Void Destroyer
Quick update - new story content
Tonight's update has new story content - including a boss fight, and a good number of new ships. This marks the "half way" point in the story line of the game. Please let me know if the boss fight is too difficult, too easy, too boring, etc etc - your feedback is greatly appreciated. Additional story content should follow soon as this is the main focus of the updates now.
I will spend the next few days polishing up the update, looking for bugs/issues then post the longer announcement with more details.
Looking forward to your feedback and thank you for supporting the project!
Paul
New content - but breaks save games.
This includes a re-worked instant action scenario - Ambush - Mark 13
A new instant action scenario - Ambush - Coach Base
A mission inserted between the "mine field" mission and the "Hub" mission.
5 new ships (4 of a new bounty hunter faction and 1 of the player faction)
The bad news is that inserting the mission changes the story line in such a way that some saved games won't allow you to progress (or may crash the game when loaded). The saved games affected are ones at the start of the "mine field" mission. So - if you are affected by this - hop onto the forums and let me know if you would like me to fix up your saved games and I will be happy to do so. If this is a big issue I'll prep some saved games along the different story segments to minimize the impact. So let me know.
The other bad news is that the new mission isn't complete - in terms of the enemy ships the player fleet faces (they don't have larger craft yet). But I wanted to put it in now due to the save game disruption - the sooner the better in terms of affecting future content. At the moment I don't forsee any future story splices in the future - so all future content should be added to the end without disrupting saved games.
Hope you guys are enjoying the game and as always thank you for supporting the project.
Paul
Void Destroyer - Early Access - the past 47 days
In that time (47 days) here is what we accomplished:
- 5 new ships
- 3 new bases
- 3 new stations
- 2 new music tracks
- Over 1.5 hours of game play - over 10% of story/mission game play time added
- New character portraits
- Much improved flight control/mechanics
- New way of mining asteroids (via a new mining ship)
- Assault platforms - long range offensive artillery
- Much improved controller/joystick support (Xbox 360 controller fully supported for flight)
- Over 25 crash bugs fixed - numerous other issues resolved
- 20 Steam Keys given out in thanks to player assistance in finding crash bugs
- 57 builds uploaded to Steam
Looking back at the past month and a half, The Steam community has been incredible. You have shown great support for the project with your feedback, ideas and criticism. With you the project has been greatly improved. With your continued support this is just the beginning.
Now that the initial spike of issues has subsided focus is being changed to new story content and game play improvements. Your feedback has made it clear that the areas to focus on are control/input, user interface and improving the look and feel of Tactical mode.
Please continue your strong support - check back often - Early Access is an incredible opportunity to make this project exponentially better experience.
Once again, thank you all for your trust and support.
Paul
PS: For more info on recent updates:
- See the project's Steam build patch notes
- For what has been done since October 19th, 2013 see Iteration 19 Change Log
Quick update
I just uploaded a new build - it has the majority of the new mission/story content (extending the game by at least an hour). To ensure you get the proper game play experience - reload a save game prior to entering the last gate.
This weekend I will be working on some of this content, though in mostly minor fixes and tweaks (the same goes for all other story/mission content and game play elements as we go through Early Access to Release) - I uploaded it now (while there eare still tweaks to do) because I'm greatly looking forward to your feedback on it (and it has a bunch of bug fixes). Along with tweaking the main story/mission game - I'll be adding at least two instant action scenarios that will feature the backstory of something you get during the new story content :)
thanks!
Paul
Happenings
Current happenings:
I just (tonight) did some work on the research system, to allow for new ships/stations to be researched in the new story content, and added support for bases that aren't carved into asteroids (yesterday), and added (few days ago) mining ships (versus the rock retrieval drones already in the game) to the game and a mechanism of how they deliver the ore chunks back to your base (via those relatively unused transfer platforms). Before that I updated turrets that are "physical objects" in game - before turrets were basically just a visual - you could fly right through them - in the case of small ship turrets this wasn't an issue, but there are now offensive and defensive turret platforms that are downright mega. Marine ships got a bit of an intelligence boost - they will line up to invade bases versus their previous - me first approach.
Also in some other news I (believe) that I improved flight mechanics - ships should "slow turning" in a more improved way, yet still obey their "physical" capabilities and limitations. Basically dog fighting in fighters should feel more responsive. I write "believe" because when play testing I can't quite nail down the change - but the code is improved and it "feels" better. Looking for feedback on this, so if you have some thoughts let they be heard.
Will continue working on polish, bug fixes and additional story content. Also now that the Steam Early Access spike has turned into a valley I'm re-focusing on art polish and assets - WIP story character portraits have been added with final assets coming in soon.
thanks for supporting the project!
Paul
New content
I wanted to set this up and get rid of the previously empty sector - because it felt too anti climactic as an end of the current content and leave things a bit more open ended.
The new content is about 10% complete. So far 3 new ships, 3 new bases, and 1 new platform have been added, arranged in a new map. The map is mostly complete, but needs more scripting (dialog, missions, cutscenes), and more in game objects (mostly on the player side). Also coding needs to be done to get rid of some glaring flaws (one of them - large turrets should be "physical objects" that are destructable).
Again about 10% complete. I'm not sure you'll be able to "win" or make much progress. It hasn't been balanced yet.
The plan for the rest of the week is to focus on non-crsh bug fixes (I've been mosty focused on crash bugs) and polish from player feedback then spend the weekend finishing the rest of the new content, then repeating the cycle.
So if you make it to the end, look around and feel free to offer up suggestions in the suggestions forum.
thanks!
Paul
Plans and Support Help
Plans:
For the weekend the plan is to spend time working on new story/mission content as well as new features to support that content. If you are at the end of the current story - you might get to experience some new missions - in rough form - the difficulty might be too high or too low.
Feel free to let me know your thoughts in the Story/Mission forum.
For the week days after that, plan is to work on small (non-crash) bugs and suggestions from players on little issues that would improve the experience. For example - the map move speed in tactical mode. I'm hoping that I can alternate between story/features on weekends and bugs/polish on week days.
Support Help:
Problem: incorrect graphics settings
A new tool to make graphics issues easier to troubleshoot
Go to:
Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\VoidDestroyer
Double click on zRenderingConfig.exe
This will allow you to edit the ogre.cfg file in a graphical fashion, instead of editing via notepad, much easier.
One player reported that setting allow Allow DirectX9Ex=No to Yes solved his/her issue. The graphics card world is a wild one.
Knowing what I know now - I should have prepared a launcher that will allow you guys to set graphics settings and other options outside of the game, this will be a goal for a future update.
Problem: sound driver issues
A player (thanks!) posted this potential fix:
Go to this directory:
Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\VoidDestroyer
Right click on VoidDestroyer.exe
Click Properties
Click Compatibility
Click Run this program in compatibility mode for
Chose Windows XP SP3
These have been noted in the main support post: here
If the above helps - let me know.
thank you for supporting the project!
Paul
We survived the first day!
To highlight how great this is for the project an example - one player right clicked faster than I ever did causing a crash. This blows my mind - I've played hundreds of hours but never came across this bug and/or realized that a crash was due to the speed of right clicking.
I will continue prioritizing bugs and issues and then over the weekend most likely work on new story content. Chances are that this will be my work split - weekdays bugs and features, weekends additions/polish to the story line.
Again thank you for a great first day.
Paul