Star Commanders we are launching an all-new BETA and we can't wait to hear your passive aggressive dismissal of our progress!
But for the lucky few of you still alive (on our steam page) this isn't a giant hulk of dead video game - it is a living breathing undead zombie video game: play it now!
Update Features: • The FULL game from start to finish. • 8 Tendrils to explore • Each tendril features independent missions and encounters • Full rebalance update • Full bug-squashing update
We are so excited to have you play it!
Give us your impressions - a more thorough update will replace this post shortly, but for now.... GO PLAY IT!
Thank you!
Warballoon.
FINAL BETA NOW.
FINAL BETA NOW.
[previewyoutube="zkvDuGu3-ZY;full"]
Star Commanders,
We need your help for the FINAL BETA build! This build has the full game. Some parts may be a little unrefined, but it is all there, awaiting your feedback.
We can't do it without you - our loyal and fully expendable cadets.
What is there:
• 8 complete mission sets • Dozens of randomly generated encounters • All new weapons, enemies, ships, ship weapons... it's a LOT of new stuff • Initial balance, pacing, economy and difficulty
What we need:
• Bug reports • Play impressions • Critiques and suggestions • Unflinching Heavenly Praise • Brutal honesty • Odd stuff • Wish lists • First born children • Kidneys • Gameplay impressions
What isn't there yet (on purpose)
• 100% Final dialog • Placeholder artwork, encounters,ships • Less redundant random encounters • final storyline... and a big twist!
Please post feedback in the discussion (steam forums) or even in the comment section of this post.
Where do we go from here?
We will take everything and anything we receive and do our best to improve and implement it before the final launch. This version of the game will help us test pacing, difficulty, overall impressions, balance and bugs.
Good luck captains!
FINAL BETA... PRE TEST - (not as cool)
Greeting Star Commanders,
We have been hard at work on getting the FINAL BETA but we need a small group of you - the chosen few reading this - to PRE-TEST to make sure there are no showstoppers.
We need you strong, able-bodied, young cadets to find any GAMEBREAKERS before the BIG GROUP gets into their easy-to-open FINAL BETA update.
SO please - help us see if there are any GAMEBREAKERS over the next few days to help prepare us for FINAL BETA launch.
If you are here to avoid such frustrations - we should be releasing the FINAL BETA shortly.
THANKS AGAIN - as always.
WARBALLOON
Leave comments & feedback & bugs & hatemail here or in forum.
TO PLAY GO TO:
Please go to your Library >> Star Command Galaxies >>> Right Click - 'Properties' >> BETAS >> betatesting - [down arrow] 'Beta Testing branch' AND THATS IT ... (no password needed)
NEW BETA /// KILL ALIENS /// GIVE FEEDBACK
Star Commanders,
The solar flares are flaring, the Glorsnoofs are snarlinging, and another BETA update has landed.
Star Command BETA v 9000.3 has arrived and it needs your beta testing!
Does it load? Is it boring? Who is your Daddy and what do they do?
Tell us! Help us! Love us?
HOW TO HELP:
Please go to your Library >> Star Command Galaxies >>> Right Click - 'Properties' >> BETAS >> betatesting - [down arrow] 'Beta Testing branch' AND THATS IT ... (no password needed)
Start the game... Play the game... Love or hate the game... Post your thoughts in this comment or in steam discussion board... Tell us about why it cheated on you with Volnar.
Psshh Volnar, what does it have that I don't... besides an armada and thousands of blood-oathed underlings at their every command.... damnit.
Here is a short list of the bugs we attempted to fix:
fixed big issue with enemy damage making objects unrepairable fixed hull placement in buy menu RMB = deselect character fixed 'So Many Bugs' encounter added verification to main menu popups got rid of baddies prematurely triggering encounter steps (we hope) Zombie Encounter should now work? I hope! fixed tooltips so they work on way more objects Had a big bad bug if you picked green nebulus ship crew no longer auto leave posts disabled quickjump whilst at station
The game is thoroughly tested until the Zombie Encounter.. then its kind of wild-west... still getting there.
Things are only impossible until they're not.
Star Commanders,
After a few long orbits in the outer asteroid belt, we are happy to report we have a brand new BETA build up on the Beta-testing branch on Steam.
It is live right now, you simply need to enable it inside the game 'properties' in your Steam Library.
So what is new? Well we fixed a lot of the AI, and a lot of mission polish, balance and tightening of all things all around. It is simply in a much better state and should feel very good.
