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[Christian]

That sounds like a great idea. Would definitely make the player's ship/cyberdragon stand out from ships in other shmups and give it a more fluid organic feel. A massive energy wingspan would look pretty epic too. Would be cool if the player ship had more moving parts too, kind of like the suit from Vanquish

Will have some impressions of the new content tomorrow

Edit: could also allow for more variety in the player arsenal. Wings that freeze or leech off enemies that pass through, wings that slow down projectiles, etc.

[DarthBenedict]

Hm, damaging/disabling enemies with your exhaust definitely sounds like it could be fun.

Here's a couple more sketches for another direction I'm thinking of taking it:



Edit: And how it'd look with extended sensors + ammunition storage + rocket boosters. Gear set in the original sketch was tactical sensors + light hull + plasma thrusters:

[shs]

It looks like some kind of hideous murder monster in spaceship form, which I enjoy.

[DarthBenedict]

Sideways and backward movement:

[Arcalane]

Looks pretty good to me. I'd go with a sharp-outline/dark-center aesthetic on the blades/fins (similar to the Mass Effect omnitool) using the chosen energy colour, rather than solid metal. Or, hey, should be possible to make the component models for thrusters swap too? Lots of combination-cases to make though, so... timeconsuming.

You could also go with a fairly 'tech'-y feel for stuff like the plasma thruster/rocket booster, and work towards more exotic and organic designs for stuff you unlock down the line. The reinforced hull might simply have extra plates covering sections, but a hull that means you constantly (slowly) regenerate health could have a much more sleek organic-metal look to it. It would also give a potentially interesting sense of tech progression over the course of a game.

And if you want to easily dial up the tech aesthetic, just add some superfluous pipes and cables.

[Christian]

Saw this on the Tumblr:

It’s a monster which slept beneath the sea for millions of years, and people woke it up as a last resort when space skeletons invaded.

So not only are we playing a cyberdragon, it's essentially an awakened mech kaiju?

And the energy wing mock up looks great. Definitely had more visual flair than the current design

[DarthBenedict]

New build is up. Changelog:

Improved minimap.
Smart missiles are now better at selecting targets.
Smoother difficulty curve in early missions.
Scatter ammo for railgun.
Better autocannon projectiles.
Mines (the weapon, not the stage hazard) now deal more damage but have less ammo.
Coolant pickups are now more visible and start blinking when you reach 80% heat instead of after you’ve already overheated.
Several enemies now have headlights.
Fixed a bug which made collision damage occur repeatedly while you’re pushing an object. This makes it a lot easier to push asteroids and explosive barrels with your ship.
Physics tweaks on a few enemies.

[Christian]

Saw your recent Tumblr post. So you are still planning a Kickstarter or are you just going to do Early Access instead?

[DarthBenedict]

Saw your recent Tumblr post. So you are still planning a Kickstarter or are you just going to do Early Access instead?

Going to do early access for now. From my reading of kickstarter post mortems, I need to get better at dealing with press etc. before doing one. The game is nearly ready to go on early access, just need to do a bit more testing with the demo builds to make sure they're working as intended.

Also, I recently added a couple of joke cheats, cimenaticexperience (caps the framerate at 24 and adds ridiculous amounts of bloom) and ilikedpixelsbeforetheywerecool, which makes the game pixelated.

[Christian]

Saw your recent Tumblr post. So you are still planning a Kickstarter or are you just going to do Early Access instead?

Going to do early access for now. From my reading of kickstarter post mortems, I need to get better at dealing with press etc. before doing one. The game is nearly ready to go on early access, just need to do a bit more testing with the demo builds to make sure they're working as intended.

Also, I recently added a couple of joke cheats, cimenaticexperience (caps the framerate at 24 and adds ridiculous amounts of bloom) and ilikedpixelsbeforetheywerecool, which makes the game pixelated.

