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[imaginaryrobot]

Stellar Nomad

Stellar Nomad is a single-player top-down space sandbox, in the grand tradition of the classic Escape Velocity series. I've also taken a few cues from more modern games like Elite: Dangerous.

You're plunked down in space in a tiny shuttlecraft and given very little direction; go do spaceship-y stuff! Run errands, trade, upgrade your ship, grow a fleet, be a bounty hunter, a blockade runner, a smuggler, a pirate. Join the military, or start your own faction and push for galactic dominance!

Stellar Nomad will feature several single player storylines, which you can totally ignore and go play in the sandbox instead.

Demo release trailer:

Links:

• Demo (Free!): https://imaginaryrobot.itch.io/stellar-nomad
• Homepage: https://www.stellarnomad.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stellarnomad/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/imaginaryrobot

Expected Release Schedule:

• Early Access: Spring 2019
• 1.0: Fall 2019/Winter 2020

Demo Features:

• Trading
• Piracy
• 18~ Ships Available
• 35 Star systems to explore
• 4 Active factions, whose power and influence changes over time
• Fleet customization; complete control over what ships are in your fleet and what weapons they carry
• Chill ambient soundtrack for your spaceshippin' aural pleasure

Recent Screenshots:

Current Dev Focus:

I'm working on getting the UI fully functional - almost everything is at least marginally represented in the demo, but there's a ton of QOL features that I still want to implement. Once I get that polished up to my satisfaction, I'll move on to expanding the game content. More star systems, more ships, more weapons, more stuff to do. Ship stat modifiers are already in the game, but there's no way for the player to purchase or apply them, so I'll be implementing that as well.

About me:

I've been a full-time game dev at various studios for about 10 years, but I've always wanted to ship something on my own. I loved the Escape Velocity games as a kid - played for hours, and cut my teeth on game development making plugins for EV and its sequels. It seemed fitting to create something that at least attempts to be a modern spiritual successor to the franchise; bigger, prettier, and more ambitious. Entirely too much game for a first solo project, to be honest.

I always, always, always appreciate feedback, especially if it isn't positive feedback; it helps me make a better game. Give it a try and tell me what you think!

[imaginaryrobot]

Finally got a decent gif capture/upload thing going, so here's some combat in motion:

And something a little less intense:

[imaginaryrobot]

I've been working on adding some features to the player's inventory panel:

Before

After

It's just at a mockup stage now, and I'm still figuring out a clever way to fill up that dead space at the bottom of the search options area.

The idea is, you could run a search for a planet that buys what you're carrying at the highest known price, then optionally, specify that you'd like a return product from the same system (not necessarily the same planet in that system) to a planet in your current system. You could also filter by range (I don't want to travel farther than x), faction (don't land me at a planet owned by x faction), and whether the destination planet is friendly (don't send me somewhere I have to bribe my way onto the planet).

This information is also limited by the knowledge the player already has about commodity prices; goods for planets a player hasn't ever visited won't appear in the search results.

[Zireael]

This looks beautiful!

[VitaliusSch]

So cute .. so cute!
I very like the bloom effect on the ships and the planets.
 

[imaginaryrobot]

I've been on a big user experience/quality of life kick recently, and one of the complaints i've heard fairly often is people don't always understand why they're being attacked. Certain missions have a chance of spawning enemies on the way to your destination, and sometimes the enemies that spawn don't make a lot of sense. I figured, why not have the attacking ships send you a threatening message (which pops up and pauses the game, making sure you see it)?

It's setup so that basically all the visible text and the button click callbacks are parameters passed in, so I can re-use this dialog for more friendly hails from other vessels. Like, maybe one needs repair, so they hail you? Or a ship is looking for some muscle to escort them to a different system, they might ping you this way, etc.

It isn't much today but alas, time for working on Nomad has run out until this evening

[agsoper]

This is impressive. Visually stunning and looks like a lot of fun. Keep up the great work!

[imaginaryrobot]

This is impressive. Visually stunning and looks like a lot of fun. Keep up the great work!

Thanks a bunch man! Gameplay wise it's still pretty rough around the edges but it's starting to have its moments

[ChrisCorr]

The combat is looking really punchy and the stylized visuals are helping with clarity. Really neat!

[imaginaryrobot]

The combat is looking really punchy and the stylized visuals are helping with clarity. Really neat!

Thanks, I'm working on making the combat not so brutally unfair still, lol. There'll be more strategic options in combat than 'have bigger guns' soon.

Some WIP UI stuff cause I can't seem to stop finding things that need massive overhaul/replacement in the UI:

The old mission log. Ugly and barely usable

New mission log. Still ugly, but loads more useful. The view on map and abort mission buttons are game-changers, pun intended.

[imaginaryrobot]

New update out for Stellar Nomad with tons of usability/quality of life features added.

