This week the two of us have worked quite hard again on improving the game. We have added some usability improvements and did a pretty big overhaul of unit health values to see how that influences the game meta.
We need your help We are working as hard as we can right now and put a lot of time, effort and money into this project. Personally I put about 70 hours per week into this project so that we can release the game in less than 5 months. We could really use your assistence though by spreading awareness of the game wherever you can. The more people share this project and help us with the marketing side the more time we have for the actual development of the game. Oh yeah and supporting us on Patreon helps a bunch too and can get you some pretty cool rewards ^^
This is what we have done in week 11:
General
Fixed asteroid sizes and harvester harvestdust location
Added bigger shipyard death explosion
Fixed Missile pods using turret models
Checked if no additional modules were added to ships by the game systems since we reduced the amount of module slots
Module slot 2 and 3 position in the ship editor were at eachothers positions. Corrected.
Added 2 more default modules, bringing the starting modules to choose from 3 to 5
Removed the new shipyard boost effect
Extra cursor for recording purposes can now be set so that streamers always have a visible cursor if they want
Decreased minimum build distance
Played testgame with programmer
Made health and shieldbars square again
Added 13 new points to the todo list based on feedback & testing
Ships
Created tables for each of the ship stats
Calculated & wrote down justifications for why we think certain units should have certain stats
Made it so that the ship stats can easily be modified as a whole (for example have all light ships have 20% more health)
Updated all ship stats
Fixed megalodon rotation
Fixed megalodon engine
Checked shield sizes for all ships
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaMdcn4v1m0 Usability and quality of life improvements
Ship loadout info now visible in the build menu (weapons and modules)
Fixed faulty weapon and module information was shown when not all weapons/modules were used
Weapons and modules now show up in tooltips in SP and MP and the build menu. If you have two bulkheads it will show up as 2x bulkheads rather than seperated
Added icons to the "Unlock Medium" en "Unlock heavy" ships
Split up the "Abilities & unlocks" menu into "Abilities & Upgrades" and a "Unlock tech" menu.
Changed inactive zabu colors
Force non-transparant background for build menu backdrop items
Renamed 'Select design slot' to 'Saved Designs' in the ship editor
Numerical shield values for units are now only displayed if a shield generator is installed
Asteroid height is now displayed when placing structures near them
Neutral building height is now displayed when placing structures near them
Surveyor height is now displayed when placing structures near them
Updated icons in the ship frame selection dropdown of the ship editor
Photoshopped new sky
Added blue, greenblue, yellowgreen and green skybox
Asteroids are now stored more efficiently in a global list that is refreshed every .5 seconds
Zabu generators now change color correctly for the local player as well
Made backgrounds of all menus more consistent
Loading indicator now disapears after x seconds
Audio
Added sounds to the shipyard upgrades
Added sounds to tech unlocks
Added sounds to the build boost
Tweaked sound volumes
Backers & patreon
uploaded new MP build for backers
Multiplayer
Fixed the multiplayer disconnect bug
Fixed ships sometimes getting stuck
Skirmish
Improved on the AI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnXHlM4cUaA
Wave defense game mode
Added a boss for the wavedefense mode
Wavedef boss now always moves towards the shipyard
Removed time-based win for wavedef
When boss dies you now win
The boss no longer spawns right away in the wavedefense mode (oops)
Changed the 'time until next wave' into 'Defeat their flagship!' for the last wave
Reset enemy wave spawn times
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urLPyzHMuzQ
Thats about all we did for this games production thats relevant to you guys. We've done some talking to publishers, advisors, contractual stuff and a bunch of overhead as well. But that's not something that should be put in this list.
Hopefully this will give you guys some insight into the time and effort we put into this. I'm going to play a 3FFA match tomorrow with some backers and will hopefully give you guys another really big update next week!
Week 10 update
This week we've made more progress with the development of the AI. It plays more like you would expect from an AI, so in that regards it's already way better than the AI from last week. We're not done yet though, so next week will be even better!
