Warm Welcome
The demo for Ambient Dark has been out for a few weeks now. Thanks to everyone who has tried it out and the feedback given.
Specifically, things that came up which I plan to fix/improve in the near future:
- Bug: Skybox is suffering from banding/gradation.
- Suggestion: Sensitivity slider for mouse look and console controls
- Suggestion: Walk button (e.g. left shift) and/or way to modify walk/run speed.
- Suggestion: FPS controls, to let people with higher powered graphics cards increase the framerate.
- Suggestion: Better icons and/or an easier way to work out what all the things are on the menu. I want to keep the game to being ideally zero text anywhere, so it can be played in any language, but I may add some text in the menu for some languages just so it's easier for players to understand, and then leave other languages as blank.
If you want to give more feedback, I made a feedback thread here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/3396470/discussions/0/727997144358725480/
Or you can hunt me down on social media, e.g. via discord: https://discord.gg/hYSbQwFQZQ
Future Plans
I would love to add new environments to Ambient Dark. Specifically I have an idea for a planet-based spaceport control room. As well I would like to add in various facilities dotted around the galaxy such as research stations or industrial sites.
However, I want to limit future environments to single rooms. Partly to make them feel a bit cozier. And partly because I'm developing Ambient Dark as a hobby project and so don't have a whole lot of hours spare for it. Hopefully I'm able to get at least one more environment in the game before release, and more afterwards, but it all depends on how much time I can sneak into working on the game between other projects.
Living Worlds
Another area I want to improve with Ambient Dark is making the world outside the window feel more alive. For the current spaceport lounge environment, I think there is enough activity from the passing spaceships, but for future environments, I want to have more sophisticated behaviour and movement of spaceships and/or vehicles, so that viewers can tell a bit more of a story about them, rather than watch them just passing by.
Melodies of the Stars
The music in Ambient Dark is based around whole albums rather than individual tracks, since albums are more relaxing and practical for playing in the background, and not having to worry about unexpected tonal changes or needing to constantly pick the next track.
The demo currently features 3 albums, with a further 3 locked that will be available in the full game. The music is a mix of Dark Ambient and Space Ambient and I will probably stick to just those genres in the future.
That said, I am currently speaking to some additional musicians to get extra music into the game. It depends on agreeing licensing terms and prices, so may or may not happen. I've already had one approach from a musician about making music specifically for the game and while it's not really practical to do right now, it may be something I'm able to do in the future.
I don't however plan to allow players to upload and/or play their own music already on their computers via the game, since this is a bit of a technical faff and a weird legal grey area.
Parallel Universes
I've also had some suggestions of things that would be really cool but are not the direction I want to take the game.
I'm not planning to have any sort of spaceship that you can fly around or any navigation between places in the galaxy beyond just selecting an environment from a menu + loading screen.
I'm also not planning to add in a story. I want to do a bit of environmental storytelling but mostly leave it up to players to have fun imagining their own stories and filling in the blanks for themselves.
As well, I don't want to expand the spaceship spotting beyond what I've mentioned above. So no stockmarket-style trading or incremental type gameplay based on the ships going to and fro.
Which is not to say those things aren't great ideas, just that for me, they'd be different games or spin-offs. The core of Ambient Dark is to have a virtual space for relaxing, listening to music and watching the galaxy go by.