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[chaosavy]

Hey guys I've been working on iteration 16 - and released it (available on the main site) yesterday. It is mostly polish in prep for the Greenlight and Kickstarter campaigns - I wanted to smooth a lot of elements out and make the presentation as nice as possible as well as include control mapping and improved options screens. There's also been some bug fixes and lingering issues that I've tackled.

I've also started the Kickstarter and Greenlight campaigns - if you are interested check out the info here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=126644.0

I started another thread so that once those end we can continue this one as we have been over the years.


Since there's a bunch of you watching this thread (thank you) I'll post a reply here to hopefully get your attention.

Since posting here - those years ago - you guys gave me great feedback and encouragement keeping me going through the bugs and issues. So I sincerely thank you for that. You guys are part of a dream.

Paul

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Hey guys, been working hard and here is iteration 15!

Iteration 15 added ship radar, HUD/GUI overhaul, asteroid mining, cutscenes, story/missions and dialog as well as other improvements.


Iteration 15 is the precursor to iteration 16 which is to follow soon (around a month).


Iteration 16 will be very important to the project as that will be the iteration for a Steam Greenlight and potential Kickstarter demo.

Due to the new story elements and impending iter 16 and its importance I'd very much appreciate any/all feedback on the current state of the project. Especially on the new "story mode"

For example:

Is it too hard?
Is it too easy?
How long did it take you to complete?
Any odd things?
Any things that stopped you?

A new video is available showing the changes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlSVAigeYc8

Here's the change log for iter 15:
http://www.voiddestroyer.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=396


I've updated the media page with some new screen shots:
http://voiddestroyer.com/media.html

Including this new vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlSVAigeYc8




Iteration 15 is available on the main site: http://www.voiddestroyer.com

thanks for reading!

------

---------

Hey guys, iteration 13 has been released!


Iteration 13 added a few things: weapon recoils, debris, gate travel, enhanced ship changing and other features, enhancements and bug fixes on our way to Beta.

Check out the change log for details:
http://www.voiddestroyer.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=387


Also a new video is here highlighting the changes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR4k4xo6QlQ

Iteration 13 is avaiable on the main site: http://www.voiddestroyer.com

Hope you enjoy and thanks for checking it out!
 

----

Hey guys! Iteration 12 is released. Iter 12 focused on "tactical mode" - the RTS portion of the project. Some of the new updates are aimed to strenghten the RTS like control over the player's assets (ships mostly). EG: right click an empty spot to move the ship there, issue a Hold position command.

Here's a vid with the latest changes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZoyVhQAPNo

Here's an older vid, but covers the game in more broad/general terms than the video above:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dwVr444Ebw


There's more on the Media page here:
http://voiddestroyer.com/media.html


The project is still free (now in Alpha stage), the download page is here:
http://voiddestroyer.com/download.html

I'm happy to say that some of the updates are a direct result of the feedback I got from you guys, so thanks again

------------------

Bit longer than a year ago I posted the first message here, the time has brought many updates and changes to the project:

Void Destroyer - Iteration 11 is now avaiable.

At least one of you guys' suggestions made it into the project (more RTS like camera for tactical mode - eg: move mouse to the right and have camera side step to the right, etc). Also by popular demand I replaced the font



As you can see the project has had significant updates to the graphics and effects. The change log is here:
http://voiddestroyer.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=363


Hope you check it out and let me know what you think! thanks

-------------------------

Hey guys, project still going strong, here's some news: did an interview with True PC Gaming about the process, it also has some new screen shots of the new art style we are going for.

Direct link to interview:
http://truepcgaming.com/2012/01/11/when-a-hobby-becomes-an-obsession-void-destroyer-interview/
http://truepcgaming.com/


-----


Hey guys it has been a few months since the first post. Got some great feedback from you guys and hoping for a repeat.


Lots of changes, new features, bug fixes, new art, new website: http://www.VoidDestroyer.com

Most notable:
Project has a name: Void Destroyer
Command ship (upgradable warship where the player's "Avatar" commands the battle) - upgrade it with offensive and defensive abilities
Base capturing - you can now capture enemy bases to expand your empire and weaken your enemies.
RTS elements: enemy bases build stations (for ship production and defense) and ships for offense and defense.
Contract artist art
Shaders added
Bare Bones mode - textureless and shaderless for non-Nvidia or ATI systems.


With the more game like elements (base capture) I need more and more feedback from other eyes than mine. I'm hoping that I can gain insight on how players see this project, is it fun? Is it interesting? Is there obvious flaws? Especially as it relates to capturing bases. It takes me about 30 minutes, am wondering how long it takes a new player.

Again I'd appreciate it if you guys gave it a shot and let me know. It is still a free download on the main site: http://www.VoidDestroyer.com


Here's my favorite of the recent screen shots:



Click for full size -> http://www.voiddestroyer.com/screenshots/iter7-1.png

Here's a recent video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHp1UATkwiM


Summary: download and play the game

thanks!

