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[orseoste7o]

As trying to balance my university degree and game development continues, I've ticked off another few small things off of this week's checklist.



Since last post I've added a checklist for the ship editor, informing the player about what their ship is missing and what it needs.



Lots of work has been done on the oxygen system. The system works with 'no oxygen here' tiles being spread from breaches. These tiles direct crew back to the original breach, and have a strength based on how far away they are from the original breach. They overwrite other tiles with a weaker strength or that have been plugged. There's a bug right now with adjacent tiles sometimes constantly overwriting each other when all breaches have been sealed, resulting in this weird flickering effect, so that's something I'm going to tackle today, if I have time. I also plan on juicing up the ship editor with particle effects, for selling and buying parts.

Finally I've also finished porting ships health and rotation from the editor to in-game, and fixed a bunch of minor bugs with bullet collisions.

From here on out I think I might start posting less frequently, but with considerably larger posts. Quality > content. Till next time!

[orseoste7o]

Right, so this last week has been completely full on with uni, it's that time of year where all the last assignments of the year get piled on to you (plus exams) but being the time management wizard I am I somehow made the time to finish up the functionality for the ship editor! Excluding crew upgrades, but that is next. I've added polish, particle effects, the ability to refund the entire ship, along with labels for mousing over some elements. I also tested adding a bloom shader for a brief moment, you can see how well that went on my twitter.







Next up is polishing up the in-game UI and grew upgrades. Considering how full on my uni workload is right now, I'm unsure how long it'll be until the next update. In the next week or two most likely. Till next time!

[orseoste7o]

Hi all! Been flat out with uni lately, but I have had some time to work on this. Should be done with everything uni in 2 weeks time, so I've got that to look forward to. These last few weeks I've been making lots of minor fixe and tiny modifications, nothing screen shot worthy. I also finally implemented importing the ship from in-game, so now you can design a ship, fly it around and get it blown up, then port it back into the editor to fix it up.



Till next time!After my exams I should be able to commit to this project with a lot more time.

[orseoste7o]

My composer just finished the game's theme, this would play in the main menu. Check it out!

https://soundcloud.com/nickmanser/01-in-space-no-one-can-hear-your-theme

I personally love it, it fits perfectly. Let me know what you think!

[orseoste7o]

A week left till my last exam! Then it's time to really double down and get a demo out there. I have, however, had time to implement a FTL style sidebar for crew selection. These cards display health, upgrades, and flash red when the crew member is in danger. You can click on each card to toggle that crew members selection on and off. I'm really happy with it!

[orseoste7o]

EXAMS ARE OVER. I will now be able to fully commit my time to Captain Forever. Just this week end I've made steps towards getting the final UI functionality in the game so I can concentrate on balance and content. New to Captain's Way are 'set' and 'go' buttons for crew positions like in FTL, a crew selection side bar and alerts for breaches/no pilot etc.



Next up is manual enemy targeting for crew members, hiring crew in the ship build screen and adding more variety to space decals, so you have more to look at than planets nebula and asteroids.

[orseoste7o]

Spent the last few days working on crew management in the ship building screen. You can heal crew (it costs more to heal the more hurt they are), and buy upgrades for them. I am yet to decide whether or not you can hire crew in this screen, as the entire goal of the game is going to be get as many crew members through a system as possible. If you can, it would be for a huge amount of money. There will also be the chance of picking up crew members from debris at the end of a round.

[orseoste7o]

Hi all! Sorry for the lack of updates, I just got back from a week long trip with some uni friends. Keen to get back into it though! Here's what I've accomplished in the few days I've been back.



I've implemented persistent crew between ship building and combat, which is pretty huge. Crew upgrades themselves are mostly implemented in game too. All that's left to do on the crew front is showing crew upgrades on their cards in game, finish the rifle upgrade, add a much greater variety of crew looks (female crew) and add for the chance to pick up crew at the end of a round. I've decided against having the ability to buy crew. Crew member names are taken from a array which you can add to by backing a certain on kick starter when it happens :D Next on the agenda is adding greater variety to the enviroment and background decals. Not far from a playable alpha now!

Till next time.

[orseoste7o]

Finished adding more crew variety! Hopefully having unique crew members with individual names and upgrades will make it more devastating when you lose one, as you will largely have the same crew from start to finish of each play though. You can also see the alerts in the top left corner, and upgrades in the crew cards under the crew member's health bars. In both screen shots only the captain has been upgraded.

