Void Destroyer 2
Dev Update - Guide updated!
A big step towards release - though many of you will probably think - meh who cares...
I've updated the in game guide. To give you a bit of history/context - work towards Void Destroyer 2 started when I copied everything from Void Destroyer into a separate branch/folder. Then I created a prototype and released it as the "Mini Sandbox" free DLC for Void Destroyer. I continued on in this separate folder/branch ever since. Point being that I never updated the in game guide from Void Destroyer 1 days - it was still a copy/paste.
This caused some players a bunch of confusion as Void Destroyer 1 included things such as "research" - which Void Destroyer 2 doesn't - and Void Destroyer 2 includes many many things that Void Destroyer 1 doesn't.
Anyway - I intended to update the guide soon before release as that would make the most sense in terms of my work load - doing it all at once versus several times before things weren't as nailed down.
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So I'm happy to say that I've updated the in game guide... This was a slog, it felt like doing homework... I so much more prefer working on new game features, weapons, AI commands, activities for the player - so this was a chore. Either way - now that it's "done" I'm very happy because I couldn't see releasing Void Destroyer 2 without an updated in game guide. This out of date guide and the combo of me so not wanting to do it - was stressing me a bit.
I imagine that maybe 5% of players actually check it out - but to me it is a necessary addition for that 5%.
As always - thank you for supporting the project!
Paul
PS: If you do check out the guide and find some elements confusing/missing please be sure to let me know!
Heads up - Thinking of a price increase.
EDIT - Thanks for the feedback guys! - price has been increased from 14.99 to 19.99
This post is more for potential customers and for existing customers to offer feedback/etc.
For potential customers - if you are sensitive to price increases, consider buying now (though I do tend to discounts quite a lot, after the increase it might not dip below the current standard price for a bit of time).
I'm thinking of increasing the game's price in anticipation to the 1.0 (out of Early Access) release. For various reasons - the game is much bigger than I anticipated when I first started it - in terms of play time, content, how long it took me to make it. Plus having a higher base price allows you to discount the game more aggressively - to compete with bigger aggressive discounts on the market (so basically - marketing). Steam has become much harder to sell games on for smaller indies like me - and I feel that my audience dried up a bit - and those looking for a game like Void Destroyer 2 and somehow find it - wouldn't mind paying a bigger price. Basically - the people who buy games at full price would spend a few bucks more for it either way.
Because of how pricing increases work on Steam I have to plan this ahead a bit - especially considering that the Holiday season is approaching with it's seasonal sales. So I'd probably have to skip the Thanksgiving/Autumn sale due to the price increase - but still be able to participate in the Winter/Christmas sale.
Anyway - what do you think? Do you think that the game is undervalued at 14.99? Overvalued? It should be free and I should work from under a bridge somehow - hunting and scavenging for food like in the olden days?
Let me know if you have an opinion.
Thanks!
Paul
Dev Video - Active Upgrades
While this update isn't huge I'm pretty excited about the recent changes so I decided to make a update video and short announcement post (this).
[previewyoutube="wwQhr5GbwLw;full"]
Direct -Link
While working on the game in preparation for release I decided to (more or less) finalize active upgrades. I decided I needed to add a few active upgrades as well as finally put in proper icons for them (versus using the old icons from Void Destroyer 1). While waiting for my 2D artist to create I icons I also decided to address the pretty big gap of not having a way for players to re-organize active upgrades (after adding them to a ship).
So now, there are a few more cool and overpowered active upgrades, the upgrades have proper icons and you can re-organize them!
Thank you very much for supporting the project and I hope you enjoy!
Paul
Dev Video - Customization, Empire management and Missions
I've uploaded another "Dev Update" video to talk and show some of the recent changes and additions to the game.
Here it is:
[previewyoutube="nqM4v__ta-A;full"]
Direct Link: Here
Here's a short summary of the recent changes/additions:
- Much easier method to customizing fleet/defense ships.
