This first demo version of FlightStuff is available for download here on IndieDB.
The demo includes a basic flight tutorial and 3 missions on the “Arctic Ocean” map.
Installation
To play the demo, just unpack the ZIP-archive and run FlightStuff.exe.
Summary
This first demo comes with 4 missions set on the “Arctic Ocean” map:
- Basic Tutorial: A guided step-by-step tutorial to introduce the player to the basics of flight in FlightStuff. You learn how to take off from a runway, steer the aircraft and navigate to a waypoint.
- Catapult Launch: Your aircraft is launched by a catapult and the player must then fly to another Island and land there safely.
- Landing Approach: The player must land safely on a very short runway by using arresting gear (arrestor cables and tailhook).
- Goat Delivery: The player starts on the island runway and must deliver a sensitive goat safely to another island. The goat reacts on how the player flies the aircraft. It does not like strong g-forces, rapid turns or roll-manoeuvres. If the goat gets sick of your flight style, it bails out with a parachute and the mission is lost.
Controls are optimized for X-Box controllers, but any gamepad should work just fine. The keyboard can be used to play the game as well but I strongly recommend using a gamepad. Haptic feedback is currently limited to catapult launch and tailhook landing.
Getting started
Here are some hints regarding game-mechanics and simulation aspects currently not explained in-game that may cause confusion. I think I will cover them in some kind of in-game-codex in the future.
- Aircraft performance highly depends on the altitude. The atmospheric density is modelled to decrease exponentially with altitude resulting in lift, drag and engine thrust to fade accordingly. The aircraft is most manoeuvrable below 1000 height units, but can fly much faster above.
- If you fly too far away from the mission area, a warning will be displayed. If you ignore that warning, the autopilot will take control to fly the aircraft back into the mission area. Once back within the mission area, the autopilot will automatically disengage.
- It is possible to stall the aircraft when the angle of attack (approximately the angle between the nose of the aircraft and its current velocity vector) it too high. A stall results in a dramatic loss of lift and increase in drag. The aircraft will begin to shake when approaching the critical angle of attack. Avoid jerky steering movements to reduce the risk of stalling the aircraft.
- Hold down “decelerate” when the landing gear has made contact with the ground and the thrust setting is down to minimum in order to engage the wheel-brakes.
- Keep the nose of the aircraft level when approaching for an arrested landing. The tail may crash into the runway when the tailhook catches an arrestor cable otherwise.
