Stellar Warfare News

This week I worked mostly on the campaign. We needed to get some systems in place to display the objectives, show the relevant information and refine the planned story a bit more. With most of these systems in place the road is paved for the other campaign missions. This week I've managed to implement the first campaign mission, with the exception of the planned voice overs.

In addition to that I've also created and tested a build to be used for an upcoming event. More on that later.



I've put all I've done this week in the list below:

Balancing

• Slightly buffed the ion cannon
  
• Nerfed gauss cannon a bit
  
• Added new weapon: Weldcannon (super short range high intensity beam weapon)
  
• Added 3 balistic weapon variants
  
• Cant confirm devastators supposed reduced cooldown (in the weapon tester it works fine). Have reduced its damage by 30% though
  

General & campaign

• Made cinematic camera slower
  
• Tested Skirmish AI
  
• Tweaked harvester income
  
• Made cinematic camera slower
  
• Reduced music volume
  
• Added player name input to the main menu
  
• Redesigned blueprint visuals
  
• Did tests with shield buildings (planning to make an overshield building)
  
• Worked out which campaign missions there will be
  
• Disabled drops
  
• Set default difficulty for skirmish to 1
  
• Tested skirmish difficulty 1 and 5
  
• Compressed all soundtracks for more stable output volume
  
• Set screen edge camera pan default to false
  
• Fixed new weapon tooltip typo
  
• Updated demo disclaimer
  
• Fixed loot always being bugged for new players if the json didnt exist
  
• Fixed loot bug not unlocknig stuff
  
• Double checked new g.round build
  
• Did new testgame
  
• Wrote campaign mission 1
  
• Implemented campaign mission 1 objective 1, 2 and 3
  
• Campaign mission 1 is now fully scripted! All the events are in and have been tested. All we need now is a voiceover ^^
  
• Re-enabled the skismish buttons from the fleet editor
  
• Fixed new player name positioning in lobby and multiplayer screen
  

I might take the next week off. So next week the updates might be a bit shorter/non existent. Although knowing myself I will probably do more work than I now intend to anyway. See you guys next time!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

This week I worked on adding a Tutorial for new players and getting a build ready for an upcoming event. Since most changes apply to the skirmish, tutorial or visual improvements I've put them all in one list for this week.

• Playtested Battle Royale
  
• Added tutorial scene
  
• Combined power and metal storage
  
• Added 22 objectives to the tutorial.
  
• Fixed players sometimes playing inside eachother
  
• Made a new icon for the game
  
• Rerganised discord
  
• Upgraded discord to community server
  
• Reduced polygon count on Taibe
  
• Reduced polygon count on Aurora
  
• Reduced polygon count on Lunaria
  
• Reduced polygon count on Type-C
  
• Reverted ship align change
  
• Uploaded a new build to steam
  
• Give resources for ships only in BR (upon killing them)
  
• Adjusted default audio volumes
  
• Did several rounds of bugtesting
  
• Added tutorial button
  
• Added tutorial objectives
  
• Added objective check system
  

Tutorial test with feedback:
[previewyoutube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnAR-moj6OA[/previewyoutube]

• Changed power icon
  
• Fixed GUI alignment top right text
  
• Moved formation buttons
  
• Restyled toggle buttons
  
• Implemented tutoral metal storage objective
  
• Implemented tutoral power storage objective
  
• Implemented tutoral population objective
  
• Added build surveyor objective completion trigger
  
• Added move to zabu objective completion trigger
  
• Added move to enemy shipyard objective completion trigger
  
• Added unlock medium objective completion trigger
  
• Added kill enemy shipyard objective completion trigger
  
• Added tutorial voice over
  
• Showing extra information when objectives are completed.
  
• Disabled selected units information in tutorial.
  
• Added objective sounds
  
• Alt+left click no longer deselects units
  
• Skirmish tweaks
  
• Fixed 2 tutorial bugs
  
• Fixed height indicator bug
  
• Fixed right click minimap bug
  
• Renamed habitat station in editor
  
• Cinematic camera had a text box in it in the editor. Removed it.
  
• Modified some default capped volume settings
  
• Recorded tutorial video
  
• Changed 'wave setup' text for Skirmish
  
• Skirmish AI ships build slightly slower
  
• Skirmish AI buildings build slightly
  
• Skirmish AI target harvester count reduced from 5 to 4
  
• Fixed unit attack distance in skirmish and tutorial
  
• Fixed incorrect unit under attack sound
  
• Fixed move height for right clicking ships
  
• Fixed harvester icons for Allies and Enemies
  
• Rounded max health display
  

6 player Battle Royale with CoreyLoses:
[previewyoutube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y347DaKrOrI[/previewyoutube]

Thats it for this week!

