I have added two more achievements to the game, both for the third Campaign.

I have also fixed a lot of bugs and added some extensive improvements.

Some minor issues that were causing console spam have been fixed, and I have improved the engine effects for all ships.

I have also tweaked and improved the performance and stats of the different missiles in the game.

I fixed a more serious bug involving player targeting. In some cases, where multiple enemy ships were in view at the same time, the players ship could lock on to the wrong one.

I also fixed an issue where the enemies projectiles did not take into account the movement of the ship, making them travel too slowly.

There were quite a few other issues fixed too, including issues with enemies spawning within, and moving, through objects, some issues with one of the Campaign events, and some minor issues with paging.

I have a few more improvements to make, and then I intend to do another full retest.

The post Spiritus Astrum [P0-B13]: p1547: Towards Early Access first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have completed an entire test run of the game in the build. There were a few issues found, almost all of them related to the fact that the build runs faster than the editor, so timed events, etc, can sometimes happen out of sequence.

The rest of the issues were pre-existing issues that I hadn’t noticed before, these are less serious, and are mostly balancing issues rather than bugs.

Most of the main bugs have been fixed now, although I haven’t managed to fully track down all of the intermittent bugs yet.

I have also made some improvements to the game. One of these involved replacing some procedurally generated structures with statically generated ones. I found that the procedurally generated structures were too maze like and hard for the player to navigate through.

In future I intend to improve the procedural generation system so that the structure can be random while still being easy to navigate.

There are still quite a few minor issues and improvements to work on. Once these are done, I will do another complete run through of the build.

The post Spiritus Astrum [P0-B13]: p1546: Towards Early Access first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have added over 20 achievements to the game, along with simple artwork for them. Most of these achievements are connected to the games three campaigns, with a few extra ones as well.

I will be adding more achievements later, but these should be enough for Early Access.

I have also added a “Debug” menu in the game which basically enables “cheats” and other helpful debugging functions. This could be necessary initially, until the game becomes more stable.

Finally, I have created a standalone build for the game with the player server integrated.

I will probably not enable multiplayer for Early Access, at least not initially, it needs a lot more testing.

So, for Early Access, the game will mostly use a local sqllite playerserver (Instead of a remote mySQL master server).

I have tested the first few missions with the build and master server, and no major issues were found.

There have been some issues related to timing. The build runs faster than the editor, and the player server will also have a different latency compared to a master server too.

I am confident that these issues can be fixed fairly easily.

The post Spiritus Astrum [P0-B13]: p1545: Towards Early Access first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have fixed several long standing and intermittent bugs in the project.

One of the fixes is a little messy but it works quite well for the moment.

These bugs were related to the floating origin system, and the checkpoint saving/loading system. The checkpoint system in particular needs to be extensively tested, since it is complex and relatively new.

I hae also uncovered some minor issues with the day/night system. The system generally works, but there can sometimes be noticeable transitions between space and the atmosphere depending on where the player enters the atmosphere. I will have to spend some time improving this later.

The post Spiritus Astrum [P0-B13]: p1544: Towards Early Access first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have been doing a lot of debugging, and have finished another complete test run of the third campaign.

I have fixed a large number of bugs and made a lot of improvements to the AI system and persistent object spawning, as well as the campaign system.

The space combat system has also received some minor improvements, but I need to spend more time on this later.

There is still quite a lot of debugging, etc, to do though.

The post Spiritus Astrum [P0-B13]: p1543: Towards Early Access first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have added a new filter mode to the shuttle’s guis that allows the player to scan for mission objectives. This is vital in eliminating visual clutter while the player is trying to navigate to the next objective.

I have also fixed some bugs with the filter and nav systems, and made some other improvements.

Some longstanding bugs with the NPC and Creature AI have also been fixed. There were issues with the AI floating in the air in some cases.

Finally, a bug with the SQL server was also fixed.

The next major improvement that I need to make will be the balancing and tweaking of the game. Currently, the difficulty is much too high. I need to balance the projectile speeds, damage values, and the shields and hull strength values, etc. This will not be difficult, but it will be time consuming.

I have also made some improvements to the art for the game. For Early Access, the art is going to be very basic, so I have not spent much time on this. I will be replacing the art later, when I get more time.

The post Spiritus Astrum [P0-B13]: p1542: Towards Early Access first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

This week, I have fixed several more bugs with the third Campaign.

I have also added more comments and interactions from the players allies, and improved the damage system in the game.

I have also made some improvements to the way text messages are displayed in the game.

There are still a few bugs left to fix before I can do a retest, and I want to spend some time working on some new artwork as well.

The post Spiritus Astrum [P0-B13]: p1541: Towards Early Access first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have finished another complete retest of the third Campaign.

There were quite a few bugs founds, since it’s been a while since the last complete test, but most of the issues are either minor bugs or optimisation issues.

There are also some difficult balancing issues, which will need to be looked at in the future. I will need to tweak weapon damage, etc.

I have already fixed several of these bugs, and added some improvements.

I have added a scaling damage reduction to the laser weapon in the game, because it was too powerful.

There are also some intermittent issues that I am having difficulty pinning down. I will try to fix these next week.

I aim to spend at least a week or two working on debugging and improvements, and then either retest the Campaign at that point, or work on some artwork first.

The post Spiritus Astrum [P0-B13]: p1540: Towards Early Access first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have completed more testing and debugging, mostly related to the campaigns.

I have also added more features to the capital ship interiors, and fixed some bugs that I discovered, as well as improved the story triggers slightly.

Finally, I have made some improvements to the campaign missions themselves.

The next step is to do another complete retest of the story campaigns.

I have also uploaded some short videos to youtube. They are mostly random exploration videos taken during the story campaigns.

The post Spiritus Astrum [P0-B13]: p1539: Towards Early Access first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.