Greetings Spacers!
I'm running a little later than planned with the October Dev Log, but the good news is that it was because we were hard at work on Orion's End that I'm behind. And that means we have seen quite a bit of progress.
Last Month's Promise
Last month I said we'll be working on more ship and blaster upgrades. As planned, there is now a specialist NPC you visit who can upgrade the individual aspects of the hand blaster and ships weapon, shield and systems - strength, fire rate, recharge etc. The player decides what aspects of the equipment is most urgent. A slow firing but powerful weapon if you are a confident aim, or a low strength rapid fire weapon. Eventually, you could have a rapid-fire, high-power weapon, but we need to look at balancing the gameplay around that somehow.
True Colours
Due to an oversight on my part, the previous colour palette for Orion's End did not capture the feel that I intended. The colours were artificially enhanced by the colour profile on my main computer, making me believe the colours were more vibrant than a lot of people were seeing them. So, to correct the problem, a fair amount of time was spent finding the correct colours and then recolouring all of the existing graphics for the game. But from now on all future graphics has a colour palette that is a balance between the different colour profiles presentation, and I won't make THAT mistake again. (As a side note: The new trailer shows slightly different colours to the new ones - the trailer may appear more saturated than what we will be working with from here on)
Palette Comparison
Hitting Things with Other Things
We now have a melee combat system in the game. No longer are we limited to blasters for vaporising aliens. The weapon currently is a power sword, because power swords are cool. Both sword and blaster are equipped simultaneously, and it is easy to jump back and forwards between them during combat.
Damn the Torpedoes!
I am periodically adding more features to spacelane travel, especially the combat. The combat had become more dynamic and fun with the addition of torpedoes from pirate vessels. This paves the way for other enemy weapons like defence drones and mines.
Dungeons Keeping
The map generation for the Space Hulk dungeon has been modified to create more interesting and a little-less-cramped areas. This should make combat more fun especially now that melee is implemented, while still retaining a claustrophobic feeling at times. Also, steps are underway to make the space hulk levels a little more varied and interesting.
Picture Perfect
New NPC portrait sizes are being implemented to show off more of the characters appearance and personality. This goes hand in hand with the different layout for the NPC dialogue boxes. This also led us to start work on the feature I've been putting off for a while, and that is the player character customisation. Stay tuned for more on that next month.
Fill My Trailer with Pixels!
We now have a new trailer, which shows off the increased resolution, some of the graphical changes and a colour palette closer to my original vision - but as I said a little more vibrant than we are currently working on - but we didn't want to delay releasing the new trailer any longer. I have been trying to release new trailers periodically, to reflect the current state of the game, and the next trailer will be showing off a greater variety of gameplay experience, so I look forward to being able to do that.
Now the Bad News
I have had to change the estimated release date on the Steam page to reflect when I realistically believe the game will be ready to play. And that date, unfortunately is ... "I don't know". I have a development schedule on a whiteboard in my workspace, and I've watched as we have slipped further and further out of sync with my schedule. As I want the game to be the best it can be, and as this is my first commercial game, and my first game of anywhere near this scale, I need to be careful with what I promise. Also, Steam is now changing their policy about how a release date is shown when you don't have a solid release date, and the most accurate option is "To Be Announced". I will provide in these Dev Logs any news when I have it. My deepest apologies, and I hope you will remain a fellow passenger on this journey into the far reaches.
In the coming month we'll be working on player character customisation, the living quarters deck on the ship and more.
Safe travels in the spacelanes, friends, and we'll be sharing more soon.
The Orion's End Crew