Hi all - It's time for another progress update. I've included a video that shows some of the work I've been doing. Details below.
https://youtu.be/_RI0zEmb9Y0
The last few months have been pretty crazy around here. Since the last major patch, I've been focused on opening the FTL gates and there is still a lot of work to do. Most of this time has been spent wrapping up all the procedural mission sets needed to make sure the universe is populated with locations to explore. This has been thousands of hours of work over the last year between me and a talented modeler/ level designer I work with. I'm happy to say that work is now done - I'm finished with the level sets for the next content patch.
Another large block of work that is finished is generating the interiors for the various stations found in the universe. That means the interiors are in the game, loading based on where you are in the universe, vendors are placed and faction mission contacts are available. You can now dock at trade stations across the universe in the development build - if you have the proper level of faction needed. In a future patch you will be able to hack station security remotely and board the stations of hostile factions. Doing that will place a station on alert and you will need to fight your way through the station to disable various systems like external station turrets and interior defense systems. Should be interesting.
All the space stations that were completed some time ago have been added to the universe. Later I'll be adding external turret systems to the stations for faction warfare.
The incursion system is now working in all systems that have stations or a faction presence. I'll expand on this in the future with faction warfare and more.
I've also added volumetric effects to all systems as well as LUT Color Grading. They add a lot to the visual appearance and diversity of star systems.
For the last week I've been focused on performance on the Star Map. The game processes tens of thousands of independent AI vessels. The Star Map uses LOD algorithms to display ships and systems that are nearby and places them into a secondary processing queue when they are out of range. Every ship has a task or set of tasks and when they are out of visual range, they switch to a secondary process that uses universe time to determine arrival, task completion and assign new tasks. It's a fairly complex system and seems to be running well. I'm going to give myself another week with this to make sure everything is performing and running as expected.
And finally, the revised animations are finished, including special attacks for all weapon types. You might notice that "stealth" will be going in the game. I'll add these animations into the game when I get through a longer list of tasks I'm working on right now.
So, what's next?
Performance on the Star Map, tying the mission generator into the rest of the universe, finishing the crew manager, adding commodities and refining the trade system and a good number of other things that need to be done like data buoy's, the mission tracker and more. These should move along pretty fast. It does take time though, so I hope you will all be patient. It's going to be a huge update when it's finished and I need to make sure everything is in and working well.
I'd like to thank all of you for supporting the game and hope you all have a great weekend!