Spiritus Astrum

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.

The testing of the third campaign is continuing to go well.

I have run into a few minor bugs, which were fixed, and I also made some small improvements to the campaign as well.

There was one more serious bug that I found with the AI navigation system, but this was also fixed. It turned out to be a relatively simple fix in the end, but due to the complexity of the AI navigation system, it took a while to find it.

I am nearing the end of this round of testing, but there are several improvements that I need to make, as well as some bugs left to fix. Once these issues are solved, I will do another round of testing.

I also have more art assets to add to the campaign, etc.

I have made some progress with the artwork for the project, but there is still quite a lot of work to be done here.

I didn’t want to get too sidetracked by working on the artwork, so I have decided to postpone this briefly, and work on the next iteration of the campaign missions.

The goal here is to test the missions extensively, and also add improvements and refinements with each iteration.

I have already made several improvements and updates, as well as refactored some code and added some additional details to the scenes, etc.

I am hopeful that the third campaign should be mostly finished in the next few months.

The final few improvements that I needed to make to the AI code are now done. There are still some additional features that I may need to add in the future, but the new AI enemeis are now basically working.

I have also spent some time planning out improvements and changes to the missions for the third campaign.

The next goal is to finish the interior art for the new capital ship. This will take some time, although I am going to try to keep it relatively simple at this stage.

The artwork is going well, I have a good proof of concept going, it is just a matter of adding the detail work, etc.

I also need to think about the path that the player takes through the interior, and which areas should be accessible, blocked, where the mission items and goals should be placed, etc.

This will take quite a bit of time.

The next goal that I have been working on is the addition of several new enemy types for the third campaign of the game.

These are almost completely done. I have been able to mostly reuse code from other NPC and enemy types, but there are quite a few unique elements to these AI enemies too.

The basic logic works fine, and the movement, attacks, etc, all seem ok too.

I still have some debugging to do, but the AI mostly seems fine.

Both of the capital ships that I am adding to the game have been modelled, and textured.

I used a combination of static textures and repeating textures.

I also added in new functioning main and secondary guns, and new projectiles, for these ships.

This took some time to do, but it worked quite well.

There is still a lot of experimentation to be done with respect to texturing large objects.

I have also made improvements to the other art work in the game, and added some special effects, including some new shaders that can hide half of an object. I have used these shaders to create the effect of a ship passing through and FTL gate.