After many months of prototyping and updates for HDog I have now settled on a Sleeper Games’ next project. Hyperspace Harvest has been in development on and off since almost a year, but it was in late 2019 that I started to solely focus on it. The game will be a Farming/Action hybrid taking place in the weirder part of the Hyperspace universe: Within the ecosphere of a giant space whale god-animal. It’s core gameplay is split between chilled farm management and intense bullet-hell dungeon-crawling, with an overall focuses on deep customization of crops, tools, gear and weapons.
If you want to know more you can check the newly published Steam page for the game. Also please consider puting the game on your whishlist so I have a chance against the almighty algorithm. <3
I’ll be posting some dev logs about the game's progress in the coming months, you can also track the current development on the public HHarvest dev Trello.
Here are a couple gifs showcasing how the prototype changed over time.
The game started out with a square-based tileset, which was later replaced with a more distinct hex tile look that's also easier to manage on save/load.
The player farm can have multiple base layouts and is dynamically populated with resources. The red skin tiles are your growing space.
The slot based gear modding system was also introduced really early and reworked multiple times. I'm still iterating on this one, and the whole VR tileset will probably get another overhaul. Weapons/Crops/Tools etc are created by combining certain base mods, which then open up more slots to further augment the item.
Dungeon missions are accessed through multiple hub rooms across the whales surface. In combat you'll have to manage your Vet Suits energy in order to charge your shields and ranged weapons.
Similar to Hyperspace Dogfights, you'll move from encounter to encounter (in separate rooms) and complete objectives to proceed. Right now there are two tilesets for combat, with premade rooms that are randomly selected. Additional tilesets will all explore a different anatomic region of the whale. You'll fight inside bone marrow, neurons, metal implants etc. Individual missions can also have modifiers like the darkness shown above.
You'll also explore the whale's surface and meet the various denizens and hanger ons that populate it. Some of these are sentient extensions of the whales body, other are just stranded on the whale like you.
The whale's visitor mall has been rep-opened on your arrival. This is where you can get new bio code to create new crops/weapons/tools. Rewards for missions will also almost always come in the form of additional code fragments.
For now I tried making resource gathering actions a bit more involved than just pressing a button.
Better timing in these minigames yields you more resources but I'm not sure how far I'll go with this. Simple actions like cutting down overgrowth will also just require simple inputs.
The whale bioluminescent ecosphere of the whale actually has a day-night cycle. The whale's body also goes through a longer cycle of death and rebirth that is not unlike seasons.
The intro sequence was the last thing I worked on and puts the game near the events of Hyperspace Dogfights. Your suit AI can project a little avatar that will give you company and advice throughout your space whale adventure.
If this tickled your interest then please consider whishlisting the game. <3 <3 <3 Cheers!
Stefan - Sleeper Games
Version 1.162 (No Masters) change_dog.txt
1.162 (No Masters) - Reworked beam collision, fixed hit detection on long range beams (both hostile and player) - Shield indicator now has a faint amount of base visibility even in situations where your shields are just slightly below full (matters for certain jets with low starting shields that take damage from certain shots unless they are at their max shields) - Small enemy attachments no longer have any density, some bosses also have reduced density (results in less melee shatter and better pierce shots) - Some larger enemies have slightly higher density now - SRM Rail shot size scales slower and caps lower now - Melee size is now caped at 400% - Forces from player melee swings no longer increase redout - Fixed too high density on corvette boss and nuke base shield generator - Fixed final boss attachments not displacing correctly - Fixed hardlight shuriken active drawing some stats from your current weapon - Fixed a problem causing melee multistrikes to apply additional melee force on player
Version 1.161 (No Masters) change_dog.txt
1.161 (No Masters) - Rival Skyborne no longer triggers if rival is at full health - Transmute Debris now scales with wave count - Store can no longer appear right before the boss, eliminating a scenario where this would prevent forced weapon drop per zone - Photon Ammo photon damage bonus and photon chance increased - HE Ammo and Sticky Ammo now also grant a bonus to explosive damage - Hyperspace Gravitas is now tier 2 (was 3) - Somatic Infrared is now tier 3 (was 4) - Improved collision on some Ruins zone ground props - Increased SRM Decay Rail money consumption - Fixed a problem preventing rival Skyborne threshold from increasing correctly - Fixed rival always having Skyborne enabled (?) - Fixed short prefix applying an incorrect damage bonus - Fixed first wave not increasing escalation over time correctly - Fixed a bug causing the game to remove an additional heart container if Greater Good is acquired after already causing high civilian casualties - Fixed Greater Good not removing heart containers correctly if multiple stacks of the passive are equipped - Rephrased speedrun phage unlock message to better reflect the unlock condition
