Wednesday 15 July 2015

Drone Bays

I wanted to wait a while for Drones to be implemented, but damnit I wanted a new type of subsystem and it seemed like the perfect time.

So now I have three types of drones and a bunch of upgrades regarding drone bays. Drones can be shot down by EMP and anti-missile turrets and they only deal damage to the hull of a ship - very useful since you get to attack subsystems directly. If a Drone Bay is destroyed all the drones are destroyed.

I made a quick little video to show them off!


Tuesday 14 July 2015

Visual improvements - Engine/Game preview

I took some time to make important optimisation and figured I might as well try and make the game a bit prettier.

First things first, the engines. I wasn't very comfortable with how I was handling engine glow, didn't fit in with the game's minimalist style and also didn't run particularly well. Some small vertex color tricks later and you get engine glow for a single draw call on any ship (since they're not moving anyway). It looks a lot better on larger, slower ships.


Second small improvement is the image preview of a game you're about to load. Witcher 3 had it and I figured it couldn't be that difficult to do it with Unity. Didn't take long to implement but it's totally worth it.

As always, the focus is on adding upgrades, items, any sort of content, and that's the sort of thing I don't want to spoil - I'll have to show them off on video.

Monday 13 July 2015

Upgrades

Finally got a good round of gameplay testing in, so I think it's time I finally make some videos.

First one's about Upgrades. Upgrades can be really anything - they work like patches on your ship and can modify the behaviour of any component - turrets, subsystems, engines, etc... This particular one replaces your basic missiles with kinetic missiles that move faster, are more agile and deal additional kinetic damage.

Other upgrades include things like dealing more damage when attacking the back of a ship, modifying anti-missile turrets to redirect missiles instead of damaging them or even unlocking abilities for your basic subsystem.

All in all implementing it was easy and the system is very versatile. It also replaces the expertise system - makes upgrades much more satisfying to have instead of a linear stat upgrade.

Thursday 9 July 2015

Missions - and Tutorial!

Like I mentioned, the game is in the stage of finally adding content!

The most important part is a goal - someway to drive the player to explore, not just for the loot but for some sort of story. Had to finally step in and make a real Dialog System, tied to encounters. It took a while but it's very flexible and already supports a few decisions. Complex quests might be further away.

The simplest contract - "Kill this for me for X credits"
Responding to a simple distress call - careful, you might answer it too late!

I didn't know how much I needed quest markers until I added them. Being procedural, the galaxy map can be a bit disorienting.

You might notice I simplified the UI quite a bit. All these borders felt silly and Web 1.0, and I may have overcompensated on the sobriety. That said, I like it and it's unified across the game like this. Took some inspiration from Besiege - simple and clean is better for this sort of game.
A sample of the new UI.

With the new dialogue system, it seemed it was time to finally add a tutorial on how to play. Completely optional and skippable, but it introduces you to the basic controls and what you need to survive. The nice part is the tutorial is really just an encounter you find on the first sector that only plays once. No extra code needed!
With all this modal dialog and quests, I decided to add a tutorial.
In the next update I'll explain the new Upgrade system (it's really neat, I promise) and the small AI improvements I've made. Down the line is a "build me a ship" system - where you get to unlock certain ship blueprints that you can add to your fleet for the building cost, maybe even unlock them by quests.

Wednesday 1 July 2015

Twitch Streams

Over the last month I've put as much time as I could into the project, however I tend to not show it much.

But I am close to a release! The key mechanics are working and I'm focusing on filling the game with content - different turrets, subsystems and abilities, polishing the graphics, fixing some code that was laying around and being lazy. I overhauled the lighting system to be dependent on the background nebula, making it all a bit cozier. I fixed up a lot of UI elements, noticeably the main menu and options menu. I even added in a crude conversation system so encounters could include choices.


New simple Main Menu

New fancy Options menu

I've begun streaming the game on my twitch channel (where you can also see the past broadcasts). The goal is to have some video to show off to make a trailer and start getting any sort of community feedback.

Soon enough I'll have to look for someone to do sound effects. I can manage cheap gunshots in Audacity but when you need audio and you don't want to learn how to do it for a few months, you get a professional!

So, in short, lots of content to be made with all the key systems in place and a lot of polishing to do!