Stellar Warfare News

The plan for this week was to get the steam page approved. Once that is approved I will announce the official release date for that date + 1 month. The extra month is needed to give the press the time to write articles.

Unfortunately the logo on the header image was not fully readable causing the review to fail. I have fixed that and re-submitted it. It should be approved in 2-3 business days now. Once that has happened I will announce the early access date for that date +1 month. Assuming that's Wednesday the store page will be approved I will put the official final early access release date on roughly 11th of August.

Apart from that I did the following this week:

• Changed some weapon colors based on projectile type
  
• Temporarily increased Bubble Size of nano repair hubs. If you guys try it out and it works well as some form of 'overshield', then i'm keeping it in
  
• The shield for The Brick is now Brick-shaped. If it looks too ugly ingame I will remove it again, but i thought it would be nice to have some extra distinction between ships
  
• Changed weapon model textures based on projectile type for 60% of the weapons
  
• Disabled all isTrigger on mesh colliders to fix the dodge bug (should be fixed now)
  
• Made The Brick shield square
  
• Fixed Flaktracer and FlakTrippler models
  
• Tweaked Flaktracer and FlakTrippler missile speeds and lifetime
  
• 100% sure i found the issue with the emperor now. one of the rays it casts was inside the ship
  
• Added a new raycast for dodge behavior for ships. This one is in front of the ship to make sure that if something is right in front and the other rays cant reach it that it still dodges properly
  
• Set screen height limit from 1080 to 2160 because I will be working on the scaling soon. Got a 4k screen to test it now (even though i cant really afford it i can afford to release the game without proper screen support even less xD)
  
• Reworked Corisant a bit and its engines too
  
• Added The Adma ship frame
  
• Reduced power and metal income from 200 to 150 per minute. Before this week it was 100, but I increased it. Yesterday I noticed it was far too much
  
• Has habitat-mining ring that generates 10 metal per minute
  
• No longer true because that caused a bug. Instead i just gave it some more health
  
• Changed the damage values of the Heavy Galactor, Blaster and Plasma Barreler based on Algor, Brackman and LaOch's suggestion ( #the-council )
  
• Added campainette to the correct menu, disabled the button though
  
• Did several blueprint visualisation tests
  

Changed the near-raycast checks for the following ships from 1 to:

• Frigate 1.5 / 3
  
• Hammer 1.5
  
• Heavy corvette 1.3
  
• Heavy frigate 1.5
  
• Lanver 1.6
  
• Longback 5
  
• Lunaria 3, but needs vertical recenter and retest
  
• Mammoth 3
  
• Mastadon 1.6
  
• Megalodon 2
  
• Orbital cruiser 1.5
  
• Repair cruiser 2
  
• Sconca 3.2
  
• Stareater 3.4
  
• Sunfish 1.5 , but needs vertical recenter and retest
  
• Taibe 2.5
  
• Taibera, 1.5 but needs vertical recenter and retest
  
• Terroriser 3
  
• The brick 2
  
• Jaap 3.3, but needs vertical recenter and retest
  
• Toshiron 3
  
• Towerer 3, but needs vertical recenter and retest
  
• Tsu 2.3, but needs vertical recenter and retest
  
• Type- c 2
  

I'm a bit short on time this week, but here is what has been done this week:

• Weapon booster now has the proper icons
  
• Fixed objects position in tutorial
  
• Added a crossfade to the combat music. The combat music now starts/stops more gradually
  
• Disabled power and metal income indicators until it becomes smooth/reliable enough
  
• Fixed Terroriser 2nd weapon slot @Algor (GMT+3)
  
• Fixed auto brawler angle
  
• Forced smartlasers to hide, just in case
  
• Fixed scorescreen scaling
  
• Fixed score screen scaling and options screen scaling (at least mostly)
  
• Also improved the looks/readability/replacing as much of the ugly old GUI as i can
  
• Increased artillery ranges
  
• Increased artillery range, changed minimap and toggle buttons
  
• Removed build-lines temporarily (with the exception of buff buildings)
  
• Disabled combat music for now because the check to see if you are in combat is messy
  
• Cursor now flashes red when targeting enemies
  
• Updated our todo list and project board to prioritise what we should do next better and make sure we dont forget anything for early access
  
• Simplified all 53 ship mesh colliders to increase performance
  
• Checked if new colliders work in MP (they do)
  
• Redid mesh colliders on 30 buildings
  
• You now have to press N to enable FPS
  
• Removed flagship label in regular lobby
  
• I think i fixed teams
  
• Removed Hostname on transport tooltip
  
• Removed unneeded column inside lobby
  
• Fixed transport icons in BR
  

Next week I will be on a holiday with my mother and brother. As soon as I get back I want to make sure 1 thing works well and then announce the official Early Access release date. Although I think steam also has to approve something before then.

