Astral Realms

I have completed a full retest of the third campaign, including the new story triggers, etc, that I have added.

I have run into quite a few bugs, but almost all of them were minor, and have been fixed already.

There are still some issues with triggering the story and dialog elements at the right time, but this should not be difficult to fix.

I have also made some improvements to the gui system within the project, in addition to many other minor improvements and changes.

One of the more complex issues that I have yet to solve is how to create multiple cities at the same time. Currently, this is not supported, but it needs to be in the final game.

There are some issues left to fix, and some more improvements to make, which I am working on now, but so far things are going fairly well.

There is a lot of work left, but I am definitely moving in the right direction.

I have integrated all of the dialog that I wrote last week into the game itself, as I have added triggers for this dialog so that it appears at the correct points in the story.

I still need to test it fully, which is the next step, but so far it seems to be working well.

In addition, I have fixed several bugs related to the story and dialog system, and the guis, etc.

The dialog system has some basic random elements built in. Character names, etc, will be changed between playthroughs. In the future, I intend to extend this to add more replayability, and more procedural content.

The dialog for each NPC will also change during the story, depending on the game state, and the players actions, etc.

I have also started extensive testing of all of the changes that I have made recently. This will take some time, but progress so far has been good.

I have added several more mission objectives and events for the third campaign.

I have also written over 8 thousand words of dialog and mission briefings for the campaign, and this is just a first draft.

I am now working on integrating this dialog into the code.

I have added a menu to display the mission briefings, and I have made improvements to the dialog system to display dialog more easily during the missions.

There is still quite a bit of work to do here, but I am making good progress.

The main goals left are the artwork, and lots of testing.

I am still working on adding more objectives and features to the missions.

The missions are quite short, but I want each one of them to have some unique element.

I have added several additional elements to the missions, and fixed some bugs, made some improvements, etc.

I have also created some art concepts for the game, although the art is mostly just placeholder art for now.

Most of the core mechanics for the third campaign are in place now.

The next step is to add the artwork, and the story.

I have spent this week making extensive improvements to the missions for the third campaign. The goal now is to add more content to them in the form of new mechanics and objectives, etc. Once this is done, I can add the artwork and story elements.

I have added new enemy types, as well as new placeholder art and objectives, etc.

I have also made several improvements to the combat system, and fixed several bugs, etc.

There were some issues that cropped up when creating large numbers of enemies at the same time, as well as some issues with placement and targeting within interiors, but these issues seem mostly solved now.

I have added several more missile types to the game, with different stats, etc, and I have improved the projectile-based weapons as well. There is still a performance issue when the guns fire a large number of projectiles at once, even with object pooling. I will need to look at this later.

I have also added the ability for the player to add multiple guns to their fighter’s hardpoints, in addition to missiles. This does cause issues with performance, as I said, but it also allows for more variety in gameplay.

Finally, I have added an upgrade system where certain weapons and items are unlocked after specific missions.

The next goal is to add more mission objectives and content to the missions themselves.

I have created a short demo video showing the space sim mechanics here. This is early footage, the artwork is not final.

I have spent this week working on improving the combat system mechanics.

I have fixed some bugs and made some improvements to the targeting system for guns and missiles (There was a minor issue where multiple missiles could not be fired at the same target).

In addition, I made some improvements and ran some tests on the checkpoint save system for the third campaign.

The vast majority of the bugs and issues that I discovered during the last test run are now done.

The main goal for this week though was adding in the loadout selection system for the fighters.

It is now possible to choose which weapons the player wishes to equip on their fighter, and this loadout will be saved persistently.

I have also had to make changes to the HUD and combat system to allow the player to view and select their loadout, and fire missiles, etc, from specific hardpoints based on their selection.

I still have some more missiles types and other weapons and equipment to add to the game, but the loadout system works very well.

I have completed another full retest of the third campaign in the game.

There were quite a few bugs and issues identified, but thankfully, nothing serious. There were no issues with the core mechanics, pathfinding, etc.

Most of the bugs that were found have already been fixed.

There were some issues found with the combat system, I will need to spend more time on this in the coming weeks.

The next goal is to fix some of the bugs that have not been fixed yet, and work on improvements and tweaks to the third campaign. I should also be able to work on more artwork and more content for the campaign, before doing another full retest.

Overall, the third campaign is going very well, most of the major issues should be fixed by now.

I have been working on improving the space combat mechanics in the project. I have made several minor changes to AI pathfinding and tweaked some variables to accomplish this, with good results.

I have also added mission triggers and logic for another mission to the game. I have not added artwork for this yet, just the core logic. There is still quite a lot to do for the third campaign, but I am making good progress.

In addition, I have added improvements to the way that dialog messages are presented to the player in the game (Particularly when they are in a vehicle) and I have also improved the NPC dialog system to add better integration for story-based dialog options.

There are probably more improvements that I will need to make here, but I think the system that I have works well enough for the time being.

The full retest of the third campaign is now done.

The minor issues that were found have been fixed, and I have also spend some time working on the more serious issues, and most of these have been resolved too.

There were also issues with players entering and leaving the ship without being properly configured, which caused issues with floating origin shifts, etc.

The next step is to improve the combat system for the space combat parts of the game. I have already discovered and fixed a few bugs, and made some improvements, but there is more work to be done here.

I also need to implement a checkpoint save system. Due to how the game is setup, a conventional quicksave system would be very complex to implement for the story missions (It is designed for the free-roaming/sandbox gameplay), so having the game save only at specific points is a better option.

This will take a lot of testing, so ensure that it works properly.

Most of the issues that are left in the game are caused by situations where the game is exited suddenly without the correct state being set. A checkpoint save system would be a much easier way of fixing this, because I could just automatically revert to the previously reached checkpoint on load.