Week 24 new projectiles, sounds tweaks, cinematics
This week I've improved on the cinematic camera behavior, added new projectile visuals and worked on the audio mix. There has also been some balancing I've also done the following:
FIXED DOUBLE CLICKING ON ICONS (only took my tired brain about 5 hours in total)
Worked on audio mix
Set audio default volumes
Lowered Smartlaser volume
Removed destroyer MK2 and other weapon testers from the scene
Researching early access release requirements on steam
Learned some stuff about game release. Implementing into plans now.
Compressed 4 soundtracks and added them to the game
Modified more sound volumes for background tracks
Changed fire sound of the wrecker because it stood out too much
Changed damage multipliers for weapon/armor types. This is used to determine how much damage a weapon does against a certain armor type. The less suitable it is for the role the less the damage modifier is.
Re-imported 9 tracks and compressed them all in Audacity because the volumes were still off/incorrect. Removed old audio files from the project to decrease project folder size
When in combat you now get a combat track. not really crossfaded though but yeah
Modified damage modifiers based on suggestions
All friendly units should now die when you've lost
When you're dead your power and metal value will become 0
Might have fixed both jump bugs + move bug (at the cost of possibly some optimization)
After unlocking medium or heavy ships you now cant build ships for .3 seconds, fixing the 'click once buy twice' bug
Increased shipyard base health from 2500 to 3500 )
Custom weapons fire sound overrides now also use the position of the object thats firing to indicate if it should be audible or not
Fixed missile rotation
Modified missile particles
Updated flak
Added long blue, long orange, orange trail and blue trail projectile visuals
Cinematic camera prioritizes ships that are in combat over ships that are not in combat. This did not work in multiplayer, now it does
Cinematic camera will now pick both enemy and friendly units as a target if there is no combat going on
Thats it for this week. Trying to prioritize early access so that I can release it for you guys asap. Also might have to start working an extra job again or start a kickstarter or something since I'm almost out of money. Either way the early access should be on steam in a month. I want to announce the official date hopefully next week!
Week 23
This week I've worked mostly on different types of levels for the player in Skirmish, Battle Royale and Wave Defense modes. I've also fixed a few dozen bugs and added some new weapons and effects.
Changed build grid visualisation
Reworked asteroid spawning. There are now three presets; rocky, nebulea and deep space. In rocky you have no zabu mines but more asteroids. In nebulea you have more zabu complex. In nebulea you have more zabu power.
Added spread to weapon stats in ship editor
Map is now randomised for singleplayer wavedef and skirmish
Map is now randomised for multiplayer battle royale
Added planets
Added nebulea
Added planetary bodies
Added 3 level presets
Tweaked asteroid spawn to be more mirrored (still random, but the same amount will randomly spawn on your side of the map)
In Rocky map preset in multiplayer you now get no zabu mines but more medium asteroids
In DeepSpace map preset there are some extra zabu generators
In Nebulea preset there are more zabu plants
Removed test ships
Changed color of sun based on map
Removed difficulty modifier x10 and instead just made the slider go from 1 to 100
Fixed wave boss bug (the game would restart in a certain wave because the wavecounter did not reset in between games)
Score screen for wavedef
Disabled healthbar on mouse hover when cinematic camera is on
Disabled radar ping when cinematic camera is on or GUI is off
Disabled extra weapons spawn for waveboss
Fixed waveboss devastator visual
Changed gauss visuals
Changed wavedefboss text in top of screen when winning/losing
Changed variable type of difficulty variables from doubles to floats
Reworked both flak and plasma flak to not use 1 long animation but regular explosions in a timed fashion
Added passwords to multiplayer rooms
Made it so that the password input box dissappears when no password is set,
Added field to enter password to host options,
Re-aligned visible options in lobby
Fixed 'bug' of players making a room without password because they forgot it, then leaving, then rehosting the room with password and the password not showing up because of that
Limited passwords to 4 characters
Styled input boxes
Fixed repair rate
Fixed formation near repair buildings
Increased repair range from 60 to 80
Repositioned top turret on The Jaap, decreased Medium Cannon volley interval
Switched ship slot 9 and 10 in the ship editor (they were inverted)
Fixed transport move bug battle royale
Fixed skybox not changing correctly in battle roayle
Increased resources mined per trip from 30/35/40 to 50/60/70
Tweaked skybox
Changed healthbar based on suggestions of
Fixed SP wave def no win condition
Fixed BR ships set as mine
Removed some photoshop files from the project folder, reducing the project size
[previewyoutube="YsSLwko7gXo;full"]
Next week I will go over the checklist for the Early Access and see how far we get ^^
Week 22 update: Missiles, ships and explosions!