Version 1.160 (No Masters) change_dog.txt
1.159 (No Masters) - Player explosive weapons now have their damage vs shields reduced by 75%, affecting performance against both enemy and your own shields - Sticky explosions and explosive shots from active now also deal 75% reduced damage vs shields - Chest tooltips for unidentified items are now universal, no longer unintentionally revealing the category of the item - Chests being unidentifiable impacts unlock cost by less now - Fixed Ultraviolet Autolaser not displaying pause tooltip correctly - Fixed a problem related to escalation increase and [redacted] stray - Fixed unidentified loot chance not affecting chests with active items correctly - Fixed Photon Duplex drawing prefixes from burst pool instead of scatter, potentially breaking the weapon - Fixed boss elite replacement attachments not attaching correctly to certain bosses (?) - Fixed boss rush mode breaking enemey spawns in endless mode (?) - Fixed a problem allowing player max health to exceed the maximum of 10 hearts with certain item combinations, breaking the ui - Fixed some typos
1.160 (No Masters) - Added some additional variants for enemy death spark vfx - Added float text for when radiation procs finish corroding enemy armor - Added custom laser phase for Photon Cealaformer elite variant - The shield focused Cealaformer elite variant now also has lower shield cooldown - Bosses will now adapt to being stunlocked with jam/disorient - Tether EMP spread during swipe phase is now more random - Somatic Infrared fire rate, cascade chance and crit chance nerfed - Photon Duplex shot count reduced - Photon Duplex/Dual Scattergun/Heavy Kinetics fire rate nerfed - Modified Ripjump icon to make it interact better with mouse select - Fixed Phase Proxy Cluster submunition explosions size still being smaller than shot hitbox - Fixed picking up Gladiator Aegis still not immediately disabling jump - Fixed bad chatter ID for Sniper Chopper hit chatter - Fixed bad pickup quote ID on Hyperspace Suspension - Fixed certain attachments still not attaching correctly to carrier elites - Fixed Speedrun Mode zone and wave type limitations not applying correctly - Fixed some typos
Hyperspace Dogfights 1.15: No Masters is live!
Attention All Aces
The 1.15 update just dropped on all platforms! New endgame content awaits if you can manage to beat the game with at least 3 Technophages active. That's right, you can now do runs with multiple phages active simultaneously for extra challenge. The phage selection UI on the title screen has been reworked to support this and also shows unlock conditions for all new and old phages after you unlocked your first one.
End Game Content
After your first multi-phage win you’ll get access to a chain of new challenge modes in the form of additional phages. There is a boss rush mode, a speedrun optimized mode, a hardmode that has you face more elite enemies and the star of the show: Technophage Hardgrade, which upgrades the final boss and gives it an additional third phase. If you manage to master all these modes then there is one more Phage that strongly changes how the game is played. More of a final reward than an additional challenge, but I won’t spoil the effect here.
Flawless Unlocks and Boss Elites
But even outside those challenge modes there is a ton of new stuff to find. There are 13 new items, most of which are unlocked by flawlessly defeating bosses. Additionally, these unlocks will allow the corresponding boss to spawn as one of three elite variants in subsequent runs. Boss elites have increased stats and/or new behaviors but they also drop more SRM and grant you an additional free chest if you can defeat them.
Boss Rebalance
Some bosses, especially zone 3 ones, saw some major balance changes. The Space Tether counteracts cheesy strategies more and I attempted to make it’s attack phases more equal in terms of threat level. Your rival now has an additional movement pattern that is supposed to make it an easier target but potentially also a greater threat for periods of the fight. In part, this should also counteract situations where a fast rival can make the fight drag on excessively.
Tiny Features
Alongside all this I also added a couple new minor features. There is a redout mechanic as a penalty on certain items now, causing you to shortly loose visual awareness if you pull too many G with your maneuvers. A few melee related items now allow you to parry enemy laser beams, giving you another way to deal with these high threat attacks aside jumping and mirror plating. Some new enemy destruction effects and boss death sounds where added too.
Better 4k Support
I also tried to address the issue of the game not scaling well on very hight resolutions/large screens once more. The display options now let you control the games FOV/Cam Zoom independently from resolution. If you feel like the game objects and units are overall too tiny then crank that value up till it fits your taste.
I hope the update offers sweet new challenges for you seasoned Aces out there and also improves the game for newcomers. For a more detailed changelog you can check the full change_dog here.
