v0.5.0

The first version came out more than three years ago, and now there is finally a second one. There has been a lot of tinkering in these years, so here is a summary of all the major changes since the last release:

New Features

1. Implementation of rudimentary traffic on the roads (currently only a single car type)
2. The helicopter can now also land (yeah, that was not possible in the last version).
3. Multiple refactors of the ocean shader
4. A day and night cycle
5. Switch to physics-based lighting
6. Building fires
7. Implementation of the water cannon, which can extinguish building fires
8. Ambient occlusion on building models
9. Huge refactor of the terrain builder
10. The new terrain builder now identifies and cleans up weird tile constellations. These constellations were causing jarring cliffs, which manifested in visible holes in the terrain.
11. Addition of stars to the night sky
12. Replacement of the trees that better fit the current style and improve the overall performance as well

Technical Upgrades

• A major engine upgrade from Godot 3 to 4
• Multiple minor engine upgrades for Godot 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4.
• Porting of multiple scripts from GDScript to Rust

Performance

The performance is still not at all where I would like it to be, but there are a couple of things that influence this. A major issue is the use of SDFGI in a large outdoor environment. This is already planned to be replaced in the next version.

Future Versions

For the future I have planned to do more focused and smaller-scoped iterations. Version 0.6 is already planned, and anything new will most likely go into version 0.7.

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⚠️ macOS Build ⚠️

Like the previous version, this version is also not signed with an Apple Developer certificate. To run the macOS build, it's necessary to run the app once and then go into System Settings > Privacy & Security > Security and click on "Open Anyway".

v0.4.0

This is a first pre-release showcasing what has been implemented so far. There is not much of a game yet, but it is possible to fly the helicopter around the map. For details on the controls, please see the README file.

To try the "game", just download one of the SimChopper builds for your platform and unpack it.

I welcome any kind of feedback, but please understand that this is just a very first step on a long road ahead.

⚠️ the macOS version is not signed with an apple certified developer ID. ⚠️
To run the game, you have to Right-Click and choose "open" on both the DMG file and the app. For the app, you might even have to do it twice. This is only necessary the first time you run the app.