Can you consider something that has been fully released to be abandoned? Most single player type games don't get constant updates after a certain amount of time.

Yes it was abandoned, the developer promised a bunch of updates and never delivered.
Abandoned development of this game and started working on another.

the fanbase also abandoned the game unlike gta san andreas, which even with only 1.0 version the fanbase made like billions of modding even a new scripting engine like cleo and asi on it, and all of them are not condoned by rockstar games which kept dmca ing major projects.

yes i know games like project wingman, ace combat, and the others but i love a "sandbox" experience now and then

es, this game may be abandoned by its SOLE deloper, i did some ♥♥♥♥ around the game files and found out it is missing features that didnt get implemented, such as fuel limitation, like in AC1 and AC2, where the spam of your mission only depended on how much fuel your craft is capable to hold(For exemple, a long mission done with an F4 you will have to do it within 10 or 15 minutes, while if you do it with an F-14 or F-15 you may have up to 30 min of fuel to destroy everything and some more).
As well as the tune system, i believe the player will acquire parts to equip in the planes to increase stats and stuff, but it was never fully developed i believe.
None of these features were properly implemented in the gameplay, altough fuelbomb mutator makes you use fuel, but you explode once you run out of it.

also, still on the Fuel Usage thing, if you enable the Fuel Feature in the game files, every plane you use will fly for about 5 minutes, 2 if you A/B this ♥♥♥♥ up, if you want to implement fuel yourself, you will have to imput fuel ammounts manualy for every single unit in the game.
And i have no idea where the Tune system will take me if i enable it in the game files, i do not know what is missing, or how to add stuff to it

The main issue is that it constantly crashes with runtime errors (Windows 10), I lost like 10K of unsaved points that could have been used of purchasing aircraft... Also some Challenges are literally unplayable, tells you to destroy ground targets while not giving you any missile or cannon ammo, got some A2A missles but they don't even lock onto ground targets.

Originally posted by WZNGT:

The main issue is that it constantly crashes with runtime errors (Windows 10), I lost like 10K of unsaved points that could have been used of purchasing aircraft... Also some Challenges are literally unplayable, tells you to destroy ground targets while not giving you any missile or cannon ammo, got some A2A missles but they don't even lock onto ground targets.

Well even far before i use Windows 10 (sticking to Windows 7 until 2019 December) i have problems like unwinnable or extremely hard campaign mode, and yeah, same issue as you.
Some custom campaign like the Mig campaign remake is better than the vanilla campaign, lol.

So to answer question posed in beggining. Yes, it was abadnoned when Developer (solo dev, mind you) ceased to respond. Many ware confused as to why sudden silence, after some time it suddenly got released as full, most likely by publisher (seperate party from dev) and it stayed as such.

Now your curosity as to why "community abondoned it". Community tried at the time, it was ONLY Ace Combat like game in its day as only alternative was Assault Horizon or going with PS2 emulator, no AC7 or Project Wingman. War Thunder at the time was sticking with early versions of jets so it was also no go.

So, community tried but capiblity to mod it was limited by code, some tried to contact dev and publisher to get codes to mod it better but nothing came out of it. Once Project wingman came to the view, along with AC7 and War Thunder adding late cold war jets, all reason to care about this game ceased to be.



TL;DR, when it was only alternative to AC, some tried. Once new and better alternatives came to, people ceased to care about this.

I hope it answers your question as to why comunity left it.

Originally posted by Sgt.Parker:

So to answer question posed in beggining. Yes, it was abadnoned when Developer (solo dev, mind you) ceased to respond. Many ware confused as to why sudden silence, after some time it suddenly got released as full, most likely by publisher (seperate party from dev) and it stayed as such.

Now your curosity as to why "community abondoned it". Community tried at the time, it was ONLY Ace Combat like game in its day as only alternative was Assault Horizon or going with PS2 emulator, no AC7 or Project Wingman. War Thunder at the time was sticking with early versions of jets so it was also no go.

So, community tried but capiblity to mod it was limited by code, some tried to contact dev and publisher to get codes to mod it better but nothing came out of it. Once Project wingman came to the view, along with AC7 and War Thunder adding late cold war jets, all reason to care about this game ceased to be.



TL;DR, when it was only alternative to AC, some tried. Once new and better alternatives came to, people ceased to care about this.

I hope it answers your question as to why comunity left it.

Not to be demeaning to the community, not at all, but just for a comparison, GTA San Andreas user-created content support is doomed since a certain mod back in the PC version launch day made Rockstar lock down modding, and yet for 18 years the game received a steady stream of fanmade content, dedicated mod support, and even ENGINE MODIFICATIONS (from SAMP to SilentPatch to Modloader)... all of them that Rockstar wouldn't approve.

