This is a minor update on the real-time space tactics game, which I should probably try and think of a snappy working title for. The Final Fleet sounds a little too “official” or “formal” for a working title. The Unity file is labeled “Flagship,” so maybe that’s what I should call it for now.
Today, my main accomplishment was adding some in-world UI elements to make controlling the ships easier. Specifically, I added an object outline asset from the Unity marketplace and rigged up some code to enable or disable the outline around the player’s ships depending on whether or not they’re selected; this makes it much easier to see which ships you currently have selected. I also added line renderers to each ship that draw a line between the ship and its current destination.
Doing this got me thinking about how “formations” might work, without getting overly complex. Maybe if a ship can be ordered to fly in “formation” mode, where it’ll travel at the same speed as its nearest and/or slowest neighbor. Alternatively, I could let the player make formations of their own that correspond to number keys (or maybe D-Pad directions, if this was a console game), and all ships in the formation fly at the same speed as the slowest ship, provided that they are within a certain distance of the slowest ship. Or I could do both, where a formation can be given orders to hold a “tight” formation where they fly at the same speeds or a “loose” formation where they fly at their own normal movement speeds. It’s food for thought, and I’ll need to make sure to think about it as I start making the ships more unique and fleshed out.
On a related note, I found that the line renderers don’t always render properly when the game is paused, because new frames aren’t being updated. My solution to this is to not pause the game – instead, there’s a “tactical slow-mo” mode where the player can slow things down to about 5% speed in order to issue a lot of orders quickly. Obviously, I’ll need to tweak this further once I start working on the combat system and figuring out what enemy encounters might or should look like.
Evan Parry 