- Method to create a fleet out of hangar ships with few clicks.
- New ship commands in Overworld mode (guard, patrol, etc).
- Repair ships can also be given these commands and will seek out ships to be repaired.
- Easily toggle primary/secondary burns for multiple ships.
- UI text to see what your ships' current orders are,
- Sensor and detection ranges overhaul (larger ships can scan further but are more easily detected).
- Upgrades to increase sensor range and/or decrease detection range (useful for combat ships to find targets, and transport ships to avoid being detected).
- Owned assets (bases, platforms) create a sensor net in Overworld mode, giving you a view of what's going on in your empire.
- Trade ship interface now includes way to create "platform traders" ships that will buy/take resources from platforms.
- Bunch of new auto generated missions added, tweaks, changes, re-balance to missions.
- Many auto generated missions are now "fleet missions" - where you get compensated for ship loss.
Full Patch Notes - Here
Changes overview:
My time recently has been spent working on end game empire management and early game auto generated missions. My goal has been to make late game empire management a lot smoother with less mouse clicks, more automation and giving the player more control and insight as to what is going on.
I've also did a pass on auto generated missions, with the goal of make the early game to middle game smoother. Filling in some gaps to reduce doing the same missions over and over. Changing mission payouts (increasing in most cases). Rebalancing some missions and adding a bunch of new ones.
What's next?
Work towards release continues with shifting focus on finalizing elements and then preparing for release, in the form of working on more external elements like a new trailer and store/marketing elements.
As always - I hope you enjoy these changes, give them a good run through in the game and give me feedback.
Thank you for supporting the project!
Paul
Auto generated missions - Phase 1.
Thought I'd toss out an update to let you know what's been going on.
I started this a few weeks ago as a sort of a finalize auto generated missions task. My goal was to play each auto generated mission and see if it needed any tweaks, balance, reward changes as well as to see if I can spice it up in anyway.
I quickly saw that I really needed to brainstorm additional missions to the roster and my focus changed to that. I've since added 9 new auto generated missions, some are fairly simple and others a bit more elaborate. These additional missions should make the early to mid game progression of the player smoother and more interesting.
I've also tweaked "priority" mission rank, ship and rewards to be in line with the finalized auto generated missions.
This is what I'm calling "Phase 1" - and I'm going to upload a patch shortly.
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Phase 2 is going to be what I originally planned to do - play each auto generated mission and tweak/balance/spice them up as well as finalize their credit rewards. My goal was always not to have the player grind for credits, so some missions will get a nice boost for that.
Also instead of my previous method of some missions appearing randomly - I'll do a more reliable system where there is a sort of a "cool down" timer on some missions that I want to be rarer.
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I'm very excited for you guys to test out the new auto generated missions and let me know what you think!
As always - thank you so much for supporting the project and for your feedback, criticism and ideas.
thanks!
Paul
PS: After phase 2 is done - I'll most likely post a update video talking about these changes and other recent updates (like being able to give your ships patrol commands in Overworld mode, being able to properly use production platforms for your empire and other changes).
Dev Video - Big Beta Patch
Hey guys!
Excited to release a big beta patch. Usually my patches are small and frequent - but this time around I needed more play testing, tweaking and adding code to properly implement the new changes.
Dev Video:
https://youtu.be/O_J6TSKOJRA
Two major items - war fleets and the reserve system.
Let's start with the reserve system.
What it is? Optional system (you can toggle it off to have the game function as before) - where ship counts are limited (per fleet), more ships will reinforce the fleet (if available) every 60 seconds.
Why? Goal is to have better frame rates, better stability and a better game play experience. Players too often complain about crashing - I believe allowing unlimited ships causes many of these issues, hence the limit with reinforcements based on ship losses.
This should also allow for a less messy fleet versus fleet warfare and longer battles overall, giving you a greater sense of triumph (or defeat!).
And now onto war fleets.
