Hi Everybody!

My name is Sean, I'm a research scientist in computational engineering.  As part of this work I've learnt how to program and design algorithms.  I'm really interested in systems which have simple rules but complex behaviour...  I apply this to game design by favouring procedural free form sandbox style games over scripted stuff. 

I'm really new to this and have only got a couple of (unfinished) games under my belt. 

My blog is [url]http://sean.crossproduct.co.uk[/urk] and you can follow me on twitter @DrSeanWalton

I pushed out a big update this past weekend.

The enemy AI has been improved, and what's more is that the longer you stay in a single the system the smarter they become....  However the longer you stay in a system the higher your score multiplier becomes, so it adds a push your luck element to the game.  This is in response to a lot of the previous feedback on players not really knowing what the aim is or what to do.
 
I would love some feedback on this aspect, since it is quite tricky to balance the difficulty...  Does it push you to warp to new systems?  Are the resources too scarce or too abundant?

You can play the game here http://waltonia.co.uk/slingshot

We really appreciate the insight, and I for one don't feel the need to defend myself

So I pushed a new build up, I won't detail the changes I'd rather you just played it and saw what you thought.  All the changes are in response to your feedback, but we are no where near done.  I for one think it plays much better now, so thanks again for your play time!

It doesn't feel right to warp out of a system without defeating the boss ship of the area, especially when I know I'll never be able to go back. Do you think you'll allow backtracking for people who don't like unfinished business?

If you know the coordinates of a system you can return to it - you just don't know the coordinates of the first system   At the moment that just resets the system, in the future we will do something like save the boss health or something.  We've even been toying with the idea of some kind of time travel-side effect of warp flight element where you find ghosts of your own ship if you go back to a system, or even having a database of systems on-line where other players have visited and you get ghosts from them ala dark souls --- might be ambitious though....

What I foresee is you playing the game with a notepad and paper, noting down system coordinates, maybe you'll have your system for farming warp fuel, maybe you'll have your system where you farm gems.  Maybe players will share good system coordinates on-line, since the same coordinates give you the same procedural system.  Also before I forget I've reduced the number of planets which can spawn in a system but increased the number of enemies in the dev build, I think it helps with performance and gameplay.... I'll upload it some time this week.

The gem thing is purely random, but maybe I should make it random-but-biased towards what you have the least of....

Thanks for all the feedback, it's all very constructive and is going to be very helpful moving forward (I'm Sean by the way   )

I'm not going to respond in detail to all the feedback, for the most part I agree with it, but I thought I'd just clarify what our vision is moving forward which should answer a lot of the questions.  Also bare in mind that the version you are playing is the raw engine without the 'game' part.

Firstly you might want to read these dev logs which explain some design choices.

So everything I explain now will be explained somehow in game, we are figuring out how at the moment...

The basic premise is that you were part of some kind of expedition force invading an unknown part of the galaxy.  You warp with your fleet, but you come out of warp alone with your warp navigation systems fried.  This means the only way to navigate is to enter random coordinates into the flight computer.  At the moment the number you enter is just a seed for a random level generator, we will be making some kind of stargate-type interface for warping.  Your long term goal to find out what happened to your fleet and find a way home.  We will be dropping in scripted events every so many warps, regardless of the coordinates.

Each system you jump to has a boss ship which is spawning all the other ships.  It will be impossible to kill until you upgrade your ship...

The upgrade drops represent the 4 alchemy elements.  Each has a different effect on different systems, the columns in the UI in the bottom right represent engines, shields, and guns....  except that the black gems are just extra 'hull'  wherever you put it, think of it like you are making your hull thicker so less space for other stuff.   The red and white gems increase some value associated with the system, e.g. red - damage per bullet or white - bullet velocity.  The yellow gem changes the system in some way, e.g. the triple shot. All the gems stack so two yellows in the gun column is even more bullets  .  Based on watching ThisIsAvery play I'm going to increase the percentage effect of each gem so you notice it more.  All the upgrade UI stuff is placeholder right now.   If you get 4 gems of the same colour in a row that gives you an extra slot in one of the columns.  The reason I haven't used drag and drop is that the primary control for the game is going to be a 360 controller, there is just a chrome update related bug which killed controller support the weekend we released alpha    ..... so you use the d-pad to do your upgrades.  

I'll leave it there for now, I've made a check list for me and Barry to work through over the coming few weeks.  Thanks again!