Weapons, modules and ships:
Added missile acceleration
New medium ship: Dreadship
New heavy ship: Tsu
Added Slammer missile launcher
Buffed repressor
Devastator missiles tweaked
Added "Double Cannon" which is intended vs heavies
[previewyoutube="T7XRcqbBK7Y;full"]
General:
You can now see how many weapon and module slots a ship has in the editor
Fixed duplicate weapons being shown in tooltip
Added almost accurate costs for buildings to be used for the AI
'Unit' icon overlap bug was actually as intended. However it did mix up the ally and friendly colors, so i have added checks for that
Added radar ping to loot being dropped
Re-enabled missile trails
Reverted projectile render space to local instead of world (rounder projectiles)
Force cursor visible in score screen
Manually checked the impact points and collision boxes of 37 ships and removed the extra team row in the multiplayer lobby
Improved alignment in multiplayer lobby and removed 'duplicate' team field
Added labels to multiplayer lobby + removed 'duplicate' team display
Added campaign button to main menu, made a campaign select screen, saving completed campaigns on disk, hiding campaign mission start buttons that are not unlocked yet, enabling relevant campaign scripts during gameplay, tested saving of missions, tested button clicks, tested victories saving the mission as completed
Disabled singleplayer campaign button in main menu until release of EA
Reduced distance at which audio is played from 250 to 200
Missiles now make sound when impacting on objects
Changed audio volume limiter to not go above .99f
Ship editor now displays weapons and module slots
Reduced size of explosions of missiles that 'miss' their target (end of life)
Left click + V in on the minimap OR middle mouse click on the minimap now shows a radar ping to allies
Radar pings visible for allies
Added an additional check that won't let you win or lose a game in battle royale mode until after all players have been spawned (thus preventing the instant lose/win that has been reported)
Instead of 'delete confirmation' upon deleting units I have added buildigns to the 'currently selected' list to the left of the screen so that you can see what you are going to delete, even if it is a building
Harvesters no longer go into asteroids that often & stop beforehand. They also use cutter beams now
Cinematic camera now goes to friendly units first, then to enemy units. It will also look at the target it is shooting at in 25% of the cases, all the other times it looks at the ship thats firing because that one is more important to the player (their own ship)
It will now also prioritise friendly units over enemy units (it wont inspect enemy units unless it cant find friendly units with targets)
Added flybys to the cinematic camera
Week 21
This week I have worked on adding new weapons and fixing bugs, since the campaign is pretty much done. I just have to have the voice lines recorded and implemented.
There are now 48 ships, 47 weapons, 23 modules. Ship module slots range from 1 to 5 per ship, and weapon slots from 1 to 5 per ship. Someone can probably use that data to calculate all possible configurations
Weapons, modules & ships
Fixed weapons not firing
Fixed Lasershield
Nerfed Gauss Cannon
Nerfed Gauss Repeater
Reduced harvester cost
Nerfed refinery costs
Made several defense buildings cheaper
Fixed fish moving weirdly
Added Gauss Shotcannon
Added Plasma Shotcannon
Reduced camera lag
Changed Corvette tooltip
Made Emperor ship cheaper
Made Longback ship cheaper
Added a Heavy Corvette
Made the Heavy Frigate tankier
Added the Dageria heavy ship (fast, cheap, fragile)
Added light frigate
Added Heat Sinks module
Added Weapon Booster module
Added the MissileDef cannon
Bugfixes
Removed stealth icon bug
Improved wave defense boss weaponry
When you win or lose you will no longer automatically leave the game. Instead you will get a leave button.
After win/lose your HUD / GUI will dissapear apart from the minimap
5 seconds after win/lose your win/lose message will dissapear and the Leave button will move to the bottom left
Cinematic camera can now be used after losing
All other options apart from building new things will stay available after losing
All of the above basically boils down to that you can keep watching after losing
Made weapon tester into a neutral building + camera smoothness is now different for cinematic cam and follow cam, and regular camera smoothness is more instant
I've moved the check to see what units can jump elsewhere (excludes buildings and AI units). Then checks if the selected unit is a friendly or not. It makes a new list from this then uses that list to jump. That should exclude any errors caused by 'wrong units' being selected for jumps. This seems to have solved the jump issue.
