As most of you know, theres been a bit of a fluff recently regarding a recently discovered feature in Air Attack. Since an update has now been put in place, more details about the situation and what the update does can be discussed.
What was the Issue?An individual discovered how to activate development mode within the game.
What is this "Development Mode"Development mode is a switch within the game which enabled a number of features which were primarily meant for the development of the game.
Why is Development Mode actually in the game if its for Developers?AA Anniversary edition is a celebration of Air Attack. This edition contains all the code, all the abandoned features and artwork which never made it into the other versions of the game. Development mode is just small subset of the stuff that was added to this version.
What does Development Mode Do?Development mode has a number of features. The ones most notably recognised are the ability to view other peoples cockpits / altitude and the ability to view the damage of other pilots.
Development mode however has many more dangerous and hidden features which upon knowing the right commands and key combinations will provide other facilities. These include:
Ability to reset own damage.
Immediately land and respawn on the runway.
Immediately land and rewspawn into a random location
Destroy own plane (no death).
Land anywhere (like the UFO).
Clearly these are not "features" and were made purely for testing the game. Fortunately for us most of these features dont work (they require server support) but they do induce instability to the server since the server doesnt understand the messages. Its very very unlikely anyone will have been able to do any of these as the commands to do this are very long and specific. So, whilst this is all possible in theory we dont believe anyone will have been able to this.
What does the new update to AA doThe new version specifically disables runtime development mode.
What does this mean for me?We believe that the development mode offers an unfair advantage and outright spoilers to those that have used it. This is a primary factor for removing this feature.
Using the development mode is considered cheating.Whats going to happen to those that have used it?Nothing. Its simply not practical to ban the quantity of people that used it.
Whats going to happen to those that do use it now?Specifically a lot of effort has been put into this to remove the feature from our end and and Ketsujin end. Anyone caught using the feature in the future will be considered a cheater.
The update that has been put in place is mandatory to update. There is no valid reason why you will not get it.
What if I dont get it?Reinstall the game. Your scores will not be affected.
I'm not sure if I have the update!Reinstall the game. Your scores will not be affected.
In order to be abundantly clear on this situation:
There is no valid justification why anybody (regardless of role) needs to use the runtime development mode. People found using the development mode will be sanctioned. People attempting or do circumvent the restrictions that have been put in place will be sanctioned.Its my opinion that the feature incurs too high a risk to the server stability (and exposing sensitive functions) to be made available for public consumption. Only in special circumstances may we use this feature again. Possibly for reffing games or training purposes only but in a restricted and controlled manner.
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