Sunday 25 September 2016

Beta Release!

After a few intense rounds of bugtesting, the game's main campaign is now completeable (albeit only a few chapters long).

Warfleet is now available for Windows as a beta release on itch.io.

Now to work on a trailer, something I've never actually done before!

Monday 5 September 2016

Release Date and Graphics Update

I'm back, and that initial release date from 8 months ago might need a bit of revision.

In the last 8 months, the project has evolved quite a bit, mostly through balancing and bugs, but also some minor graphics features such as ship lights and UI redesign.

Piloting the ship is now much easier - it will automatically try to stay horizontal, and rolling is no longer possible. If you still want to pilot your ship like an F16, the complete flight controls are still available, but this makes for AI that keeps the ship steady and avoids crazy angles. It also makes it much easier to pilot a strange ship where the top might not be quite as obvious.

AI has gotten smarter - it won't simply target a single part of your ship, refreshing its targets every few minutes, but it's also much better at dodging other ships, keeping longer range capital ships stationary while fighters attack, and overall makes for a more fun experience.

You can add small ship lights to really make it stand out in the distance.

Also added a simple loading screen.

After the debacle that was No Man's Sky, I had to rethink what the progression in the game was and actually start adding a main campaign. It's not much, but it does show off the different unlockable features such as stations, fleets, missions and the like - enough to feel like you have a clear goal from the start to follow.

Expect more updates as we reach that initial release date. The game will first be available as a "Beta" version on that date on itch.io. Making this game has been a solo project for so long, I'm looking forward to getting any feedback!

Monday 11 January 2016

Release Date

There's been some major things happening in my life and it's forced me to set back any plans for Warfleet for at least eight months. Can't go into details, but basically - I'm set on a release date.

September 19th 2016

That's it, that's the launch date.

Tuesday 5 January 2016

Taking pictures

If I ever want to release this, I need to take pictures and I need some video for a trailer. Can't just expect people to buy the game on screenshots alone, right?

Playing through the game, taking screenshots normally just wasn't doing it - so I made a few interface shortcuts that allow you to pause the game, detach the camera and hide the UI. Let's call it Photo Mode. It really helps in showing off the game, and it's obviously available to players as well.

Warping from sector to sector
So cinematic
So comfy
Warping from solar system to solar system
As usual, bugfixing. Had to rewrite the way fleets are positioned in sectors - turns out you can't just assign a transform, use it to place objects and delete it on the same frame. Also turns out you can't just have saved files anywhere, so now they're stored in My Documents along with screenshots.