I have fixed two long standing bugs with the character system in the game. These bugs were causing visible distortion on the character meshes under certain circumstances. The issue was visual only, but it was noticeable enough to be a problem.

I also fixed some issues regarding spawning at random locations in the multiplayer survival scenario, and I made some improvements to the groundcover/grass exclusion system on ringworld.

In addition, I fixed a number of bugs with the inventory and item systems, as well as the enemy AI combat and spawning systems. One bug with the animation system took a particularly long time to find. It was causing the enemy AI to face in the wrong direction every time the fire animation was played. This turned out to be an issue with rotation baked into the animation itself that was causing the character to rotate.

Finally, I am in the process of adding tracer rounds to most weapons in the game. This allows both the players and enemies projectiles to be visible from a distance, which makes it easier to see where enemies are, as well as letting the player know when they are under attack. This is very important in a game with such long view distances as Spiritus Astrum. The effect also looks very good.

The next goal is to finish adding the projectile tracers, and fix some more bugs with the enemy NPC’s. This should take a few days. I then want to do some more testing, as well as add helper menus, tooltips, etc, to the game to reduce the learning curve a little.

The post Spiritus Astrum [P0-B14]: p1559: Towards Early Access first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

This week, I have added two new campaigns to the game: A single and a multiplayer survival campaign.

The campaigns are very simple: The player lands on an Earthlike world and must simply survive for as long as they can.

The single player campaign has the player landing on random worlds, however the multiplayer campaign has players landing in the same region of the same planet, so that they can interact and survive together.

The multiplayer campaign should be considered in early beta however, the server has not been properly stress-tested.

Most of the work I did this week was on both of these campaigns. They seem to be quite stable now, although some more testing is needed, especially with the multiplayer campaign.

I also fixed an issue with the grass exclusion system which was preventing it from working properly on ringworlds. The solution is not 100% perfect, but it is much better than it was.

Several other minor bugs were also fixed, including some GUI bugs, some issues with the crafting system, etc.

I could be closer to an Early Access release than I planned!

The post Spiritus Astrum [P0-B14]: p1558: Towards Early Access first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

This week was spent on more testing, improvements, and debugging.

I have completed multiple full retests of the first campaign, in the editor and in the build.

Most of the issues that I found were minor cosmetic issues and simple improvements, but there were some slightly larger bugs that appear to be intermittent (Mostly related to placing campaign items persistently in the world).

The main improvemets were to the AI system. There were some long standing issues here (Mostly related to navigation and pathfinding while the capital ship the AI was on was rotating) that were difficult to pin down, but the system seems to be much more reliable now.

I also spent some time testing and improving the AI when exploring planets, and added some new abilities.

I modified the campaign a little bit, to make the objectives flow better and make more sense with the story, and made some improvements to playability (There is a toggle option for sprint, as well as a hold-down, which makes sprinting long distances easier).

There is still quite a bit of testing and debugging to be done, but I am making progress.

The post Spiritus Astrum [P0-B14]: p1557: Towards Early Access first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have fixed quite a few bugs within the project, including some long-term bugs. I have mostly been working with the AI system. This is one of the most complex systems in the project, since the AI has to be able to navigate and move on rotating ships, at any angle, etc. There are still some issues to fix here, but I am making progress.

I have improved the navmesh that the AI uses to navigate around the ship, removing some problem areas where the AI was getting stuck.

I have completed two more retests of the first campaign, and fixed almost all of the issues discovered in each one. There should be very few major issues left now, hopefully.

I should be able to finish the next step of the project this month.

The post Spiritus Astrum [P0-B14]: p1556: Towards Early Access first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have made improvements to the driving mechanics in the game. In particular, I have added a new smoothed camera system, to fix the issue of the camera jumping around too much when the player drives over rough ground. I have also improved the driving mechanics, and fixed some bugs, as well as disabled collision between vehicles and small objects in the world, to prevent the player getting stuck on objects that they can’t see properly.

I have also fixed an issue I was having with resetting the players position correctly after loading the game in a specific part of the second campaign.

I have made some improvements to the dialog system and text display in the project, to improve readability.

