Flight of the Athena News

A new boss was built for Flight of the Athena, Mega – he is heavily armed and extremely dangerous, with primary vulcans, secondary bolo cannons and a nasty impact mine launcher.



To add a bit of balance, work was completed on a new player Capital ship, the Arkangel. Heavily armoured, equipped three primary hardpoints and two secondary hardpoints, it makes an ideal ship of the line (though it will not come cheap!).

A new boss was built for Flight of the Athena, Mega – he is heavily armed and extremely dangerous, with primary vulcans, secondary bolo cannons and a nasty impact mine launcher.



To add a bit of balance, work was completed on a new player Capital ship, the Arkangel. Heavily armoured, equipped three primary hardpoints and two secondary hardpoints, it makes an ideal ship of the line (though it will not come cheap!).

Happy New Year to everyone, I hope 2018 is a good one.

Two major sections of the game for Flight of the Athena are the overall campaign setup + handling, and the battle engine. They have been kept independent for the most part to keep development work flowing (whilst being sympathetic to the factors that impact the other), however sufficient progress has been made to move onto the next stage – bringing the two together. This will be a significant step towards a full end to end flow for the full game, and whilst there will still be other parts to complete within this flow (e.g. Shops for ship / weapon purchases), will start to give a good idea of how progression feels, and further work around this aspect.



Interface V2 is now work in progress, and should tie in nicely with the end to end flow work.



Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for further Flight of the Athena updates!

Happy New Year to everyone, I hope 2018 is a good one.

Two major sections of the game for Flight of the Athena are the overall campaign setup + handling, and the battle engine. They have been kept independent for the most part to keep development work flowing (whilst being sympathetic to the factors that impact the other), however sufficient progress has been made to move onto the next stage – bringing the two together. This will be a significant step towards a full end to end flow for the full game, and whilst there will still be other parts to complete within this flow (e.g. Shops for ship / weapon purchases), will start to give a good idea of how progression feels, and further work around this aspect.



Interface V2 is now work in progress, and should tie in nicely with the end to end flow work.



Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for further Flight of the Athena updates!

Happy first of the month all!

One of the unique aspects of Flight of the Athena is the procedural level generation for certain mission types in the game. This won't be required for certain types (e.g. boss battles), but for others (like the classic start to finish shmup level), these levels will be built and so provide a unique campaign experience on every playthrough. It also reinforces shifting the challenge away from level learning, and towards situational awareness + pilot skill.

These levels are built using a variety of input parameters (campaign progress, target length, mission type) from sets of level "chunks", using the input parameters to narrow down suitable chunks, and build the level accordingly. This also gives scope to scatter in special mid-mission events (e.g. take down a stray enemy cargo ship), which if completed will give extra resource bonuses to the player(s).

The system is still in development and coming on nicely, but still plenty to do in terms of building and balancing the level chunks.



Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for further Flight of the Athena updates!