Astral Realms

This week, the main goal was to finish working on adding the new features to the story. This has now been done.

I have added the ability for multiple vehicles to appear during the story events, however, even though Spiritus Astrum has support for multiple vehicles at this point, but this support has not been properly tested. It does work, but it is not quite ready for release, and so I will probably stick to just one controllable shuttle, rover, ship, etc, for the moment.

I have also added improvements to the navigations and beacons/markers systems in the game. It is now easier to track and find items and objectives, etc.

It is also possible for the player to convert harvested minerals into energy (In addition to items, etc), which they can then use to craft advanced items.

I have also made some changes to the ending of the most recent story, to allow the player to continue on playing if they choose to. In the future, it may be possible for the player to play multiple stories in a row, effectively choosing their own endings, etc.

Finally, I have updated and improved my website. This is not 100% done yet, there may still be some slight issues, but I am quite happy with the results.

I have added support for more advanced scanning, and improved the navigation beacons, etc, in the game.

I have also been working on improving procedural objects, etc, to allow for easier and more powerful integration into the story system.

I am relatively close to finishing the improvements to the new story. At that point, I want to test it much more extensively, and then add AI dialog, etc.

I can then work on the next main story quest.

It is now possible for the player to craft more advanced objects and buildings by converting harvested items and minerals directly into energy.

This basically unlocks a new “advanced” tier of constructable objects.

The next goal is to improve the scanning system so that I can not only detect cities that have not paged in yet but actually place beacons, etc, at their location to guide players.

This should not be too difficult.

I am still working on the new story.

I am adding more new, more complex elements to it, which require improvements to the story generator and supporting mechanics.

This should allow for the static and dynamic story generators to be substantially improved in the future, as more and more elements are added.

So far, these new features are progressing well.

The new story is going quite well.

I have added quite a few new events to it, and some new features, etc, too.

I am hoping that the basic building blocks of the story will be done in the next week or so, and I can then focus on adding the dialog, art, and other improvements and features.

There are still some bugs and issues, and a lot of testing to do, but I am making good progress.

I have made several improvements and additions to the story, in addition to some minor improvements to the core mechanics of the game as well.

I have improved the “scanning” system so that more information can be obtained from planets in systems that the player has not visited.

This is extremely important, because the procedural story system uses this scaning feature to determine where to send the player next.

I have also modified and improved the ground cover for non-earthlike worlds.

I am now working on the details for the second story campaign.

I am adding a lot more content, objectives, etc, and testing these.

The artwork is relatively basic for the moment, but I can improve this later.

The goal is for each of the campaigns in the game to have about 3-5 hours of gameplay.

I have finished the basics of the new story mission.

The basic triggers and events now work, the next step is to add more gameplay and story elements.

These gameplay elements will require quite a lot of thought. So far, the game relies on mostly survival and crafting elements for it’s core gameplay loop, but I want to extend this to add more things for the player to do, and more ways to interact with the world.

I could improve the combat system, add more random enemies, etc.

I have also conducted more tests on the story, and so far, it seems ok, except for a few minor issues.

I have been testing and improving the next story mission/quest for the game.

The main elements of the story work, it’s just a matter of adding the supporting gameplay logic.

This is going quite well, the project is designed to be easily extensible for exactly this reason.

Once I get the quest functional, I can work on adding the story elements, etc.

I have been testing the second main story in the game. This was finished in concept, but is not fully done.

The next goal is to finalise this story. It should, hopefully, be about 2-3 hours of content.

The game is currently arranged into multiple stories, with a different one being chosen based on the players choices in the startup screen.

Eventually, I want to have more procedural stories, etc, etc.

The testing has gone well, and the next step is to start working on implementing the story itself.