Flight of the Athena News

Flight of the Athena V0.48 has been released! Originally these changes were being saved for a more substantial update with V0.5, but there is some good stuff that has gone in so it made sense to get it out.

The change log for build V0.48 is as follows:
-New player ship, the Renegade - an advanced corvette class ship with 3x forward hardpoints & 1x turret hardpoint.
-New player ship, the Skymoth - a new corvette class ship with 1x forward hardpoint & 2x turret hardpoints.
-Minefield tweaks - shorter but a little more dangerous!
-Campaign event balancing - slight raising of the odds for a shipyard or a ship selling black market to occur.
-Economy rebalancing - resource events reward less of a bonus, destroying enemy ships rewards more (a little less R in the RNG).
-Region complete cutscene - interstitial after beating a boss and moving to the next region.
-Controller update - enabled left stick navigation of menus etc, to complement D-pad navigation.
-Fix: Disappearing minelayer - very occassionally the minelayer was being removed prematurely, this should be fixed now.

Flight of the Athena V0.47 is now available through Early Access! This provides a couple of key issue fixes and updates:

-Vehicles sometimes overlapping - Ground vehicle collision code updated to fix this.
-Bullets occassionally disappearing - The bullet garbage collection code has been rewritten to fix this issue.
-Eliminated text - Added to the campaign info screen to highlight the boss / bosses already beaten within that run
-Beam laser power - slight tweaks to rebalance the power for the higher mark weaponry

The next game update will likely focus on content, potentially player weapons, ships, enemy types, etc; content TBD.

Any thoughts or feedback, feel free to drop here or in the discussion threads!

Flight of the Athena V0.46 is now available through Early Access! The key addition with this update is the extended campaign content now available.

-Campaign generation extended to 3 Acts (2 previously): Content will be generated for the first 3 acts now (bosses, levels, campaign map etc)
-Various bug fixes and updates

Note: There are a couple of known issues regarding ground unit placements and collisions, fixes for these will be determined and incorporated into the next build.

*Flight of the Athena V0.45 has a greatly updated save game system - if any previous saves are causing issues, going to Options > Data will allow a data cleardown*

Flight of the Athena V0.45 has some major updates over the previous version. Key updates:
-Additional boss (Codename: Warlock) - brings the boss count to 5. Available to battle in the main Campaign, and the Bosstiary.
-Major UI overhaul - the campaign interface has been greatly streamlined to try and reduce any confusing aspects.
-Special mission overhaul - previously, these missions (e.g. transport raid) were separate distinct levels, but this really broke the game flow in an unsatisfactory way. Now, they have been integrated as Key Events that can occur within a standard battle mission. Current key events are the transport raid, minelayer takedown and enemy convoy, with more planned. Be ready!
-Weapons updates - beam lasers and missiles have been reworked to fix bugs and calculate power values more accurately.
-Numerous updates and bug fixes throughout the game.

Flight of the Athena development has been on a long hiatus, for a number of reasons. The largest of these by far was hitting a real impasse on the game design elements of trying to bring together a shmup with experimental ideas & procedurally generated elements. Ultimately, too much was trying to be done together, and it was proving a real detriment to progress.

One of the more unique elements I had built into FotA was a range of level types: An intercept level type for raiding enemy transports for credits, a minefield level type to traverse, with the aim of building up more of these separate level types. The problems with this was not just the added technical complexity, but also whilst fun for a short burst, it was breaking the game flow far too much as a replacement for standard levels.

The solution to this has been to integrate these additional components as "special events" within the main procedural level generator - so within a standard level battling enemies, you can encounter e.g. an enemy transport to raid, and after he has boosted away, the main level will continue.

During playtesting, this works so much better to add variety and interest to the standard (non-boss) levels, as well as solving the conundrum of getting these ideas into the game. More can be added as and when, and they will be integrated into the procedural level generator.

Solving this, as well as a few other design and UI issues has helped get the project rolling again, so what's next?



The next main step is to get a new, stable Early Access build out. In no particular order, the tasks to get there:
-User Interface: Currently it is too cluttered, taking out complexity is a priority
-Bug crunching: There are a couple of serious data issues which need fixing. There are smaller ones that need fixing at some point, but getting the serious issues fixed is a minimum
-Level generation updating: Taking out the good elements and ideas from the previously separate game types, and integrating them properly into the main level generator as "special events".

Those are the key points which will be addressed to get a new EA build out - alongside this I've been updating some graphics, and will continue to do so as it is helping raise the whole game feel and experience.