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[KPas]

Sorry to say it, but I don't like the monitor effect, or the green color for that matter. How about it, if you made it a darker gradient of your current FOW color ?

That Wing Commander reference was most of all provoking, I guess. I wasn't sure about it.
After some trial and error with patterns and colors I got to this one:

[KPas]

A new demo version has been uploaded.
I said good bye to the rotating camera and there is a tutorial now.

Download on itch.io

[KPas]

In the last weeks I was working on the sound system and on the sounds also. I needed a better type of sound emitter in order to attach persistent sounds to objects. I'm using sound loops and repeatedly played sounds for this purpose.

At the moment I'm setting up the steam page which is a kind of unpredictable process regarding the uploads ... Anyway! I made an actual gameplay trailer therefor. That video lets you gain an impression of the new sound.

[PetSkull]

I like how the sounds shifts from side to side when you move around. And the atmosphere is kinda creepy 

[KPas]

The Steam store page is ready for now. It's a Coming Soon page with the common release date: TBA. A feature section and perhaps a few GIFs are still missing.

I wrote a description of the game:

Savage Vessels is a rogue-like 2D space shooter with pixel-art, physics and hard survival.

Within fields of asteroids and fragmented freighters you scavenge and combat against robot vessels. At the same time you have to keep away from the strange surrounding void, that swallows up smaller masses and backs away from larger ones.

With your carrier you got into this threatening area, where hyperspace reaches into our realm. In order to escape you have to determine your location repeatedly. It's rather simple: leave the carrier, visit some navpoints, land again and move on. But the robots won't let you. So you have to arm against them by gathering and crafting.

The levels consist of crafted regions, which are combined randomly. Items and enemies are also assigned randomly to certain locations. You get used to the levels, but every replay differs, so the game will be able to kill you even after 100 sessions. By the way you can look at Savage Vessels as a spiritual successor to Teleglitch.

All native English speakers among yourselfes are invited to point out my mistakes or correct them.

Also I began to twitter, which means I will show GIFs mainly in order to reach those who may like the game and show them the way to steam. I don't want to tweet around much otherwise. That's the plan anyway.

[DanTheMan112]

I might have to play this, I'm loving the way that you designed the ships and the graphics in general. Looks very cool.

The unique weapons are something else also.

[KPas]

I like how the sounds shifts from side to side when you move around. And the atmosphere is kinda creepy 

I might have to play this, I'm loving the way that you designed the ships and the graphics in general. Looks very cool.

The unique weapons are something else also.

Thanks!
A good occasion to remember that there are others involved ...

@DanTheMan112
There is a graphic artist behind the scenes. I redirected the bigger part of your comment.

@PetSkull
For now I'm using free sound assets from A Sound Effect and Freesound. I only edit this material for my own purposes.

[Ramos]

Good visuals, the theme is very solid, gj on that

[KPas]

Good visuals, the theme is very solid, gj on that

Glad to read that!


Most lately I tried to interface my game to steam ... Ok, it's my own fault to code myself and to not use, e.g., Unity. Furthermore it has been kinda reckless to not get used to C++ but to Pascal. Anyway the steam overlay is showing up for now.

Regarding visuals, almost all of the item graphics have been redrawn:



Ingame preview:

[KPas]

Accessing Steamworks
In order to use many common Steam features you have to pass in a C++ class as an argument. It wasn't that easy to mimic a C++ class in Pascal, but it's doable. I wasn't confident first, but at that moment when it turns out to work ... (I guess almost all of you know what I mean.)

Map HUD
The player can't see what's in the shadow-of-view. But those invisibel parts are overlayed (in terms of a HUD) if the player has seen them already:



I decided to take that map HUD away from the player or rather restrict it to usual map mode because it counteracts the atmosphere. This gadget is more comfortable than necessary in early levels. Later, when situational awareness becomes really important, the player will be able to craft an appropriate device.

Aggressive play style
Not everyone likes it to retreat from enemies all the time and to lure them into the void or hazards.
So I added a tool called "salvage ram" (which every scavenger relies on). It drives out by leap and has a low rate of fire. It only deals a little damage and a little momentum, but it's available all the time.

[KPas]

I'm working on levels 3-6, weapons and enemies. Here's a snippet of ingame action:



In this scene the player uses a boltgun and a grenade launcher. The opponents are misusing their tools: boltguns (weaker models) and welders. The environment consists of ice.

