First and foremost I would like to say: No, we're not dead. We're very much alive.
There is something to be said about real life throwing wrenches into best laid plans. Crisp white sheets, if you are a fan of a particular franchise of arcade air combat games - I certainly am! I am also meandering, so I'll get to the point:
Our plan was to release updates every few months, exploring various aspects of Ardent Seas' game-play in detail. Clearly, that didn't happen.
What happened is: I started studying. "Fachinformatiker für Systemintegration" is the long German word for it. The official translation is Computer Science Expert Subject Area: System Integration
I am almost done with that. I have my final exam on the 20th of January, after which I am free(er). Time sometimes flies like a supersonic anti-ship missile. I hope to be able to stick to the plan we laid out a couple of years ago, starting then.
That is it for the personal update, now for the game update.
In the time since our last update post, we've made progress on a number of things. Most of it are visual and gameplay tweaks, we're going to share what we're doing here.
The first one: The TDN's Supersonic Anti-Ship Missile Frigate
We've been working on getting all art assets up to the same standard. The original model for the SSAShM Frigate didn't meet those on any level, largely because it is one of the oldest models. We've remade this from scratch. With it came a gameplay tweak: It fires a rapid barrage of missiles, with a long reloading interval.
Originally, it fired one missile after another, which prevented it from fulfilling its role of smacking capital ships.
Next up is the Coalition's flame tank
It's received a graphical touch-up, to also bring it in line with existing assets, as well as to look more flame tank-ish. The VFX is currently broken, it still uses the old Shuriken particle system, and will receive a VFXGraph-based firing effect.
Some progress has been made on the Tutorial.
Part 1 is playable form start to finish, but is still missing a lot of detail, and more extensive map scripting options. It feels clunky for that reason. Once it is closer to finished, we're going to post a full play-through.
The Tutorial is split into two parts. Part one will introduce many of the basic game concepts, most of it will be familiar to RTS veterans.
The second part goes into detail on all the things we do differently than traditional RTS games, as well as introducing more complicated gameplay elements.
We hope that we could alleviate the concerns about Ardent Seas's status, at least somewhat.
Fair winds and following seas!