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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The effectiveness of chaff increases dramatically when you are flying perpendicular to the incoming missile, or the incoming radar. For Command Guided missiles though, you will want to be perpendicular to the radar, since the missile itself has no sensors.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Made a little HP bar as a debug tool to visualize how countermeasures affect missiles, but I think I'll leave it as an option. It's kind of ugly though, and if I leave it I should probably make it look a little nicer.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

With the AI starting to fire radar guided missiles, I'm learning a lot about how bad the R-3Rs are. I never really put any thought into its stats since the AI couldn't fire it anyway. Apparently the missile was slow enough that the proximity fuze would blow up the launching jet half the time.

MiG-21 from Tiny Combat Arena carrying 4 R-3Rs.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I really tried to make it work, but I think chaff is just going to function similar to flares and I'll leave it at that. It's a tried and true, and very predictable system. There's a reason pretty much everybody, including most real sims/wargames, do it that way instead my bubbles idea.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Going through the list of essential features I think are needed before a main branch patch, one of them being chaff for the radar missiles. I've had this idea in the back of my head for years now, of treating chaff as this line of sight blocker for missiles, but it doesn't really work in practice.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

0.18.2.1 is now available on the Tester's branch. A full suite of missions with a variety of targets are now available in Instant Action Strike. The old island has been removed from Instant Action now that it's obsolete.

store.steampowered.com

Tiny Combat Arena - 0.18.2.1 is available on the Tester's branch - Steam News

A full suite of missions with a variety of targets are now available in Instant Action Strike. The old island has been removed from Instant Action now that it's obsolete.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Finished filling out the rest of the instant action missions for the new island map, which is now becoming THE island map!

The "Island SAM Complex" strike mission features up to three SAM sites over open ocean.

Dive bombing on the "Kudamaki" target, which is a military base on a peninsula of the big island.

Tanks driving down a coastal road to attack a base.

The bridge with various radio towers in the distance.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Was digging through some old footage and found the dev footage of the procedural runway markings the game has.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Been filling out the Instant Action Strike missions. Each strike mission has some themed target like e.g. bunkers which require iron bombs to destroy or a big garrison. Once all these get done, the old placeholder island map can be removed from instant action entirely.

The targets are the big fuel tanks, defended by an SA-2.

The targets are three hardened bunkers, which up to two ground groups defending.

The target is all the hangars on the airfield, but it's defended by two SAM sites.

The targets are the various garrison buildings on the base.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I was looking for a good "SAM Hunting" loadout and was going to use cluster bombs for the "clean up" but they looked kinda awkward and heavy. Then I remembered that I added airburst bombs specifically for dealing area damage to soft targets and just two of them worked out perfectly!

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Patch 0.18.1.1 is now available on the Tester's branch of Tiny Combat Arena. The SA-2 and its radar guided missile is the big feature of this patch, along with a reworked Instant Action Strike mode (currently only fully featured on a single base) that supports the new island map.

Screenshot from Tiny Combat Arena of an SA-2 flying towards the camera just after the booster has separated.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Platoon of M60s advancing against a bunch of APCs while an Abrams is firing on T-62 at the rear defensive live.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

The options for aircraft wings and ground formations are now dynamic in the instant action Strike menu based on the mission as defined in the map's JSON data. The menu also finally properly handles a map with no strike missions.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

I fixed a crash where if you alt tabbed while in photo mode, and then tabbed back into the game, and had a joystick plugged in, but you did NOT have a gamepad plugged in.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

SAM sites are done, now they need to be integrated into the rest of the game. As part of that process, instant action is getting another pass, which means the new island is getting a whole host of new strike missions.

Screenshot from Tiny Combat Arena showing the AV8B bombing big spherical fuel tanks.

AV8B strafing some tanks on a beach with the cannon.

T-62 taking pot shots at an F-5 over the Garrison target.

Dogfight over the southern base with the big protected harbors. An F-5 just ate a missile to the face from a MiG-23.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Simple, but obvious in hindsight solution to just showing both. Just use a subtitle for when you want to add an alternate name to something. For modders, there's a new property so they can add subtitles to their objects too.

Screenshot from Tiny Combat Arena's database showing the new subtitle text on database object names.

SA-9
9M31 Strela-1

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Running into a funny problem right now where I can't decide if I want to use the NATO names or Russian names for various Russian missiles. I don't really have room for both, but I want to standardize on one. I tend to prefer NATO names for SAM (e.g. SA-2), but Russian for A-A (e.g. R-27).

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Taking out the radar will disable the SAM site and any missiles already in the air. Getting close enough to do so, can be risky. At both long and very short range, you can outmaneuver the SA-2s. At medium range though, you'll need to either terrain mask or fly nap of the earth.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

They look so much more legit when you put the big tracks under them.

SA-2 site in Tiny Combat Arena with a low poly funny looking version of the big tracks that these sites are known for.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

While digging through various test scenes for reference I found the prototype map that the game started on. This is from 2020 and it's where all the earliest parts of TCA were built from.

Green very polygonal island. I think this was first created for the final version of what would be called Tiny Combat Legacy, but the new project that became Tiny Combat Arena started on this. You can see this island in the earliest TCA footage on YT.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

SA-2s are wiggly. This was something I wanted to add because of the source videos showing it. Basically it adds noise to the control inputs.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

The missiles are now using a more correct "Command" style guidance, with the radar directing the missiles. The missiles depend on the radar for guidance. If the radar is lost, the missiles lose guidance. If the radar switches targets, it'll try to redirect missiles already in the air if possible.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Added an option for turrets to need to align to azimuth only to handle the case for missile launchers which don't necessarily aim the missile at the target. For this launcher, even if the target is very low, it elevates to a minimum of 25 degrees to avoid the missile hitting the ground.

