Hi
Now that Next Fest is over and I received some useful feedback about the demo I'm finally ready to start making real progress. The first stage of my roadmap before the Early Access Launch is pretty big so I won't be making an update to the demo soon, that's why I decided to start making Developer Diaries like this one, so I can keep you updated and you see that I'm hard at work improving the game.
Content:
I'm not just a coder, I also make most of the 3D assets for this game. One of the things I'm doing right now is adding more enemies, props and environments for the game, the tools I use are Blender and Substance Painter.
Most of the props are just decorative but some will have an effect in gameplay, for example sometimes you'll board a ship and the crew will try to make a hyperspace jump to escape, in those cases the mission will have a countdown that will only stop if one of your soldiers disable an HyperDrive Core like this one:
Besides props and environments I'm also taking a look at my current combat units and their customization options. Customization in the game will be limited but combining body types, head types and textures for each soldier should give a good set of starting options for the player.
Combat Depth:
In order to make gameplay more interesting I'm working in features like:
Fog of War:
While this feature won't make much difference in small scenarios, bigger scenarios that require exploring and assaulting rooms will benefit from it. This should also force the player to move more tactically and explore instead of just wait for enemies to come.
Additional Objectives:
Currently the demo only shows a single combat objective: Kill All Hostiles. My idea is that some scenarios will have optional objectives like "Disable Hyperspace Drive", "Capture Bridge" and others will have main objectives like "Capture VIP", "Grab as much loot as you can before reinforcements arrive", etc.
All these objectives should make missions less repetitive and force the player to play less defensively.
Improve AI:
This is something that I'll be doing during the whole development of the game but before Launch I'm thinking I can add more behaviours to AI besides shooting, charging or looking for cover. Stuff like using items, grenades and special skills should add more flavor to combat and new defensive and ambush behaviours should keep the player on his/her toes while exploring a ship or installation.
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This is just what I'm working at right now but I have a lot more ideas to improve the game (I mentioned most of them in the Roadmap), I'll be sharing my progress with you during these months before the Early Access Launch (which I still hope should be during September, I'll let you know if that changes).
Please feel free to share your questions, ideas and criticism, any feedback is useful feedback.
Thanks for reading!
Jorge