Hey everyone, it’s time for your weekly update. As we’ve mentioned previously our current focus is on implementing the core gameplay loop. Along with balancing the lethality and cost of weapons and ships there are some other design challenges we face due to the unique nature of our technology. Specifically, to-scale planets are quite large. So large in fact that until you’ve spent some time in our game it’s likely difficult for you to truly appreciate just how big a solar system really is. Where this presents a problem is encouraging players to congregate around certain “points of interest” within the solar system. Otherwise, with lifelike scales, you could easily spend the entire rest of your life in our game without ever meeting another player.
One way of mitigating this issue is showing you where other players happen to be located. We already do this with our limited implementation of radar/sensors and that will only get better as development progresses. Another way is to give players objectives to guide them towards certain areas. These ideas and many others are explored a recent gameplay discussion we started on our forums.
Aside from the ongoing discussion regarding gameplay we’ve also fixed a number of engineering and art bugs and made some improvements to our sound effects. With just over a month to go until our release of the Alpha we may or may not release an intermediate patch. That’s it for this week, until next time!
Honestly, I think unless there’s something you need us to specifically test before Alpha goes live, just focus on getting that release done smoothly. Going Alpha is an important step so take the time to get it right! Us dev-tier backers will no longer be alone… Will they be able to hear us scream?
Also, I applaud the way you guys open up gameplay discussions on the forum. You’re really doing the testing phase properly - especially keeping us in check when our ideas go wild! But also sharing ideas and trying out community suggestions. Well done!
Been following this amazing project for more than a decade now and are very excited about getting alpha access soon!
A quick question:
Do you plan to give your planets and moons different appearances depending on distance to their poles and equators and the amount of sun exposure and temperature differences? If so i think it would not only look cool but also help the player to orient and navigate the planets and get a better understanding of where you are relative to other places - like planet bases, orbiting stations and even the rest of the system. Would it require much work? Can you perhaps use a similar method like the current texturing that gives high altitude geometry on Sarake a snowy white appearance?
Actually it’s already partially implemented, the planet engine supports various biomes depending on latitude/longitude and we had icy poles at some point.
The technique however required more video-ram usage and had filtering issues, so it was removed “temporarily” until we have enough time ( = budget ) to re-invest into the engine.
Sounds great Flavien! Will be looking forward to see those features getting reimplemented in the future, but now i guess gameplay and getting the game ready for alpha is your priority.