Video overview of the major changes:

• You can now sell ships as well as buy them at the shipyard
• All ships in your fleet, plus any docked at the current station will be available to be sold
• You can now sell equipped weapons, leaving the slot empty if you desire
• Mission Log window (hotkey P) has been reworked
• You can abort missions from the log window (if the mission is able to be aborted, not all are)
• You can click ‘view on map’ to open the map to the destination system
• The inventory panel has been improved
• You can now filter your search results based on distance, faction, and whether the destination system is hostile to you
• Clicking ‘mark destination on map’ in the inventory search panel now opens the map to the specified system
• Added ‘Current Objectives’ tracker to main HUD
• The objectives are clickable, and will open the mission log to the selected mission
• From there you can read the mission text, abort the mission, or view the destination on the map
• Radar now displays uninhabitable planets as empty circles
• Radar now displays hostile planets in red
• Radar can now be zoomed
• Radar can now hide or show orbit lines in-game
• Put some sweet tooltips on the radar buttons
• Mission dialog window improvements
• Now pauses the game when it appears, and hides other UI elements
• Can now display a ship icon optionally

Download the demo here: https://imaginaryrobot.itch.io/stellar-nomad

Full patch notes here: https://imaginaryrobot.itch.io/stellar-nomad/devlog/69355/stellar-nomad-v022-released

[imaginaryrobot]

I've started prototyping a fairly hefty change to how ships detect one another in-game - currently, every ship can see every other ship by default, simply by accessing the master list of active ships in the relevant manager class.  One of the things I've wanted to add was some sort of variable sensor interference (which would be different per starsystem, and maybe there could be 'ion storms' or some other local events periodically that could temporarily increase the sensor interference in a star system).

In the new system, each ship would have a sensor range, determined by a modifiable stat on each ship, which could be negatively impacted by sensor interference in a system. Each ship would also have a heat signature stat (also modifiable through equipment) that determines how visible it is.

Above I have a quick prototype of my heat signature visualized with a gizmo, and you can see that when the ship fires its engines, the heat signature grows, and when it fires its weapons, it grows some more. I may also give the player the option to drop their shields to reduce their heat signature, while certainly introducing a bit of risk

Part of the point of this is to support a sneakier style of play and to make the player slightly less disadvantaged against the AI. It would also allow you to try and run blockades, which previously was basically impossible because you'd be immediately detected by every ship in the system.

It may end up dumb or un-fun, but it's nice to get back to working on gameplay systems after spending sooooo long on just UI

[imaginaryrobot]

Working on stealth mode effect - still need to apply it to the weapons and swap out engine particles with something subtle. It's a very basic grabpass manipulation but it sells it well in-game

[imaginaryrobot]

Just a small update today. I've added a new ship to the game, the Gryphon class frigate:

The gryphon is a medium vessel that can fill many roles; it's fairly sturdy in combat and can carry enough firepower to punch way above its weight. It also makes an excellent bounty hunting or escort duty vessel - it's quick acceleration and relatively high top speed for a ship its size makes it excel in either role. It's also a good stepping stone up to something beefier, like the Kestrel or a Condor

[imaginaryrobot]

Been doing a lot of visual polish this week - I've been sprucing up weapons VFX (not quite done, no screenshots), adding new planet models and improving the planet shaders, and I also started adding destroyed versions of ships so that after a large battle it starts to have a wolf 359 feel

Here's some new planet models with visible oceans:

I've taken some time to tune them so that they remain compatible with the game's color palette swaps, so all I had to do was swap out the model loaded for any planet that I wanted to have an ocean (roughly 50% of the inhabited worlds in-game are now using ocean meshes) and also keep the chunky aesthetic

A bunch of 'sploded ships. Still working on the glow effect for the internals of the dead ships, but I'm reasonably happy with how a system feels after a long fight (it feels messy!)

[imaginaryrobot]

Here's some of the reworked VFX and destruction I mentioned in my last post. Blowing up big ships is starting to feel really satisfying

[filbs111]

This is hot stuff!

[imaginaryrobot]

Thanks a bunch, glad you like it!

To be clear, I'm using a debug build to cheat like crazy, a combat encounter like that would not be survivable solo

[Ramos]

So many cannons on those ships, it looks amazing

[imaginaryrobot]

Just updated the itch.io page with the latest version of Stellar Nomad, containing all the things I've been posting/talking about recently! To name a few:

• New Ship
• Stealth/Heat Signature/Sensor Range mechanics
• Explody ship chunks
• Overhauled VFX

I'm also super excited to announce that I've brought on an extremely talented and experienced sound designer to handle all of Stellar Nomad's audio needs, my good friend Paul O'Rourke (https://twitter.com/8ighty6ix) His audio credits include The Cave, Hack 'n' Slash, Costume Quest 2, Broken Age, Day of the Tentacle: Remastered, TiltBrush, Psychonauts: In the Rhombus of Ruin, Punch Planet, Psychonauts 2, and Double Fine's latest, RAD

Check out the complete change list and grab the latest version here! https://imaginaryrobot.itch.io/stellar-nomad/devlog/73777/stellar-nomad-v023-released