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[PetSkull]

Today I finished the main menu for the game. Every time the game starts it will present a new planet and colors to match it.

[PetSkull]

Things dont always go so fast as I like. I'm creating this game in my spare time, and sometimes I just can't find minimum 1 hour where I can do more on my game. I have set that as a minimum. If I can't do 1 hour worth of work, I shouldn't start at all. Those days I revisit or add new tasks to my hacknplan project instead.

But I did manage to add the Shipyard and Ship upgrades to the landing pads. Now you can exchange your ship with another with better performance or cargo capacity and you can upgrade the different systems on your ship.



Next will be adding missiles and mines to the game. Once these are in place, I'm going to add them to the NPC's defence behaviour.

I also started the process of getting a Steam page setup. I've filed the initial paperwork and are waiting for confirmation from Steam. When this is ready, I will go on the hunt for a great name for the game, since Trading Tycoon is already taken (domain wise). So if any of you have an idea for a name for the game. Please don't hesitate to throw them in here

[KPas]

I'm curious where this leads to!

... and some suggestions to play around:
- Stardust Tycoon
- Trades In Space

[PetSkull]

Thanks KPas - I kinda like the Stardust name

[PetSkull]

Today I stumpled across some of my early code and had that "WTF?!" thought Crappy, dedundant code for shooting off weapons - Made for the player and totally unusable for the NPC's, so I had to rewrite it. But now I can extend it with new weapons without adding exstra code. I like it!

The reason I saw this code, was because I wanted to implement the first "dumb" missiles in the game. These missiles don't have a target to chase. They'll just fly straight and try to bend towards magnetic objects (including the player himself!). When they run out of fuel, they'll explode, and will hit any bystanders.

And I changed the smoke particles a bit. I like them better this way.


Sorry for the choppy gif. Don't know what happened when it came to Imgur.

[PetSkull]

All weapons have now been added to the game. Last but not least, the mine. The mine will after deployment, seek nearest magnetic source and when close, it will start to shake and ultimately explode. On explosion it will deploy a number of high speed darts, which flys off in every direction, dealing a great deal og damage (not shown in this GIF)

Right now my project plan looks like this for the first milestone:

Estimated tasks : 100
Closed tasks : 72
Remaining : 28



I've planned with 4 milestones, so the "30% done" is my best bet.

[Undomi12]

very nice! i like the planet generator addition and the warp animation. the warp  is nice and solid. isn't dizzying.  also like the large variety of ships you've added.

[PetSkull]

Thank you for the kind words - It's comments like that, which boosts morale and keeps us going.

I got around to add the darts to the mines. And a word of caution. Don't stand too close to a shaking mine. It'll hurt you - A lot!



With the basic core mechanic for ships done, I can now concentrate on implementing the other NPC types. Pirates and police will be fun to create, so they are on top of the to-do list.

[PetSkull]

Some time ago I was working on changing the spaceship generator, so ships has a little more detail and wasn't so wide. I never got around to show the result 



These are "size 7" ships. The generator can go from size 3 to size 21, where 21 is really big cruisers. My idea is that the big cruisers always will be accompagnied by smaller escorts for defense.

[fearless_donut]

Hi. I like your game.

Here is some flow of my mind, don't take it seriously.

Do your ships have monolite graphics? I mean it would be nice to support partial damage like breaking some parts off the ship or something.

It'll be great if you could add some land operations - landing in random point of a planet, then using some small portable vehicle to discover places, gather resources - it can add some very interesting cases like searching for fuel in the middle of wastelands.

How is it going with world dynamic? Do you plan to make different factions that will fight over the planets(like in SPAZ)? Can you change world's global state by your small actions?  I think this is the very important moment in this kind of games.

Trading is good, but what do you think about some producing economy? - like building your own bases in random point of planet, then hiring guards to protect them. (I pretty understand that these are some crazy thoughts that's almost impossible to implement but still)

You have a lot of ships. Do you plan to make your ships unique in some way? Like 'missile frigate - very dangerous on long distances but easy to destroy in close combat'. I think it'll be very good if you can give your ships some 'personality'.