You can also theoretically beat the entire game now. The latter missions purposefully use repeated encounters to placehold - but if this all works we'll update those before final launch with new challenging content.
What we would LOVE is overall feedback about your time in the game - any consistent bugs? What annoyed you? What did you love? What do you want us to work on the most to improve? What do you miss from mobile? Any feedback is welcome and appreciated!!!
So, we are now entering final descent to landing and we are happy to have you aboard! Let's hope we don't crash and burn!
-Warballoon
New SC:G Update at long last!
Hello Star Commanders!
We would love to get your feedback on the latest beta we just put up on the beta branch. We are excited to hear your thoughts!
So this is a 90% done version and should take about 2-5 hours to play from start to end. We have turned off the second half of the game for now, as we think that we can tweak and balance it based on feedback we get from this beta.
So PLEASE let us know how the latest game plays, and we will be improving it based upon feedback as we make the final push!
What’s in there now: 4 adventures: Salvage, Rebel chase, Asteroid SOS, Orbital Decay.
What is done but we have disabled for now - waiting for YOUR feedback for balance and pacing: 5 More adventures: Rebel Wave, Tourist Trap, Grolbellion, Rebel Base, Ending
Those 9 adventures will be our launch title: there will also be other game modes of various sorts. Thanks for your help! and thank you ahead of time for giving us your honest feedback.
Thanks! Warballoon
PS to play the beta’s ‘Beta’ - right click on Star Command Galaxies in your library, go to ‘Properties’ and then ‘Beta’ and you will see the Beta branch available in the dropdown menu.
Beta 4 on beta branch
Hey Star Commanders,
As we approach a more and more complete version of Star Command Galaxies we'd love to have your input if you are up for the task!
We are releasing the latest BETA build on the Beta Branch as of now.
The game is like 90% there but that last 10% will make the game sing - but until it does we need your help, in the comments/discussions with the following items:
- BUGS? If your game crashed our back-end will register these bugs - GREAT - most likely no discussion needed. Still though, we would like to hear the stories behind these incidents to make sure our findings match with your crashes.
- SOFT BUGS? Any weird oddities / game-enders / weird moments / stuck? / Not working?
- Concepts that took too long to understand? Is there something that seems awkward to understand or things about the game that made no sense for a while.
- Weapons or enemies feedback - overpowered/underpowered/too useless etc.
- Economy feedback - "too easy/hard to get gold, scrap or medicine"
- Your worst 2 things about the game
- Your top 2 favorite things about the game
What would you add if you had a week?
THANKS THANKS THANKS
Warballoon.
Dev Chat: Tendril Galaxies
Greetings Captains!
Some of you might have seen our Facebook comments where we talked about October 2nd being the release date. Today, we are here to announce...
...
that we are still alive and working on the game, but today is not the release date.
We've been largely upgrading the game behind the scenes, fixing a lot of the bugs we've seen, ironing out some of the balance issues, but we are definitely not ready yet for a full release at this point. We still have assets to add, encounters to build for a bit more variety, and bugs to fix. So release is still a little ways out.
In the meantime, we agree with several of our posters that we haven't given a proper update on what we're doing with the game for too long. Today, we'd like to introduce you to one of the changes we've been making to Nav, one that some of you might have noticed when watching twitch streams of SC:G.
Nav in the live version is currently a bit of a chaotic mess. A call is sent out to you from somewhere in the galaxy, you select the node where the call is coming from, then you travel along a pre-selected path to reach that goal. This can lead to the galaxy feeling less like a specific choice and more like a chore. It can also lead to extremely different feeling play experiences when it takes 5 nodes to get to a mission in one game and 2 nodes to get to the same mission in the next game.
One issue with that system is we can't necessarily control what order you do those encounters in and, on a larger scale, we can't necessarily tell where you are in the macro-game. So to solve this chaotic and disordered delivery of content, we decided to make more of a choose-your-own-route to the endpoint which we call Tendril Galaxies.
With Tendril Galaxies, you get some novelty every time you replay, but the main story missions are delivered in order of the narrative. These are a lot smaller than the current galaxy, but they will have far more obvious paths to take. When you first enter a Tendril Galaxy, you are explicitly choosing where to go and what to do. Do you want to deal with two hard nodes and a vendor, or would you rather deal with 2 medium nodes and a hard node with a nebula on each one? These nodes will also have encounters largely designed to fit within that Tendril Galaxy (with some randomization still around, of course).
