Miksi Early Access?

Early Access will allow players to take an active part in the development process. Their feedback will help refine the core mechanics, tune ship systems and gameplay parameters, and adjust priorities to keep development moving in the right direction.

Players will also be essential for testing the near-infinite variety of possible cockpit setups.

Miten kauan peli tulee arviolta olemaan Early Access -vaiheessa?

It is expected to last for about a year.

Millä tavoin lopullinen versio tulee eroamaan Early Access -versiosta?

I plan to include more game content (missions, challenges, environments, ships and ship systems) and more core features such as Steam Workshop support.

During this time, I also intend to keep expanding the built-in models library to include the most popular devices.

Mikä on Early Access -version tila tällä hetkellä?

Input

• Motion controllers: VR controllers can be used to interact with all holographic controls in your cockpit, including buttons, sliders and configurable 'Motion Controller Docks' for full ship control without additional hardware.
  
• HOTAS, joysticks and other flight controls: any input device can be used in Tinker Pilot with fully customizable bindings. Predefined bindings and models for the most popular devices are included.
  
• Hand tracking: the game includes optional support for SteamVR skeleton hand tracking data (works with Meta Quest hand tracking via SteamVR Link) and Leap Motion Controller (Ultraleap), best suited for use alongside HOTAS, joysticks and other physical flight controls.

Cockpit customization

• Elements placement: anything inside your cockpit (HOTAS, joysticks, motion controller docks, holographic panels, screens, virtual buttons, etc.) can be placed and scaled to your liking, and the cockpit editor allows you to organize the different components as a hierarchy of elements so that you can access and edit the sub-elements and arrange the groups as you prefer.
  
• Animation system: a generic animation system allows you to easily add movement to any element or sub-element in your cockpit and connect it to your inputs or data provided by the ship systems. This is great not only to make your virtual devices match the movements of your real devices, but also to add all sorts of effects to your virtual elements such as control panels or holographic controls.
  
• Binding system: every ship system in the game is designed as an interface with a series of actions and data that can be accessed by any element of your customized cockpit. Any action or ship control can be connected to any of your inputs from either a physical device or holographic controller. And thanks to a bidirectional binding system, you can also bind any of the exposed data/telemetry to any cockpit indicator or as a trigger for further actions.
  
• Custom model importing: the game includes the tools so that you can import your own models and integrate them into your cockpit.
  
• Serial and UDP interfaces: a built-in serial communication interface allows two-way communication with external serial devices (e.g., Arduino boards), enabling you to create your own input hardware and add additional immersion effects. The game also includes fully customizable UDP telemetry streams, allowing real-time cockpit and game data to be sent externally for motion simulators or applications.

Gameplay

The game contains a few environments with different game modes:

• Free flight
  
• Basics tutorial
  
• Circuit time trial
  
• Hazardous waste elimination (3 levels)
  
• Hostile takedown (4 levels)
  
• Recovery mission

A faster-than-light drive is used to travel between environments, while the ship comms system lets you seamlessly manage your involvement in missions and challenges at each location. Other ship systems include flight systems (engines, sensors, linear/rotational stabilizers...), weapons, diagnostics, lights, actuators, scopes and a camera drone.

Muuttuuko pelin hinta Early Access -vaiheen jälkeen?

There will be a small price increase after Early Access.

Miten yhteisö otetaan mukaan kehitysprosessiin?

I intend to use Steam, Discord and Reddit as the central places where players can share their feedback, contribute to the project and discuss new ideas.