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[Noffle]

I've been a oh so long-time lurker here on the TIGsource forums. I was recently convinced that I ought to quell my inner critic's insistence that my game "isn't ready to share yet" and start a devlog here. Hi!

For the past 3-4 weeks I've been actively developing a top-down action/stealth game called Boarding Action. The content will be a mix of handmade and procedural. I've described the game's premise to others as a mashup of the things I love from Hotline Miami, Rogue, Deus Ex, and Grand Theft Auto. Er, in space. That sounds nonsensical, so maybe this is more helpful:

Boarding Action is about sneaking or fighting your way aboard space ships of varying sizes and firepower (depending on your inclination between piloting, say, a low-profile fighter or a massive battlecruiser that half the system can detect) in order to accomplish missions for different factions.

Current Status: you can board ships through their (doorless) airlocks, gun down foes that don't shoot back, and get hopelessly lost in the endless vacuum of space.

Slipped in through the open airlock of a cargo ship.


This ship was hardcoded to fire regular MG bullets, which have exactly zero effect on the cargo ship's hull.


Crates! Bullets!


Little animation of being scooped up by a fast moving space platform and pushing around some boxes.

[ryansumo]

Kinda cute.  Makes me think of the original GTAs which I loved.

[beeglebug]

This looks cool, but quite similar to Heat Signature by Tom Francis (the Gunpoint guy).

http://www.pentadact.com/2014-02-03-heat-signature-a-game-about-sneaking-aboard-randomly-generated-spaceships/

(this is not a criticism btw, just pointing out the similarity)

[Noffle]

This looks cool, but quite similar to Heat Signature by Tom Francis (the Gunpoint guy).

Hah, yeah, I've been told this by a few people now.   I've been following his blog since the days of Gunpoint, so I was definitely surprised when he first talked about Heat Signature. We ran into each other at GDC this year and got to compare notes a bit. Though our projects both share some similar mechanics, I think they'll end up being very different games. I'm excited to watch them both evolve in parallel.

[Noffle]

It's been a quiet few weeks, but I've been tinkering away on the particle engine so I can tack engine thrusters onto ships.

There was a brief period where the thrusters were actually spawning inside of the ships instead:

After some fiddling, things were in working order:

I spent a little more time tweaking the trails until they were a wee bit more subtle:

Huzzah! Now I'm rigging up controls to let the player move between character<->ship controls. Having members of enemy factions shoot back at you should come after that.