Supporting Sleeper Games
Hdog 1.15 No Masters is free for everyone who owns the game, just like the two content updates that came before. But for those of you who wanted to further support Sleeper Games and HDogs development I added the Deck Crew Edition DLC, essentially a donation that shoots me a few bucks extra. Purchasing the DLC itself gives you no additional content, aside from a title screen text that reminds you of my eternal gratefulness. <3 <3 <3
1.15 No Masters Is Almost Here
The third free content update for Hyperspace Dogfights is feature complete and tested! I'm only really waiting for Steam staff to finish reviewing the volunteer dlc component. Accordingly, the update should go live in the next couple days. In the meantime, you can check out the preliminary change log here.
Hot New Stuff
Added a chain of five new Technophages: Hardgrade: evolves the final boss fight Iron Dog: enables hard mode Regicide: enables boss rush mode Time Killer: Enables speeddrun mode (always same bosses, wave count and zones, no objectives that have fixed minimal time to complete) [Redacted]: [Redacted]
Multiple Technophages can now be active during a single run and all Technophages can be freely combined, you can play bossrush with the new final fight and Plate Flood enabled etc. (in fact the first new Phage is unlocked by getting a win while you have at least 3 other Technophages active)
Added three elite versions for every boss in the game. The chance for them to appear is pretty low and only comes into play if you previously flawlessed the boss, unless you increase elite chance through certain items that is. Boss elites have increased stats and/or new behaviors but they also drop more SRM and grant you an additional free chest if you can defeat them.
13 new items added, most of which are unlocked by defeating bosses without taking damage
A few rare items now allow you to parry laser beams, granting you another way to deal with these high threat attacks. The Fang Stray starts with this ability and no longer needs to tank hits at a certain point in the game. (You need to face the source of the beam and strike into it right when it is about to hit you to pull this off, tricky timing and positioning requirements.)
A few items can now have you suffer from redout if you pull too many Gs, but this only comes into play once you strap ridiculous amounts of engine upgrades onto your jet. A few passives can also make you resistant to the effect.
Replaced HDogs adaptive res-scaling with a "Cam Zoom" setting in the display options. This effectively allows you to change the games FOV to your taste. Adjust this value if the game appears overall too small for your liking. This is most likely the case if you play on 4k monitors/very high resolution.
Added some new vfx for enemy destruction, player shield overcharge/recovery and player weapon impacts. Added new sfx for boss destruction.
General Changes/Balancing:
- Reworked phage selection ui - Title screen now shows tooltips for technophages - After you unlocked your first Technophage, the game now displays all locked ones on the titles screen with tooltips showing their unlock conditions - Differentiate damage float text scaling to telegraph relative damage dealt a bit better - Dmg float text now has - markers if an enemy has effective armor that reduced the attacks damage - Attempted to make unlock conditions a bit more consistent: Wins with jets now universally unlock the next variant, jet specific phage unlocks moved to stray endless wave 6 - Enemies that deploy flares will now briefly scramble your weapons if you are turned towards them - Armored suits no longer count as massive - Naval cruiser boss now spawns with an escort of three destroyers - Lowered knockback force on all enemy explosive shots - Ruins zone is more rare now - Deflecting enemy explosive shots now has them go on a longer, safer collision timout (0.2 seconds) - Additional objects, including large bosses, now count as player obscuring and show the flashing position marker if you collide through them
Weapon Changes/Balancing
- Reworked armor piercing so that weapons can have individual AP (now also appearing on the weapon stat sheet) - Granted some innate AP to all railguns, ultraviolet lasers and few selected melee weapons - SRM Rail now gains AP alongside piercing - Sai gained a lot AP at the cost of some damage - Maw damage buffed, dmg vs massive reduced - Phalanx trike range increased - Field Mace damage and piercing increased - Increased piercing and ap on several other melee weapons - Gamma Laser damage and explosion size buffed - Dual Scattergun now has a duplex trigger (fires first barrel on press, second on release) - K-Wave Cannon damage, fire rate and boost accuracy nerfed
Passives Changes/Balancing
- Melee blocks now loose size depending on blocked damage and will eventually shatter, resulting in your block going on full cooldown - Accordingly, melee size upgrades now make your block more durable in that regard - Gladiator Aegis now only grants empty heart containers (not filled ones) - Anomaly Ammo now reduces shot size - Your own rules now allow you to deal collision damage during jumps - Furi Dash now overcharges your shields if they are not above max already - Furi Dash now has you retain a small amount of your jump boost when dashing - Kinetic Heart is now tier 3 (was 4) - Radical Decalls now also increase enemy elite spawn chance - Stealth passives now reduce escalation by a minor amount - Removed attack rate penalty on Warhead Workflow and Missile Maker - Maker passives stacks now scale slower but also indefinitely - 2 previous technophages now have slightly different effects in order to make them combine better - Technophage: Plate Flood now also makes enemies a bit more resistant to crits - A couple healing sources now technically count as heart pickups to enable synergies with a certain new passive - Recoil modifier is now capped at 20%/300% - Dodge boost modifier is now capped at 500%
Actives Changes/Balancing
