In November we kept the momentum going.
The event system was enhanced, giving us the ability to reference more details such as the random amount of a resource the player needed to give, or the name of the ship that the player was using. We can now set the health of any ship directly from the event as well, and that is going to come in really handy. Ships and formations can now be given attack orders in events, and we can also place formations nearby other ships. We can also now make ships jump away. And we can spawn multiple types of ships randomly from a list in a given event which will help to add variety.
Events now have the ability to support multiple languages (as the rest of the game does), text automatically word wraps, and we have control over all the text in all of the event windows on an event-by-event basis.
We added a way to end an event early so we could have more than one event running at once.
We did a lot of bug fixing and adjustments for how the event system works.
The most fun thing for me was testing out the nuke! The nuke is as devastating as it sounds, wiping out everything in it’s blast radius. They’re easy to defend against if you have a laser, and it takes a lot of ore to make one. You’d better be sure your ships aren’t nearby when it goes off, but they are incredibly effective.
Speaking of cool weapons, the minelayer now lays a 3×3 minefield instead of dropping individual mines. You tell the minelayer to lay mines, and your mouse pointer changes to a 3×3 grid that you can place anywhere on the map. Once the mines are placed, they orbit with ships until an enemy gets close, then they turn into missiles! There’s still work to be done on making the experience perfect, but functionally it’s working well. We’ll also be adding an action to recover a minefield which takes time and risks the minelayer, but allows you to get your valuable ore back.
In addition to designing the minelayer UI, I did some 3D modeling for the Rover Getter, Irenic Gatherer, Empire Refugee and Corp Refugee ships, as well as the sandwall (part of the sandcaster weapon, and more on that in a future update). I also created an ‘intro/outro’ animation to tie the action animations together visually.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before, but my son Alexander has been doing a superb job modeling ship icons for the game. His attention to detail and professionalism is incredible for a 13 year old. It’s super fun working with him, and a dream come true for me.
You can now create weapons from plans that you receive, and equip ships with weapons. You can even melt down existing weapons on ships in your fleet to gain ore and free up space for something better.
Jump entry points were adjusted for Harvesters and incoming ships and now make more sense for the flow of the game.
Disabled ships now tumble slowly into the gravity well until they are destroyed, reducing the time you have to seize or jury rig them. This also makes it a lot easier to visually spot a disabled ship.
That about wraps it up for November. Every month I feel like we accomplish more than we did in the prior month. We head into December full steam with very full plates and a lot left to do, but so happy about the way things stand. Huge thanks to everyone for the patience, warm wishes and support on this project!