Transports now spawn more randomly
Rewards for killing transports is now between 250 and 350 per destroyed transport in multiplayer and between 250 and 750 of each resource in singleplayer
In BR now 3 transports spawn at random positions instead of 1, making it easier for players to get them
Made transports easier to target
Zabu beacons in multiplayer are now spread out more
Battle royale jump cooldown is now 1/3 of regular jump time. I have also set the jump cooldown very low temporarily to test it
Added check that unit must have more than 0 health before being allowed to jump
Added an extra check that won't even send the network command to jump a unit if its health is lower than 0
Made all blue and green projectiles less bright by setting the transperancy from 255 to 70. Also changed projectiles visual
Tweaked recoil
Fixed neutral transports needing to be dead to win in BR
Testing neutral transports needing to be dead to win in BR fix (success)
Added a check to see if unit references were still set when seeing if player should lose in br
Noticed that when you win the win in br the win screen almost instantly dissapears. Just checked it, same goes for the lose screen. Has to do with screen sizes, fixing now.
Increased time that the victory or lose message stays to 10 seconds
Improved leavegame positioning
transports in BR now give between 150 and 300 of each resource
Repair stations in BR work again
Decreased jump delay by 1 second (will take 3-4 seconds to jump now instead of 4-5)
Fixed Reinforcement beacon (+ build speed increaser) from applying benefits to allies
Removed 'music playing double' until it can be reproduced
Might have fixed the population bug. Can't really test, almost impossible to reproduce. But I suspect its because the owner of the units of the ally that died were counted as friendly units, reducing your own population below 0. I've added an extra check that checks if those objects are owned by the local player to hopefully fix this issue
Added the same check to populationCap
Increased loot drop chance in all singleplayer game modes by 30%
Added some checks that if selected units are null that they get removed from the selected units list in the formation helper. Might fix move issues
Cleaned up shipyard death
Repositioned leave button
Increased height indicator display distance while placing buildings
Changed height from "xx Meters" to "Height: xx"
Thats it for this week. Next week I will probably do more similar fixes. I've also fixed most game breaking bugs so far, so thats good :)
Week 20: campaign mission 7 & 8
This week I've mostly worked on campaign mission 7 and 8. I had to:
Flesh out the script
Write all voice over lines
Time all the events
Check win conditions
Check lose conditions
Analyse the gameplay aspect
Make sure the whole lore is consistent enough
Test if all objectives could be achieved and the missions could be completed
Apart from that we've also worked on Fighters and Bombers. Those are not an absolute requirement for game release, but it would be very cool to have!
Each week I also play at least two games with patrons. One is a multiplayer game and the other is a battle royale game. Patrons on https://patreon.com/TenseGames also get to design ships based on which tier they choose and their name will be included on a transport ship. Without people supporting me via patreon I would have had to quit this project a long time ago, so I'm forever thankful for those who continue to help me with it.
Week 19: Campaign mission 5 & 6. New weapons!
General, balance, weapons
Added the Toad light ship frame
Added the Veloci light ship frame
Added the Discus light ship frame
Added Magma repeater weapon blueprint
Fleshed out campaign mission 5
Fleshed out campaign mission 6
Wrote global lore events for campaign mission 7
Wrote global lore events for campaign mission 8
Started implementation of campaign mission 5
Changed Auto Repeater weapons fire sound
Changed default cannon sounds
Fixed audio popping for cannon sounds
Played game with patreons + coreyloses
Added an extra check for sounds to only play if they are within 250 units distance of the camera
Tweaked all projectile lifetimes so that they detonate right behind max range
Added weapon recoil
Campaign mission 5
Added custom buildings
Added 8 objectives
Did several test games in
Created a special damaged ship for
Added new radar pings pod
Added escape pod
Campaign mission 6
Added custom buildings
Added effects
Added enemies
Added 9 objectives
Added win/lose conditions
Added radar pings
Tested win and lose conditions
Rewrote part of the script
That's it for this week. See you next week!
Week 18 update: Campaign & ships
Ships
Added Patroller ship frame
Added Heavy frigate ship frame
Added Blade ship frame
Added Hammerer ship frame
Fixed Patroller shield
Fixed Heavy frigate shield
Fixed Blade shield
Fixed Hammerer shield
Reduced Longback cost
And I've made some ship stats cards:
Campaign
Started campaign mission 4
Wrote out campaign mission 4
Added objectives and text to campaign mission 4
Added objective 1, 2, 3, 4,5 for campaign mission 4
Written the text for the voice over
Photoshopped radar ping
Animated radar ping
Implemented radar ping system
Added objective radar pings to mission 2
Added objective radar pings to mission 4
Completed campaign mission 4
Increased time until first objective trigger in campaign mission 4 + changed the tooltip
Refined campaign story, currently 8 missions planned and 4 of them done
I also implemented this for the campaign, but I won't tell you what it is:
We also did a bunch of performance tests. If we don't use any of those new techniques right now then at least we'll have them ready for later versions of the game.
