DeadStick - Flight Simulator

[Asid]

Update about Deadstick & The Irregular Corporation
Thu, 29 April 2021



Hey everyone,

After working closely together on Deadstick since 2017, both REMEX and The Irregular Corporation have made the difficult decision to end our publishing relationship, with all game distribution and publishing rights returning to REMEX.

A message from The Irregular Corporation - “We have enjoyed working on Deadstick over the past few years, especially getting to know the community – it’s been our privilege to witness your passion and love for the project. So thank you for your support, and also our heartfelt thanks to the entire REMEX team for giving us the opportunity to work on the game. We wish you all the best for the future!”

The REMEX & Irregular Corporation Teams

[Asid]

ChrisDeadstick (
Developer)
04/29/2021

I'm sure many of you have questions regarding today's announcement -

I can't comment on the specifics but can say we're looking forwards at a number of options/opportunities (and there's a few more we'd like to explore) so please bear with us whilst we figure out the best path ahead.

Development is temporarily paused whilst we evaluate these options. Will this affect scope and release? Undoubtedly yes, but with change comes opportunity and there's certainly opportunity for a few interesting changes now, particularly based on frequent feedback we get from the community we’re excited to explore.

I'm sure you're all desperate to get your hands on something/anything at this point and so we're also looking at a few ways as to how we can address that in the mean time..

Once we have an idea of which avenues we'd most like to explore moving forwards we can then start to look at resources required and what is / is not viable given the resources we have at our disposal. Things will undoubtedly have to change vs our initial ambition but that isn't necessarily a bad thing - Getting something out sooner we can all rally behind, have fun with and play with regular updates, even if it is rough around the edges, feels like an attractive option right now to help with engagement + visibility on what we're up to. However we need to weigh that up against the long term vision and check that doing so will get us to our end goal without compromising the quality bar we have set for ourselves.

In short I can’t make any promises on what the future holds just yet but I do promise to keep you all in the loop as we work through it! I’m keen to be as transparent as possible with our plans and equally keen to get your feedback.

Thanks as always for your support – the journey continues!

Blue skies and tailwinds,
Chris

[Asid]

Deadstick - Bush Flight Simulator - Developer Update
Mon, September 16, 2024



Hi pilots,

It’s been a long time since a news post has gone live, today that changes. We have a major development update for you on the status of Deadstick, and who else to bring you this information but Chris Cheetham himself.




To highlight some of the main topics of this video:

-    New Deadstick publisher, Mythwright.
-    New Deadstick developer, Spiral House.
-    Deadstick development updates - incoming and more transparency with the community.


The reason we have decided to work on Deadstick is because we believe in it, and want to make sure it becomes a reality. Our aim is to share as much with you, our community as possible between now and launch. This will be a range of information from developer diaries, short videos/gifs, to screenshots of the game being developed - not all news will be a major update but we want to make sure you are along for the journey, you can also join us on our Discord to chat with other pilots.

We hope you will join us in celebrating this new Deadstick era and continue with your patience while the game restarts its development journey.

- The Mythwright Team

[Asid]

Flight Log #5: Unity & HDRP
Mon, 30 September 2024



Happy Monday everyone ✈️

We are reviving the Flight Log series today, and planning on bringing them to you more frequently!

In today’s development update we wanted to talk a little bit about Unity and why we chose to stick with this engine as this seemed to be a common question with our announcement. We’ll also have a few images to share of some retextured High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) plane renders.


Why did we choose this engine / version for Deadstick?

We chose to stay with Unity so we could build on the work already done by Chris and his team and it gave us a good head start on development.

We upgraded to the latest version of Unity to take advantage of HDRP. This offers many visual improvements over URP (Universal Render Pipeline) or the previously used render pipeline. Unity released this spotlight video to showcase the capabilities of HDRP.



Disclaimer: This video is used for informational purposes only. All rights belong to the original creator.


Advanced physically based surfaces

HDRP gives us a much better graphic quality and greater fidelity of surface textures and materials across the board. We are able to use advanced shaders with customisable subsurface scattering, translucency, iridescence, anisotropy and real time tessellation and provide Deadstick at a much higher graphical standard.


Immersive Lighting

HDRP uses correct physical light sources with much greater control over the lighting including the light types, shadow options, light exposure and control, light baking, ray marching and ray tracing and reflections, global illumination, volumetric lighting, that's not to say we will use all of this everywhere, but it gives us more options with greater quality.




Spectacular Atmosphere

All of the HDRP tools and rendering options allow for some procedural skies, volumetric fog, volumetric clouds and weather, all adding to the atmosphere of flying an aircraft in near realistic conditions and providing the player with a fully immersive flying experience.


Maximise Platform Performance

Using HDRP we are able to maximise performance by utilising the Burst and Job system and upsampling algorithms such as NVIDIA DLSS or AMD FSR.


Example Retextured HDRP Plane Renders





Please note that images and videos shown are not representative of the final visuals, all are work in progress while we work on development.


Thanks for reading all, and we’ll be back with another developer update soon.

Please do not forget to follow us on our social channels:

[Asid]

Flight Log #6: Hangar Then v Now
Thu, November 21, 2024



Hey bush flyers,

Last month we shared some images of how our work in progress hangar was looking, and today we are here to share a further update on this.

We want to show the difference that upgrading the game to Unity 6's HDRP has made and explain how we got here.

Then


Now


Utilizing Unity's HDRP physically based materials (PBR) we are able to really improve the overall visual quality of the scene. Using this pipeline the lighting is affected by different surface materials giving us a more realistic experience. Compared to traditional materials, all PBR channels support textures which gives the material more information about how to interact with light. It breaks down each of the materials physical properties and simulates how each would interact with light in the real world. For example, a wood material would have a high diffuse and low reflectivity. PBR materials also use a shading model that is simulated from how reflection and refraction work in the real world.