Last week I wanted to add some more content for players. Some more game modes. Co-op was a bit difficult to achieve within the time reserved for it and the campaign game mode takes priority over that. Instead I experimented a little bit with a Battle Royale game mode.

That cost me 3 days to work on, which is an acceptable 'delay' for the amount of extra gameplay potential and fun it provides. After that I celebrated easter with family. Below is a list of everything I've done regarding the game last week:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Multiplayer & Battle Royale

• Added a Battle Royale game mode
  
• Added a team Battle Royale game mode
  
• Added dropdown to menu in multiplayer room
  
• Styled dropdown in multiplayer room
  
• Host can now set gametype in multiplayer
  
• Set game type to Regular by default
  
• Added that room name must be unique
  
• Made it so that the game mode shows up in the lobby
  
• Increased max teams from 2 to 8
  
• Set default teams on room enter based on player actor number ID
  
• The game now hides the "Select start ship" from the battle royale mode in the room for other players
  
• Improved alignment of elements in the lobby
  
• BR ship selection now works
  
• Increased ship selection dropdown height
  
• Fixed team auto set
  
• Removed underscore from team display
  
• Tested if the right ships spawned
  
• Neutral zabu generators now heal correctly
  
• You can now jump in Battle Royale
  
• Fixed menu button alignment
  
• Added transports to Battle Royale
  
• Medium and heavy ships are now unlocked by default in Battle Royale
  
• transports now spawn every 2 minutes in BR
  
• Added a power plant above the battlefield in BR
  
• Added a zabu mine below the battlefield in BR
  
• changed reinforcement spawn position
  
• Changed the Zabu Repair station model in BR to make it more visible
  
• Changed transport spawn rate for multiplayer
  
• Fixed harvester bug
  
• Ships in battle royale now spawn below enemies
  
• Transports now dont spawn right away in a multiplayer match
  
• Improved network stability
  

General & optimizations

• Fixed jump timer
  
• Prevented ships from going outside of the map
  
• Fixed transport loot
  
• improved harvester poly count
  
• Removed film grain in editor
  
• Lowered Surveyor poly count
  
• Reduced polygon count on the Ant
  
• Leaving the game is now harder (asks for confirmation)
  
• Its been almost a year I think but the Selection Box dissapearing bug is now fixed
  
• Building upgrades now have icons for power and metal instead of the letters P and M
  
• The Fish now has 12000 less polygons
  
• Fixed heavy/medium unlock bug
  
• Building upgrade icons are now aligned better. It now also shows metal first, then power
  
• Development discussion with programmer
  
• Made minimap lines less thick/look better
  
• Changed neutral building icon on minimap
  

That's it for this week. See you next week!

I'm excited to announce that this week we have managed to add team games to Stellar Warfare. I've personally done 3 test matches with that new functionality and I can tell you that its a lot of fun to work together to defeat your opponent!

Here's what we have done this week:

General

• Increased metal and power supply increase for storages from 350 to 400
  
• Uploaded a new build for backers
  
• ASWD mouse camera pan is now off by default
  
• Added 'press C for cinematic cam' in the options
  
• Uploaded new build for backers
  
• Set default ASWD, QE and other settings
  
• Rebalanced audio volumes
  
• Fixed escape menu navigation button width
  
• Control groups are now shown next to the healthbar
  
• Aligned ship data more accurately
  
• Selected units are now displayed
  
• Fixed control group bug
  
• You can now delete all your settings from the Options menu
  
• Added screen pan camera controls to the options screen since it wasnt there yet
  
• Added not enough metal/power sounds to unlock buttons
  
• Added not enough metal/power sounds to building upgrade buttons
  
• Added sound effect to building upgrades
  
• Replaced 'canceled' building sound for not enough resources with not enough power or metal sounds instead
  
• Fixed faulty module reading on tooltip
  
• Tested ship jumping after noticing a bug. Works fine it seems though.
  
• Changed naming of Voice Over volume to avoid confusion
  

Visual
You can now spawn extra projectiles for each fired. Should you have a very good computer you can do this to make the experience even more cinematic. This does not actually increase the damage of weapons though, its just for visual purposes.

• Added a setting in the escape menu to create more flak
  
• Added a setting in the escape menu to create more projectiles
  
• Improved positioning selected units text
  
• Shieldbar now overlaps the healthbar
  
• Tweaked healthbar positioning for units and buildings
  
• Fixed ship editor module & ship frame icon positioning
  
• Made asteroids on the minimap sharper
  

Team games

• You can now change teams in the lobby
  
• Allied ships will no longer be attacked automatically
  
• You can now repair allied ships
  
• You can now repair allied buildings
  
• You can now jump to allied jump beacons
  
• You can now follow allied ships
  
• Allied ships and buildings are now blue on the minimap instead of green
  
• Your team now changes on enterting lobby
  
• You should now only win in co-op games if there are no enemy shipyards left. Before this change if your opponents died but you sitll had an ally ingame it would not go to the victory screen
  
• Losing a game in team-mode now works as intended
  
• Allied unit in minimap now has the right icon
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

I want to thank the people supporting this project through patreon. Without you this project could not exist. So thank you!

