Stellar Warfare News

Stellar Warfare has been in development for three years by a very small but very dedicated team. After
almost a year of play testing and implementing feedback from patrons, I am finally content to let the game go into Early Access.

Players will be thrown into the aftermath of a galaxy spanning conflict between the humanity and
the zealous followers of The Light. Events have taken place which has thrown the galaxy into
chaos. It is up to the player to find answers and safeguard his people.

The player can choose to build up their fleet slowly, but can also start raiding right away. Hour-long
buildups are not required for those who desire instant action. Killing enemy units allows you to find
blueprints which you can then use in between games to modify your units. There are currently well
over a million possible ship configurations you can choose from.


[h2]After Early Acces + current situation:[/h2]

So there you have it. On August 4 this game will be released into Early Access. Once that is done I will collect feedback from you guys and implement some of your ideas. You can read more about that in the Early Access section of the Stellar Warfare steam store page.

I will keep you guys up to date of what I'm working on like I have been doing for the last 10 weeks or so on a weekly-ish basis. That way you guys can always keep track on whats happening with the project. Speaking of which, this is the update for this week:

• added the Hunter andd Speeder (light ships)
  
• added the Starangel and Delta destroyer(heavy ships)
  
• working on the 4k scaling of menus
  
• disabled the 'loading...' text in the main menu. It wasnt styled. Will re-enable once its styled
  
• ship editor now properly scaled for 4k screens
  
• changed the damaged blueprint tooltip to 'The recovered blueprint was damaged beyond recovery. By the looks of it we already have this blueprint anyway. Lets hope the next one we find is in better shape. ' to make it more clear in any case
  
• fixed scaling for the Credits screen
  
• fixed scaling for the The Light screen
  
• halfway through ingame menu rework + updated dreadship, light frigate and mastodon stats
  
• fixed logo on steam store after Brackmans suggestion
  
• unlocking ships now works in the new menu
  
• styled the new menu
  
• moved unlocking of support, artillery and esalation buildings to the new menu
  
• building menu data is now retrieved correctly as well
  
• you can now buy buildings with the new menu
  
• powerplant costs in build menu are now updated automatically again
  
• added all economy buildings to new menu
  
• added all Escalation buildings to the new build menu
  
• added all defensive structures to the build menu
  
• added all artillery structures to the new build menu
  
• added warp jumps and constructionb oost to the new menu
  
• added shipyard upgrades to the new menu
  
• fixed a potential bug of not being able to buy shipyard upgrades after restarting a game
  
• updated steam tags
  
• all the buttons are in the new menu, but im still fixing things here and there. And it still doesnt look great, but i will look into that too (thanks @Algor (GMT+3) )
  
• updated icon
  
• commented out a lot of functionality of the old build menu. Need to double check a bunch of things there such as unlocks though
  
• fixed double menu through eachother
  
• everything after the dash for building names is now removed for better readability
  
• the new GUI now has a progress bar for ships and buildings
  
• Fixed bug which required building buttons in the new build menu to be clicked twice (took me 40 minutes to find)
  
• moved top menu resource display code to a new area
  
• added bleeps to build ships buttons
  
• added bleeps to build building buttons
  
• restyled tab backgrounds
  
• when you press ship build buttons they now have an overlay making clicks more clear (have not done this for buildings yet, not sure if should)
  
• new ship icons now retrieve the correct names + they display the amount in queue
  
• new menu now uses the correct shipyard upgrade costs
  
• artillery, escalation and support structures tab is now red and disabled if you have not unlocked that tech yet
  
• tested hyperspace with the new menu
  
• fixed but with artillery unlock having the wrong cost
  
• shipyard flak now has an effect when bought
  
• shipyard weapon upgrades are no longer exclusive, but they are currently all placed at the top of the shipyard
  
• you can now press tabs again in order to hide them
  
• hyperspacebutton is now hidden if there is no jump structure yet
  
• buildbars are now more individual
  
• fixed overlap of building and ship progress bars over the buttons and restyled colors
  
• it should look exactly the same (but the 4k resolution is twice as high, obviously)
  
• removed a bunch of commented out lines from the old GUI script
  
• set the minimap zoom properly for the new scale
  
• minimap restored, but the functionality still doesnt scale properly with 4k
  
• only took me 3.5 hours but the minimap now scales to 4k mostly properly
  
• tweaked Fish stats slightly
  
• fixed pause button messing up the rotation of ships
  
• I've written a press release for the Early Access (with LaOchs help) and I've contacted someone who helped me with the first press release since I can't remember where I'm supposed to submit those press releases (there was a website that allowed you do submit them, but i'm not sure which one it is)
  
• fixed adma engines
  
• updated blueprint looks
  
• fixed blueprint bugs
  
• reworked blueprint tooltip display so that you see different visuals for weapons, modules and ship frames
  
• new blueprints
  
• new layout for ship drops
  
• new module drop visual
  
• new weapons blueprint visual
  
• wrote press release for early access on august 4
  
• press release is online
  
• added the new tensegames logo to
  

[h2]You can help![/h2]
Last but not least: you can help the project if you want. We have a very small team and everything is self funded, so our marketing budget is non-existent.

That means that you can help the project a lot by sharing the link to the store page store.steampowered.com/app/1113030/Stellar_Warfare or the patreon patreon.com/tensegames or by just spreading cool gifs of the game wherever you can.

Tell your friends, share in your discord/facebook/reddit/twitter community groups and you can have a serious impact on how well known this project becomes.

See you guys next week!

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 ^^