This week we have done the following things: - Instead of duplicate loot you now get damaged blueprints - Increased loot drop chance by 20% - Added mouse 'ASWD' camera pan - Changed healthbar visuals - Added health upgrade to all buildings - Added shield upgrade to all buildings - Added health regeneration upgrade to all buildings - Added health regeneration upgrade to all buildings - Set upgrade values and ratios - Set max amount of upgrades per type per building - Added click sounds to building upgrades - Fixed formation buttons - Fixed ship textures for new ships - Photoshopped black textures for the new ships since we didnt have those yet - Fixed defensive strcuture selection ping sound popping - Reduced the amount of modules some ships have to make ships more diverse - Decreased size of mouse ASWD camera movement trigger box
Weapon changes: - Increased blaster lifetime by 3 seconds - Replaced missile launcher and repeater sounds
New ships: - Added The Aurora for one of our backers - Added The Bongolongo for one of our backers - Added the Velociraptor
Optimized ships (10x less polygons) - Corvette - Beacon ship - Ant - Raptor
Videos I also recorded some videos for you guys to give you some more impressions of the current state of the game. Although the 1v1 I've played is in an outdated version.
1v1 match backer VS developer (with dev commentary) [previewyoutube="1NNv13aLWTM;full"]
Ship editor dev commentary [previewyoutube="BaMdcn4v1m0;full"]
Developer feedback for programmer on the 2nd iteration of the AI [previewyoutube="LnXHlM4cUaA;full"]
That's it for this week. If you guys like the project please subscribe on youtube. I don't really care about subscribers there, but it has benefits/gets more exposure to the game if we can get more than 1000 subscribers there. See you next week!
Week 9 update
[previewyoutube="2OboXJmBt_Y;full"] This week we have mostly worked on AI and explored the potential adding of factions. The following is a list of things we have worked on:
Skirmish AI A very basic skirmish is already operational. This week we worked on refining it. We have done the following:
Ai enemy interception
Fixed Skirmish Ai missile defense
Fixed shield texture bug
Fixed health networking
We aim to use several of the Skirmish functionalities for the Campaign as well, so right now this is one of our highest priorities.
Factions research This week I've done a lot of research into factions. A solid plan began to form on how to add the factions, how to incorperate it into the ship editor and what bonuses each faction should have.
The general idea was to have two playable factions, The Explorators and The Purists. Purists use human-technology only, while Explorators aren't afraid of using alien technology as well. These differences in techniques would create variations in ship designs for each faction and generate faction-wide buffs. One faction would have 10% extra health for all ships for instance, while the other faction would have cheaper ships that move faster.
Because we are working on this project with just two people however we have to make choises and set priorities. Neither of us a 3D artist, but we attempted to overcome that by having existing ships incorperate different textures and materials next to the already existing materials. I was not satisfied with any of the results on any of the experiments we conducted. We would have to hire a new 3D artist in order to make the changes we wanted and since we can barely pay our rent as it is we are currently forced to scrap this idea.
Another things to consider is the amount of work adding factions would cost and how much extra value (fun!) it would add to the project. I've thought about this and while I do think that the more factions there are the more fun a game can be I also think that a poorly added faction is more detrimental to the games quality than having more than our current human factions. For now it is better to spend our time on the other cool things we have planned such as unit veterancy, bigger shield buildings, more weapons, sound and visual tweaks. New factions might still be added in the future though. A neutral pirate faction with a whole new shipset is another idea we had.
General bugfixes and things we have done
Fixed resource networking
Fixed menu navigation bug
Talked to potential business partners about marketing the project to create a bigger playerbase
Made a bunch of youtube videos
Tweaked ingame bloom
Added sound to building selection
Added 3 new weapons
Added a new ship
Summary and plans That's about it for this week. I will try to put as much time as I can into this project again next week. It's sometimes hard to find enough time while also trying to make money in other ways in order to keep paying rent, but all in all I think we did some good things this week. You can help us with this by supporting us via the links underneath the youtube videos by the way.
[previewyoutube="HH95VC831ck;full"]
I'm not quite sure what we will work on exactly next week. But these are some of the things on our short term todo list;
Update loot tooltips
Mouse on edge of screen should behave like ASWD camera controls
Perhaps revert healthbars back to rectangles
Add options to the ingame menu to set the various control speeds
Add health upgrades to all buildings
Add shield upgrades to all buildings
Add sounds to the unlocking of various tech
Re-evaluate and tweak gameplay
Continue fleshing out the current lore
Add some ship designs as rewards for patrons who support the project
See you next week!
