Hi everyone!
We're getting SUPER close to launching the beta for Starless Abyss, so if you haven't signed up already, be sure to click here & get ready for when your ship launches, Proxima!
But I'm sure you're all wondering what cool stuff we've been getting up to behind the scenes of development, and of course we're more than happy to share what we've been working on!
Combat Director
After running some internal playtests and feedback, we've been working on and making some changes to encounter design. We wanted to ensure that while the player still faces challenges, it also still feels fair, so there is a nice balancing of both and the player still has a good shot at problem solving. In turn, we made some adjustments to the combat director, which is responsible for procedurally adjusting the waves of enemies based on a number of factors, such as the state of the player. It should now feel a lot more balanced, and not push things too much over the edge.
Enemy AI
After keeping a close eye on enemy AI behaviour, we felt we needed to promote more of an active playstyle, and to just give enemies more depth in the way they react to the player's moves. Whenever an enemy attacks, an aggro line will be shown to the player, informing them which of their ships is about to be attacked. To keep the aggro line consistent, we've adjusted the AI to prioritise the player in its attacks, taking into account other factors less, e.g. the enemy destroying a passing Asteroid to clear a path, rather than attacking the player. In this situation, the enemy will instead ram the object blocking the path, therefore destroying it - but the enemy won't be able to move beyond where the object was.
Localization
We've been busy working away at ensuring all text and language in-game is standardized, so we can smoothly implement various localization in the game.
Keywords & Description
It's important to us that the player is given all the information they need to have a deep mechanical understanding of the game, so we've implemented a system which lays out all of this information as soon as the player needs it.
Boss animations, bug fixes!
We've also been working on some super cool BOSS ANIMATIONS, because who doesn't love those? Oh, and of course, the all important bug fixes along the way!
That's all for this dev update! Be sure to get signed up in the run-up to the beta, which will be dropping VERY soon, and keep an eye out for more as we get closer to launch!
We'll see you out there, Proxima!