All in all a fairly light week, but I'm excited for early access!

This week I've improved on the cinematic camera behavior, added new projectile visuals and worked on the audio mix. There has also been some balancing I've also done the following:

• Added Agressor, Terroriser and Avimimus ships
  
• Added Plasma Barreler, Plasma Repeater, Blossomer, Tracer, Streamer weapons
  
• FIXED DOUBLE CLICKING ON ICONS (only took my tired brain about 5 hours in total)
  
• Worked on audio mix
  
• Set audio default volumes
  
• Lowered Smartlaser volume
  
• Removed destroyer MK2 and other weapon testers from the scene
  
• Researching early access release requirements on steam
  
• Learned some stuff about game release. Implementing into plans now.
  
• Compressed 4 soundtracks and added them to the game
  
• Modified more sound volumes for background tracks
  
• Changed fire sound of the wrecker because it stood out too much
  

Changed damage multipliers for weapon/armor types. This is used to determine how much damage a weapon does against a certain armor type. The less suitable it is for the role the less the damage modifier is.

Old modifiers:
damage_exactMatch = 1f;
damage_offByOne = .75f;
damage_offByTwo = .5f;
damage_offByThree = .25f;

New modifiers:
damage_exactMatch = 1;
damage_offByOne = .5f;
damage_offByTwo = .25f;
damage_offByThree = .12f;

• Re-imported 9 tracks and compressed them all in Audacity because the volumes were still off/incorrect. Removed old audio files from the project to decrease project folder size
  
• When in combat you now get a combat track. not really crossfaded though but yeah
  
• Modified damage modifiers based on suggestions
  
• All friendly units should now die when you've lost
  
• When you're dead your power and metal value will become 0
  
• Might have fixed both jump bugs + move bug (at the cost of possibly some optimization)
  
• After unlocking medium or heavy ships you now cant build ships for .3 seconds, fixing the 'click once buy twice' bug
  
• Increased shipyard base health from 2500 to 3500 )
  
• Custom weapons fire sound overrides now also use the position of the object thats firing to indicate if it should be audible or not
  
• Fixed missile rotation
  
• Modified missile particles
  
• Updated flak
  
• Added long blue, long orange, orange trail and blue trail projectile visuals
  
• Cinematic camera prioritizes ships that are in combat over ships that are not in combat. This did not work in multiplayer, now it does
  
• Cinematic camera will now pick both enemy and friendly units as a target if there is no combat going on
  

Thats it for this week. Trying to prioritize early access so that I can release it for you guys asap. Also might have to start working an extra job again or start a kickstarter or something since I'm almost out of money. Either way the early access should be on steam in a month. I want to announce the official date hopefully next week!

This week I've worked mostly on different types of levels for the player in Skirmish, Battle Royale and Wave Defense modes. I've also fixed a few dozen bugs and added some new weapons and effects.

• Changed build grid visualisation
  
• Reworked asteroid spawning. There are now three presets; rocky, nebulea and deep space. In rocky you have no zabu mines but more asteroids. In nebulea you have more zabu complex. In nebulea you have more zabu power.
  
• Added spread to weapon stats in ship editor
  
• Map is now randomised for singleplayer wavedef and skirmish
  
• Map is now randomised for multiplayer battle royale
  
• Added planets
  
• Added nebulea
  
• Added planetary bodies
  
• Added 3 level presets
  
• Tweaked asteroid spawn to be more mirrored (still random, but the same amount will randomly spawn on your side of the map)
  
• In Rocky map preset in multiplayer you now get no zabu mines but more medium asteroids
  
• In DeepSpace map preset there are some extra zabu generators
  
• In Nebulea preset there are more zabu plants
  
• Removed test ships
  

• Changed color of sun based on map
  
• Removed difficulty modifier x10 and instead just made the slider go from 1 to 100
  
