Hello everybody. This last update before game release contains not only complete colour redesign of UI but many functional and other visual changes. However the most significant update is completeness of all mob's visuals (finally). I don't say I'm not going to ever change those visuals, but I believe they are good enough to show them in new trailer. And new trailer is the main reason for this devlog. With trailer I will be also replacing old screenshots on Steam Store Page. And with those Steam changes finished I will reach out to multiple web platforms and I will try some youtubers to gain additional awareness about Celestial Drift. With all of this I'm now confident enough to have fixed release date on the 23rd April. Time I'm aiming with release is at 11:00 PM GMT+2 (23:00 CEST) which is at 2:00 PM PDT because majority of page visits on Steam are from United States.
Now with release information out of the way lets talk about changes with demo visible first. The most visible one is game UI. I unified multiple button styles and all over the place colours with great help of my friend Feo. Another UI related change is visualisation of running ship system. I moved from less obvious visualisation in action bar only to show running systems directly in HUD bellow ship's structure/shields while keeping simple cooldown animation in action bar. Then I fixed situation when sector names weren't fitting in sector name widget. However current solution isn't the best I would like, but it works for now. I tweaked occlusion mask, when ship is behind some structure, both in effect and size (which I doubled) and I also looked at camera shake on damage which I was scaling incorrectly in proportion of the incoming damage. Last change that is visible in demo is player death related. Previously player's ship instantly respawned at nearest respawn location when it was destroyed (this was a little bugged, but I fixed that too). Now pop-up window is displayed when player's ship is destroyed. This pop-up has variable messages whose selection is based on killing shot damage amount related to ship's maximum structure.
Those were changes visible in demo now lets see what I added this time to future release version. First I added visuals to remaining nine mobs as I announced in the start of this long devlog. Visual and sound FX for all weapons are also in place. I added whole game map with each individual map being discoverable. You will be able to see where you haven't been yet. Currently no level objects (stations, gates, wormholes) are visible on big map. I played a little with rotation rates of mobs to improve their visuals and I already know I will be tweaking those rotation rates more. And finally I fixed issues with AI of scavenging and hunting mobs. Previously hunting mobs were unable to catch players even when those mobs were faster player's actual ship. And scavenging mobs weren't looting items. Now you should keep an eye on your loot. And that is all about changes.
Game is not fully finished and is still missing some graphics for 15 items and most lore and contracts/quests are handwritten in my notebook. But those changes are more than doable in one week. Then in remaining time I will be doing only some polishing and maybe some small testing.
This new build contains these new game updates, history of all project changes is available on my discord server (https://discord.gg/4x8489reYV) in changelog channel for Celestial Drift:
- Moved server time and online players counter above ChatWindow widget
- In MainMenu widget changed checks for newer version only in case of release version and checks for newer demo and release version availability in case of demo version
- Removed checks for newer test version in MainMenu widget
- Fixed sector names above minimap weren't fiting in widget, however current solution needs more work because it looks ugly right now
- Fixed chat isn't displayed imediately after client session start
- Made server name configurable through ServerCfg.json file
- Added better visualisation of running systems
- Changed cooldown visual in action bar
- Redesigned UI visuals and color palette
- Increased size of rendered icons
- Implemented whole space map
- Added recording of visited sectors
- Added sound FX for rest of the weapons
- Added remaining VFX to weapons
- Added visuals to mob Lone Celestial
- Improved lighting in levels
- Doubled occlusion masking radius
- Added visuals for mobs Wraith, Spectre and Background Shade
- Added icons for Shadow Miner and Polymorph mobs
- Added visuals to mob Sentient Singularity
- Updated charged clouds visuals
- Tweaked camera shake amplitude on damage
- Fixed player not respawning in correct locations
- Reworked logic flow of player death evaluation allowing to display popup window with short message to player and giving control of when to respawn to player
- Added visuals to mob Living Entropy
- Added respawn popup with randomized contextual messages to player
- Fixed charcters being possible to damage when they are protected
- Renamed mobs Nebula Mind and Nebula Heart to Spirit of Nebula and Cetus
- Added visuals to mob Spirit of Nebula
- Added visuals to mob Solarus
- Added visuals to Cetus
- Updated target mark visuals
- Disabled found tick functionality on components to improve performance
- Tweaked space dust VFX
- Updated revenge mobs movement so these mobs now have chance to catch players
- Changed rotation rate of mobs for better visuals
- Shorten visuals of Angelic Wings
- Fixed scavenge AI isn't looting lootable items
- Fixed some typos
- Added popup messages to mobs in contract tasks
- Changed color of Nostromo station to assign it to Military
- Changed individual cargo containers display to condensed form next to action bar
- Fixed text in insert pop up widget was overridden by default text