What are they? Non-player factions generate "war fleets" - fleets in space that will help in base defense and attack the faction's enemies while at war.
Why? Many players gave feedback that the current "at war" mechanic was too intense, with fleets incoming seemingly out of no where. War fleets are visible in space and thus can be attacked. War fleets properly depend on shipyards and base resources.
This should give a better sense of a base/faction capabilities before going to war, and thus allow for a more strategic approach to faction warfare for the player.
What else?
While adding these two major features, many smaller items were added, including a more efficient way to build and manage ships while docked at a base. You can now select a base which to build ships in and have multiplier buttons to save on mouse clicks.
To add the war fleet mechanic - I've had to look at quite a lot of base economy and production elements to ensure that they can properly get to the point of building war fleets.
I've also looked at several elements related to assaulting a faction, including adding delays/timers to give a player more strategic choices. For example - if a player destroy's a faction's shipyard, it will be a good amount of time before it is re-built, giving the player a chance to take advantage of their victory.
What's next?
I'm going to continue play testing and polishing up middle to end game features.
Thanks for your incredible support!
Paul
-- Full patch notes --
Reserve Mechanic ------
Fleets are now limited to a certain number of ships.
Current limits - 20 fighters, 15 gunships, 10 corvettes, 5 frigates, 2 destroyers, 1 cruiser
If there are more ships than this in your fleet (or any other fleet including enemy fleets) - they will reinforce losses every 60 seconds.
You can turn this mechanic off in the "Difficulty/Balance" menu (while in game - hit ESC key then click "Difficulty/Balance")
This mechanic is intended to put in a base line for me to balance against and to hopefully prevent many crashing issues due to a huge # of ships players tend to bring to the field.
War Mechanic ------------
War Fleets -
Instead of massive attack fleets coming out of no where - bases will "build" "war fleets."
These will appear in space (allowing player to attack them/see their status/etc)
War fleets will be built - despite the faction being at war (think of them as armies)
War fleet count per faction - number of bases owned / 2 + 1
So a faction with 2 bases would have 2 war fleets, a faction with 4 bases would have 3 war fleets. A faction with 6 bases would have 4 war fleets, etc.
In "peace time" war fleets are capped at 3 (to prevent player being mobbed right at the start of a war)
War fleets will properly take shipyards into account - eg: if a base needs a shipyard to build a frigate and doesn't have a shipyard... the war fleet won't be built.
To accomplish this - Pirate and BH factions will now build shipyards
A Base's war fleet will respond to a base being blockaded and assist - becoming part of it's defense fleet.
In the factions screen - can now buy "intel/asset locations" - by paying 250k per unknown asset (base/platform/field) of a faction. This is to help players locate those pesky platforms (to be destroyed during war or pre-war) - for a price.
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Late Game Base Polish/Improvements:
New function - base management - convert 3k ore to 1k energy - sacrifice ore for energy - for concurrent ship building and mobile base speed boosts. Ore might actually be easier to get than energy, as it comes from asteroid fields - and there's a good amount of them near every base. You can consider that mined ore would have some radioactive properties - so converting to energy could be explained in this way.
Non-player bases low on funds for ship/defense platform building will convert their production resources (if they have plenty) to credits.
-- Sell price is 33% of base price
-- Will sell 10% of stock if it has at least 25% of max stock.
-- Goal is to help ship production for defense which then allows for war fleet production.
In the case above (not enough credits to build) - non-player faction bases will "share" credits - if baseA has over 5 mil - it will give 1 mil to a base low on funds.
Blockade check - now only tests for built platforms (without this - could seem like there are no platforms - but base isn't being blockaded - due to platforms in the process of being built being hidden before a certain % complete).
Added 5x, 10x, 20x check boxes to ship purchase/buy screen - letting you buy/build up to 20 ships per mouse click - versus clicking mouse 20 times.
Added "owned base" list while docked in the ship purchase/buy screen - letting you build ships in remote bases that you own.