[KPas]

Loot boxes in outer space

Up to now items have been distributed separately to spawners. They can be bumped by enemies, shockwaves etc. Though they are placed in niches, they can drift away in some circumstances and end up in the void, which is unfair. Moreover the amount of items is going to rise, so that far more than half of the spawners would be occupied.

In order to solve these problems I introduced loot boxes. They appear as clusters of flotsam without collider and can contain several items. From a distance they are lettered "Flotsam". When the player comes near enough to pick up items, he sees that one item being atop within the cluster. Every second the first item joins the end of the queue and the second item rises. So the player is able to view all items step-by-step if he wants to. But usually the player presses SPACE and picks up all items at once, so that the flotsam vanishes. If the player's inventory is nearly full, one or more items may remain and the flotsam too.

The player can't create flotsam. When he drops items, they always appear drifting separately. If these items end up in the void, the players has to blame himself, not the game. And that is - to bring it back to the beginning - the difference between fair and unfair I think.

[fearless_donut]

Hey, nice progress. By the way, what do you think about making item's text a bit more stylish? Right now it looks like it is
a part of physical world(i mean in real world you can't actually meet a barrel with a text 'oil drum' floating above it ).
I think it's a good spot to apply some imagination here(like showing some kind of scanner, which shows item's name on getting close to it, or maybe using some kind of sci-fi fonts, or letter by letter text appearing animation).
Otherwise very good style(well, i've already said it earlier). Watching your game's screens gives me imagination to enhance my own game 

[KPas]

Good point. Thanks for the hint, fearless_donut, and thanks anyway!

[KPas]

After 5 months the demo was outdated. A new one is available on itch.io.

First of all some in-game action ...




Let me address two improvements here: the Void and the UI.

The void has been too dangerous. When swallowing up an object the black "tongue" often used the victim as an extension and catched other objects which actually have been in quite safe positions. This was unfair. As you can see this no longer happens.

I wanted to concentrate some essential infos close by the player's ship. Now you can read magazine state and reload duration from the line-of-fire. HPs are displayed close behind the ship to the left.

[KPas]

Using oxygen cylinders as rockets


Shooting ball-lightnings

Levels 4-6 are ready regarding locations and enemies. Ready for now, you know.

I'm not yet able to determine the amount of specific items for each level. Before I can get a feel for this I have to define all the blueprints for weapons, devices and so on. I guess once the levels are done I have to go back through the levels and to spread all the items by instinct.

And I still don't know how to pass lore to the player; cutscenes, log entries, ingame messages ...

[KPas]

So finally there's an intro in the game. It's a post-loading screen intro.
I want to have background, (more) atmosphere and story. And an intro plays a certain role in this plan.

[Panurge]

This looks awesome, really nice crunchy feel. (Also, I've PM'd you!)

[KPas]

This looks awesome, really nice crunchy feel. (Also, I've PM'd you!)

Thanks again at this place!


Still trying to integrate story and lore.

Imagine the scenery: there's a data storage device drifting through the level. You grab it and find a note, message or record on it. A text overlay appears and you read it. -- This isn't what I want.

Also I don't want to lay down all the stories in many words, but rather to suggest what's going on.

At the moment I'm trying to attach the telling to letterings and descriptions. I'm not sure if it works, but here's the idea regarding map letterings: certain level formations get striking names. Small notes are added to some of these names (observations, questions etc.) Step by step the player absorbs all the hints and get's an idea what happened and what's going on. At least I hope so.


The formation "Gaping Mouth" has a note attached to it: "All the flotsam seems to be recent"


By the way, I didn't introduce letterings for the purpose of being lore carriers. They are actually meant to help the player recognizing and remembering the level's structure.

The following image shows 2 groups of formations. These groups are pre-defined and fixed.
1. Smoker, Lighter, Astray
2. Underworld, Volcano, Dragon, Phoenix


Sorry, no notes here. WIP.

The groups aren't marked as groups of course. The player has to assign each name to a certain group by his own efforts. This "work" isn't that hard because the names have something in common.

[KPas]

I concentrated on weaponry recently. Among other things it resulted in a new weapon: the Plasma Net Thrower.
It's kinda fancy but quite useful against many or large targets.
The net sticks enemies and asteroids together and lets them repel. The contained (green) plasma deals effective damage which can make a neat sum.