Flight of the Athena - status & development update
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?
Flight of the Athena - next steps
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.