You can also see I've started work on more background variety, with broken parts and the moon in the second screenshot.

[orseoste7o]

Good news everybody! I've just reached a pretty huge milestone in regards to the game's development today. All the game's featured, like the crew, the sidebar, oxygen breaches, boarding, enemy ships and fighters, ship construction nebula the list goes on and on, are done. Everything I would list as a feature on the game's store page is fully implemented, and as far as I can tell, bug free.

Part of why it's taken so long to get to this point is programming everything in a way that would make it easier to add content later. This means going out of my way to create template objects, and setting up enemies in a way that I can easily duplicate enemy ships, for example, and customize everything I need to in order to make a brand new ship in it's create event. There is of course some brand new things I'll need to add later, like level generation, boss ships, neutral monsters, completely new types of ship parts but up until the kickstarter I should be able to rapidly develop content until the game's meaty enough to be fun, non-repetitive and I'll be able to make a nice trailer out of it.

So that's whats next! Nothing but content, new environments, new enemies, new ship parts. It feels like I'm finally actually making a game, not a engine. Exciting stuff! This also means I can finally get around to balancing everything too, right now all kinds of broken.

Until next time! Let me know if you have any suggestions, for anything!

[orseoste7o]

Right in the thick of it now! I've been bug fixing and content adding non stop the last few days. I've started implementing healing pads for your ship, neutral mines, interior turrets, improving enemy ship AI, implementing more enemy types, and adding new types of enemy weaponry (watch out for gas canisters being shot into your ship! Undecided whether or not they go through walls, but if they do it's via space magic).





EDIT: Gas ships and the canisters they shoot

[orseoste7o]

Healing pads and interior turrets are now in the game! This screenshot is a bit old, the healing pads are now blue to better contrast with crew members. Healing pads heal at a slightly faster rate than crew can suffocate, yet take damage when a crew standing on a pad is being shot at by a boarder.

Interior turrets are squishier than crew members, yet shoot at a slightly faster rate than crew (unless they're upgraded). Boarders prioritize turrets over crew.

I've also finally started to tweak and balance item costs, weight, booster power, and the damage and health of both enemies and your weapons. Obviously there's a lot of variables to get right so it'll be a looong time before I get it in that sweet spot but for now engagements last long enough and enemies are dangerous enough for battles to be lots of fun. I had a great moment when everything came together the other day, I was trying to rotate my ship to keep enemy ships in range of my remaining broadside turrets, with only half my boosters left, while trying to avoid mines. At the same time I was also balancing choosing which crew to heal, which to fight boarders, and which breaches to seal first. All the while fighters and bombers dog fight around the ship. Thank god I implemented a pause mechanic.  

[orseoste7o]

I've really managed to smash out my to-do list for this week, I've got so much done :D I've implemented more background variety with suns (as seen above), different planets and wreckage, continued to balance everything, finally implemented random systems so asteroid fields, nebula, planets and mines are all placed randomly. AND I've made huge progress on the game's enemy wave system.

Each system you warp into has a max 'danger' value, and a certain amount of points. All enemies, boarders, fighters, and ships have danger values. More deadly enemies have higher danger levels. It costs the enemy's danger level points to spawn in enemies. At no point will the game spawn in enough enemies that the sum of their danger levels is larger than the system's max danger. When the system's points are depleted, the game stops spawning in enemies and you win the round. This has proved be a great way to allow me to easily manage the game's difficulty + difficulty curve.

I figured I should start making more of a effort to market this, so I've also started work on a trailer, which is around 65-70% done now. I just need to polish up the ship builder some more, add some more enemy variety then I'll be able to truly show you what this game is all about!

EDIT: My brother just had the brilliant idea of ship breaches being a source of impulse, same as boosters. It makes all the sense, with the air escaping your ship propelling it along, and could end up in awesome emergent gameplay (a breach sending you into a mine for example). Also shouldn't be hard to implement. So that's what I'm working on next :D

EDIT: Done 

[orseoste7o]

First trailer!





Hopefully you can see what the game is really like from this. Let me know what you think!

