Long overdue development update.
What’s the status of the game now?
Mechanically, it’s about 80% there. Content wise, 25%. That may not seem like a lot, but creating content is speeding up greatly as the systems get more fleshed out. There is no way the game will be done by early 2023, but Early Access seems doable. A combat beta before that.
The first area on Callisto is mostly done in terms of characters, quests and story. You can finish the first quest in the main line, get the modular space station mobile and travel on the world map. World map is a bit of a misnomer since you’re traveling around Jupiter’s orbital system but for gameplay purposes the term is accurate enough. You can add party members and select one or two from the roster to join you if you venture out with the shuttle pod. You can take them for useful field skills or their combat skills.
You can move the space station to orbit different moons, stations or stable orbits of Jupiter. You can also travel freely, but this consumes a lot of fuel. Compared to Titan Outpost, it’s as if you can move your entire base around the map and then shuttle to points of interest.
Jupiter’s radiation is extremely dangerous, and the deeper you get into its orbit, the more shielding you need. I really want to include Io in some form, but I’m thinking of changing the current arc I had envisioned there to something based on drones, because there is simply no way I can justify having humans there without venturing far outside the scope of hard sci-fi. Anyway, the jury’s still out on that one.
Before moving onto the next area and populating the world with locations, I decided to focus more on combat for a while again.
Combat
There are two possible combat encounters in the first area, although the game doesn’t necessarily have ‘combat encounters’. You can initiate combat and attack someone as long as you’re in an area that allows combat.
The first two encounters are on a moon, which means that there is minimal gravity. One character is carrying an angle grinder as a melee weapon, and I had yet to implement melee weapons when I finished the area.
This made me realize I needed a combat testing area that was more versatile than my abstract block area and the ship around which I built everything. I made a testing tool where I could easily add characters to a combat situation and put them on a map designed for combat. This works well, so I decided to add it to the game as a skirmish mode. I think turning this skirmish mode into a combat beta might be a good idea.
Character sheet at generation (still incomplete of course):
Anyway, right now the combat system works.
It’s not feature-complete yet, nor is it in any way polished and a lot of actions are not animated yet. But it works.
Characters can walk on surfaces when they have their magnetic boots engaged. When they jump off, they float freely in a zero G environment based on their momentum. You can apply thrust in a direction and change your momentum.
Characters can attack each other, damage calculation, resistances, etc. Right now, that’s all in. The AI can also shoot at you and navigate surfaces. They can navigate freely in the zero G environment. The AI even transitions between the two states with a semblance of intelligence, but that still needs a lot of work.
I wrote a behavior tree system for the AI so I can easily add AI scripts to characters. This will give each enemy character a unique approach. I still need to see what works and what doesn’t. My first AI profiles started fleeing for cover when health was under a certain percentage, but in this game, sometimes cover isn’t what you want. Sometimes you only need to disable your magnetic boots and firmly jump upwards to get out of dodge.
I’ve also created a framework where I can attach code to characters that works in tandem with the AI and character status. Dialogue can be triggered when a character’s health goes below a certain level, or if their oxygen runs out, etc. so characters can beg for their life.
The Nitty Gritty
I’m sure you want to hear about how resistances work, what the different damage types are, how deep or shallow the health pool is and how many attacks you can get in a round. Stuff like that.
However, most of this is still in flux. I can give a specific example of a weapon as it is in the game right now, which is a good indication of how it will ultimately end up in the game.
This a laser weapon that consumes battery power quickly and isn’t inherently more powerful than a kinetic weapon, just different. It fires a short, intense burst of energy. It’s useful because it has zero kickback so you won’t go flying if you shoot it untethered in zero G.
You can set it to low frequency mode and apply more heat damage, or high frequency mode and apply more electromagnetic damage. The former does more overall damage, but the latter has more penetration and higher critical chance. Criticals do not come in the form of increased damage, but in breaking or debuffing something for the target.
These are weapon modes. Some simple guns have just one mode, others have two or more, like bust fire.
Weapons can also have special effects. If you aim the laser for the eyes you can get a blinding effect. Most kinetic weapons have a rupture chance. Electromagnetic weapons have a stun chance. Others have armor destruction.
The damage types are :
Kinetic, heat, electromagnetic and radiation. Of course the last two are both radiation, but the latter is a combination of everything we typically associate with radioactivity. (keV to MeV, secondary gamma rays, etc.). There is a fifth type of damage that I’m intentionally leaving blank because I’m not sure if the system needs it yet.
If you get closer to Jupiter, everyone constantly gets hit with radiation type damage if they’re not shielded. This is an environmental hazard and important for positioning.
Speaking about shielding, armor works with a hard damage threshold to kinetic damage. Criticals can reduce DT permanently until repairs are made. Any penetration will cause leaks and significant penetration will quickly deplete oxygen if not patched during the character’s turn. If left unpatched, characters will suffocate in a few turns and seriously debuffed before that.
Other types of damage ignore DT and directly lower HP minus the victim’s resistance to those damage types.
The standard space suit without alterations has limited DT and limited heat and EM resistance. A suit geared towards combat you can get relatively early on has higher DT but limits movement.
You can wear suit packs. Right now there are two, both allowing for omnidirectional movement with varying amounts of thrust. A suit pack with embedded weaponry could be fun, but I want to cover all the basics first.
That’s it for now. I have lots more to write about and this is not a very structured update, but I don’t want to dump an info bomb in one go. I'll try to update more regularly with specifics.