-----------------------------

Hey guys, I found this forum through reddit.com, the post that got my attention said that you guys give feedback to indies, and feedback for me is like brains for zombies.

TL;DR - making a space sim, check it out and let me know what you think, thanks!

I'm making a 3D space sim/rts hybrid (you can control your ships directly (mouse or joystick) or issue commands through a tactical map). You can build ships and stations, manage the economy of your bases (what resources to produces), setup trade routes (this needs a lot of work). Engage in combat with "pirates" (need to come up with a better faction name) and alien forces. The main goal of the game right now is basic survival (try to see how long you last), but eventually the plan is to have a storyline.

Right now the game is in a pre-alpha/prototype stage (the game doesn't even have a name yet), but its playable and I've just created 2 basic tutorials (still in rough shape) in hopes of easing players into the game. Anyways I hope and dream to eventually go commercial with this project, but right now everything is free and will be for a while.  The graphics are mostly programmer art with some outside models. Everything (graphics, sound, the gameplay itself) needs a lot of work (my update schedule is about monthly), my goal to releasing the project so early is to get feedback from the gaming/gamedev communities to make the game better, and avoid the pitfals of designing in a vacuum.

You can find more details on my site: http://www.arrmaytey.com


Here's a few screen shots to entice you guys to check it out:






Latest you tube vid:
http://www.youtube.com/v/LtFS7l98t9g?hl=en&fs=1

Hope you enjoy, and thanks for reading!

[jester]

Youtube vid looks sweet anyway, if it wasnt for the 5 other alphas im playing atm id be all over this.   You have posted in the right place, even now the urists will be dragging it back to their hard drives and hammering away at it.

[Flying Carcass]

Youtube vid looks sweet anyway, if it wasnt for the 5 other alphas im playing atm id be all over this.   You have posted in the right place, even now the urists will be dragging it back to their hard drives and hammering away at it.

Eh, I'm not sure downloading something from a first time poster is such a safe idea...
(No offense to the OP if he or she is a legit indie dev, but this forum's had shady bots before)

[Siquo]

B12 has a reputation? Awesome

I'm going to look into this one, will get back.

Ninja'd: this looks nothing like a spambot, and you should always viruscheck everything you download anyways.

[chaosavy]

jester: I know how you feel, due to the game dev hobby I often see indies in situations like mine, there's quite a lot of activity/demos/etc.

Flying Carcass: I understand, I'm fairly active on the Ogre3D forums (the project is using the Ogre3D rendering engine, I've posted here: http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=62233 about the project back in Jan and kept the thread updated, also you could search my "Chaosavy" username to see that I'm a regular poster there. My site has a youtube vid history of the project here: http://www.arrmaytey.com/oldvids.html

Siquo: thanks!

[freeformschooler]

Space sims aren't my cup of tea but my God those particle graphics. I'll have to try this out later on.

[chaosavy]

freeformschooler: yep, I think that the particle effects are the best looking part of the game. They are from an addon pack that I purchased to the Ogre3D engine, it $20 for the source code to the engine plugin and about $10 for the particle grafics and scripts. Best $30 bucks ever spent on an indie game I'm thinking.

If you don't like space sims (I'd be curious as to why, I'm curious of what some nagging or negative issues with space sims [and the perception of etc] may be) you may enjoy the game as more of an rts, you can toggle crew control on (my way of fancying up the term "autopilot") and the AI will do the work for you, you could then manage the economy and issue commands through the tactical mode and then enjoy the particles in ship mode as your forces fight it out. Right now tactical mode is a bit sparse on features (basically you can select your units, and right click on enemies to attack, travel the map via the tactical camera, manage the base economy, build ships and stations, but tactial mode needs to include grouping of your forces, seeing a list of your assets with their health and status, stuff to help the player be more tactical), eventually I hope that the command options and userinterface are close to what Homeworld/Homeworld 2 had.

Here's a screen shot of tactical mode:

[thobal]

Is it SOP to make a new account when you're finally ready to plug a game?

[Diakron]

Oh come on guys. The OP has shown a few other things to collaborate the fact that (s)he is an honest person. The pictures show a level of sophistication that suggest that the game is legit. If i had something other then dialup I'd DL it, looks good.


If your REALLY worried about viruses (on an 80+ mb file... seems a bit much for just infecting people) then make a system backup disc before hand.

[freeformschooler]

@chaosavy The main reason I dislike space sims is because I've played so many and I've become disillusioned with the "management as you fly" formula: gather resources, fly some places, sell resources, do missions, possibly have battles with other ships that may or may not be frustrating depending on the control scheme, then repeat until you are space-rich for no real reason or get shot down by raiders or something.

"Tactical mode" is pretty cool. I've begun to play around a little bit, it looks fine by me, better than what a lot of upstart indie devs have to show. I don't know how to say this but I think you could benefit a little more from fancier/more borders around UI elements like text that are sort of just hanging out there. A UI that feels comfortable and doesn't make you feel like you're watching it more than the action really helps the gameplay of a space sim.

