ionAXXIA News

Lots of work, lots of changes.

Quick overview:
· Enemies have secondary abilities
· Autoshoot aiming super accurate
· Classic mode added
· Engine enhancements for future content
· Beta builds to be made available

I've added secondary abilities to the enemies, which required significant changes to the AI and reworking some systems, and implemented a lot of engine changes to allow some really diverse abilities. eg. Notice one of the ships can launch a blob that can transmute a rock into three fighters. AI aiming has had probably three upgrades to the current solution where it should be pretty perfect. Future randomisation can dumb it down if needed! The engine now supports more complex firing patterns like fire once to launch, fire again to detonate, or hold-and-release activation.

I've also included a classic mode toggle. Enable that to have every level as a single planet, no extra features, in keeping with previous games of this ilk.

Word of warning - there is zero game balance! Enemies are possibly overpowered. It might be very hard to beat a star system at the moment. I won't look into balancing until the new strategy game is in place and attention shifts from game-engine to content.

Which is next up. The strategy game sees you build ships on the star system and move them through the stars, establishing mines and colonies, towards eradicating the opposition. Development progress should be fairly swift.

Finally, I've added a Beta option to Steam. If you subscribe to the Beta, you can experience more frequent updates where I won't worry about release quality. To enable, right-click "ionAXXIA" in the steam client and select Properties. On the "BETAS" tab, click the select drop-down and choose 'beta'. There's no password - you'll just get more frequent if somewhat buggier versions to play. ;)

Finally got it out the door! Woohoo! ːsteamhappyː

This is the first step of Iteration 2, being a more fleshed out and solid version of ionAXXIA. There's procedural levels and star maps which are the precursor to the strategic sub-game to come next. AI is much improved and can be punishing on anything other than easy difficulty, which is where using your special abilities and scenery comes in. Component upgrades are in so you can increase things like engine speed, weapon range, damage, hull health, allowing you take on tougher challenges.

There's still some engine work to do and no doubt a few bugs have still managed to sneak through despite god-knows how many hours playing and fixing and playing and fixing and playing and fixing...

However, I'm in a position now where updates should be far more frequent. Each change - moving to a better sprite system to allow larger ships, adding secondary abilities to the enemy ships, creating the strategic sub-game, adding more content - should be rolled out as they happen.

I feel I should have some awesome promo art-work, but truth is I've coding work to do. Upgraded to the latest Unity and things have stopped working...

Happy 2018! Here's what's been happening...
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My last update hoped to get ionAXXIA out before December. Ha. Ha ha. Ha ha haaaaa. Suffice to say, more life got in the way, including Christmas. That is the problem being a part-time dev; it's not just a lack of hours, but a lack of momentum so even when I had time to work on ionAXXIA, it was hard to focus and find clear goals. Booo.

However, post-Christmas with a lot of thinking and pacing, I have a clearer sense of direction now. The AI is improved and the game plays better. Procedural star systems are in. And yesterday was spent solid, implementing a components upgrade system.
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This'll form a significant part of the game's progression. I'm thinking of a galactic map that gets harder as you move towards the centre, so you'll have to work on designing and building your ships to become stronger to conquer it. Very Diablo 3 rifts!

Today I'll hopefully finish the back-end to that front-end and have the upgrades active. One area of work is 'pricing' these upgrades. I want to be confident the balance is right.

And finally, a new year and a new communication strategy. My idea of daily updates failed, because I was leaving them to the end of the day when I was busy coding or with something real-life related. So now my plan is to do a morning report on what I achieved yesterday, which I can write in the morning when my dev skills are at their lamest. I'll be posting these every morning on the Software Geezers blog...

Not going to offer any ETA. I've never managed to hit one of those yet! Suffice to say it's coming along. Much of the core elements are in and they just need tidying up.

Wishing you all a great and entertaining 2018!
David

Happy 2018! Here's what's been happening...
​​
My last update hoped to get ionAXXIA out before December. Ha. Ha ha. Ha ha haaaaa. Suffice to say, more life got in the way, including Christmas. That is the problem being a part-time dev; it's not just a lack of hours, but a lack of momentum so even when I had time to work on ionAXXIA, it was hard to focus and find clear goals. Booo.

However, post-Christmas with a lot of thinking and pacing, I have a clearer sense of direction now. The AI is improved and the game plays better. Procedural star systems are in. And yesterday was spent solid, implementing a components upgrade system.
​​


This'll form a significant part of the game's progression. I'm thinking of a galactic map that gets harder as you move towards the centre, so you'll have to work on designing and building your ships to become stronger to conquer it. Very Diablo 3 rifts!

Today I'll hopefully finish the back-end to that front-end and have the upgrades active. One area of work is 'pricing' these upgrades. I want to be confident the balance is right.

And finally, a new year and a new communication strategy. My idea of daily updates failed, because I was leaving them to the end of the day when I was busy coding or with something real-life related. So now my plan is to do a morning report on what I achieved yesterday, which I can write in the morning when my dev skills are at their lamest. I'll be posting these every morning on the Software Geezers blog...

Not going to offer any ETA. I've never managed to hit one of those yet! Suffice to say it's coming along. Much of the core elements are in and they just need tidying up.

Wishing you all a great and entertaining 2018!
David

Following an exciting launch on Steam, I've been eager to roll out updates quickly for my players and armed myself with a glorious Road-map to lead the way. Sadly, the sat-nav took me a different route and into a pond...

Or rather, a lot of Real Life has gotten in the way and slowed progress. Also, a notable detour has been taken from the roadmap where I wasn't happy with the core game-play. A primary inspiration for ionAXXIA was the campaign mode in the original Star Control. I felt my current objective-based levels and repairing of ships produced a very different feeling game, where the currency aspect didn't make much sense and the ship values were pointless as the biggest, most expensive ship would always be the best. So, even though procedural level creation didn't take too long to get running, I decided against refining the procedural objectives for that as they'd need to be replaced for a completely different balance in the new structure.

So the past 6 weeks when I've had time, I've beavered away at a different star map system and had to make some notable changes under the hood. The focus of the next patch will be more 1-on-1 combat and fighting on a budget.



You'll have a limited budget to clear all the stars. Healing will be rare, so you'll want to balance your 'garage' (selection of ships taken in to each star system) with different levels of affordability. Stars you can clear with a budget spaceship will free up more cash for using tougher ships in tougher battles, as it were.

There'll also be no in-level designer, which was only present as an introduction. It now resides in a separate phase where you'll design your ships, and then select from your designs for each star system.



The basics of this are all in, leaving just a lot of polish and some more content to go before I release the first update. I hope this can be managed by the end of the month. Feedback on balance will be very important! Looking forwards to what people think.

David