[orseoste7o]

It's been a hectic last few days but I've managed to make time to implement two new enemies:


Torpedo ships, which are long ranged and squishy. These launch torpedos, slow moving, dodgable projectiles that explode on impact damaging multiple parts similar to mines.


And 'gas ships' (working title) which shoot gas canisters at your ship which penetrate walls through space magic and spead poison gas in your ship in a small area.

Next I might add more weapon part variety. Let me know if you have any ideas!

[orseoste7o]

Hi guys! Made heaps of progress in terms of new weapon parts and implementing neutral space monsters.



You can see this ship is equipped with a railgun, and two scatter blasters. Essentially in CW a rail gun is a spaceship sniper rifle and scatter blasters are shotguns. You can also see I've started to implement enemy indicators for enemies outside the screen.



Space sharks! These guys swim? around biting chunks in your ship and your enemies.

I'm running short of other enemy monster ideas so if you have any ideas about what might be fun in this game let me know.

[orseoste7o]

Hope every had a merry Christmas! Quick update on what I've been doing in the short time I've had between social engagements; work on the progression of the game and main menu (being able to continue or start a new game), work on shark and enemy ship AI so they fight each other,some minor balancing and polish and started work on the graphics for some new monsters and ship parts.

By the end of January the goal is too have at least 3 types of enemies, sharks (done), some kind of fighters and some kind of boarders. I also have ideas for new types of environmental hazards such as black holes that curve your bullets and space gems your bullets and maybe lasers reflect off of. Next on the parts list are blow torches (my version of flame throwers), repair bots and reflector shields. I hope to also add some new minor enemy ship variations too.

[YellowAfterlife]

This is cool, briefly reminds me of both FTL (crew control, boarding) and Captain Forever (ship building, flight). I assume that it will be either very fun or very confusing (due to having to both pilot ship and manage crew actions).

Also slightly curious about the technical side of this, but can't make any guesses.

[orseoste7o]

This is cool, briefly reminds me of both FTL (crew control, boarding) and Captain Forever (ship building, flight). I assume that it will be either very fun or very confusing (due to having to both pilot ship and manage crew actions).

Also slightly curious about the technical side of this, but can't make any guesses.

Thanks! The few people that have play tested it do get a little overwhelmed at first when there's a lot going on, piloting your ship while commanding crew to heal/seal breaches/fight enemies but when they get the hang of using the pause button to command crew (As in FTL) they get into the swing of things and have lots more fun. I'm actually considering forcing players to pause the game in order to move crew, so they get forced into playing the game at the same rhythm they do when they get used to it. But then again, part of the fun and what makes the most stories is when the player misses something, like a boarder about to destroy something particularly vital or a weak block about to be destroyed and it all spirals downhill from there.

The technical side of this is quite weird haha. Essentially there is actually 2 player ships, an invisible 'ghost ship' always at a right angle in the top left corner of the room, and a 'real' physics ship the camera follows about the  level. Crew pathfinding, combat, breaches and everything 'in ship' all happens in the ghost ship so I can use stuff gamemaker's built in path finding functions (which I couldn't if I was having crew move about in a moving, rotation ship built out of physics fixtures). When blocks are created for the ghost ship, they create fixtures on the physics ship object.
The ghost ship then draws all the blocks and the crew and bullets on to the physics ship.

A downside of this is I have to convert enemy bullets locations to be relevant to the ghost ship and then test for collisions with blocks there and stuff like that.
I think that pretty much sums it up though, I hope that makes sense :D Here's a screenshot to show what I mean.



Here I turned on the debug grids for the ghost ship, and got the crew to draw themselves at their actual locations on the ghost ship, and also at the physics ship. The red square is the ship's center of mass, and the red circle is the mouses location relevant to the ship, for crew selection and what not. It's all quite convoluted and abstract but honestly I couldn't think of any other way I can achieve what I have in gamemaker.

[orseoste7o]

Hi all, sorry for the lack of updates recently. I've been flat out with things for new years and Christmas  and I haven't really had time to take a breather, and get some nice relaxing (not really) game dev done. In the few short breaks I have had, however, I've made lots of progress towards there actually being persistent progression through the main menu and actually being able to have play through through multiple systems with the same ship and crew. I've also made steps towards adding more monster,part and enemy variety.



Pictured is a few new monsters, new smaller drone like enemies, and the blow torch / reflector shields and repair bot part.