Owned mobile bases - Instead of a checkbox to use energy while moving and a small boost to speed.
A selected owned and mobile base will let you toggle primary/secondary burns like ships can.
Boosts are much more powerful than previous boosted base speed and use up energy much more than before for the increased speed.
Owned mobile bases will respond to the "hold command" (h key by default) - stopping their movement.
Non-player bases - destroying platforms will cause a delay to building additional platforms.
Defense platforms - 1 minute
Production/shipyard platforms - 10 minutes
In the case of "far" platforms - the nearest base takes the delay hit.
Delay adds up until 15 mins max.
This is to allow the player some breathing time between bases re-building platforms. Giving the chance to do hit an run missions on base shipyards.
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Bug fix - allowing auto dock with military/bounty hunter bases while wanted
Bug fix - Kind faction didn't properly build base defense ships
Oversight fix - way point traders will sell/transfer all cargo pods on docking with a base - to prevent being stuck with cargo that isn't intended for trade and not picking up the proper cargo for their next leg.
Bug fix - player trading ships would buy resources from player bases - versus getting them for free... enjoy the proper profits!
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Base defense ships - increased production amounts.
Base defense ships - will launch 2 wings of fighters and 2 wings of gunships - and 10 corvettes - if there are more fighters/gunships/corvettes "in reserve" - will launch those if those 2 wings/corvettes are destroyed - the reserve units will launch.
Beta Progress!
Thought I'd update you how Beta is going.
Quick Summary -
- Focus is on play testing, polish and balance.
- Loads of small changes.
- Currently doing a complete play through of the game.
- Check out the change log - Link
- Check out the "Road To Release" forum - Link
Currently I'm in the process of doing an entire play through of the game. Then as I see issues I either make a note for later or address it. For example yesterday I noticed that pirates weren't aggressive enough in taking asteroid fields. This means that auto generated missions linked to asteroid fields weren't as plentiful as I'd like and that the game world was far too "friendly" than my intention.
I started my play through in a peaceful way as a law abiding citizen, doing missions for various factions to be able to buy bigger and better ships, when I'd hit a wall in the missions I added a new auto generated mission. I then played story missions until I hit another wall - where I needed a bigger fleet and so I decided to go pirate and play test their missions as well. For a while I was able to skirt the law - I'd do a mission for the pirates - killing scouts and couriers - then murder other pirates to stay in the neutral range. When my next task was to destroy civilian transports - my ability to stay lawful ran out.
So I decided to capture ships. Including some mining and transport ships - which I put to good use to test the balance tweaks on pirate attacks of these and their response.
Gotta say! I'm having fun! I can't wait until I get my own base and get it setup for capturing other ones!
And it's very satisfying to polish the game and feel the satisfaction of many small improvements.
Hope you guys are feeling this too!
Thanks for your support!
Paul
Beta!
For the past year I've been focused primarily on adding the "main story" aspect of the game and finishing features related to the end game including - carriers, at war mechanic and enhancements to platforms.
At this point... the main story is nearly done - with probably just one final mission remaining (to avoid confusion - this mission hasn't been developed and added to the game) - after the player accomplishes certain elements in the sandbox to allow for that mission (which again - will be added later).
So with the game being nearly content complete and being nearly feature complete - I've decided to...
Ahem...
I DECLARE.... BETA!!!!
Yeah the game's industry can be a bit silly sometimes... these phases are basically made up and pretty arbitrary.
So to me - it means that I will be now focusing on polish needed to get to release - which the game needs in many aspects...
To help me in this - I created a "Road To Release" forum and have been adding posts to it to help me remember necessary tasks (as they popped into my head and you guys gave me feedback on).
Here's a link: Road To Release Forum
Some tasks are pretty small and some tasks might take a bit of doing.
Either way I overall hope that the "Beta" phase will be relatively quick as - I've been focused on bug fixing through out development (thanks to your many bug reports).