Then


Now


To further improve the overall quality and detail inside the Hangar, we have also remodelled and upscaled the textures for each of the props, decorative assets and the structure. Lastly we baked the lighting into the scene with global illumination, this enabled us to simulate how light bounces off surfaces and affects the surrounding environment - as opposed to being limited to just the light that hits an object directly.

Then


Now


Thanks for reading, and we'll be back with another update soon!

Please do not forget to follow us on our social channels:

- Mythwright

[Asid]

Dev Update | Day/Night Cycle
Tue, February 18, 2025



Hey bush flyers,

It?s now 2025 and we are at full throttle with development of Deadstick, our goal is to make Deadstick a believable world of wonder with interesting points to discover as you progress through the game. So in our first community update of 2025 we are focusing on day/night cycle and want to share some sneak peeks at the work we?ve been doing around the scale of the game.

So let?s start with the size and scale of the map. We have been planning out where mountains, lakes, valleys, and rivers are located ahead of our next step, populating the world! Things like trees, foliage, rocks, and rivers etc, will be added and we?ll be sharing snippets within our dev logs and social media channels soon. So, yes, if you think the world looks a little sparse, you are right and we?ll have updates for you in the future around this?🌲







The screenshots we have to share today show another crucial element of the believable world, a fully simulated day / night cycle. The Sun tracks from East to West during the day and then at night a star skybox is in place, with the moon simulated through an 8 phase cycle. Waxing from new moon to full moon then waning back to new moon over a number of in game days. At night in the wilderness the moon, accurately reflecting on to the terrain surfaces, is the main source of light. The phase of the moon combined with weather conditions will need to factor into any decision to take on a flight between dusk and dawn.



Temperature is also an important simulation element, impacting the performance of the plane and making icing another risk to factor into gameplay decision making. The scale of the map allows for distinct biomes with different temperature profiles and the day, night cycle will also factor into this, so you can expect colder temperatures at night and the highest temperatures at midday.

If there is an element of Deadstick you would like to know more about, please let us know in the comments.

Thanks for reading, and we'll be back with another update soon!


- Mythwright

[Asid]

Dev Update | A World of Wonder
Tue, April 1, 2025



Hey bush pilots,

There has been steady progress in our development and recent milestones have brought us progress on things like; Pilot Reputation, Job Complexity, Improved Landscape, Weather systems and Runway surfaces, Remote bush airstrips and so much more.

We'll remind you that all of our screenshots and video footage shared is work in progress and should change over time. Which we are sure you'll begin to notice as we share more and more.




We spent some time stress testing the foliage amount, is 3 million trees enough? Turns out it's not and we expect we'll need 30+ million trees over the full map.







Weather from inside the cockpit. If it rains, snows or is super foggy, someone needs to complete those cargo deliveries, right?




When bush flying you expect to see some incredible views, and the Aurora Borealis is just one of them. 🌌

We'll see you next month for another developer update! Don't forget to join our Discord, wishlist Deadstick and stay tuned for news about future playtests.


Is there something you'd like to see? Let us know in the comments!


- Mythwright

[Asid]

Dev Update | Airports & Playtest Sign-ups
Fri, 30 May 2025



Hey bush flyers,

It's our end of month wrap up and we've got a bunch to share with you. In our latest development Milestone we've started working on procedural weather changes (very excited to share this with the community), tweaks to the reputation system, updated the map UI and began concepting side missions.

Let's get straight to the thing you've seen in the title and clicked in for, playtest news.

Now, we don't have a playtest date yet. However while we continue our work on the development of a first playable later this year for Deadstick we wanted to open up sign-ups, this is so we have an idea of who wants to get hands-on ahead of launch to provide us very valuable feedback!

You can sign-up for the playtest by heading over to the Deadstick store page and hitting the 'request access' button. Don't worry you won't miss out when the playtest does become available, we will post about it EVERYWHERE and Steam will notify you

The button looks like this on the store page 👇




So what have we shown this month?


As usual, please note that all of this is work in progress in-game footage/images.

We shared a hangar tour and gave a sneak peak as to how you can upload images and place them on your picture wall.




An early look at cargo deliveries, this is an example of an early game cargo delivery. We've seen a bunch of the community say great things about the center of gravity and weight chart.




Meet a first look at airports, Lawless, Graves & Cook (and a bonus Cook at dusk 🌇)









Is there something you'd like to see? Let us know in the comments!

-Mythwright

[Asid]

Dev Update | Peaks & Valleys
Mon, 1 September 2025



Hey bush flyers! It's our August wrap-up and we've been doing a lot of sight seeing!

In our latest Development Milestone we've done some work on the weather parameters (balancing based on the specific biome), added navigation aids and associated cockpit instrument upgrades, we've added more varied jobs and began implementing Aircraft audio.

Playtest sign-ups are still open for folks who may have missed these in previous updates, you can sign-up over on the store page. We are hoping to have news about the date of a playtest soon. https://store.steampowered.com/app/771800/Deadstick__Bush_Flight_Simulator/

As usual, please note that all of this is work in progress in-game footage/images.


In August we've shared a look at some of the peak and valley work we've been doing.








Valley tour

Watch YouTube Video
https://youtu.be/m-1MsQSpGT0?feature=shared


Camping









Here are a few recent short form videos we'll think you'll enjoy:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/771800/announcements/detail/518597293118587605

Deadstick then & now

Terrain

Crash land views

Jobs in Deadstick

Exploring the world

Which airport are you landing at

Snowy scenes

Is there something you'd like to see? Let us know in the comments!

-Mythwright

[SpaceGameJunkie]

I am so excited for this game, even moreso no with the failure of Flight Simulator's career mode.