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[chaosavy]

Hey guys - long time no post here.

Just wanted to let you guys know about Void Destroyer 2 coming soon to early access (should be more or less two weeks away).

Void Destroyer 2 is a space sandbox game, where you can go from dodging pirates in little tiny fighters, to commanding massive fleets - and have the tools to control and use them (via a RTS like interface).

To get more info check out the game's Steam page - http://store.steampowered.com/app/369530/

Here's the latest trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lckN9EJJlr8

thanks!

Here's some images:

[Anvilfolk]

Broken screenshots are broken

Good to see a new Void Destroyer coming out though! For those who got the first one (unfortunately not me), what will differ in this new version?

[chaosavy]

Huh - the images (gif files) show up for me - strange.

The first Void Destroyer is a story/mission based game - similar to Homeworld where there is a main story and the fleet persists. Unlike Homeworld - you can pilot any ship (from dog fighting in fighters, to slugging it out in cruisers).

Part 2 - is a sandbox game (versus linear/story/mission). Like many similar space sandbox games you start out in a lowly fighter and work your way up. In part 1, you'd get control over a cruiser and a fleet within 10-20 or so minutes as part of the story. In part 2, you work your way up from a fighter, to a bigger/better fighter, to a gunship, to a corvette, to a frigate, etc etc - all the while building up a wing/fleet, which you can issue commands via a RTS (ala Homeworld) like interface.

So the catch is - that its an indie game, made by me (solo dev) with contract artists, and is self funded via sales from the original. So it won't be as polished/slick as AAA games or even indie devs with teams/budgets - but in no way will be consolized/dumbed down.

EDIT - here's a "Early Access Explainer" vid - shows a snippet of the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lmob3CTW6Xs

[miauw62]

I hope that there will actually be something to do in the game. That seems to be the most common pitfall in these sort of things.

[Gabeux]

Been waiting for news on this. Are you taking any inspiration/influence from the X games?
Would be great to have an X-like with such controls, with actual opponents to fight against that live by the same rules as you.
It'd also become insta-buy for me if the AI doesn't cheat, like in Unending Galaxy. Which means..if you destroy every miner/production facility from an AI Commander/Faction, he/it cannot spawn ships from thin air.

Not sure if anything I said is in your plans, though.    But good look on the EA launch, I've been following it on steam for a looong time now.

[chaosavy]

miauw62 - hope you like blasting ships!

Gabeux - be sure to add the game to your wish list - that way you'll get emails when it goes on sale/sales/etc.

I'm taking a lot of inspiration from all the space sims I've played - including the X games.

Overall I loved the X series - but I found that once I had a fleet it became a real pain to manage - hence the "RTS" like control of fleets. Also I didn't like how the X games handled ship switching (via teleporter - though it has its benefits) - instead I have a instant ship switch.

The X economy was pretty awesome - but because it was so complex it could also break, my economy will be much simpler (there's a few reasons - including me not wanting to have 124312 raw materials, 2342 components, and 213 final products like the X games - I'm just not that into the economy simulation). But the cool thing is that if you want a ship to be a trader/miner/shuttle or escort of those - you select it then you right click (a asteroid field to mine, a base to trade with, or ship to escort), and that's it.

Either way - cheating is a very important tool in game design - and a lot the mid/late game stuff is a bit of a mystery (hoping that these are illuminated with players giving feedback/thoughts/criticisms). The X games usually had a big giant threat faction (eg: the Khaak) which makes big battles really easy to come by if properly used - and in Void Destroyer 2 - you are going to have a fleet, so there's no doubt you are going to use it.

[jocan2003]

So the catch is - that its an indie game, made by me (solo dev) with contract artists, and is self funded via sales from the original. So it won't be as polished/slick as AAA games or even indie devs with teams/budgets - but in no way will be consolized/dumbed down.

Fuck that dont care, new void destroyer will be bad ass im sure of it, im not the one to look for stability and such coming from indie, what i look for is god damn gameplay, longevity and if possible replayability, hell i love DF .

[Trebz]

I have to say it, Void Destroyer sucked. I wish I could get my money back. And don't be pulling that "indie, single dev" bullshit. If you make something and have people pay for it, they expect a good product.

You made a lot of promises and put it in early access VERY early. So early that you got away with obfuscating the mechanics and story of it. I was expecting a space war, instead it was a game on rails. The controls sucked and are overly complicated. Older games fine tuned controls in the genre and you ignored all of that. The graphics stutter, the sound sucks, all the ships have the exact same one weapon. dogfighting is a mess, locations and objectives in the missions are unclear. I heard the campaign is short and retarded.

Anyway tempted to buy this, do not. He is very good at making something look like what its not. He got my money and a lot of other peoples as well. To the dev, you should go into another line of work. Perhaps gardening.