Sounds good, yeah since I'm managing the Kickstarter thread on NeoGAF, I've seen so many promising campaigns fail, and a lot of it comes down to exposure and media attention

Oh, and an unrelated side note, thanks for sharing about the TwitLonger. That was very useful

[Christian]

Just saw this is on Steam now. Congrats for finally getting on there and just in time for the Summer Sale! Posted my impressions in the Steam forums, so hopefully that interests some people

Do pre-Steam buyers get a Steam key?

Oh, and on your site? If you wanted to change it, my name is Christian Valentin. Probably looks better than "cvbxsta"

[DarthBenedict]

Thanks, and yes I'm working on setting up a page on the site where you can put in your pre-steam key and get a steam key. Might take a few days because I'm not great at sql/php.

Also, the demo is now on steam so you won't have to download the whole thing again every time I update.

Here's a bunch of gifs to celebrate:

[DarthBenedict]

Redid the smoke trails on swarm missiles, should have better performance plus I prefer how it looks now:


(click for HD webm)

[DarthBenedict]

New build is up on steam (demo here)

It adds a weapon mod which makes charged weapons automatic:

(webm 1) (webm 2)

Other changes:

You can now rebind controller triggers.
Physics tweaks to make player more agile.
Medium and Mega warheads on missiles/bombs/mines have a bigger blast radius.
Flak shells move slightly faster.
Only one sniper spawns at a time on wave 3 of phobos.
Fixed some bugs with joining passworded servers
You can now delete saved builds.
Some fixes to linux gamepad input.
New ammo type for autocannon and flak cannon which fires three projectiles.
Swarm missiles now look nicer and have slightly better performance.
Better sparks on explosions.

[DarthBenedict]

Also, forgot to mention: if you have one of the old beta keys, you can now get a steam key with it here

[DarthBenedict]

Just realized that I've been forgetting to post updates here, there's a fair bit of progress since the last post:

Latest update:
-Improved effects for missiles, tactical nukes, autocannon, flak cannon, howitzer and railgun (plus a few enemies).
-Fixed a bug that made explosions not apply physics force.
-Fixed some problems with joining LAN games through the browser.
-Made radioactive zone and deep space look nicer.
-It’s now possible to launch the game by clicking join game from people who are in servers on your steam friends list. It doesn’t work doing it from the in game overlay yet, only if you’re not running the game when you start (it’s using command line args).
-Missiles have better AI.
Some tweaks to weapon balance, enemy stats and enemy spawns.
-Multiplayer menus now give a bit more info about whether your server will be easy to connect to (if you’re hosting) and an error log when you try to join games and it doesn’t work (if you’re joining).
-Made custom mouse input to help ensure that the player never accidentally clicks outside the game.
-Controller detection tweaked to reduce the chance of the game thinking you’re using one when you aren’t.



Previous update:
-Fixed a bug which sometimes made the player not gain control after spawning in multiplayer.
-Enemies with multiple machine guns can no longer fire invisible bullets in co op.
-Enemy rocket artillery now looks cooler.
-Some weapon balance improvements for deathmatch.
-Improved bullet sprites for certain ammo types.
-Tweaked enemy spawns in earth, phobos and asteroid field.
-Plasma ammo moves faster but deals a little less damage.
-Tactical nukes move much faster.
-UI now scales when screen width goes below 1280.



The one before that:
-Fixed problem which was making clients overpredict with high ping, multiplayer should look a lot smoother and have less rubber banding now.
-Fixed jittery trails on swarm missiles in multiplayer
-Reinforcement counts and boss health bars now work in co op.
-Switching which player to spectate in multiplayer is now a lot more reliable
-Fixed excessive screenshake in spectator mode

[suny]

Good work!
I love the homing missiles animation: it's very nice and energetic.

[outlandishPIXEL]

Looks awesome

[DarthBenedict]

Minimap now works like the aliens motion sensor. This makes it a lot harder to play the game through the minimap, which was often effective but not all that much fun (I find the biggest balance problem in SP/Co op games is when you have a boring but effective tactic that discourages people from playing in more enjoyable ways). It still works pretty well for finding the last couple of enemies or hunting down snipers/artillery.

[GrahamOfLegend]

Dude, this is looking awesome! Gonna get my hands on it soon