DevBlog #10 – Something old, Something new (V0.44)

As a solo indie developer, getting Flight of the Athena to the Early Access stage back in August was a massive effort, and took a mountain of work closing of work items, fixing bugs, and getting the release out (with the Demo and 0.43 release coming out in August also). Subsequently I took a bit of time out to recharge, and work on some other (smaller!) projects. This time out has been beneficial, and has allowed some reflection time on the next updates in store for Athena. This leads to...


Whilst I would like to get the chapter 3 content and enemies up and running, asset building for these takes time. Given there were some issues I wanted to address sooner, I put together a short list of these, the fixes were done, and the release is now live!

Version 0.44 updates:

• Gameplay Issue: Secondary turret rotation speeds. Whilst the slower turret rotation speeds for the Missile Battery make sense as a trade off for that weapon (and any future heavy damage secondaries), the penalty has been too great for lighter weapons like the vulcan and laser cannon. Fix: Rotation speed increased for these lighter secondaries.
  
• Gameplay/UI Issue: Mid-mission pop ups break up the gameplay too much. Fix: Streamlined mid-mission event pop ups (and fixed a performance bug to boot!)
  
• Gameplay/UI Issue: No pause functionality available. Fix: Pause functionality added (abort mission option to add at a later date), trigger with start / options button..
  
• UI Issue: Slow menu transitions. Taking too long to move between menus in the main game. Fix: Sped up transitions.
  
• UI Issue: Bosstiary mode, description required. Fix: a brief description of the Bosstiary mode objective has been added to the Bosstiary mode setup screen.
  
• UI Issue: Unable to view game version for save files. This matters as new updates to weapons, craft, game types etc will impact new games, but not current saves, to reduce risk if bricking saves. Fix: Game version field added to the game load button (it's recommended to start a fresh campaign game with new Early Access versions in any case, to avoid issues during this development period).
  

I'll evaluate whether a smaller update before the next major content update (0.5) makes sense, but the quality of life updates in 0.44 have been good to release.

That's all for now, till the next update!