Hey everyone.
It’s been two months since my last update, but that’s not because I haven’t been making progress, but quite the opposite. I’ve been working fulltime on Orion’s End for the last two months and have been so deep in it that I’ve found it hard to stop working on the game long enough to write a devlog or even post much on social media. But, I think it’s about time I gave some kind of update. So, this is what I’ve been working on over the last two months.
Ship Design
Orion’s End was originally going to have a static spaceship as your home, with a customisable living quarters and upgradable engines, weapons, shields etc. However, I do love the idea of having even more freedom than that. So, I commenced work on a whole ship design feature. Everyone starts with a set ship, but then you have the ability to customise the structure of the ship any way you like.
Open World Areas on Planets
I like having a handcrafted settlement where you land on a planet, with familiar faces and locations and the services you need to do whatever role you choose to take in the universe. However, I also want the ability to go adventuring in a large open world to mine for resources, hunt outlaws, harvest plants, or to fulfill quests. So, I’ve been working on a system that allows you to explore the planet beyond the landing zone. This will use a combination of handcrafted and procedurally generated content. I want to find the right balance, because I know the limitations that full procedurally generated content has, but as I am working mostly solo and I want to complete the game at some stage, I need to streamline the process somehow. A certain amount of procedurally generated content is my solution.
Every NPC Unique and Interactable
In December I spent quite a bit of time working on the character system. Originally in the code, the player’s character was a separate object to the NPCs. As I started to think more about recruiting crew for your ship, I realised how necessary it was for the NPCs and player character to be exactly the same object with exactly the same features. This will even allow the player to take direct control of a crew member and go exploring as that character, or swap between characters to complete more strategic missions.
I also improved the art and animation for the characters, have created multiple body builds/genders, and created a system that allows for changes of clothing to be reflected on characters in game.
Originally, only a handful of NPC were special. All of the others were texture for the world, creating crowds that would move around randomly and react to your actions in a minimal fashion (run away from you if you become violent). But that was never the ideal plan, and I’ve now started work on a deeper NPC system. Now, because they are all essentially the same as the player character, they all have their own name, portrait, clothing, likes, dislikes etc. Next, they will have their own homes and daily routines. Eventually, the player will be able to befriend any NPC in much the same way that a special NPC can. I hope to even give them procedurally generated quests. However, special NPCs will always have their unique and handcrafted portraits, quests, stories.
Creatures
Improving combat is something I will be working on soon, and is going to be a huge milestone in gameplay. Before that can happen, I need more things to actually fight. In the past few days, I’ve started working on creatures to populate the wilds of the planets. These are simple herbivores at the moment, and there’s only a few types while I work on the code. Eventually, there will be a procedural system that will generate a larger variety of creatures and behaviour, but I’ll update that as time goes on. Again, finding the right balance of proc gen and handcrafting is soooo important.
Accessibility
Providing accessibility options is very important to me, and it’s something that may require a lot of tweaking to get right, but I’m ready and willing to make whatever changes are needed to make the game as accessible as possible while retaining the core experience planned for the game.
I’ve rewritten the controls code ready to allow for key/button player customisation. The customisation screen itself will come a little later, but it’s important that the nuts and bolt are in place now.
I’ve also started implementing the mouse control for the game. This is a major change to how the game can be played, but also opens up new opportunities. The characters can be controlled by keyboard or controller in a standard action style, or they can be controlled in a point and click manner with a mouse. However, this could make combat for mouse control a bit of a challenge – especially when considering accessibility factors. So, I’m also implementing an action/pause system. The plan is that gameplay can be paused to allow the player to target enemies or given commands using the mouse (or other control methods) and when unpaused, the character will perform the attacks, actions or movements. This is a work in progress, but I envision some really cool scenarios where this could be useful, such as planning a heist and swapping between different crew members as they do their part of the action.
I’ve also created a new font, that I believe is a lot easier to read than the original one.
What’s Next?
The next thing I’ll be working on is combat – on planet and in space. This will involve creating new spaceship designs, creature designs, and new NPC/creature intelligence code. I’m sure that I’ll find prerequisites I need to complete first or discover branching features that will tempt me away from this as I work on them – nothing is ever straight forward.
Best wishes to everyone, and be safe out there in the space lanes.
Dave