At the end of each mission, you will receive a request from your crew to return to your station where you will find new things that await. New vendors, a new mission, new NPCs, possibly even new hireable crew. These changes to your station will help prepare you for the fight ahead...but be warned, the fight ahead will be preparing for you as well.
We should have a new version of Galaxies up on the beta branch within the next few days so you can try out this new setup. We still have a lot of content gaps to fill, but we hope that the idea of where we are taking this comes across better with this new version.
As always, let us know what you think and what bugs you find.
Cheers, Warballoon
Beta Branch Updates: 3/22
Greetings Captains!
We've just pushed out a hotfix to our beta branch for you to play with should you choose. Several aspects of the game have changed, so it may feel a bit different at first.
- Navigation is now divided up into Easy/Medium/Hard nodes which will determine the difficulty of encounters you run into.
- In-game traveling vendors have been added into the Nav Map as well.
- Encounters with choices will offer different rewards on Easy/Medium/Hard difficulties.
- Most kits have stronger equivalent kits that you can find and use.
- Walls being destroyed now can spawn a small particle that may damage your crew or enemies, and will start to explode more as a ship gets weaker.
- Certain ship walls will consistently stay in their raised state for an improved ship display.
- Many vendors have had their inventories updated, and a Droid Merchant has been added.
- Plenty of bug fixes
As we extend out the content for the next phase of the game and update our in-game balance, we'd like to get your feedback on several items:
- Do any weapons/kits feel super overpowered or underpowered?
- Do any parts of the game just feel weird or confusing?
- Is there any specific encounter you'd like to see improvement on?
- Are you noticing slowdowns in any particular areas?
Cheers,
Warballoon
Beta 3 Testing
Greetings Star Commanders!
Today, we have rolled out an update to the Beta branch for testing. There is still a good amount of content to add in before release and some places where things are unfinished (Nav, for instance), but we wanted to get our general structure down and finalized before finishing up the content.
First, let's start with the good stuff. What's new?
COVER COMBAT
For a while, we have felt that our combat has not had a lot of strategy to it. You stand in one spot, the enemy stands in another, and the battle comes down to who remains when the fight is done. To fix this, we have added in several objects to our maps (with more to come) that provide cover when fighting. When any character is hidden behind cover, they will take slightly-to-significantly less damage depending how strong the cover is.
CREW ENERGY
One of the main difference you will notice is that we have brought back energy, but in a different form. Energy now works as a constantly refilling resource which your crew will use for most of their abilities. Healing, Ship Repair, Weaponry, Cloaking...all of these now use energy as opposed to the previous ammo system we had for kits. This means that your pistols are only limited by your recharge rate in combat and can be used repeatedly.
NEW REBEL THREATS
The rebellion has been growing in the time it has taken us to release this game, so you can imagine just how strong it has gotten. They now fight all over, and you might just get a distress call from a Star Command vessel in need. Additionally, you will now see a constant Rebel Threat meter which will grow or decrease based upon your actions in-game. If it gets too high, they will come at all parts of the galaxy with full force. They are of course willing to work with you to grow their strength and might offer you various trades to not fight them in certain places, such as a battle droid or rare weaponry. If you take their deal, they will grow in strength. However, you can also call their bluff and make several encounters intentionally harder. If you win one of these harder encounters, you will take down their threat level a bit.
KIT & SYSTEM UPDATES
With the aforementioned new energy system, we decided to make improvements to two of our more problematic systems, healing and repair. These are still done with kits, but are now done via a pressed button cast rather than internal behavior settings. Those settings are still there, but they have instead been given to droids that will work with you as discovered. Additionally, we have also given most of our ship systems and kits three different levels of strength and rarity, so there will almost certainly be better stuff for you to track down as the game proceeds.
NEW REWARDS
Getting money and XP is nice and all, but it just isn't as exciting as being able to choose your own rewards. To this end, we have added and updated our rewards system to give plenty of objects at the end of various encounters & missions. Some, like scrap and money, are far more commonly found in the galaxy. Others, like new crew and droids, are far less common, but will occasionally come up.
We also do have plenty of smaller pieces that we have added in as well, including a "Select All Crew" keyboard shortcut (Y), purchasable inventories on some NPCs, and several bug fixes.
We do plan to continue working on this, including more encounters, weapons, maps, scenarios, missions, storyline, and more. We also need to do a few more balance passes, so things like the in-game economy and drop rates are still very WIP right now.
In any case, let us know what you think. Thank you for all of your support!