Also during Beta - another big goal of mine is to play the game - start to finish - and polish/improve whatever I can - within reason. I could improve the game forever but... gotta release it some day and then see where this game dev business will take me next.
So I'm super tired, sleepy, burned out - but also super excited!
The road to release is sure to be a very positive chapter in this project - I hope that I smooth out many issues that you guys have been having (especially late game issues) and deliver you a even better experience :)
As always - thank you for your great support!
Pal
Dev Video - Carriers!
Exciting times - for the past month I've been working on "properly" implementing carriers.
Here's a YouTube vid - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDxAiA5r-SM
Direct Link - YouTube
Not just ships that can launch drones/fighters - but "proper" carriers. Ships that share some of the characteristics of bases. You can think of them as mini armed mobile bases or ships that carry a base inside of them.
To sum up - you can dock with a carrier and walk around inside of it (like a base - limited hangar/walking area). Then you can either manage the carrier (in terms of building ships) or switch to the pilot's seat and personally fly like any other ship.
The carrier's hangar functions pretty much like inside of a base's hangar (though limited to ship production and management) - you can build ships (fighters/gunships/corvettes) - in exchange for ore. While in space - you can command these ships to be launched, they will return to the hangar after the battle (on the switch to Overworld mode).
The carrier can either pick up ore from ship mode (so you can buy/steal the ore) or you can buy or take ore when the carrier is docked at a base. Making it pretty self sufficient!
Here's a short list of new features -
- 3 new carriers.
- Carriers can be docked with and walked around in.
- Player can then take control of the carrier and pilot it.
- Carrier can pick up and buy ore cargo pods.
- Carriers can build ships in exchange for ore (fighters/gunships/corvettes).
- Player can launch ships from its internal hangar while in ship mode.
- Launched fighters/gunships will automatically return to the carrier (when player switches back to Overworld mode) and be rapidly repaired (for free!!!).
What's missing?
Necessary bug fixes and polish and minor details I didn't consider - looking for feedback!
I had also hoped to include missions to obtain "plans" to build these carriers but at the moment I'm short on time - so I hope to be able to work on this prior to release (can't promise it though) - right now the player can build a carrier (provided a faction has this type of ship) as soon as the player captures a base of that faction.
What's next?
My goal is to finish up the "main story" - and thus enter into the "Beta" phase of the project.
Beta?
Beta to me means that the game is major feature complete (though without the necessary bug fixes/polish) and has nearly all of it's story/mission content (though potentially missing some ships).
During Beta I will play the game start to finish, polishing up elements as I go and as I see them. The late game stage - is badly in need of polish and balancing - especially Overworld combat calculations and the new "at war" mechanic. I'm looking forward to working on these elements to give them much needed improvements.
Thanks again for all of your amazing feedback/bug reports and support - I truly appreciate it! You guys are helping me create something I've dreamed of for a long time and I hope you enjoy the final product :)
Paul
New Story Mission!
As the game goes towards the end of the "main story" - story missions will tend to involve more work on my part.
I tend to be a more more dramatic/visual with the mission (story telling through action). I've added several new ships and new weapon types to support the story. I've added a new mechanic to again support the story and change the dynamics of the game world in relation to the story.
Speaking of the new mechanic... It's a pretty simple add - but in testing I see that it will require me to work a bunch on "Overworld combat" - how ships fight with other ships in Overworld - mathematically. This was on my list - so it's actually good that I've waited to work on this some more before the update as now I've got a pretty clear issue to resolve.
What's next?
As I've focused on the new story mission I've ignored a few minor bugs, so I'll work on those next. After that I should be able to quickly release a few more story missions as they will tend to be far more focused on combat rather than story telling. After that - I hope to work on carriers and after that finish the story and have a fairly short Beta phase and head on to release!
As always thank you for the incredible support, comments, feedback, criticism, reviews you guys have given me and the project.
Paul