- Added a couple new effects to Crowdsourced Displacer - Planetwide Cyber-Taunt now grants a greater coolness bonus, but also increases enemy elite chance more on each use - Orbital support that requires line of sight is now unable to reach the command system - Rocket Pod damage nerfed - Revealing chest content with End-Tech Scanner should now immediately show the chest content's tooltip - End-Tech Scanner should now also automatically identify chest content if it is unidentifiable (reveals ??? items)
Your Rival
- Your rival learned how to circle strafe, which makes him both more dangerous and vulnerable for short periods of the fight - Rival will switch to CQB strafing more often as the fight goes on, counteracting situations where a fast rival might lock you in a continuous standoff - Your rivals can overall use its offense actives more often - Your rivals skyborn threshold now increases each time it triggers, requiring them to deal damage 1 more time for each successfull regain - Your jet will now give you a warning shortly before your rival uses it's DMZ field active (the effect itself can be dodged)
Space Tether
- Space tether boss segments that are near the ground and top clouds now have increased HP +armor and look different - Tether rocket phase is shorter now and fires fewer shots - Tether kinetic gun attachments have more health and armor now, but are no longer immune to homing lock - Tether kinetic wave fires faster now, but the phase lasts less long - Tether now switches faster to a new phase after firing missiles - Tether map swipe phase now fires way more EMP shots - Changed tether forced attack phase behavior if player is near ground/top clouds - Tether defense sliders can move down and up further now
Optimization/Effects
- Attempted to optimize mouse lock function by having it execute at the start of each frame - Improved screen glitch visuals - Enemy beams now flash white just before they start to deal damage - Rapidly switching active no longer spams pickup quotes - Shell casings fade out more efficiently now - Increased shell casing fade out on fast firing weapons - Slightly optimized enemy/player shot collision checks - Added a cap for hitlag caused by deflecting multiple enemy shots simultaneously - Slightly differentiated sfx for reverse thrust and strafe - Boost ignition sound effect is a little less dominant now - Impact sounds will bunch up less if a large amount of enemies is hit simultaneously by an attack/explosion - Optimized air and ground prop loading on wave initialization
Bug fixes
- Fixed a rare crash caused by certain float text (allies taking damage, collison damage) becoming impossibly large - Fixed a problem allowing your rival's on-jump effects to trigger repeatedly even if the boss is already jumping - Fixed a couple combat chatter messages not displaying correctly or on wrong triggers - Fixed Crowdsource Displacer effect and item anim being messed up if it triggers SRM Replicator - Fixed Crowdsource Displacer not triggering artillery effect correctly - Fixed melee sheath anims still appearing while infected with [redacted] - Fixed Cloud Recon making clouds appear during intermission - Fixed duplex trigger weapons jamming if both salvos are fired during the same frame - Fixed a space tether death choreography not executing correctly if their segment max health is increased beyond a certain point - Fixed launch base boss launching nuke instantly if launchpad max hp has been lowered enough by items - Fixed HE ammo not calculating the an attack's remaining kinetic damage correctly - Fixed AM mission completion value not being saved correctly, leading to one item being potentially locked forever - Fixed a charge related item not being added to the loot pool correctly - Fixed Quantum Augment being able to change your boost ignition into the negative - Fixed Quantum Augment being missing a turn rate up effect - Fixed Quantum Augment not obeying global stat caps in some areas - Fixed Contempter Frigate sometimes firing it's kinetic blisters from its previous position while it is already in an attack jump - Fixed a problem preventing deep floor from being displayed correctly on certain resolutions - Fixed Gladiator Aegis block move being unavailable until first weapon switching if you pick it up during a wave - Fixed a bad combat chatter ID on the final boss - Fixed homing flechette using the wrong casing anim - Fixed phalanx having a freakishly large dmg multiplier against massive - Fixed a problem causing knife strike sound to use multiple sfx simultaneous - Fixed an issue preventing enrage crit chance bonus from affecting weapons that have no natural crit chance - Fixed #dmgSway weapon prefixes not affecting explosion damage sway - Fixed Phase Cluster Proxy using too small explosion size for submunitions - Fixed Sector/Vertice Shield unintentionally blocking hostile photon shots - Fixed enemy Flak Gun attachment not having a true color value to revert back to after color changes wear off - Fixed a missing text id in GC mission progress chatter - Fixed Orbital Support: Armor Strip unintentionally affecting enemy shields too - Fixed some typos
Hyperspace Dogfights 1.15: No Masters is in the works
I though I was done with this game, but then I read through some reviews and that page long lore discussion on the discord and when I got stuck thinking about another content update it was already too late. I know full well that working another month on a game that basically nobody buys isn't a smart business move, I guess your're lucky that I don't understand capitalism. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Update 1.15 No Masters will center around boss battles and new late game challenge modes. These will again come in the form of Technophages, challenge passives that you activate on the title screen. While the previous Technophages mostly affected your jets stats, the 5 new ones will make broader changes to the overall structure of the game. There will be a boss rush mode. There will be an "Iron Dog" hard mode, a variation of something that previously only existed as a cheatcode. And more. I hope to push your dogfighting skills to the limit, while also implementing some stuff that previously got cut due to time concerns.
