Keyboard and mouse support went in over the weekend (yeaaa!) but we're just getting all the in-game prompts settled this week. Right now you can see what keys are assigned to which action by pressing F1 while playing. It'll bring up this handy menu!
Part of our never ending mission this week is to make controls more intuitive for kb+m players. Yamatron put together a mock up of some of the icons that could appear. This is just a test for us to check the size and visibility of each icon. You won't see all the icons crowding the left side of the screen at the same time when this goes into the game.
Are you playing with a mouse and keyboard? Let us know what you think about the current setup in the Nom Nom Galaxy Steam Community!
http://steamcommunity.com/app/226100/discussions/
Welcome to the Nom Nom Galaxy!
Thanks for being part of our grand experiment with Early Access! This is the first time a PixelJunk game has ever been in the public in such a raw state, so of course we’re very nervous! This is the first of many updates we’ll use to keep you abreast of what’s going on with development. You can find these updates on Steam and also on our dev blog (http://nomnomgalaxy.com/).
But before we get too deep into the soup, let me give you a little background on PixelJunk games and Nom Nom Galaxy. Q-Games is a modest sized studio (we’ve got about 40 people here now) but the core PixelJunk team is usually just a fraction of that. PixelJunk games usually start from tech concepts from a very small team and then blossom into full-fledged games as we find gameplay to match those concepts.
With Nom Nom Galaxy, we followed the normal formula, starting with a small team working off of a concept of deformable environments combined with some base building and tower defense elements. From that base we’ve been changing and tuning the game ever since. The art style has changed a few times, along with some of the core gameplay systems, all in the name of perfecting our soup, if you would.
And that leads us up to the present - Nom Nom Galaxy on Steam Early Access. You may be wondering, “Why have you chosen to open up development?” Well, releasing on Steam gives us a lot of options we didn’t have when making games for the PlayStation Network in the past. Through Early Access, we’ll have the chance to get constant feedback about Nom Nom Galaxy that we can work into the game. We also get your help finding crazy bugs and testing the game on way more systems than we could hope to here in our small office.
So now that you know a little history behind Nom Nom, let me introduce you to our five man team! The core Nom Nom Galaxy dev team is made up of two members: designer and programmer Tatsurou Sawa, and the robots and beer loving artist, Yamatron. Overseeing the project is our veteran PixelJunk producer Tomi, and PixelJunk Final Boss, Dylan Cuthbert. And finally, I’ll be the liaison between you all, the community, and the rest of the team!
Nom Nom Galaxy Alpha State
Over the next few weeks our development priority will be in these areas:
Bugs! - We know we’re going to have a fresh batch of bugs come into the mix as everyone gets their hands on Nom Nom. We’ll be squashing game breaking bugs with impunity.
Keyboard & Mouse support! - Yeah... in all the excitement, we kinda neglected that.
Saves - There isn’t a functional save system in place just yet. We’re working on that.
Pause - There isn’t a pause for Nom Nom now thanks to design issues with networking and multiplayer.
AI Tuning - We’ll be using your feedback to find the gameplay balance sweet spots.
Further down the road
- Online Play, VS and Co-op*
- Improving combat and enemy AI
- Expanding research tree
- More robots
- More planets
- More buildings
- More FUN!
*Pending design
We Want Your Help!
We’ll be using our Steam Community as our main means of communication for Nom Nom. All of your praises, rants, requests, and bugs should go there. You can also email us directly at nomnomgalaxy@q-games.com. We’ll be collecting everything you post or email us, and I’ll do my best to address your questions, concerns, love-letters, etc.
So there you have it! Alpha Update #1 complete! I’ll be back soon with another update, so enjoy the soup while you wait!