Ps. please subscribe to the youtube channel if you want to be kept in the loop more frequently; https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvYClYMPAkPeHtjZyCwIi5g
Week 8 update
[previewyoutube="2OboXJmBt_Y;full"]
This week was pretty marketing-oriented. I've done almost 120 tasks this week and the programmer has worked on the Skirmish mode. That being said the following things have been done:
Experiment with different types of planets
Added the wave defense preparation time to the scorescreen
Added the time in between waves to the scorescreen
Tweaked the color palette of space
Created a basic skirmish mode
Tested said skrimish mode
Added rudementary formation controls
Adding building selection sounds
Uploaded video of skirmish mode feedback to our YouTube
Discussed todo list for skirmish with our new programmer
Prioritized todo list
Created an internal development build
Created a pipeline system for creating cinematic videos for marketing purposes
Had contact with a potential publisher
Updated the steam store
Updated all steam logos and capsules
Created a new cinematic video
Uploaded cinematic video to the store page
Created an infinite-play map for video recording
[previewyoutube="2Vjpgn0E4HU;full"]
That's about it for this week. We have also discussed things like unit veterancy, unit range, unit accuracy, new ships, new modules, new buildings, tweaks to the game audio and many more things.
First weekly update
First update I haven't been posting updates here often. But I plan to do this more and more often. The main goal for this is to inform you guys of what is going on with the game and involve you guys a bit in the development process.
Audience and promotion Another goal is to reach a bigger audience. The biggest thing we struggle with right now is exposure. Basically we need as many people as possible to know about the game. You can help with that by sharing game content with your friends and on social media. You could also contact streamers that you know would enjoy the game and if they are interested I'd be happy to send them a key of the game for them to try it out.
The discord channel can be found underneath each of our youtube videos and is a great place to get additional information.
[previewyoutube="z3ciVhZLz1M;full"] Devlog and changes that we have made this week This devlog will actually include some stuff from january as well since this is the first time I'm posting here. Here's what we did:
Ships <*>Added The Jaap battlecruiser frame in honour of my father who passed away from covid <*>Added The Towerer heavy frigate <*>Added The Bountiful ship frame <*>Decreased transport spawn rate (Backers on Patreon get their name on it & help me keep developing this game) <*>Fixed a texture bug causing ships to have weird textures <*>You can now cancel ship constructions <*>The Cruiser is now unlocked by default <*>Added Repressors to each default ship design because they look good <*>Tweaked default ship design loadouts
Buildings <*>Added artillery buildings <*>Added defense buildings <*>Updated plasma fortress looks <*>Zabu generators now have different visuals for active and inactive states <*>Updated zabu gen locations <*>Added snap-to-grid functionality for building placement <*>Added height indicators for buildings that are being placed for easier placement <*>Added white lines to nearby buildings during building placement for easier placement <*>Added green lines towards the structures the booster buildings such as Synergisers generate <*>Added missile intercepting defensive structures <*>Added range indicators for repair buildings
Weapons, modules and miscellaneous <*>Added a cinematic camera <*>Toggling the cinematic camera now hides the GUI, healthbars and icons <*>Asteroids now have limited resources <*>Added 22 new weapon sounds and effects <*>Increased base income for players <*>There are now shield upgrades for buildings and ships <*>Added a ship module that increases shield strength <*>Added a ship module that increases shield regeneration <*>Added a ship module that increases shield strength and regeneration <*>Added a ship module that combines various shield effects <*>Reverted beam colors, optimized them, fixed damage <*>Rechecked weapon damage values <*>Added missile intercepting ship modules <*>Fixed skybox rotation <*>Fixed bug caused by Vsync <*>Increased base ship limit from 40 to 50. This can be set by the players themselves int he future <*>Fixed GUI text sizes <*>Limited screen resolution until all GUI elements are fully responsive <*>Fixed sound volumes not being stored correctly <*>Improved dodging behavior <*>Increased FPS <*>Removed empty healthbar shield texture <*>Decreased volume of impact explosions <*>Changed missile fire sounds <*>Added a collapsable GUI menu and made the Singleplayer and Multiplayer options in the main menu collapsible <*>Fixed the green cube bug <*>Added shield up & down sounds <*>Solved all json settings for audio, display, control and playername so that new players will have the correct default settings without errors.Also limited screen height to 1440 until we complete GUI scaling
Thats it for this week. We done a bunch of other stuff as well but I don't think the other things are too interesting for you guys. See you next week!