Campaign 2 is basically done for the moment, and I have started testing Campaign 1.

Several runs have already been completed, and some bugs have been discovered, including some slightly more serious ones.

However, most of these have already been fixed, with just a few issues left, which I will hopefully fix next week.

All of the trophies/achievements within the game have been tested, and work correctly, and I have fixed a lot of issues and made quite a few improvements to the first campaign.

The main issues left now are related to moving and rotating the players capital ship while AI Crew members are walking aboard it. Under some circumstances, the navigation of the AI can break while the ship is rotating.

The post Spiritus Astrum [P0-B14]: p1555: Towards Early Access first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have completely retested the second campaign. This is a simpler campaign technically, so there were fewer issues with it than with Campaign 3, however, I did discover some bugs.

Almost all of these were very minor, and were fixed quickly.

There were only two slightly more worring ones, one involving placing of navigation objects at long range, and one involving travelling to planets over long distances.

I have fixed both, but there are still some issues with the second bug. When the player saves after travelling to a particular zone, but before travelling to the planet, the position of the players ship when they land is off slightly. This is likely a floating point precision bug, but I haven’t quite tracked it down yet.

Other than that, there were some minor issues with campaign triggers, and I added some new features and quality-of-life improvements to the crafting system.

The next major goals are to try to fix the above issue with the floating point precision, and spend some time improving the driving mechanics. The ground vehicles have some annoying issues, such as the camera shaking when the player drives over rough ground, etc. In addition, ground vehicles come to a sudden stop when they hit any obstacle, even something that it should be able to pass through or drive over.

Hopefully I can take a look at these issues next week, and then I can work on retesting Campaign 1.

The post Spiritus Astrum [P0-B14]: p1554: Towards Early Access first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have improved the “Decoy” system for space fighters. There is now a visible “Missile Lock” warning indicator, allowing the player to know more easily when to fire decoys. I have also improved, and fixed some issues, with the targeting and combat systems.

The story campaign has seen some slight changes and improvements, mostly with dialog triggers and enemy balancing.

I also fixed some issues with the colour of some gui elements, as well as a severe performance issue with the AI that I didn’t notice before.

There were also a lot of minor issues and improvements related to the third campaign that have ben done. There is still some work left here, but I definitely making progress.

The next goal is to retest the First and Second campaigns, and then return to the third campaign.

The post Spiritus Astrum [P0-B14]: p1553: Towards Early Access first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have added nav objects to assist the player in moving around on board their capital ship, and I have fixed some issues with the ally and enemy AI.

A minor issue with the players missiles not registering collision with enemies under some circumstances was also fixed.

I have also done another complete retest of the third campaign, which uncovered some more, mostly minor bugs, as well as some balancing issues.

Most of these have now been fixed too. I should be ready to move on to the next phase of testing soon.

The post Spiritus Astrum [P0-B14]: p1552: Towards Early Access first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

The NPCAI system has been further tested and improved. I discovered some issues with it on the last run, and I have since fixed several bugs and added some new navigation and local object avoidance features. There is still some work to be done here though.

I have also fixed several other bugs that were discovered during the last run, mostly related to some random generation issues, some more AI improvements, etc.

Finally, I have completed another full retest. The vast majority of the serious bugs appear to be fixed now, and I am running into mostly minor bugs, and areas that need improvement, etc.

Many of the bugs that I discovered on this run have been fixed already, and I should get mostof the rest done next week.

The post Spiritus Astrum [P0-B14]: p1551: Towards Early Access first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have added some improvements to the existing NPCAI and Companion AI systems, and improved the filtering of objects on the HUD, and I have made some improvements to the mission triggers in the third campaign.

I also completed another full retest of the third campaign. Even though I did discover some new bugs, the retest only took two days, since the campaign is becoming much more stable with each run.

I have already fixed many of the bugs discovered in the last test rung, they were mainly minor issues. I have also made some improvements to the game, such as line of sight checks when locking missiles onto targets, etc.

Thre are still some long standing issues with the project, which I will need to track down and fix eventually.

The post Spiritus Astrum [P0-B14]: p1550: Towards Early Access first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.