I'm not sure about this but by looking at gifs your ship have very plain controls. What do you thing about adding some non-linearity to it? Adding some acceleration and inertion can improve player's experience.

I'd recommend you to look for some free metal/technical textures. You have a very nice ship generator, but plain textures look a bit shabby and out of style imo. While your landscape is in pixel style, your ships look more like vector graphic(yea, i know it's a hard topic for us programmers). And may be you should use more neutral colors for ships(but i'm not sure - it may be a good psychological attack to dye some heavy warship in pink...)

This game somehow reminds me of Dune2.

[PetSkull]

Hi fearless,

I really appreciate your thoughts on my game, and I'll try and answer your questions below

The ships won't be breakable - Until they explode completely.

Land operations. I've only planned for mining operations, where you can build a mining facility and let it mine until it's warehouse is filled up. You can then collect the materials mined and sell them on markets (you will be notificed by the mining operator when its ready to have a pickup). But I like your idea of land based vehicles

I haven't given any thoughts to global changes, other than prices on markets and on stock exchange - Which will be influenced by supply/demand. But stock markets will change according to which type of new systems will be explored.

Producing economy - I have this idea that you should be able to "own" new star systems - But I haven't given the idea much thought yet.

I see what you mean about the many ships - That all look more or less the same. I'm trying to group the ships into different types:
- Traders
- Police
- Pirates
- Carriers
- Escorts
And their sizes will fit the type - As in a pirate ship is normally small and fast, and a carrier is large and heavy and can be accompanied by small fast escorts. Police ships will only occur in goverend systems and will guard the landing pads and surounding areas.

Trading ships will try to either flee or defend themselves on attack, pirate ships will go for the lesser protected ships, so yes, each type has it's own personality based on their type.

The ships are controlled by accelleration/deceleration, and in the beginning I had newtonian psyshics, but I removed it, as I felt it would be too difficult for players to steer correctly. So I settled for a simpler control scheme.

I will look into the possibility to add textures to my ship parts and tone down on the coloring. I hadn't giving it any thoughts that it might look stupid to fly in a pink space ship, but now that you mention it, I can see the silliness 

Thank you very much for your comments!

When my first milestone for the game is done, I'll upload a demo of it on my itch.io page.

[fearless_donut]

When my first milestone for the game is done, I'll upload a demo of it on my itch.io page.

Hey, that's great. I'll wait for it.

[PetSkull]

I've recorded a small video showing off some the features in my prototype. Hope you like it

[nkm]

Well done, that looks impressive! Kind of like a 2D No Man's Sky? (no offense).

The top down view reminds me a bit of Raid over Bungeling Bay, an old-time favorite.

[PetSkull]

None taken - Glad you like it.

Funny you should mention Raid on Bungeling Bay, this was also one of my favorites as a kid. I've actually made a browser version of the game here - Well only the concept: http://www.ngames.dk/games/evilislands/ (Press H ingame to see controls)

[nkm]

Ah nice. Smooth game.

[pelle]

I like the look of this.

Ships might need a bit more character to make the different classes different?

[PetSkull]

Thanks! - I've already added a task to my project plan that ships need yet another iteration - To diversify them and give them more character. Hopefully this weekend I can give it some care

The challenge of being and indie dev in your spare time. Sometimes spare time is so sparse that I hardly get anything done. Days can go by without any progress. I've tried to cut up my tasks in features so small, that I can do and close them within 2 hours. This gives me the sense on progress every time I work on my project and also makes me think about how I want to implement a given feature, as I'm cutting the features into so small tasks.

[nkm]

Know what you mean. Spare time is very sparse due to my day-time job and family obligations (2 kids) 

I always try to make sure that I know what to do next so that when I have some time I can be productive right away.
And just be patient and work with small increments. Which is not bad per se as you are forced to reflect on your work a bit more and you can't rush things.

[PetSkull]

Today I tinkered a bit more with the spaceship generator. I've adjusted the color scheme, and added textures for some of the ship designs:



No more pink ships