Hey everyone!
So these past two weeks have been interesting. I started closed testing recently, which immediately opened up a world of new bugs, but more importantly a lot of balancing issues. I’ve been a lot less focused on coding, and more focused on guiding the testing, as well as starting back up on art assets. I’ve continued work on doing the ship and module visuals (of which there are many of) as well as the overlay visuals. Below here, you can see what I mean by ‘overlay’; small icons and other visuals to assist in the presentation of information. I’m trying to diversify and simplify the information you receive on your screens, while also maintaining the core aesthetic.
Testing has revealed a few things to me, one of which is balancing; some events are randomly scaled too high and some boss-entities are too tough for when you fight them. This is fantastic feedback and is something that will be balanced out to hopefully have a smoother experience without sacrificing too much challenge. Another dominant request has been to include a tutorial; the nature of the game unfortunately means there is a lot the player is in control of and a simple ‘game-manual’ does not seem to be enough for some people, understandably so. Unfortunately, from the perspective of the developer, I have a rather detailed knowledge of how everything should go, but processes and mechanics will almost certainly not come as naturally to most players. I try to account for this as much as possible, but without actual player’s opinions I can’t know for sure where I am lacking. I had originally considered the idea of a tutorial a few months ago though had shelved it because I wasn’t sure how to implement it. However, a recent update I did which allowed the player to select different starting stations, and the update I did to the event system, may now allow a simple way to approach this. Oh yeah! Also I did an update where you can now unlock and play as different stations, each with pros, cons, and differing strategies!
Currently, my two main up-coming goals are to get a tutorial established and to set-up all the new overlay icons, as well as a handful of smaller patches and updates. There are numerous bugs which need to be tackled!
That’s it from me for now. Till next time, all the best~!
^,,^