[jocan2003]

Wow that was harsh, sure not all feature was in the game, but the overall mecanics was still there, some stuff was cut out but eh, what game todays doesnt have? its not as flagrant as some other game i wont say the name. For the price tag i did receive the enjoyment worth of it and most of all it helped funding this game wich, even if i were to not have liked the first, would have meant something good in return anyway.

Call me indie fanboy, i may be one and i just dont know it, but small team games receive all my respect and forgivness unless there is outright lies or malpractice ( bad move and such? ). He did say during devlopment some stuff were to be cut due to constraint, im sure i saw that somewhere, just cannot remember when. I do understand the underliying reason of the post and sorry if it didnt suit you and you felt betrayed in some ways.

Giving a negative review is one thing, but attacking the dev on a personal view, in my book is a bit low, we are not talking about EA ripping off spore or something here, but a single man who did is best to make his game. In the future, never take what an indie studio wants their game to be with what the game will offer, there is a big line between wants and can have, big studio learned it and its why there is no information during a long time in devlopment to nail what is possible and whats not ( even there sometime they fail at it, watchdog anyone? )

Personaly after the shitstorm of starbound i stopped taking even roadmaps for granted and only base my expectation on the latest devblog and not their first few annoncement and what they want. While im sorry i do hope you will learn from this situation and be more prepared for futur similar situation. But please, everyone makes mistake and attacking their integrity or what they should or not do is.... not cool to be polite.

[chaosavy]

Hey Trebz - sorry to hear that you feel that way.

If you want to discuss, send me a Steam friend request and maybe I can help you enjoy the game more. I guess I could try to argue with you - my side, but I think that wouldn't really help.

So let me ask you this - sounds like what I said didn't match up with what you expected, so what did you expect?

This could help me understand other player's potential issues in the future.


jocan2003 -

Trebz sounds like he was invested in what I promised, but it sounds like he doesn't feel like I delivered. This is a bit of a tragedy because it sounds like he was a fan, otherwise he wouldn't feel so strongly. I wished that everyone would enjoy the game - and hope that more people enjoy the second. I'm living the dream so I have zero room to make complain - but there are many challenges with indie game dev, lack of skill, lack of money, lack of time, making enough promises to get people interested and then trying to keep them.

Oh hey - the plan is to release the game tomorrow (not next week). This is a particularly good week for me to do release - my wife is visiting her family so I can be 150% game dev machine.

[chaosavy]

Oh yeah - and I fully support Steam's refund system, I cheered when it was put into effect.

I had a demo for over a month prior to EA (took it down about a week ago since it was horribly outdated) - but the refund system itself is a bit of a demo, which is fine by me.

[Knave]

Just want to jump in and say I'm looking forward to the new release

Good luck with the launch!

[Gabeux]

Wow that was weird. I mean, a decent amount of indie devs come here to either tell us about their game or join up on already existant threads, but Trebz is a very new member, with his very first post being made with personal attacks.

I mean, I hate the folks that make Space Engineers and I'll forever see them as scammers - even though I got the game almost for free and I sometimes play it - but going out of your way to nuke someone's work always feels way too weird to me, and not really a thing that happens here often.
There's a bunch of games that devs talk about here that either took a different direction of what was expected, or is just failing to deliver (in time, or in general) and people can (and will) openly criticize it without going crazy about it..

Except, of course, for Starbound. That's the world's pinăta for years to come, and nobody is changing that. 

[chaosavy]

First off - thanks guys for the kind words and encouragement

Hmm... this is getting a bit more attention so maybe I should address Trebz? I hope that this doesn't come off in an unintended way, here goes:


You made a lot of promises and put it in early access VERY early - from memory the game had about 1/2 the story done when I released, on early access. So this might depend on your perspective, I spent over a year in Early Access. So I went on Early Access a year before the game was feature complete. To some this might be too early. But there's also been a lot of games that stay in early access a lot longer.

So early that you got away with obfuscating the mechanics and story of it - I don't understand this so I can't argue against it.

I was expecting a space war, instead it was a game on rails - you contradict yourself below. The game is story based, I never said it wasn't, if Void Destroyer is on rails then so is Homeworld (Warcraft, StarCraft, etc) - and to me there's nothing wrong with following a story in a RTS.

The controls sucked and are overly complicated. Older games fine tuned controls in the genre and you ignored all of that. - No newer games "fine tuned" controls - and dumbed them down. Void Destroyer has three modes of control - flight (for dogfights primarily), command (for cap ships primarily) and RTS (for fleets) - so there is a lot of controls. This is a big argument and criticism of the game - in VD2 - you start in a single ship, so by the time you get larger ships and/or a fleet, you'd have mastered the flight aspect and should be ready for the next stages. This is my attempt at correcting that flaw in Void Destroyer's design.

