Greetings Spacers!
We've been hard at work on Orion's End over the last month, however, there hasn't been anything visually impressive to show off. Hence, why I've been so quiet on Twitter lately. (Twitter is usually where you will find frequent updates on what we've been doing lately.)
A New Dimension
A major change to the game has been the screen resolution, which has been increased from an already impressive 256 x 144 pixels, to a massive 320 x 180 pixels. It mightn't sound like much, but it has created a lot of freedom around menu screens and more importantly the internal space of the player ship. I originally loved the pokey little ship, but with plans to have a customisable living space on a lower deck, the additional room will be greatly appreciated when that is implemented.
Unfortunately, this has meant that there was quite a bit of time modifying code and graphics to suit the new dimensions. This is almost completed now. You can see the change to the ship design below. (It still requires more consoles and extra engines. They will come soon.)
Bugs, Bugs and More Bugs!
We've also been squashing some annoying bugs, optimising code and then squashing more bugs from the new code. :( But it has been time well spent, and the game is feeling a little smoother thanks to the lack of invertebrates.
Speaking of bugs, the randomly generated spacehulk levels are absolutely full of bugs and they are really fun to blast away at. The plan is to have 100 levels of increasingly difficult levels to grind through if you feel so inclined and gather all kind of rewards for the effort - monetary, loot and in-game badges.
Dodgy Space Travel
Space combat has been pretty fun, but we felt it needed to be a bit more fun. So, we have started to implement more weapon and ship upgrades. The first two involve some pretty cool ship manoeuvres, allowing the player to dodge and weave through other ships and asteroids like a true roguish space captain.
Next, we will be working on hand blaster upgrades and more ship upgrades.
Safe travels in the spacelanes, friends, and we'll be sharing more soon.
The Orion's End Crew