Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Simulator, Strategy, Indie
Starport Delta
v0.12 - Alpha Update
Another closed alpha update to Starport Delta as the Cloudfire Studios team looks forward to PAX East! A lot of the gaming world will also be paying attention to San Francisco for GDC next week, as there are usually some exciting announcements that happen there each year. Cloudfire will be in attendance (although not with a booth!) and looking forward to hearing all the news. The week after that, we're off to PAX! We'll be at booth 24090 if you want to come talk to us and play Starport Delta.
What's new
Saving and loading your station
New construction animation
New graphics for when tiles are inactive
Add support for Russian
Add support for Spanish, and a first round of translations
Change zoom to also alter the pitch of the camera
Move the language switcher to the options menu
Optimize and add more colour to the various ships
Tweaked the population growth rate
Always show the area of effect of each building, regardless of play mode
Mining depots now affected when they need maintenance
Fixed defense lasers sometimes not firing at space pirates
Fixed solar wind effect not appearing
Fixed buttons in the UI not unlocking
What's next
Over the next couple of weeks, fixing bugs and going to PAX East is likely to consume our time, but when we're back it'll be campaign time!
This week we thought we'd give you a bit of a close up on one of the buildings in Starport Delta, the Defense Lasers!
Not all aliens choose the diplomatic option for communication. Actively defend your station from marauding space pirates with these laser turrets. Similar to shields, they only depend on having a nearby source of power, but help to prevent your station from being dismantled for parts in raids.
These laser turrets provide active defense for a radius of three hexes around them. Any pirate spacecraft that attack within that radius will be shot at and likely destroyed by one of these turrets.
Time for another closed alpha update to Starport Delta from the Cloudfire Studios team! There's a lot of great content in this update, including several changes and suggestions from our alpha players. Our save system and early campaign missions are in place, but currently have some bugs we need to work out before we roll them out, so both of those will be our upcoming focus.
What's new
Introductory text on how to play from your supervisory Admiral (our next character!)
More prompts from the Holo Assistant about different parts of the game as you play
Brand new central port tile!
New upgrade sets for oxygen plants and food farms!
Hovering over notifications now prevents them from disappearing
Basic information about each building is now provided on hover
More information is provided when hovering over various parts of the UI
Added level of detail (LOD) meshes to the buildings to improve performance
Updated the visual effect for the ship trails
Objective flags now complete independently
Sound effects are no longer stacked
Reduced rate of tile degradation
Fixed the Escape key not closing the options menu from in-game
Fixed panning around the station at the top and bottom edges of the screen
Fixed space pirate harvest beam sometimes not disappearing
Arrow keys now correctly pan after clicking UI buttons
Fixed information box not disappearing when deconstructing tiles
Fixed language switcher not switching to German
Fixed custom cursor not appearing in the Steam build
New Zealand gamers are looking ahead towards the NZ Games Festival and the Play By Play conference, and the Cloudfire Studios team has been working on another update for the closed alpha players of Starport Delta! We're excited about bringing on board some more alpha players for our next round of testing - you can sign up on the Cloudfire Studios website if you'd like to apply to join our playtesting programme or keep up with our news via email.
What's new
All new designs for oxygen plants, food farms and housing tiles
New Objectives system available in sandbox mode to show goals to work towards
New Notifications system will provide information and story cues
Our first character is now in-game - come meet the Holo Assistant!
Sound effect for meteors exploding against shields
Repair costs and missing resources now appear in the new UI, along with some other minor updates to the in-game UI
Laser turrets now attack multiple space pirates in sequence
New options menu with configurable scroll speed and music/sound volume controls
New music - our main menu now has a brand new theme to listen to
Added a solar wind and new kinds of planets for each environment
Updated all tile designs with new colours
Other characters are design complete and will appear in later updates
Mesh optimizations for better performance
Extended the in-game music track for better looping
Plumbing and basic UI for saving/loading has been added
Fixed rare program crash when trying to exit from the main menu
As the game development world delves into the Global Game Jam, the Cloudfire Studios team is hard at work bringing another update for the closed alpha players of Starport Delta! Some of our plans from the previous update were delayed so while there has been progress, we ended up prioritizing other updates.
The Cloudfire Studios team are excited to announce that we are bringing Starport Delta to PAX East 2019! We'll be at booth 24090, so if you're going to PAX make sure to stop by, say hi and give the game a go!
We're looking forward to meeting some great players and games fans, seeing other great games on display and hopefully meeting up with some of the amazing local Boston gamedev scene.
This week has also seen the first week of our closed alpha for Starport Delta, and it's been exciting starting that process and getting it out to players away from the hustle and bustle of conventions and group settings where we've been showcasing the game so far.
This week kicks off the first round of closed alpha testing for Starport Delta! We're excited to be running this via Steam and Discord, and looking forward to getting more player feedback throughout development.
