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[zanrai]

STEAM STORE | HUMBLE STORE

STARDUST VANGUARDS is a local multiplayer dueling game in the style of old-school anime space operas, blending precision high-speed mecha warfare with overwhelming numbers of NPC reinforcements. The game launches on PC/Linux on Steam & Humble Friday, January 30th! We're a two-man team and we're really excited to get the game out and available.

The game caters to couch-multiplayer fans, and beyond the chaos of players fighting it out alongside their respective NPC troops, we also added a really cool random event system where a hostile faction of computer-controlled space pirates can appear in dozens of potential scenarios that put all players on the defensive. The pirates appear in minor ambushes, full-on blitzkriegs, transport convoys, mercenary attacks, and more, and it mixes up the flow of the fight. The pirates can even win the battle too, so brief cooperation with your rivals may be a good idea. Duels between the players still feels personal even while on a battlefield crowded with NPC squadrons, capital ships, and pirates.

 
 

As the commander of your factions army, your mecha comes equipped with an energy blade and an auto-targeting machine gun. Your gun has very limited ammo and shouldn't be too heavily relied upon. Bullets from players and NPCs can also be deflected back with your sword, so while projectiles can be powerful, using it on a rival that knows its coming could be a bad idea. Bullets serve better as an obstacle to force dodging (a wink to bullethell games). You can also boost away for quick getaways, but boosting too much can burnout your engines temporarily which puts you at a severe disadvantage against tough baddies.

The game is primarily a local multiplayer affair. We included Death Match (with custom options), Conquest (King of the Hill), and Space Ball Mode (soccer style capture the flag). We also included a shared lives cooperative mode for 1-4 players across 3 difficulties, and an endurance mode to take all 3 difficulties in one go.

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We hope you'll take a look and let us know what you think. Feel free to drop us a line on Twitter. We're really excited to finally be able to release Stardust Vanguards soon and we hope you'll tell your friends.

On Steam Store
On Humble Store
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Dev Blog - www.zanrai.com
Soundtrack Available Digitally via Bandcamp

See ya on the battlefield!

[zanrai]

Just posting a few avatar animations. Each character the player picks will react to what's going on in the battle, and each faction has its own set of animations. They were really fun to make and I think they add a bit of drama to the aesthetics in-game, outside of all the explosions everywhere. Besides, I've always been a fan of pilot cameras in science fiction.

This is your default avatar’s expression. Just calm and blinking.


Firing your Guns (or going to a rave) -


Dying - Yeah, blowing the hell up.


Static - Nothingness! (or just waiting to respawn)


Respawning - And your mecha boots right back up and you're back in the game!


And last but not least, here's a spritesheet just to see how it's all put together.

[zanrai]

Lots of balancing going on. Want to make sure the player's sword swings feel more deliberate so we're increasing the cooldown on that.

As a concession of that we've had to lower enemy fire rates just a smidge so reflecting the bullets back works how they should. Still... a lot of balancing and testing needs to go on to make sure we hit that sweet spot between deliberate and chaotic. IT gets pretty hectic with a lot of enemies on screen, but the balancing efforts we're working on makes the game feel a lot more survivable, like you're actually in control, which is nice.

And also on the docket is to get manual shielding working which we're also trying to get going. Whew! SGC2014 is our deadline to get most of this stuff in for the general public to play, which is a week and half from now, but things are looking like they'll work.

And new music! Yay! I'll post some soon.

[Sustrato]

Definitely an interesting idea. I feel like the small screen size really cuts back on the epic feel of the battle.

[zanrai]

That's a fair point. I was looking closely at the scale when I was in the prototyping phase. I know the scale isn't particularly grandiose currently, but so far with our tests this size is working for us to hit all the gameplay goals we're trying to achieve and keep the gameplay fast and arcade-like.

Though you're absolutely right, and that's a fair point. I'm looking into a few creative solutions to possibly address this while preserving the current resolution we're using. So we're looking into it and testing a few things.

I appreciate the feedback.

[zanrai]

Working on writing a little dialogue today. Nothing story heavy, but just prepping to have our radio chatter going on in the background between pilots and their allies. Nothing too sophisticated, just alerting the player when they're on their way, when they're retreating, etc. These will be heavily filtered and low-volume just to add to the atmosphere of a big battle going on.

And with our events, when a big enemy force is moving in it's just begging for a big "WARNING" voice so we're aiming to do that, too, in addition to warning the player's what event is popping up. So when an enemy VIP is passing through the area, the players will be warned ahead of time. I have about 50 lines planned already, so recording day will be crazy, excluding the utterances for the player characters, but most of them are short and sweet. So I think this should work if we aim for over the top, believable, but not too overly serious voice effects in line with something like Street Fighter II's delivery.

On top of that, we're working on a few new arenas too.

[zanrai]

Quick little snapshot of our banner for our booth at SGC next Friday. I hope it will look okay among the other indie booths at the convention! Our "booth" is rather bare bones, just this TV, four Xbox360 controllers, and the game itself. Well, and now the banner mounted to the top of the TV. Just hoping it looks decent among the other indies at the con.

[zanrai]

Here is a vine clip of our new capital ship explosions. I really think they're looking pretty cool. Sorry its blurry! I'll post a proper captured video soon, SGC prep has me moving 100 miles and hour.

