Update for the weekend

Won't have much time this week for work on this project so here's a bunch of quick fixes and enhancements to the editor.

- Transform Gizmo now always the same size on screen
- Fixed stat bonus being applied twice - it's why other ships couldn't attack more than once every 3 minutes.
- An early attempt at custom physics.
- Fixed a lot of "expertise" numbers.

About expertise :
Items (Turrets and subsystems that cast abilities like Flares or Redirection Field) are unlocked by earning expertise which you get from being damaged by a turret, defeating a ship using that item or damaging a ship with that turret/using the ability. After unlocking, any additional expertise allows you to upgrade your performance with that item - turrets will have smaller reload times, will generate more heat, abilities will have shorter cooldowns, etc...

About the custom physics, we want to :
- Make sure no ship turns too fast - no fun flying a simple drone that turns on a dime.
- Make sure large ships can still turn at a reasonable rate (180 degrees over 30 seconds sounds fair)
- Allow the shape of to affect the rotation rate like PhysX intended

Download the latest build here.

Ship Editor v2.0

A lot of things needed fixing and a lot of things were fixed.

• Rewrote the code and UI that handles turret groups ingame. Right-clicking them now toggles autofire.
• Added Move/Rotate/Scale gizmo. Not quite perfect just yet but already better than the standard buttons.
• Fixed test ships not exploding in the ship editor test mode. They died but important particle effects were missing and the ship could not play its death animation.
• Fixed naming issues - mainly the ship editor wouldn't rename the ship on load and this caused save issues
• Fixed saving the ship if there are no engines, it's not entirely possible, just don't expect your ship to show up as anything but a station ingame.
• The Ship Editor is now a single portable prefab with one large animator. This simplifies the work of porting it over to different levels and should make it a much better experience to use.
• Added help boxes (that you can hide at any time).
• Fixed Options in the main menu not being useable and also fixed them not actually changing options. Currently I do not have access to post-FX due to Unity Pro, so some options will be missing.
• Modified the engines' look, they should look a bit more "lit-up" now.
• Messed with turret/projectile damage, force, expertise and cost values. Dual Cannons should no longer send your frigate spinning and throwing off the second shot.
• Added sound to most UI buttons.

I'm not quite ready to say I'm done with the editor, it needs a lot more field testing. That said, I should be able to start working on world generation/factions next week.

Download here. If you want your ship included in the final game as a default ship, feel free to send the .ship file by mail (saved ships are stored in Data/Ships/User) for now. Maybe someday there'll be Steam workshop integration, you never know.

Feedback on the editor:
- Camera controls are weird
- Manipulating parts is a pain
- It's not clear at all that placing regular blocks is a 2-click process (spreading them over a surface)
- Crashes on saving (failed to save, probably)
- Physics are weird - I'll probably switch to a more specialized solution where max speed and rotation speed is calculated manually for gameplay reasons. Nobody likes a ship that takes 10 minutes to align to a warp target and nobody wants to pilot a ship that turns way too fast.
- No tutorial on combat
- Somebody ran the game on a toaster at 2fps which should not be happening

So for now I've added a simple transform gizmo. It's not perfect but it's better than a million buttons on the right that don't really mean anything.

I've also got access to a second Unity Pro trial, so expect some pretty shaders and a lot of optimization.

Ship Editor

Here's the first release of the ship editor. There's no limitation on what you can build so go crazy if you want to. The only possible limit is the number of vertices in the ship (~65532), which clocks in at about 8000 blocks, the other limits are for gameplay reasons - MAXIMUM 10 turret groups. It's very important to take all the turrets you have and group them together - only identical turrets can be grouped.

Press "Done" to test your ship and how it handles in the current physics (which are subject to change). You can spawn a random enemy ship by pressing "+Enemy".

How combat works - click on a ship to set your target and then click on the subsystem you want to damage. The hull will naturally block either all the damage or part of it depending on its health. Different subsystems have different effects when damaged or destroyed - the warp core causing a complete meltdown and destroying the ship.

Right click on subsystem icons on the bottom right to set whether they should be repaired or not. Your repair rate is based on your crew percentage - crew can be lost to a broken life support subsystem (since there's no air).

This is the first release of anything ever I've done, so any bug reports or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Download here.

Obligatory first post

This blog will be dedicated to a single game project. I don't have a name just yet, so Project Warfleet will have to do.

It's an open-world procedural space exploration game with roguelike elements using Unity3D. This should hit enough buzzwords to be greenlit. The idea is to build your own capital ship and share it with other people so they can show up in their games. You can capture ships and add them to your personal fleet and eventually overtake entire systems. Think micro-M&B: Warband.

There's also support for faction creation where you can specify what ships are included and what ranks exist. These factions will show up randomly in games as owners of systems.

Here's the main menu for now. It'll spawn some random ships and have them warp in and out. Sometimes they'll attack each other, it's all just for show.

Expect the ship editor soon - most of it has been complete for months it just needs to be packaged correctly.