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[Boggard]

Update of this week:

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As usual this week’s portion of updates to the game. This time we focused primarily on making the space to look decent. We are finally happy with the results of how the space background generation works. Effects of the sun also got some love and it looks gorgeous in motion. You can see the results in the screenshots below. Another feature implemented this week was mining. It is now possible to equip mining gears and go extract some useful minerals from the asteroids. Although the visual effects for this are not quite ready, so we will wait on posting the screenshots of it. And finally we started building a proper website that would replace the current one. It would include all the needed functionality such as the ability to actually buy our games
Anyway, here are some nice pics of the progress.
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Original post: http://atomictorch.com/?p=209

[Drakale]

Very nice looking space scenery, that sun is huge! At least from this perspective, it must be or that planet would be boiling 

[Boggard]

Very nice looking space scenery, that sun is huge! At least from this perspective, it must be or that planet would be boiling 

It is only for the testing purposes, in the actual game they won't be that close, ofc.

[jocan2003]

I have to it... is it me or one of the model REALLY look like the amar frigate in eve online? ( Or is it the Amarr shuttle? ). The brown one.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Could just be that the ships are on the same orbital plane as the planet, and it's oriented like this:

Ships ----> Planet --------------------------------> Sun

Which is also why the sun isn't much bigger than the planet.

Although the lighting effects would suggest that the sun is to the right of the planet. Otherwise we'd be seeing the dark side of the planet.

I guess, is the background supposed to just be a background, or would you interact with it at all? Because if you're not interacting with it you might as well just make it a pretty picture instead of worrying about a planet being laterally very far from the sun.

[Neyvn]

You are quite obviously not a spam bot at this point, so anyone who bashes you is out of line at this point,

That's good

*lifts a bat over his head* OMG SPAMBOT!!! GET HIM GUYS!!!!........... Um guys??? We not doing this? Oh ok.... *puts down bat*

Anyway, For reals, Looking forward to looking into this game after I wake up a bit, else I keep doing stupid stuff like that ^

[Boggard]

Here is another update.

http://atomictorch.com/?p=215

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Another week of hard work :) We are still mainly working on creating a new website. The site will provide all needed functionality to power the game’s community and allow such obviously important functionality as buying our games :)
But aside from that we also implemented several new features in the game:
* New ship, gorgeously called “Crab” for it’s shape.
* Several new weapons. Among them are several lasers, plasma cannons, new rockets/missiles. And speaking of missiles, you can see render of them below. Please note though that these will be tiny in the game, so we tried to make these models very low poly.
* Identity protection for multiplayer. This way no one will be able to hijack your nickname and pose as you.
* And finally we started implementing character skills system in the client. It will take a long time to finish it, but even now we can see how awesome it is and how fun and rewarding it is to advance your character.
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[Boggard]

Hm, looks like I forgot to post update from last week

Here it is: http://atomictorch.com/?p=222

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This week we have completed probably the biggest update to date. A whole lot has been accomplished, but let’s go one by one:

* We have finally implemented the logic for skill system. There are about a dozen skills now, but by the time we release the game we will surely bring it up to possibly one hundred or more.
* New space station. You can see it in the screenshot below.
* A lot of improvement for AI. The NPCs and enemies now behave much smarter and can accomplish tasks such as delivering goods or mining asteroids. Funny thing here, since they all belong to different factions, as soon as we run the simulation they started fighting each other That was unexpected, but that’s what makes the system good. They can make decisions for themselves.
* New planetary system generation. It works now and things such as asteroid belts, proper planet orbits, jump gates, etc. are generating properly.
* New logo for the game. Which you can already see in the top of this post.
* Icons for items and skills are now properly loaded from resources.
* And finally we have added a new type of effect for weapons. It is now possible to add sprite effect such as plasma ball and such.

This week we also finally completed our second internal build of the game. Now it even looks more or less like an actual  game even though there is not much content yet, but it proves that we are on the right track!



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[ductape]

lets us play it.

[jocan2003]

lets us play it.

/signed
Also nice job on the progression and thank you for keeping us updated

[Boggard]

lets us play it.

I'd be happy if we can release it already, but we don't want to make people disappointed. We would rather finish it to a more or less complete state, and only then release. There is not much to do in the game at the moment anyway...

lets us play it.

/signed
Also nice job on the progression and thank you for keeping us updated

Thank you
We are really working hard to make it into a great game.

[Shadowgandor]

Looks very interesting! I've been looking for games like this, really gives off the Space Rangers vibe, which is always a good thing!

[Boggard]

Hello again, here is another update

This time we have finally updated the site!

You can see all new stuff in action here: http://atomictorch.com/



And update from this week:
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Main addition to VoidExpanse this time is a new ship which you can see in the screenshot below. I think you can guess its purpose from its look. Yes, it is a cargo vessel. It has very spacious cargo holds ideal for trading missions or transportation of mined ore. Now, thinking about it, it is actually a very smart idea if one player does mining in a specialized engineering ship, while other player helps him to transport ore to a processing facility in one of neighboring star systems. I should certainly try it to see how much more effective it is compared to mining alone.

And here is our usual detailed list of other important features this week:
* Crates. Now it is possible to loot destroyed ships. Or you can jettison some or your cargo into space for others to pick up. The crates themselves were done some time ago, but this week we finally implemented UI for actually picking up these crates, or rather their contents.
* Better planets. We have adjusted how the atmosphere is displayed and increased the polygon count for the planet models.
* Better shaders for the sun, now they take into account actual 3D space fore more realistic look.
* Energy calculation. Generator, capacitor and all energy requiring equipment now take into account all associated ship stats. That means you can be left off without energy if you spam-shoot your weapons non stop for some time.
* Tractor beam. You can use it to draw containers closer to your ship if you are too lazy to pick them up manually. I know, I will certainly use it often!
* We have also started working on the galaxy editor that would help us in creating the campaign for the game later on. For now though, it is mostly needed to tweak the galaxy generation in the game.
///

Also,

Looks very interesting! I've been looking for games like this, really gives off the Space Rangers vibe, which is always a good thing!

Thank you And yes, that is one of our significant inspirations certainly ^_^

[Boggard]

Huh, I haven't posted anything here in a while.
In the meantime we have released several updates and even did official press release of the game

Here are some pics.

Engineering skill tree (work in progress, so there are only a few skills so far):


Character creation (UI is work in progress, but generally it will work the way you see now):


Freighter ship (great for moving stuff around as it has very spacious cargo holds):


Shield physics (it looks good in static, but in dynamic it is 10 times more awesome):


You can read actual news here: http://atomictorch.com/ scroll down since there have been several posts.

And comment something here too, because I don't even know if anyone is reading it and if I should continue positng at all

[Mephansteras]

Looks interesting. I'll have to keep an eye on this.