Don't forget to turn on the sound!

http://vine.co/v/MU95ZqvLtPK

And yellow just owns everything.

[zanrai]

Battle line tactics are now starting to emerge which is really cool. Through a lot of tests, it's now a perfectly valid tactic to use your allies to absorb enemy bullets as you flee behind them.

On top of that, you can also protect your allies when they're making their initial charge. For instance, you can activate your own shield at the front of the pack or deflect bullets away with your shield as your allies move in. You can really do a lot to help them during these phases which is pretty cool. It allows you to use your units offensively or help them even defensively... a lot of sweet strategies are starting to develop.

In other news, we're also doing some last minute touches for our SGC showcase, more voiceover touch ups, announcer touchups, and a lot of polishing to make things pretty.

[spinaljack]

This game looks ace. I gave you a greenlight vote

[Office57]

Awesome look!
Maybe less realistic explosions would be better? Voting on Greenlight for sure!

[zanrai]

Thanks a lot.

[zanrai]

We just finished day one at SGC! The turnout at our table was great and we received a fantastic response! One thing is certain that a lot of people were only somewhat interested or intrigued when they saw the game, but a lot of people became totally hooked with the gameplay. A lot of return players and a lot of great battles going down!

Fortunately our 4 player mode is balanced almost perfectly! We'll need to balance the other modes for different players, but we're getting a lot of information and data that we already have a great idea for how to make 2 player fights feel a little more dynamic, but when four players are in the game feels really fun!

We've been capturing a ton of videos too, so we'll be posting those soon also! The con has been super busy, so once I get a chance I'll upload those videos. Some crazy strategies have emerged, but it's really cool to see how things work out that way!

So yeah, we're having a great time and if you're at SGC please come swing by our booth. We'll be playing matches all day long and would love for you to swing by! Cheers! (movies and pics are incoming later this weekend)

[zanrai]

New Battle Video from SGC2014 played by live attendees at the con! It's in 1080P and 60 frames per second.





The balancing for 4 player is nearly perfect. Our team couldn't be happier with how the game performed!

[zanrai]

And here were a few crowd reactions playing at our humble booth.





Next on our to do list is to take a little breather after the convention, and then we'll be tweaking a few things we saw in gameplay for balancing. Minor little fixes and polish.

But after the base of our game functions how we want it, it'll be level o'clock, and we'll really start cranking out new stages and gameplay modes.

[zanrai]

Our new trailer is online! Whew, crazy all the work necessary to go into a simple video. Still, marketing turns into a big deal at this phase of development.

[zanrai]

Hey starting to get a little press around the internet. It's pretty encouraging to see your work start to show up around the internet. Yay!

http://www.destructoid.com/stardust-vanguards-looks-like-towerfall-mixed-with-a-shmup-279099.phtml

[Savick]

The sudden total stops in action that you have sometimes are probably necessary, but it kills the flow of the action in my eyes. Also, grats on the press! Also also, your avatar isn't working.

[zanrai]

Hey thanks. You know we wanted a sort of slowdown on kills and we too were concerned about the flow of the action. It was something we wanted but worried about once it was in, you know? But once we had people playing this game live at a convention, we were surprised not to hear one complaint about it. In our own playtests we felt it worked, but we also worried some people might find it distracting, but out of the 100+ people that played the game, not one complaint. I think part of it is that once you're in game, that slow down is kind of a welcome respite. It actually helps players dodge a bit and make a last minute move to better position themselves. Or even to take in information survey the area.

Once you're in game, it's really not so bad, though I think both the slowdowns and the chaos can be a bit disorienting if you don't have a controller in your hands. I think the first trailer we put out showed how big (admittedly more unusual) NPC battles could get and we got a lot of flak about "How can you even play this?" But we neglected to realize when viewing the game without having played it, it could be kind of intimidating. In our new trailer we showed smaller more common kinds of battles and had a lot more success with people's reactions. I think the big battles look impressive, but I think it was a bit much to show at first. We still used those bigger battles in our new trailer but near the end once people had caught on to the fact of how the game works. Once you have a grasp of the game and you're in it playing, the slowdowns are kind of a welcome reward to almost be hyper aware of danger around you. There can be a lot of bullets on screen and those kinds of things help.

So I think the same thing is kind of going on with the slowdowns. At first glance when you're watching 4 players flying around it looks kind of herky-jerky, but once you're in game, it feels natural, almost like a visual cue that something important's happened.

And thank you for letting me know about my avatar. I think I'd gone messing with things on my site and lost it in the mix up.
 

[zanrai]

New Stage Alert. This is an Asteroid Mine themed stage with physics based asteroid hazards. They can be attacked and knocked into other players. The outer squares and the central giant asteroid are permanent fixtures in the level.

We've implemented a number of little extra assets to use as hazards and merely accessories. We also added extras like buildings in some levels which offer nothing more than something to destroy, but it helps levels feel more lived in, and it's rather fun to see all the chaos going down. As busy as a game like Stardust Vanguards gets, its important for our hazards to merely be a temporary distraction, and over time these objects will either be destroyed or knocked out of the battlefield, allowing your troops to move freely through the map.