[Sowelu]

The font makes me go "Gnnghh" a little, especially the k.  Like, to the point of "that would irritate my eyes after not very long".

Haven't had a chance to play it yet, not sure it's my thing anyway, but wanted to point that out.

[Soadreqm]

Hah! Bay12 is indeed a passable place for indie game feedback, except for the people bitching about the poster being a spambot or a troll or some other malevolent entity out to destroy the forums. Maybe a vengeful ghost or something. Anyway, after like ten posts or something you will shed the shameful torn straitjacket of the Escaped Lunatic and gain the distinguished title of BAY WATCHER, after which people will pretty much believe that you're for real. At least most of the time.

But yeah, I don't really have time to go testing pre-alpha space sims (I have negative time at the moment), but it looks pretty cool, so I'm posting to add this thread to my new replies page.

[Stakudomer]

I generally like space sim games, especially ones that involve blocky ships blasting each other into scrap. The youtube video leads me to believe this thing has potential.

However...

I can't help pointing out that a ship with all of its engines mounted to the right of its center of gravity will be incapable of flying in a straight line. Some of those green ships would only be able to fly in circles. 

[chaosavy]

Sorry for the wordiness of this reply, I have to try to work on being brief:


thobal: I'm actually plugging my game but... I'm plugging it for the future (it is free and will be until I would feel comfortable charging people, and even then there will be a substancial demo, plus whatever releases were free {like this one} will be free to download). And truthfully I don't feel super comfortable going to forums and plugging stuff, however.. how else can people who want to know about a game find out about it? The circles I tend to run in focus on game design and engine programming, and those guys are fairly busy on their projects to give me feedback.

There is no budget or funding for advertising campains, magazine adds etc. And its not even about the commercial aspect, part of the fun of the dream of being a games developer (and a huge source of motivation) is having people enjoy the game and making sure I'm not missing some obvious things before its too late in development.

Diakron and Soadreqm: thanks

freeformschooler: originally my intent was to have a space sim like you describe (EG: like Privateer), but.. as I was planning out the economy side I realized that the X series (X3 especailly) really covered the trading and manufacturing aspect well. So I decided to simpify the economy into more RTS style of basic resources (ore, energy and food), and have the resources be gathered pretty much automatically (produced by the bases  - based on population allocation {I got this idea from Master of Orion}). Also I realized that often in space sims you start as the lowly peon (or magically lose all your stuff in the begining) and I didn't want that, I wanted the player to be in charge, even in Homeworld or World of Warcraft the player is in charge, but takes orders from disembodied voices (Fleet Command in Homeworld).  So basically the RTS elements popped in. I always wanted a space sim where you could conmmand ships through a homeworld like interface (X2 and X3 make it a real pain to command your ships). But at the same time switch from ship to ship at will.

In keeping with the "you are in charge" idea I'm going to try to create objectives in a way that the player specifies them, EG: player choses from a drop down a type of an objective: destroy then from another drop down an object: enemy gate. Based on these objectives the game will trigger other events, or at least that's the idea I'm toying with. I don't know maybe players like being told what to do (the escapism aspect of games, games not being work etc).

I've updated the font yesterday as a result of gamer feedback (from asking my wife she says that the new font is not that great either, personaly I like it but I'll have to wait and see). So the ones in the sreenshots are the old font.

The GUI is terrible, I probably hate it the most since I see it all the time, it came with the GUI addon that I use with Ogre3D, I'm very thankfull that it exists, but  I pretty much know I'll have to pay someone to re-do it. The GUI being so important that its best to invest in a pro. It is a very scary thought for me - to put money into this thing though.

Stakudomer: previously a lot of the art was

Stakudomer: previously all of the models were done only by me, and the ships tended to be extremely blocky, and often very symetrical with low levels of detail. The new ships are taken from a "parts" file that I found on blendswap.com, I then combined and altered the parts to create the better looking models. I actually really like that ship (with the side engine) and that it is asymetric because of past ships that were so symetric that I was churning out. But! funny thing even though I think that they look 10 times better than my work, I'm less proud of the new ships since they came from the outside. Eventually the goal would be for them to be better models and textured. Although at one point I was considering the game to look "tron/articifial/neon/glowy" like (sort of like what tactical mode looks like, problem was it turned out uglier so I put that idea on hold.

Also part of the reason for the asymetry is to conserve polygons, in my inexperience I don't quite know what the engine will be able to handle once everything is in place, and I'd like to have fairly epic battles.. but have individual ships still matter, so not hundreds, but tens, or rather give the ships more turrets and abilities rather than having more of them.

[Siquo]

So yeah. I've got no idea what I'm doing.

The tutorials just stopped on me halfway through, I tried a game, but have no idea how to play this thing.

I'm not really sure I want to, either. I like the 4X type games of management, and I liked the XWing/Tiefighter dogfight action. I'm not sure it's a good idea to combine the two in real time. I really disliked Sins of a Solar Empires' RTS-form (and your game is looking like that thing game-wise), a spacesim is just too big and often one doesn't have the overview to make correct decisions. Or that's just me.