Screenshot from Tiny Combat Arena of two SA-2 batteries. Three of the launchers are firing. All the launchers are angled up 30ish degrees even though the target is very low.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

The SAM launchers have their turrets cued off of the lead vehicle in the group's sensors. The lead radar also keeps track of missiles in the air, so it doesn't fire off all the launchers at once. In this case it's set to keep only 2 missiles up at a time.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

Fields in the Germany terrain with the updated trees and scatter rendering.

Screenshot of Tiny Combat Arena's finished new terrain with the updated trees and scatter rendering.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

0.17.2.3 has been released for Tiny Combat Arena. It contains a hotfix for the Unity security vulnerability that was patched this morning.

store.steampowered.com

Tiny Combat Arena - 0.17.2.3 - Steam News

Patched Unity security vulnerability

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

Since release, Tiny Combat Arena has been designed to be able to be played 100% offline. This means with no connection to Steam whatsoever. If Steam isn't detected, the game will save all its settings locally, and Steam APIs and features are bypassed/forwarded to local versions. #StopKillingGames

The STANDALONE on the bottom left of the main menu shows that the game is running in standalone mode, and will run everything saving files locally and without any connection to Steam. Even mods can still be loaded and run locally, without Workshop.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

Hotfix 0.17.2.2 is on the main branch, fixing the newly broken sounds that only happened on the main branch. Units have also been added to the external camera bar, and match the HUD Units setting.

Screenshot from Tiny Combat Arena showing the AV8B flying above an island. The info bar at the bottom of the screen reads
HEADING: 215 AIRSPEED: 444 KT G: 1.27 ALTITUDE 2022 FT

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

Minor new feature that's part of the hotfix releasing later today is the info bar at the bottom now displays in the correct selectable units.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

0.17.2.1 is now available on the main branch! This is mainly a technical patch, updating the engine for optimizations to the new terrain. However it does include the oft-requested ability to change the units that appear on the HUD, and cockpit animations for the AV8B.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

0.17.2.1 has been released on the Tester's branch. This should (hopefully) fix all the sound sourced issues that cropped up from the last update. If there's no major issues with this, it'll be pushed to the main branch soon.

Screenshot from Tiny Combat Arena featuring BMP-1s, ZSU-57-2s, and T-62s driving down a road.

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Reposted by Tiny Combat Arena

Skyward Flight Media @skywardfm.com · 13/06/2025

There's something satisfying about annihilating T-72s in Tiny Combat Area, absolutely amazing feeling. #flightsim #lowpoly

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

There might be a light at the end of this tunnel now.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

It did not go all well. There's a pretty serious FMOD bug. As good as I think FMOD Studio is, the Unity integration has given me so many extremely difficult to debug and solve problems that endlessly frustrate me. It's why I almost NEVER touch the game's audio. FMOD is incredibly fragile.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

0.17.1.1 has been pushed to the tester's branch. This doesn't make too many changes, but this updated the Unity engine from 2020 to 2023. This touched much low level code in the game, so I want to keep it simple for this patch. The update was important for optimizations to rendering on the new map.

A bunch of buildings in the new map of Tiny Combat Arena being destroyed.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

The 60 second flight time of the AIM-54 Phoenix. Mods by Viperu Zeiro and nuclearstonk

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Thought it'd be fun to animate the flight stick, but then one thing led to another and another and another so now: Flight stick, throttle, nozzle lever, pedals, gear lever, and gear indicator lights all have animation based on what you're doing.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

Today I learned the AV8B cockpit never had a joystick in it. This entire time I could have sworn it did.

3D memepoly model of an AV8B cockpit. Notably missing is the joystick.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 26/04/2025

Migration to 2023.2.20f1 seems to be complete. Still need to do some more testing to make sure exciting new regressions haven't appeared, but so far so good. Even mods still load correctly, which is something I was a bit worried about since their asset bundles would have been made in Unity 2019.

Tiny Combat Arena screenshot featuring a cockpit of F-14A by ViperZero

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

Holy cow just came across this ancient screen that, I'm not sure has ever been in the game or if it was just a prototype? The creation date is September 2020, so it predates the game's release by quite a bit. This would have been only about 5 months since the game started development.

Ancient canvas from the bowels of Tiny Combat Arena's Unity project. It's called "HangarMode" and I guess it was a loadout editor of some kind?

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

Almost finished with moving the game to Unity 2023 from 2019. There's a lot of optimizations that can be done for the new terrain using features in 2023. Most of the game's packages and assets have had to be updated, which caused some minor havoc.

AV8B flying over the new terrain. Hills are in the background, with "forests" and farm fields near.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

I use geometric "decals" on the models as a substitute for not having textures. The shrinkwrap modifier in Blender was such a game changer.

Side of an A-10 with lots of little panels being applied using the Shrinkwrap modifer in Blender.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

The formatting for the category and filter database buttons has been polished a bit to make room for the ATGM filter, because a lot of mods add these types of weapons. The TMPro subscript tag came in clutch to squeeze in all the categories.

Tiny Combat Arena screenshot showing the updated filter labels in the database.

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Tiny Combat Arena @tinycombatarena.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Hello, this is going to be the official development account for Tiny Combat Arena! Follow here if you want to see updates and random progress-posting on the game.

Screenshot from Tiny Combat Arena. An AV8B strafes some tanks on the ground. Dirt is flying everywhere from the explosions and empty shells rain from the plane's gun.

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