New Shield Effect and World Map

Decided to put some time into a real shield impact effect, and here's the result.

Also made the world map a bit more pleasant to use. Definitely feels at least a little prettier too.

When in local sector mode...

... and when in world map mode.

General Update - Graphics, Bugfixes, Tutorial

This is a busy time, with lots of university projects and exams coming up followed by a move to California in January, so there are my excuses for updates.

That said, I did finally make the switch to Unity's deffered rendering - it allows me to use HDR and get some proper post-processing effects. It also means I simplified all the layers and simplified the whole process. I get fancy distortion effects in return as well.

I also took a lot more time than usual to playtest the game and managed to fix a lot of bugs, including a whole rewrite of the music system. I still need a major sound pass (something I know very little about) to make it all more satisfying.

The new lighting in action, along with a much easier to follow tutorial.

Ship physics have been slightly reworked so that ramming is a more effective tactic and "grinding" damage has been reduced. You'll need to really charge your enemy to attack them, and you'll probably need to disable their engine core to slow them down and do it. Ship speed is also detached from the number of engines you have, so your ship's visual design is no longer tied to stats. It makes movement more predictable.

Station - Visiting Actions

Made a new main menu background

Of course, there should be a reason to come back home and at least visit your station. As of right now you can add a shipyard to your station, allowing you to edit your ship while in your base but also order the construction of ships to add to your fleet. They're automatically stored in your base and unmanned and cost as much as building the ship yourself. If you ever find yourself with too many credits and not enough ships, that's one way to spend them. Keep in mind salvaging ships is not 100% effective!

Build-a-ship menu, much like the ship loading in the editor

You can now also send crew home from anywhere - boarding craft will undock from your main ship and warp to your home sector or dock with your station if you're already there. Taking out crew, however, is reserved for when the player is home.

Boarding craft going from your ship to your home station

I'm also still adding upgrades and encounters to the game, optimising and bugfixing. A lot of the goals I had for stations are complete, only a few features left to implement!

Station - Away Actions

When you're not near your station you can still do most of the actions - managing ships, calling them in for backup, starting research missions or exploration missions, sending crew home or just emergency warping your fleet home. The interface is all there and the features are almost all complete.

Station Management while away from home

Starting a research project

Managing missions and ships

Research projects simply take one ship and use it to research modules and upgrades. Larger ships speed up research since you can place more crew towards the project. So far the rewards are random, but you are guaranteed an item you haven't unlocked yet.

Exploration missions are a different beast, you essentially send a fleet to do what the player does. They might come back with additional crew, might lose or gain some ships, discover new technology, etc... It's essentially like simulating a second coop player. The risk is real but the rewards are much higher than the relatively safe research projects.

Calling in backup

Backup arrives

At some point you'll find your current fleet just isn't up to par, maybe you underestimated the enemy fleet - and you'll have to call backup. If your station has the crew to man the ship, it'll be sent on it's way and warp to your location ASAP.

Just a little update - there's a lot of UI building for missions and station management in the works - not quite ready to show it yet!

Giving the player a home - Mother Base

General Update

I've got a big semester and it's not going to get any easier, that said I still try to do the most I can on this project (which is why I haven't bothered making any kickstarter or Early Access campaigns). That said, there are other delays that I have to pass through that make the release of this game difficult.

I've made some art style changes that I'm as of yet unsure of - namely much more bloom and flares using HDR cameras. This unfortunately disables the near perfect antialiasing of forward rendering and the default Ambient Occlusion of Unity. Long story short - I'll need to buy a more advanced AA solution and a much better AO solution as the default one is downright awful.

The Main Title screen will randomly choose a background. It's nice to be welcomed by a different spacescape.

Mother Base

There's nothing quite as boring as mining in space sims. So why have the player do it in a game where you capture ships and add them to your fleet? What if you capture a ship but have no place in your fleet? What happens when you rescue willing crewmen but your ship is full? The answer is the player needs somewhere to call home, some place to store resources and allow him to manage a larger fleet.

Stations are already very easy to create - just pop open the station menu, spend some credits and there it is - the default station. They're already easy to edit - since you just use the normal ship editor anyway. The infrastructure to store ships is already in place, including their configuration (mining, combat or cargo). From there you'll be able to send ships on different missions - when you discover a profitable asteroid field or a planet with valuable resources, you can start a mining mission from the menu and if you have enough ships and crew to man them, they will be sent to that destination. Or you can start a research project that requires crew to dedicate themselves to it and will unlock an item. All of these are slowly completed over the course of sector jumps (just warping to another sector moves the missions along) and have various rewards.

It's already easy to edit the stations

I'm also planning emergency station services - calling in ships to bolster your fleet in your time of need, firing a superweapon from light years away, etc... there's a lot of possibilities here and it gives the player a nice money sink. It's also pretty easy to expand the system to do a lot of things or more complicated economics. You need more crew and ships to start missions, you need a bigger station to store more ships and crew, and you need credits to make a bigger station.

After these features, it'll be time for the final stretch - the game could use some balancing and testing.

Enhanced Encounters

Exploration is pretty key to to this game, so an overhaul of the encounter system was overdue - having a single random list of encounters won't cut it.

So I got to work - encounters now are based on a main/bonus pool system. Main encounters are selected from a list of possible encounters (and are finally weighted!) and occasionally bonus encounters that spice up the gameplay a little are thrown in, like anomalies or asteroid showers, etc... The nice part of this is that suns, planets and orbits can now contribute to the pool with their own specific encounters, so a specific type of planet might now have a colony you can invest in and get some passive income from it. Encounters can also be unique so that only one shows up per solar system. The result is a much more varied and balanced experience - neutral hubs are not so rare, some quests are much more difficult to find, etc... Entering a new system is like entering a new dungeon level.

Maybe someday there will be a system for overtaking entire sectors, but those mechanics are a bit beyond me when I'm trying to rush to a release build!

Another feature I've been working on is the ability to load ship schematics. When you capture a ship, not only do you get that ship added to your fleet, but you also have its schematics added to your ship library - which means you can build it at a shipyard. So if you see a design by another player you really like, you can load it and edit it.

Of course, to make it balanced, you won't automatically unlock all the ship's weapon schematics - if you don't have a turret unlocked but the ship you're trying to load does, it won't be added to the ship when loaded.