I used to believe Vector Thrust would be like that. I was wrong.

But then again i moved on to Project Wingman just like the musician for this game, and Project Wingman was such a well-made game, though the moddability isn't as big as Vector Thrust (there's very few fan made missions yet, for example, and most mods are model replacements or stats changer).

Originally posted by Meyers07:

Not to be demeaning to the community, not at all, but just for a comparison, GTA San Andreas user-created content support is doomed since a certain mod back in the PC version launch day made Rockstar lock down modding, and yet for 18 years the game received a steady stream of fanmade content, dedicated mod support, and even ENGINE MODIFICATIONS (from SAMP to SilentPatch to Modloader)... all of them that Rockstar wouldn't approve.

I used to believe Vector Thrust would be like that. I was wrong.

But then again i moved on to Project Wingman just like the musician for this game, and Project Wingman was such a well-made game, though the moddability isn't as big as Vector Thrust (there's very few fan made missions yet, for example, and most mods are model replacements or stats changer).

Well aware of this all, but you forgotten difference in interest. GTA SA was big thing that many wanted to play, it was continuation of well established franchise, info about it was spread all around, from day to day news, politicians taking interest and thats not including how much hype it got through game news outlets.

Vector Thrust in comparison, brand new title from unknown developer, had no news covering it, very few ware interest in this type of game and above all, when dev dissapeard from face of internet, it was very buggy and problematic to deal with unless you know from get go where to go for fan made patches.

GTA SA had all going for it to remain cult classic while VT had nothing to provide interest even for casual steam shopper.

Originally posted by Sgt.Parker:

Originally posted by Meyers07:

Not to be demeaning to the community, not at all, but just for a comparison, GTA San Andreas user-created content support is doomed since a certain mod back in the PC version launch day made Rockstar lock down modding, and yet for 18 years the game received a steady stream of fanmade content, dedicated mod support, and even ENGINE MODIFICATIONS (from SAMP to SilentPatch to Modloader)... all of them that Rockstar wouldn't approve.

I used to believe Vector Thrust would be like that. I was wrong.

But then again i moved on to Project Wingman just like the musician for this game, and Project Wingman was such a well-made game, though the moddability isn't as big as Vector Thrust (there's very few fan made missions yet, for example, and most mods are model replacements or stats changer).

Well aware of this all, but you forgotten difference in interest. GTA SA was big thing that many wanted to play, it was continuation of well established franchise, info about it was spread all around, from day to day news, politicians taking interest and thats not including how much hype it got through game news outlets.

Vector Thrust in comparison, brand new title from unknown developer, had no news covering it, very few ware interest in this type of game and above all, when dev dissapeard from face of internet, it was very buggy and problematic to deal with unless you know from get go where to go for fan made patches.

GTA SA had all going for it to remain cult classic while VT had nothing to provide interest even for casual steam shopper.

Also, GTA SA was stable out of the box. Vector Thrust is HORRIFICALLY unstable and loaded with showstopper bugs all over the place. What the community REALLY needed, in order for a mod-based continuance to occur, was the ability to get the crashes and some of the more esoteric showstoppers fixed. They were never given the tools that would have been required to do so, nor did the publisher devote resources to getting the game in a properly playable state for a supposedly 'released' game, so the mod community floundered and died in it's infancy.

As a comparing example: The STALKER games. Highly moddable, but held back by engine issues. The difference was, those engine issues could be worked around, the engine's openness to modding on practically every level meant most the issues COULD be either fixed by community or worked around. You still had some crashes and unfixables, but not to the point of hindering core game structure on a regular basis. Then we had Open X-ray, which was/is an open-source fork of the engine, with a lot of the core issues solved or neutralized. All it took was one of the 'sandbox' mods (in this case Anomaly) shifting to Open X-ray, and you suddenly had a modding resurgence, as you had a stable platform on which to do so, one that already included many of the common changes players were doing anyway.
Same situation pops up with bethesda games, for the most part. Buggy and unstable, but the engine is open enough for the community to work around the issues. That wasn't the case with Vector thrust.




A significant part of the distaste/bitterness people who were excited for VT have, boils down to having seen the potential it had, only for the dev to just abandon it without so much as a word, who couldn't even be bothered to get it stable before dropping it. Even when it WAS still in development, the developer raised red flags with his constant silliness of focusing on adding new content instead of making sure what was there worked first. Anyone with knowledge of programming or game dev knows adding new stuff when the stuff you have isn't working is probably the worst idea you can go through with.