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[enigma27]

The game has been added as a free game on itch.io.
DOWNLOAD GAME: https://enigma-tutorials.itch.io/space-battle-arcade

If you want to play it with a Star Wars mod instead, you can get all of that bundled here:
DOWNLOAD ALTERNATIVE: https://github.com/lykeion19/SpaceBattleArcade_StarWarsMod

Name: Space Battle Arcade
Engine: Custom C++/OpenGL/OpenAL engine
Monetization: Completely Free
Platforms: Windows Only -- At The Moment.
Requirements: Decent CPU and GPU. Nothing too fancy, performance can scale in skirmishes, can tune match sizes.

Controls:
W - Speed Up
S - Slow Down
Q,E - Roll
Shift - Boost
Left Control - Slowmo (if enough enemies destroyed and "Slowmo Ready" at top of screen.
Left Alt - Free Look while held down
Tab Toggle Highlight Enemies / Friends

Objectives:
Destroy the enemy carrier ship before the enemy destroys your own. Take it down by destroying the turrets, satellites, and generators on the surface of the carrier ship. Once all the enemy objectives have been destroyed, the carrier ship shields will go down and it can be destroyed with direct impacts. Taking out objectives will get you some attention from fighters. Destroy enough fighters and you can use a 10 second slowmo to assist with dog fighting.

Below are some snippets from the gameplay.













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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ STAR WARS MOD ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Final Devblog:

[pancakespeople]

Hey I played your game and here's my thoughts:

The animations on the menu are nice but maybe a bit too long, players might get annoyed if they have to wait multiple seconds to go to the settings menu.

In-game, It's kinda hard to tell what's going on, like I don't know who's the enemy and who is friendly. Maybe having some colored circles or something to indicate who's the enemy and such would be nice. A minimap would also be useful to get an overview of the battlefield.

The health bar is a bit hard to read.

I think there should be more explanation for what the goal of the game is. What do I do? Kill all the enemy ships, attack the big ship? I dunno. A tutorial or at least some help text would be nice.

And I also feel like pressing A and D should turn your ship left and right respectively. That would make the game feel more responsive. Also I think that increasing the movement speed of the players ship would make the game more fun and exciting.

Adding some different kinds of ships, and more weapons than just lasers would make the game more interesting.

Also having some more indication that you're being shot would be useful, like a sound effect or the screen flashing.

[enigma27]

Thank you for playing! Those are all valid points and great feedback. Definitely shows some communication failures on my end for sure. Examples: That red line that comes from your ship actually goes to towards someone who is targeting you and attempting to attack you. But it seems its usage might not be immediately discoverable. Pressing Tab highlights enemies and friendlies to help make it easier to see what is going on. But without knowing that -- player would just have to get lucky by trying it out. There's a boost with shift too. I think a tutorial would potentially fix a lot of that.

The A/D thing is a bit intentional because I was attempting to make it more of a point-and-shoot arcade type of game -- mostly for personal taste as I find the standard flight controls in games hard. But perhaps I should support both types of piloting.

I didn't think about the health bars being hard to read, but makes total sense -- since they're just thin lines. It is probably worsened by having a high resolution monitor.

Thanks again

edit: adding controls and explanation to original post to help with lack of tutorials in the mean time.

[jbarrios]

Hey Enigma27,

I played your game.  Very cool game.  It's very impressive when you fly into a massive space battle.

Good things:
- I liked UI and the menu animations
- I'm impressed the game runs well on my laptop
- I like attacking objects on the mother ship rather than chipping away at a health bar
- I liked when an enemy got behind me and we entered a bit of a dog-fight

These could use some work:
- It's really hard to judge distance in Arial combat.  Many games solve this by having a small indicator for where you should shoot for your bullets to hit the enemy.  I think that would be helpful.
- It would be awesome if that dog-fight mechanic could work while I was on the attack
- Missiles would be a good touch

Over-all it was very cool

[mobilelast]

Oh, those lasers remind me of mosquitos in Lapland: no matter how much you fight, they just keep coming.

I pretty much agree with the commenters before me, but with couple of additional notes:
- The game needs pacing. Instead of constant shooting, alternate between long, nerve breaking pauses and chaotic firefights that will inevitably follow. This would automatically add a tactical element into the game, which could then be further developed by adding other weapons such as missiles.
- Audio could be enhanced to achieve the battle feeling. Perhaps try accenting the voices that are close, and dampen the rest. This would also increase audio's informational value and thus make observation of the situation easier.

The idea of massive laser-fights is funny and interesting. When the shooting starts, it should definitely go over the top. Good job.

[enigma27]

Thanks to all for the kind words and useful feedback.   

You're right, missiles would be a great addition, probably fun to implement too. I suppose it probably feels like something is missing without them. Or at least -- some other type of alternative fire. I thought about the shot prediction indicator, but I wasn't sure on a good way to implement it. I was thinking it would be very frustrating unless it was accurate. I suppose I could put together a naïve one based on the ship velocity vector, and travel speed of projectiles. But if the AI does a sudden move, it would be thrown off. But now that I think of it, they flight pretty straight and have predictable curves. So maybe the simple version would be sufficient. Thanks for the suggestion.

The pacing comment is insightful. I have previously thought about how halo had a nice action-break-repeat loop. But never thought about putting something like that into my games. Having something like that here would break things up and give player a nice reset. I think generally, at the moment, you have to  make your way over to enemy carrier ship while dog fighting, which isn't necessarily easy or fun.

The audio feedback is also great. I haven't done too much with audio in the past, but your suggestions make sense. By changing the sounds up close, you can more easily discern what is relevant to you, vs what is just noise in the background.

Thanks again for all the feedback, suggestions and information.