The graphics stutter, the sound sucks, all the ships have the exact same one weapon - Nearly every ship has primary and secondary weapons. Larger ships have multiple turrets, and often missile/torpedo launchers.

Variety of weapons: "same exact weapon" - projectile gun, plasma lobber (heavy damage slow moving projectile), scatter guns (shot guns in SPAACE), turrets of various kinds, rail guns (instant hit - come in two varieties charging and non-charging), beam weapons, various missile/torpedoes (also missiles that split into missiles), mines (mines that split into missiles), heat seeking mines (react to larger ships, and weapon fire/engine use - possible to sneak past them). There's flame throwers, and plasma globs that split into flames and stick on ship's hulls, there's also "melee" weapons - drills/chain saws, there's weapons that disable a ship's engines, there's tractor beam abilities. there's ships that fire rocks that have a big pushing effect.  Did I miss any? EDIT: yes I did - there's a canister gun, shoots a canister that on impact explodes into a radiation cloud. There's also ships that "latch" onto other ships (some do damage, some disable engines).

Check out this vid for secondary weapons demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DG5y0mwNj0

Graphics stuttering depends on the system. Yes the sound system was buggy and there were clicks when too many sounds were playing, this is fixed now.

Dogfighting is a mess, locations and objectives in the missions are unclear - Personally I think dogfighting is awesome, Newtonian physics (full thruster control and the ability to turn it off), tons of unique weapon systems, switching ships on the fly, lots of various small ships to dogfight in (21 fighters).

Locations/missions unclear - there's a HUD marker on pointing towards objectives marked - capture base, enter gate, repair ship. The dialog is pretty important sometimes giving you clues (eg: get reinforcements via a gate). I don't get this argument - but then again I wrote the story/missions so I guess I'm totally biased.


I heard the campaign is short and retarded - "I was expecting a space war, instead it was a game on rails " - you said you heard that the campaign is such and such so it sounds like you didn't play it. Its absolutely bonkers huge battles through most of the story. The time to complete is somewhere around 15 to 20 hours. This is for a 14.99 indie game. There's also additional instant action scenarios, a built in battle editor (map editor to make your own battles), a "RTS mode" where you can fight against the AI in a RTS style map, and a "endless" mode where non-stop waves of enemies and friendlies come in to fight with.

Check out these two trailers (release trailers):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0rFGZuqXb4

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVdito6v1cY

I recorded these from the campaign - now if that isn't "space war" then I don't know what is. You can even see mission markers and objectives in them (upper right side of screen - text).

It sounds like you need to try again - it sounds like you really wanted to like the game, but it came up short at the time. Try it now and maybe you'll fall in love.

Either way - there's no other game like it.

[Trebz]

I didn't intend to reply but I appreciated the response. I was a bit harsh, I was having a bad day. And I lost the password to my last user account so this one is new.

I do have issues with early access and there are a lot of bad games (starbound) but I have some real gems made by indie devs. The difference was that the gems had realistic goals and kept their focus. I checked the VD store page again and see that the images were replaced with real in game screen shots. With very early access in incomplete games dolled up screen shots are posted that are not in game. Combined with performance issues and game breaking stuttering is breaking a promise for a working game. You wrote back to a lot of users that it was their pc's that were broken.

On rails. Homeworld had a rails story, but you were free to strategize on your own to win. Reading your replies to a lot of frustrated users, you gave them specific strategies to defeat difficult bosses. Right down to which ships to attack and how.

On controls. That is a big complaint. It could have been alleviated had there been a slower learning curve. Not many people got past the training missions. You told people to read the tutorial. We all did the tutorial. You cant progress without it. When a lot of people still don't understand whats going on, then its a useless tutorial. Older games may have dumbed it down, but dog fighting gave a lot of info at once with better HUD. In VD you just line up the circle in front to the other circle in front. ( I understand there is now an auto aim. Now THAT is arcady)

When you start playing a new game and nothing is marked then how would we know to go looking in other screens to find stuff? A tutorial mission should cover everything.

As far as the varied weapons, I never got that far. No one did. Even the positive reviewers don't average more than 3 hours play times. (exlcuding that one guy who probably beta tested for you).
Checking the stats... you sold around 22,000. Average play time 1.5 hours. Most players at once averages at 5 a day. Achievements, 39 people got through the second mission? Then 14 people got through the next 4? 1 person got the advanced achievements. This is not a popular game. And I WAS excited about it. Getting burned is not fun, especially when the developer hides behind the indie excuse. There are great games made by single developers.

I don't mean this as a personal attack. I mean either get better at what you are doing or go do something else.