the surrounding numbered plots outside activate and await player input.

These areas I mentioned represent you (that is the roman numeral 1,) and your potential wingmen. They can be filled with the same fighters and utility craft you could choose from the original menu. Occupied plots can then be selected and edited, or have their loadouts modified.

When you're done, all you have to do is click on the main hangar doors and you're off.

And just to point out, unlike in previous versions, purchases will be made instantly. Any time you add/remove a ship, your credit balance adjusts accordingly. I feel that this method removes an unnecessary step from the transaction, simplifying things, but not dumbing anything down in the process.

Just a quick update: I have added a short video showcasing everything I have implemented so far:

Overall, this is only a cut-down showcase of this feature. I still have plenty to add, one of them being a quick rundown on controls and some kind of helper for those who try it out for the first time. Another would be the ability to edit not just your own, but other wings of fighters under your control. In which case, I believe the soundest solution is to have the option to add more hangar bays, which connect together, and can be swapped. This also brings up the fact that currently there's no real room for capital ships, something that I might resolve with a separate bay altogether. Believe me when I say that there's still plenty to go through.

Another less-noticeable change here was my decision to switch from Unity's lightweight rendering pipeline to its HD counterpart, which is something I wasn't originally planning to do, but proper lighting effects you see here now were impossible in the former. This will definitely cause optimization issues and graphical settings will need to be changed to mirror the new framework. Whether or not I will have time for it all this month is up for debate, but I always aim to resolve these as soon as I am able.

And that is mostly what I can share for now. My short-term goal in finishing the hangar remains the same since February, and I will do as much as I can to get it in a complete state for the end of March. Until then, I leave this post as another stepping stone for this project's journey.

I thank you for reading! See you next month!