It’s been a little while since I last posted, but that’s mainly because my school workload has increased in the past week or so. From here on out it’s likely that these development logs will happen on a weekly basis instead of happening every few days. On the plus side, once my capstone prototype team’s project gets closer to completion, I’ll probably make a log post or two about that, so stay tuned!
Anyway, regarding my progress since the last update. I’ve added camera controls, and now I’m wondering how I went so long without implementing them; they’re basic, but they help a lot. I’ve also started work on the resources screen. Right now the buttons do work, but they don’t work properly; I’ll need to add some more code to properly clamp the pool and ship hull values. In the future, you won’t be able to select a destination if the pool for any resource is above zero, but that’s a later feature.
Speaking of the future – I think I need to refocus and scope down for my minimum viable product. Things like an encounter system and a jump system and a resource system aren’t really meaningful if the core gameplay loop of moving ships around and responding to enemy attacks isn’t engaging, so I think I’ve got a different idea: build a prototype MVP built entirely around the combat system. This will probably mean that you have to deal with waves of enemy attacks until your ships can jump.
Here are some problems I’ll need to tackle:
- How to discourage the player from just turtling up with all of their ships next to the flagship, since that’s the most effective way to protect all of them?
- How to encourage the player to move their ships around the map instead of waiting for enemies to come to them?
- How to make maneuvering tactical and engaging, instead of just having two ships slug it out? This might be tricky, but maybe it’ll be less about how maneuvers affect one-on-one engagements and more about how you can manipulate the AI to lure them in specific directions.
I’ll try and address these questions and challenges in my next big update, which will be focused on making a “combat playground” for making sure that the core gameplay loop of tactical space combat is engaging. This may take a while, since I’ve got some algorithms homework that needs to take priority, but I’m going to try and have an update every week for the rest of the semester, no matter how minor.
Evan Parry 