If you are still new to the game you won't see the challenge modes for a while, but additionally there will be a full set of new boss unlocks, all tied to defeating bosses without taking damage. So even on regular runs you'll have new things to strive for. The update is still early in development and I'm not quite sure how long certain features will take to implement. But I hope to finish it in February. There might be a public beta for the update at some point, so stay tuned. Same as the two previous content updates, No Masters will be free of charge. I'm considering adding an optional "Air Support" dlc package that allows you to shoot me a few bucks at your own volition.
Also the game is 20% off during the lunar new year sale, so now is your chance to get into some juicy item-stacked airobatics if you don't own HDog yet. Peace.
Stefan Sleeper Games
Version 1.140 (Stray Dogs) change_dog.txt
1.140 (Stray Dogs) - Flock drone damage now scales with your kinetic damage multiplier - Flock drone health now scales with your max shield - Flock drones now regenerate using your shield regeneration x2 - Increased money drain when SRM Decay Rail is equipped - Jump friction bonuses are capped lower now - Boss husks now have a lot of armor, preventing active charge farming after boss kills - Fixed Artifact Stack Printer calculating additional stacks incorrectly if used to print copies of another printer - Fixed melee attacks gaining unintended shot speed from Nova Broadside - Fixed a rare scenario where enemy boss engine burn would not be removed correctly after the boss has been defeated - Fixed repeatedly selecting [Redacted] MKII increasing hack time bonus on any subsequent runs - Fixed some typos
Version 1.138 (Stray Dogs) change_dog.txt
- Explosive melee strikes now spawn their explosions further away from you - SRM Decay Rail is now rated tier 3 - SRM Decay Rail money consumption now scales (-0.2 SRM every 10s for each wave you've completed) - Weapon stat sheet in intermission now lists your current SRM consumption on SRM Decay Rail - Weapon stat sheet in intermission also lists explosion size now - Switched to expressing explosion size in pixels since the bonuses where always additive - Reduced hitlag on flak shot submunitions - Lost Mission Intel now also grants a bonus to recon speed - Sentient Combat AI now also grants a bonus to hacking speed - Jet stat sheet in intermission now also lists hacking and recon speed bonuses - Fixed Cealaformer shield collision not deactivating correctly after being depleted in specific cases - Fixed Anomaly Ammo explosion size penalty applying incorrectly - Fixed some bosses being able to become targets for Bounty Hunter Database - Fixed missing pause description on Ultraviolet Auto Laser - Fixed Infrared Autolaser not appearing in pause screen correctly - Fixed a problem causing Armored Suits to not avoid the ground correctly while EMPed - Fixed a few typos
Version 1.136b (Stray Dogs) change_dog.txt
1.136b (Stray Dogs) - Nerfed boss nanowire damage - Nerfed Rival Warped Warp Engine damage - Buffed Heavy Railgun damage, shot speed and shot collision size - Optimized collision boxes on some player shot - Added some safeguards to weapon switching that should reduced bugs where player weapons become permanently unavailable - Fixed [redacted] title text rainbow flashing even when no victory has been achieved yet - Fixed cloud recon not applying cloud transparency immediately if gained as starting loadout for Fur MKI - Fixed store ships being able to die to dots after the wave objective has already been completed - Fixed a scenario where a certain Technophage penalty might not take effect - Fixed Glass Configuration and Trigger wire killing the player if acquired at low max health - Fixed [redacted] nemesis unlock triggering repeatedly - Fixed a certain Technophage lowering player max shield beyond the global cap - Fixed overlapping splash text when advancing through waves quickly - Fixed missing line in one survive objective splash text - Fixed bad explosion point on certain frames of the Electron Laser beam