This week the two of us have worked quite hard again on improving the game. We have added some usability improvements and did a pretty big overhaul of unit health values to see how that influences the game meta.



We need your help
We are working as hard as we can right now and put a lot of time, effort and money into this project. Personally I put about 70 hours per week into this project so that we can release the game in less than 5 months. We could really use your assistence though by spreading awareness of the game wherever you can. The more people share this project and help us with the marketing side the more time we have for the actual development of the game. Oh yeah and supporting us on Patreon helps a bunch too and can get you some pretty cool rewards ^^

This is what we have done in week 11:

General

• Fixed asteroid sizes and harvester harvestdust location
  
• Added bigger shipyard death explosion
  
• Fixed Missile pods using turret models
  
• Checked if no additional modules were added to ships by the game systems since we reduced the amount of module slots
  
• Module slot 2 and 3 position in the ship editor were at eachothers positions. Corrected.
  
• Added 2 more default modules, bringing the starting modules to choose from 3 to 5
  
• Removed the new shipyard boost effect
  
• Extra cursor for recording purposes can now be set so that streamers always have a visible cursor if they want
  
• Decreased minimum build distance
  
• Played testgame with programmer
  
• Made health and shieldbars square again
  
• Added 13 new points to the todo list based on feedback & testing
  

Ships

• Created tables for each of the ship stats
  
• Calculated & wrote down justifications for why we think certain units should have certain stats
  
• Made it so that the ship stats can easily be modified as a whole (for example have all light ships have 20% more health)
  
• Updated all ship stats
  
• Fixed megalodon rotation
  
• Fixed megalodon engine
  
• Checked shield sizes for all ships
  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaMdcn4v1m0
Usability and quality of life improvements

• Ship loadout info now visible in the build menu (weapons and modules)
  
• Fixed faulty weapon and module information was shown when not all weapons/modules were used
  
• Weapons and modules now show up in tooltips in SP and MP and the build menu. If you have two bulkheads it will show up as 2x bulkheads rather than seperated
  
• Added icons to the "Unlock Medium" en "Unlock heavy" ships
  
• Split up the "Abilities & unlocks" menu into "Abilities & Upgrades" and a "Unlock tech" menu.
  
• Changed inactive zabu colors
  
• Force non-transparant background for build menu backdrop items
  
• Renamed 'Select design slot' to 'Saved Designs' in the ship editor
  
• Numerical shield values for units are now only displayed if a shield generator is installed
  
• Asteroid height is now displayed when placing structures near them
  
• Neutral building height is now displayed when placing structures near them
  
• Surveyor height is now displayed when placing structures near them
  
• Updated icons in the ship frame selection dropdown of the ship editor
  
• Photoshopped new sky
  
• Added blue, greenblue, yellowgreen and green skybox
  
• Asteroids are now stored more efficiently in a global list that is refreshed every .5 seconds
  
• Zabu generators now change color correctly for the local player as well
  
• Made backgrounds of all menus more consistent
  
• Loading indicator now disapears after x seconds
  

Audio

• Added sounds to the shipyard upgrades
  
• Added sounds to tech unlocks
  
• Added sounds to the build boost
  
• Tweaked sound volumes
  

Backers & patreon

• uploaded new MP build for backers
  

Multiplayer

• Fixed the multiplayer disconnect bug
  
• Fixed ships sometimes getting stuck
  

Skirmish

• Improved on the AI
  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnXHlM4cUaA


Wave defense game mode

• Added a boss for the wavedefense mode
  
• Wavedef boss now always moves towards the shipyard
  
• Removed time-based win for wavedef
  
• When boss dies you now win
  
• The boss no longer spawns right away in the wavedefense mode (oops)
  
• Changed the 'time until next wave' into 'Defeat their flagship!' for the last wave
  
• Reset enemy wave spawn times
  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urLPyzHMuzQ

Thats about all we did for this games production thats relevant to you guys. We've done some talking to publishers, advisors, contractual stuff and a bunch of overhead as well. But that's not something that should be put in this list.

Hopefully this will give you guys some insight into the time and effort we put into this. I'm going to play a 3FFA match tomorrow with some backers and will hopefully give you guys another really big update next week!