News

x64 update, or is that an early April 1st joke?March 29th, 2022

unfortunately, it isn't. See, this project got started a long long time ago, and back then I though who needs all those bits anyway! Now, after I already had some problems with limited memory available (mostly related to doing memory allocation like an idiot), I ran into some problems with my scripts, which I hoped library update would fix (it didn't, the actual error was forgetting to add reference when deserializing objects in some cases). But the library had project only for new visual studio, so I decided to upgrade to new visual studio. And while I was at it and I needed to rebuilt all libraries used, I decided that it might be a good oportunity to switch to x64 as well. It all turned out to be pretty much painless, except for a bug where debris generation stopped working correctly, which turned out to be caused by some undefined behavior which behaved consistently for years...

Other than the technical fun above, I worked on some optimizations, because the latest mission was beginning to run like crap for various reasons (slow script due to unnecessary checking for breakpoints, slow finding of close objects to position, unnecessary reallocations when preparing rendering, etc.). I also improved loading time for textures, because there was a lot of time spent waiting.
Even though I'm not a big fan, I've added camera shake, which I try to limit to bigger explosions, so it isn't annoying. Along with that I've added more sounds for guns and explosions, which I think helps a lot, after sounds being neglected for so long.

This release also brings you a new campaign mission, in which you control a very small fleet and a hero battleship. This hero gets more abilities than standard battleship, so you better use them to win this mission! Some of these are reactor overload (get more energy in exchange for damage to reactor), ignite resources (use resources on board to generate energy), microwarp (teleport 50km away, using energy), disable engines (use on enemy to slow him down - useful to stop those ships running circles around you!), repairs (use a lot of energy to get some hitpoints back).
Last but not least, there is new joke completely serious scenario called Pod Tow racer! Here you control 4 ships towing other one around a space race track! If your idea of fun is racing with RTS controls, this is your lucky day!

You can grab the current release here (.zip 342 MB). You can load provided saves to jump into any campaign mission


Christmas updateDecember 23rd, 2021

This "exciting" update brings more textures to your ships! Together with this comes 2 color paint scheme. You can go to options and set your default colors, which will be used in campaign. Because you can set color same as your enemies, you can now also change sensor/minimap colors to green/blue/red. Thanks to a lot of new textures I started loading compressed textures from disk which not only speeds up loading, but also saves some disk space (in good part because I no longer store roughness/metalness/masks as separate images)

In other exciting news, one whole new mission was added to campaign, which makes it 10 now. I finally got around to implementing preserving of selection groups between missions, which I really should have done sooner. Another thing that helps in new mission is that your ships no longer spawn as an ugly pile but in a formation, truly some revolutionary features there.

I now also have a stupid twitter account, you can follow me there to avoid refreshing this page once in a blue moon and finding that nothing has changed. I'm talking to that one person that visits this page, you know who you are!

You can grab the current release here (.zip 300 MB). It also appears this runs pretty okay on linux with WINE. Although pretty okay in this case means that I've tried it on my 10 year old notebook, it runs, it runs out of memory for textures (note to self: make option for lower texture size) and for reasons unknown, direct lighting doesn't work, but it runs, which is a start!


More missions and rebalancingJuly 30th, 2021

Two posts in a row that aren't a year apart? What is going on? Well, not much...
I've uploaded latest build (go to downloads), that contains two more missions (technically three, but one of them doesn't really have any objectives). Apart from that, some more ships got textures and everything got more explosion particles. I've also finally replaced the shitty bloom I had there since forever for something a lot better.

In terms of rebalancing, apart from previously mentioned decrease of available resources and cargo capacities on ships, I've doubled hitpoints on all ship subsystems, but left hardpoints as they were. This worked nicely in a way that it now makes sense to not completely destroy every ship, but once it isn't a danger anymore leave it be. Since there aren't as many ships as before, it takes longer to completely destroy a ship, so it gives you some incentive to micromanage your ships. Your ships have more chances to actually survive a fight as well, which allows their experience to accumulate.

As always, while doing the whopping 2 additional missions, lot of bugs and weird behaviors we're fixed. One feature I added is form to send feedback directly from game, so if there is anything that sucks and could be improved, you can let me know from there! (I mean, if the server doesn't crash) One of the things that is never improved in this game is sound, so you might want to turn some of it off. Last time I checked, your units were always predicting they are going to lose...


Some texturesMarch 15th, 2021

In an uncharacteristic move, I'm posting some update and not even a year passed from the last one... Anyway, for a long time I had these spaceships without textures and considered it beyond my capabilities to do something about it. Suddenly I had an urge to try out Substance Painter and see if I can do something with software like this. Instead of this being a praise of Substance Painter, I actually ended up doing it in free beta (will this be free in future?) of Quixel Mixer. It isn't anywhere as complete as Substance, but hey, it is free, and it was enough for the things I needed.
I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and it is probably too detailed for RTS anyway.

And here are the 4 lucky ships that got makeover

And here is one in 3D, because why not

And that is pretty much it for now. I've been working on some rebalancing of resources and construction times, because I've been playtesting my campaign and found out that you quickly end up with 30 ships, and it quickly devolves into situations where you have so many ships that you don't have to care about any positioning at all, and if ship gets targeted, it doesn't come out of fight alive, so all the damage levels is pointless. In addition to that I also made a single new mission (wow!...), and whatever general improvements.


Update, if you can believe itDecember 21st, 2020

I'm not gonna blame any lack of progress this year on corona, because let's be real, it should have given me more time to work on this, so I'm just gonna blame it on laziness. So let's find out about all the new exciting features

Your ships now gain experience when they do or receive damage. In my infinite wisdom, I decided to make it more complicated and there are two experience values. One is gained by doing damage, and this experience increases gun/beam reload speed and accuracy, and missile replenishing speed. The other experience is gained by receiving damage, and it increases speed of passive self-repair of ships outside of combat, and more importantly reduces incoming damage. While all this makes a lot of things more complicated, there is at least one positive side effect - it can be used to make hero ships in campaign (amazing...).
Second most exciting feature is added minimap (what do you mean there wasn't minimap?). When playtesting my stupid mission I came to conclusion that switching to/from sensor view doesn't really cut it, so I added a small minimap like you can find in practically in every RTS. If new enemy ship is detected, it will be blinking for two seconds to attract attention.
I added a whopping 3 new missions to the campaign. It is incredible how many weird bugs I've encountered while playtesting those. E.g. harvester turning sideways when game was loaded, game crashing when ship warped out and warped back in before it's trail disappeared, and always my favorite - bugs related to scripting serialization.
Overall I think I got the game a bit more towards the fun side of things, so that's good. Here's hoping that next update will not take another year.

Here is extremely low effort video of the game :) . I couldn't be arsed to spend more than 10 minutes on this, apparently...


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