For quite a while now we've been showing off the game in devstreams on twitch, later uploaded to youtube. Now we're starting the final road to the Early Access Launch we decided to get more focus by producing Devblogs here on the steam page.
When will the game launch?
Good question. Internally we are pushing for the end of September, but we won't hesitate to delay the launch until we are satisfied the basic game loop is complete; and it's stable with good performance. Basically it will take as long as it needs to. We'll give plenty of feedback here about how we're going, and you get to see how design decisions get made (and changed!) here in our development blogs.
New UI implementation
We've got a whole new UI look coming in and it looks amazing! I think this is now the 34th variant that Shaun has done, but it's well worth it. Not only does it look great, but it's easy to read and use. Look out for it in the next devstreams!
Dynamite!
Kevin added dynamite. We're working on how weapons, explosions, and the general damage model affects the world, and items in it. More to come.
Shuttle Refactoring
One of our core issues with the game has been completing the game loop. That means, giving you a nice "loop" in the game that gives you a repeating sense of fun. Things like building, exploring, crafting, fighting, and so on. One of our big obstacles to this has been "how do we provide lots of events and things to do, and how do you get around to them".
We came up with the concepts of shuttles, where you use them to go on away missions. These were going to be custom made parts that clip together, like vessels in Kerbal Space Program. The problem is: that is a lot of design, programming, and content work - not to mention it is a whole new system that needs to be taught and explained to players.
So... we have decided to try taking all the existing mechanics for construction and allowing them to apply to building "motherships". A mothership will be a station that flies. This means we can make new features once, and have them able to be used both for static stations, and then used in the same way for your moving mothership.
The static stations will be much "safer" than the motherships. We anticipate your mothership will get damaged, a lot, during away missions. Maybe even destroyed. So it allows players to manage their risk.
I should say here: the mothership concept is an idea currently, we're going to try implement it, and if it works, we won't do shuttles as we were. If it doesn't work, we'll keep going with the old shuttle idea.
No devstream on twitch this week!
Due to the above, we're not going to be streaming this week so I can have a play and keep focus. Normally we stream 1PM Saturdays NZ time, but not this week!