And finally the Brachio and Destroyer MKII in action:
See you next week!
Week 17: Campaign mission 2 and 3!
This week I've completed campaign mission 2 and 3! There is also a bunch of things related to the project that are not relevant to this list so I've left them out. Oh yeah and I worked on expanding the lore this week as well!
To do that I've done the following things:
Made script for campaign mission 2
Wrote out the events of campaign mission 2
Made a comms station
Added comms dead lose condition
Changed comms station selection circle
Set up system for proper info text coloring
Hidden wave timer in mission 2
Made text color white
Tweaked objective texts
Increased the amount of objectives for mission 2 for more smooth storytelling
Fixed object rotation speed
Added comms sound
Wrote mission 2 script
Added objectives mission 3
Completed mission 3
Reworked the victory conditions a little bit so we need to test those in each game mode again
Support This projected is funded by myself and I'm losing money on it every month. Sometimes I'm struggling to pay rent as well because of it. Therefore I've set up a patreon called TenseGames and I'm fortunate that a lot of people already decided to help me out. To do something back I'm giving them the following:
Their name on transport ships
Access to all work in progress versions of the game
Depending on the tier they get to name a ship, weapon or module
Every week I play a game of Battle Royale and regular Multiplayer with them
So if you can spare it, and only if you can miss it, please consider supporting the project that way as well.
Future plans Next week I hope to complete campaign mission 4 and 5. And perhaps implement some new ships as well!
Week 15: First campaign mission done
This week I worked mostly on the campaign. We needed to get some systems in place to display the objectives, show the relevant information and refine the planned story a bit more. With most of these systems in place the road is paved for the other campaign missions. This week I've managed to implement the first campaign mission, with the exception of the planned voice overs.
In addition to that I've also created and tested a build to be used for an upcoming event. More on that later.
I've put all I've done this week in the list below:
Balancing
Slightly buffed the ion cannon
Nerfed gauss cannon a bit
Added new weapon: Weldcannon (super short range high intensity beam weapon)
Added 3 balistic weapon variants
Cant confirm devastators supposed reduced cooldown (in the weapon tester it works fine). Have reduced its damage by 30% though
General & campaign
Made cinematic camera slower
Tested Skirmish AI
Tweaked harvester income
Made cinematic camera slower
Reduced music volume
Added player name input to the main menu
Redesigned blueprint visuals
Did tests with shield buildings (planning to make an overshield building)
Worked out which campaign missions there will be
Disabled drops
Set default difficulty for skirmish to 1
Tested skirmish difficulty 1 and 5
Compressed all soundtracks for more stable output volume
Set screen edge camera pan default to false
Fixed new weapon tooltip typo
Updated demo disclaimer
Fixed loot always being bugged for new players if the json didnt exist
Fixed loot bug not unlocknig stuff
Double checked new g.round build
Did new testgame
Wrote campaign mission 1
Implemented campaign mission 1 objective 1, 2 and 3
Campaign mission 1 is now fully scripted! All the events are in and have been tested. All we need now is a voiceover ^^
Re-enabled the skismish buttons from the fleet editor
Fixed new player name positioning in lobby and multiplayer screen
I might take the next week off. So next week the updates might be a bit shorter/non existent. Although knowing myself I will probably do more work than I now intend to anyway. See you guys next time!
[previewyoutube="DKxmE6DGT8c;full"]
Week 14 update: AI & Tutorial
This week I worked on adding a Tutorial for new players and getting a build ready for an upcoming event. Since most changes apply to the skirmish, tutorial or visual improvements I've put them all in one list for this week.
Playtested Battle Royale
Added tutorial scene
Combined power and metal storage
Added 22 objectives to the tutorial.
Fixed players sometimes playing inside eachother
Made a new icon for the game
Rerganised discord
Upgraded discord to community server
Reduced polygon count on Taibe
Reduced polygon count on Aurora
Reduced polygon count on Lunaria
Reduced polygon count on Type-C
Reverted ship align change
Uploaded a new build to steam
Give resources for ships only in BR (upon killing them)
Adjusted default audio volumes
Did several rounds of bugtesting
Added tutorial button
Added tutorial objectives
Added objective check system
Tutorial test with feedback: [previewyoutube="BnAR-moj6OA;full"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnAR-moj6OA[/previewyoutube]
Changed power icon
Fixed GUI alignment top right text
Moved formation buttons
Restyled toggle buttons
Implemented tutoral metal storage objective
Implemented tutoral power storage objective
Implemented tutoral population objective
Added build surveyor objective completion trigger
Added move to zabu objective completion trigger
Added move to enemy shipyard objective completion trigger