• Fixed wave boss bug (the game would restart in a certain wave because the wavecounter did not reset in between games)
  
• Score screen for wavedef
  
• Disabled healthbar on mouse hover when cinematic camera is on
  
• Disabled radar ping when cinematic camera is on or GUI is off
  
• Disabled extra weapons spawn for waveboss
  
• Fixed waveboss devastator visual
  
• Changed gauss visuals
  
• Changed wavedefboss text in top of screen when winning/losing
  
• Changed variable type of difficulty variables from doubles to floats
  
• Reworked both flak and plasma flak to not use 1 long animation but regular explosions in a timed fashion
  
• Added passwords to multiplayer rooms
  
• Made it so that the password input box dissappears when no password is set,
  
• Added field to enter password to host options,
  
• Re-aligned visible options in lobby
  
• Fixed 'bug' of players making a room without password because they forgot it, then leaving, then rehosting the room with password and the password not showing up because of that
  
• Limited passwords to 4 characters
  
• Styled input boxes
  
• Fixed repair rate
  
• Fixed formation near repair buildings
  
• Increased repair range from 60 to 80
  
• Repositioned top turret on The Jaap, decreased Medium Cannon volley interval
  
• Switched ship slot 9 and 10 in the ship editor (they were inverted)
  
• Fixed transport move bug battle royale
  
• Fixed skybox not changing correctly in battle roayle
  
• Increased resources mined per trip from 30/35/40 to 50/60/70
  
• Tweaked skybox
  
• Changed healthbar based on suggestions of
  
• Fixed SP wave def no win condition
  
• Fixed BR ships set as mine
  
• Removed some photoshop files from the project folder, reducing the project size
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Next week I will go over the checklist for the Early Access and see how far we get ^^

Weapons, modules and ships:

• Added missile acceleration
  
• New medium ship: Dreadship
  
• New heavy ship: Tsu
  
• Added Slammer missile launcher
  
• Buffed repressor
  
• Devastator missiles tweaked
  
• Added "Double Cannon" which is intended vs heavies
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


General:

• You can now see how many weapon and module slots a ship has in the editor
  
• Fixed duplicate weapons being shown in tooltip
  
• Added almost accurate costs for buildings to be used for the AI
  
• 'Unit' icon overlap bug was actually as intended. However it did mix up the ally and friendly colors, so i have added checks for that
  
• Added radar ping to loot being dropped
  
• Re-enabled missile trails
  
• Reverted projectile render space to local instead of world (rounder projectiles)
  
• Force cursor visible in score screen
  
• Manually checked the impact points and collision boxes of 37 ships and removed the extra team row in the multiplayer lobby
  
• Improved alignment in multiplayer lobby and removed 'duplicate' team field
  
• Added labels to multiplayer lobby + removed 'duplicate' team display
  
• Added campaign button to main menu, made a campaign select screen, saving completed campaigns on disk, hiding campaign mission start buttons that are not unlocked yet, enabling relevant campaign scripts during gameplay, tested saving of missions, tested button clicks, tested victories saving the mission as completed
  
• Disabled singleplayer campaign button in main menu until release of EA
  
• Reduced distance at which audio is played from 250 to 200
  
• Missiles now make sound when impacting on objects
  
• Changed audio volume limiter to not go above .99f
  
• Ship editor now displays weapons and module slots
  
• Reduced size of explosions of missiles that 'miss' their target (end of life)
  
• Left click + V in on the minimap OR middle mouse click on the minimap now shows a radar ping to allies
  
• Radar pings visible for allies
  
• Added an additional check that won't let you win or lose a game in battle royale mode until after all players have been spawned (thus preventing the instant lose/win that has been reported)
  
• Instead of 'delete confirmation' upon deleting units I have added buildigns to the 'currently selected' list to the left of the screen so that you can see what you are going to delete, even if it is a building
  
• Harvesters no longer go into asteroids that often & stop beforehand. They also use cutter beams now
  
• Cinematic camera now goes to friendly units first, then to enemy units. It will also look at the target it is shooting at in 25% of the cases, all the other times it looks at the ship thats firing because that one is more important to the player (their own ship)
  
• It will now also prioritise friendly units over enemy units (it wont inspect enemy units unless it cant find friendly units with targets)
  
• Added flybys to the cinematic camera