What’s the status of the game now?
Mechanically, it’s about 80% there. Content wise, 25%. That may not seem like a lot, but creating content is speeding up greatly as the systems get more fleshed out. There is no way the game will be done by early 2023, but Early Access seems doable. A combat beta before that.
The first area on Callisto is mostly done in terms of characters, quests and story. You can finish the first quest in the main line, get the modular space station mobile and travel on the world map. World map is a bit of a misnomer since you’re traveling around Jupiter’s orbital system but for gameplay purposes the term is accurate enough. You can add party members and select one or two from the roster to join you if you venture out with the shuttle pod. You can take them for useful field skills or their combat skills.
You can move the space station to orbit different moons, stations or stable orbits of Jupiter. You can also travel freely, but this consumes a lot of fuel. Compared to Titan Outpost, it’s as if you can move your entire base around the map and then shuttle to points of interest.
Jupiter’s radiation is extremely dangerous, and the deeper you get into its orbit, the more shielding you need. I really want to include Io in some form, but I’m thinking of changing the current arc I had envisioned there to something based on drones, because there is simply no way I can justify having humans there without venturing far outside the scope of hard sci-fi. Anyway, the jury’s still out on that one.
Before moving onto the next area and populating the world with locations, I decided to focus more on combat for a while again.
Combat
There are two possible combat encounters in the first area, although the game doesn’t necessarily have ‘combat encounters’. You can initiate combat and attack someone as long as you’re in an area that allows combat.
The first two encounters are on a moon, which means that there is minimal gravity. One character is carrying an angle grinder as a melee weapon, and I had yet to implement melee weapons when I finished the area.
This made me realize I needed a combat testing area that was more versatile than my abstract block area and the ship around which I built everything. I made a testing tool where I could easily add characters to a combat situation and put them on a map designed for combat. This works well, so I decided to add it to the game as a skirmish mode. I think turning this skirmish mode into a combat beta might be a good idea.
Character sheet at generation (still incomplete of course):
Anyway, right now the combat system works.
It’s not feature-complete yet, nor is it in any way polished and a lot of actions are not animated yet. But it works.
Characters can walk on surfaces when they have their magnetic boots engaged. When they jump off, they float freely in a zero G environment based on their momentum. You can apply thrust in a direction and change your momentum.
Characters can attack each other, damage calculation, resistances, etc. Right now, that’s all in. The AI can also shoot at you and navigate surfaces. They can navigate freely in the zero G environment. The AI even transitions between the two states with a semblance of intelligence, but that still needs a lot of work.
I wrote a behavior tree system for the AI so I can easily add AI scripts to characters. This will give each enemy character a unique approach. I still need to see what works and what doesn’t. My first AI profiles started fleeing for cover when health was under a certain percentage, but in this game, sometimes cover isn’t what you want. Sometimes you only need to disable your magnetic boots and firmly jump upwards to get out of dodge.
I’ve also created a framework where I can attach code to characters that works in tandem with the AI and character status. Dialogue can be triggered when a character’s health goes below a certain level, or if their oxygen runs out, etc. so characters can beg for their life.
The Nitty Gritty
I’m sure you want to hear about how resistances work, what the different damage types are, how deep or shallow the health pool is and how many attacks you can get in a round. Stuff like that.
However, most of this is still in flux. I can give a specific example of a weapon as it is in the game right now, which is a good indication of how it will ultimately end up in the game.
This a laser weapon that consumes battery power quickly and isn’t inherently more powerful than a kinetic weapon, just different. It fires a short, intense burst of energy. It’s useful because it has zero kickback so you won’t go flying if you shoot it untethered in zero G.
You can set it to low frequency mode and apply more heat damage, or high frequency mode and apply more electromagnetic damage. The former does more overall damage, but the latter has more penetration and higher critical chance. Criticals do not come in the form of increased damage, but in breaking or debuffing something for the target.
These are weapon modes. Some simple guns have just one mode, others have two or more, like bust fire.
Weapons can also have special effects. If you aim the laser for the eyes you can get a blinding effect. Most kinetic weapons have a rupture chance. Electromagnetic weapons have a stun chance. Others have armor destruction.
The damage types are :
Kinetic, heat, electromagnetic and radiation. Of course the last two are both radiation, but the latter is a combination of everything we typically associate with radioactivity. (keV to MeV, secondary gamma rays, etc.). There is a fifth type of damage that I’m intentionally leaving blank because I’m not sure if the system needs it yet.
If you get closer to Jupiter, everyone constantly gets hit with radiation type damage if they’re not shielded. This is an environmental hazard and important for positioning.
Speaking about shielding, armor works with a hard damage threshold to kinetic damage. Criticals can reduce DT permanently until repairs are made. Any penetration will cause leaks and significant penetration will quickly deplete oxygen if not patched during the character’s turn. If left unpatched, characters will suffocate in a few turns and seriously debuffed before that.
Other types of damage ignore DT and directly lower HP minus the victim’s resistance to those damage types.
The standard space suit without alterations has limited DT and limited heat and EM resistance. A suit geared towards combat you can get relatively early on has higher DT but limits movement.
You can wear suit packs. Right now there are two, both allowing for omnidirectional movement with varying amounts of thrust. A suit pack with embedded weaponry could be fun, but I want to cover all the basics first.
That’s it for now. I have lots more to write about and this is not a very structured update, but I don’t want to dump an info bomb in one go. I'll try to update more regularly with specifics.
