Hello explorers!
First off, with the one year anniversary of PULSAR’s early access launch on Steam we want to thank the community for supporting the game over the course of its development!
We’re in the home stretch of Beta 10. Most of the new features and content are now in testing or polish stages. Our current plan is to release next week, but we aren’t promising anything specific yet!
We’re quite excited about the new priority system for Beta 10. We believe it will end up giving a lot of control to the captains on how they want their AI crew to react to orders and the world around them. Our two main goals for this system were to help communicate what the AI is currently doing and to allow the captain to really fine tune the actions of his crew to mesh well with his play-style. It’s a big project, and we’re certain it’ll grow when we start getting some of your feedback! Please keep in mind the screenshots below are subject to change as we still have work to do! More information and a quick tutorial / overview will be part of the Devlog!
Priorities being arranged by importance. Example of overrides in action.
The current list of overrides possible. Post ideas for new ones below! Click image for full size.
New AI Priority System
- Allows the Captain to define priorities to specific actions just like before
- Main Priorities are now sorted by the computed importance
- Main Priorities now can have subpriorities for more fine control over behavior
- Additionally allows custom overrides to priorities so you can customize the AI to match your playstyle
- Can be synced to alert level, captain’s orders, or from a set of overrides based on crew or bot status
- Some have a data field that can modify when the override is active
- Ex. Hull > X% can be customized to any percentage the Captain chooses
- All overrides can be inverted to reverse the situation in which it is active
- You can rename and customize the appearance of bot crewmembers
- You can save / load your bot data anytime
- Some priorities have editable metadata allowing you to customize certain aspects of bot behavior within a priority
New navigation system is now fully implemented
- All planets now have built networks
- Some enemies can even use the navgraph
- They also get the combat routines and gunplay enhancements from the crew bots
- Future enemies might be able to use the jetpack system
Work on Hubs
- New Background Ships
- Help to add the feeling of a busy sector
- Space Turrets attached to hubs, space stations, etc
- Wanderers
- New type of NPC that can walk around hubs
- More progress on the Estate
Other small tweaks
- Ship physics tweaks
- Hopefully piloting skill has more impact
- Jetpacks in Exosuits
- New lens flare system
- Changing the temp unit in the settings (we heard you loud and clear!)
- Turrets on planets and stations
- Ground based turret systems that protect areas / bases
We are planning a series of updates during the Beta 10 cycle (10.1, 10.2, etc)
The first few will likely be focused on smaller fixes and tweaks based on community feedback.
We are planning on adding the contraband system (hidden cargo support) and a polish pass on the Estate adding some things that didn’t make it in.
Couple screenshots of the Estate and a new planet:
After Beta 10, we’re planning on switching the focus to content for a time. The past few major updates have been focused on game systems or more technical improvements that are important but perhaps not as exciting to some players.
One of the more interesting concepts for us in working on a space game was the idea of adding strange scenarios and phenomena to the universe. We’re planning on dedicating a good chunk of time to that endeavor for Beta 11.
That’s it for now, keep an eye out for Beta 10!
Thanks for your time!
Best,
The Leafy Games Team