Hi there !
This is going to be the last devlog of this year. It’s unlikely I will code enough to warrant a new post between Christmas and the New Year’s Eve. It has been a very rough year for me and my family and I couldn’t put as much time in Unending Galaxy as I wanted to. Still, I am still pretty happy with how things are going.
Barring any unexpected massive issue, Beta 2 should be available shortly after the next devlog in early January.
Anyway, let’s get to what has been done this week 🙂
Hey !
When I am writing code for a project, I usually have a sort of “plan” for each week. It works, most weeks. This is not one of those weeks.
I still did a lot for the pirates, but there’s some unrelated changes as well, like a new faction, more detailed scenarios and some other random stuff.
Anyway, let’s get to it 🙂
First of all, thanks to iski19 for his donation, you will receive a mail shortly.
Now, let’s get to what has been done during last week. As expected, it’s mostly about the pirate faction, and especially about individual pirate base AI. There has been a follow up on the changes I implemented last week, regarding ship movements, too. Oh, and while at it, I added a dynamic pause button, so you can issue commands while the game is paused. And I replaced a few sprites, added new pirate vessels, and began changing ship flight stats to accommodate the new physics.
Let’s get started, shall we ? 🙂
… and I failed ! 🙂
General news about the Beta 1But first, no game breaking / crash bug reported so far, and only a few misc issues. The game also stayed in the Top 100 of IndieDB during 5 whole days (got up to the 9th position). We also got donations (you’ll receive an email and the game editor shortly), thank you very much ! A short let’s play has also been published on Youtube. All this with basically no advertisement or press release. I initially thought of making one, but I’d rather wait for beta 2 (in 2 to 4 weeks, roughly), so the game has more content/missions, and other default settings defaults in the new game menu.
The documentation has also been updated. Some parts are still missing, but all in all, it should be enough to understand what’s going on. The forum has been updated too, I will publish the design documents there from now on. One related to the beta 2 has been posted.
Let’s get to what I did instead of taking a week off. 🙂
Finally, the official Beta 1 release of Unending Galaxy is available for download. This is by far our biggest release to date, massively improving the game. The full changelog is available on our forums, but here are the main points:
This article, instead of focusing on what has changed, will explain what will happen now that this first beta is out. Also, note that the documentation center has yet to be updated to reflect the changes in 0.8.0. The general idea stay the same and the game has optional help bubbles for the main UI, so If you’ve played the game before, it’s unlikely you’ll get lost.
Weekly devlog !
I added a hunting mechanism to the game. When a game starts, a few locations will be selected to spawn small space creatures living in asteroid fields. When killed, they will drop a loot, used by some factories to produce wares that can be traded or used. Right now the creatures are harmless, and it’s only to produce some space rations. But the interesting part is that, in the game, everything that can be built or used is a trade item. So more dangerous creatures (like The Swarm) could very well be used to drop something necessary to the making of specific weapons, shields, or even ships. […]
Enjoy !