Greetings, and welcome to my development blog! In these blogs, I like to share features that I am working on incorporating into the full release of my game. This is my third development blog, but if you are new here, then don’t worry; reading them in order is not strictly required. :)
About the release date of my game
When I first created the game’s webpage, I wasn’t really sure when I would release the final product as I was still pretty early in development. At the time, I thought “sometime in 2024 sounds good to me!” so I put that in as the release time.
Now that I am further along in the development process, I can now say with slightly more confidence that, assuming everything goes well, I will still be able to release this game before this year ends.
However, something always goes wrong in the development process, be it programming difficulties, real-life time conflicts, etc. So, I will be going with the safe option and will be announcing now that I will be releasing Solar War sometime in Q1 2025. (January-March) I hope you understand.
The actual thing that I wanted to talk about today
In Development Blog #1, I had mentioned that I was going to add more solar systems into the game, “each with their own design and gameplay feel!” I believe that now is a good time to be revealing the first of these new solar systems. Let me introduce you to… Alphy Centauri!
(For those who were looking forward to images, sorry, there will be none! I like to let each planet be a mystery, and if I associate a planet’s likeness to its AI, then I will kind of be spoiling the game for newer players. And no, I will not be putting images under spoiler tags! I will only be putting other things under spoiler tags!)
Alphy Centauri is a binary star system with 10 main sequence planets in the system. These planets can spawn moons, though none of them can spawn nearly as many moons as the Sol System can. (Tidal can spawn 3 moons, as opposed to Saturn’s 6) Rare events can also hit this system, which can spawn planets, asteroids, comets, Things, nukes, and even suns! And, of course, there are 8 bosses that can spawn in.
The thing that really makes this system challenging and fun(?), though, is this: Annoyances (the small gray balls that are really hard to hit and can shoot The Earth) spawn in much greater frequency here, making it much more difficult to effectively recover your HP when you “accidentally” run into one of the bigger objects. A lot of objects in this system are smaller, but there are a few big objects that can really ruin your day.
Note that in harder game modes, annoyances can kill you directly!
Some of the new objects that you can expect to find
I won’t be going over all of them, but I will be going over a few of them.
Caged
This is a planet that you may not want to destroy… because if you do, multiple annoyances will fly out of it, wreaking havoc on your health!
Stats:
- 20 Max health
- NO Recovery
- Can spawn up to 8 annoyances when defeated, with a minimum amount dependent on difficulty
Lente
Lente is a real beast, with 300 max health! It slowly slumbers toward a random location on the screen, and when it does… it fires a Lazer beam at The Earth!
Stats:
- 300 Max health
- NO Recovery
- Can fire a lazer beam at Earth, making it currently the only main sequence planet to do so
- Can also spawn a moon, which I will not be talking about today
Shroud
With all of those annoyances flying about, all hope may be lost; but there is another planet that can help clear them out for you!
That right, it’s today’s planethero, Shroud! Shroud is an AOE planet that can help clear out some of the smaller entities for you. It does follow you, though, and it can defeat you if you’re not careful… so? Do you keep it alive so that it can help clear the board, or do you defeat it so that it doesn’t clear YOU?
Stats:
- 100 Max health
- SOME Recovery
- Has an oversized collision box due to its really thick clouds
- Deals damage to every planet that contacts it
- Damage rate due to direct collision with The Earth is reduced
- Can be terraformed, which eliminates its threat to you while still keeping its helpful abilities
- Can also spawn a moon and its cloud, which I will also not be talking about today
Alphy and Beaty Centauri (The final boss of this system!)
Since this is a binary system, it makes sense that the final boss has two suns. I coded in the ability for two boss bars to display simultaneously just so that I could effectively pull this off.
I’ll leave the details of the boss fight itself for all of you to figure out when the game is released. Don’t worry! You’ll be fine… mostly.
I guess I’ve said enough today
If all of this sounds interesting to you, then why don’t you wishlist this game on Steam? It would mean a lot to me, AND it also enables you to receive a notification when the game is released!
Until next time!
-Andrew