Hello, all!

I created this project almost two months ago but haven't gotten around to actually posting anything until now. Which is a shame because I'm making progress over here.

I've been working on the core features of the game such as:

•  the upgrade system for player ships and weapon platforms
• movement AI and behavior systems for player and enemy ships
• the UI system using placeholder graphics until I finalize the final look and feel
• some of the more "basic" weapon systems
• weapon platform selection and placement
• the shield system

I'm going to take the next few weeks to bang out some other critical systems such as:

• resource system
• adding sound effects for the UI, weapons, etc
• finalize the enemy spawning effects and system
• add some more weapon platforms using the existing weapons

You can watch the attached video to see what the current weapons look like. Plus there's a GIF showing the upgrade visual effect. A big issue with my last game was the lack of punch and visual cues. I plan on fixing that mistake with plenty of visual and audio clues so players know they did something.

I've been using this project as a way to reuse some code from my last game and refactor it to be more sensible and flexible to the needs of this project. I'm also taking the time to add more comments so I know what I'm looking at 2 months down the line. Codecks has been great at helping manage my workflow and planning sessions. It's also a great way to keep track of bugs and put down todo items so they don't get lost on my desk or in some commented section of code.

Update #2

In between work and my personal life, I was able to get some coding time in. Enough to work on some features and adding some new units.

At the beginning of each level, the player has the option to choose from categories of ships. Two random ships are selected from the chosen category and the player is able to manually control them in defense of the planet, structures, etc. The player can also choose to randomly get two ships from the whole list.  The categories are:

• Brawler - specializes in close range, high damage combat
• Fire support - specializes in long-range support
• Generalist - mix of short and medium range weapons
• Ling breaker - specializes in high damage, medium to long range damage

There will also be capital ships that will be available during select missions. You can see the ships below.

I also started working on the spawn system wherein enemies arrive via warp tunnel:

The last major changes I've made for this update is showing the currently selected ship's upgrade level in the UI and adding event listeners to active each ship's special weapon once its last upgrade has been reached. For the coming week, the goal is to work on adding some more sound effects, weapon platforms, and the scriptable objects for each player ship.

Here's a video of the two fire support ships testing their turrets on a hapless drone target.

Update #3

I keep a running list of each change I make any day I touch code. Unfortunately, I don’t keep a running summary which would be fantastic for updates like this!

Let’s check the notes.

I worked on the line breaker ships, the ones that specialize in high damage at long range. I wanted them to have both visually and practically very different weapons. One of them shoots a large plasma projectile that does area effect damage and has a proximity fuse. The other ship features a twin-barrel railgun which can pass through multiple ships. You’d think this wouldn’t happen in the vastness of space, but little test combats show that it’s more common than you’d think.

For a while, exploding ships would have small explosions randomly spawn in their collider box. I felt that it lacked oomph so I added a final large explosion to each ship death. I think I need to scale the debris up and add more outward force to make them scatter more.

I finally added a resource counter to the bottom of the screen and animated it to reflect any changes (from destroying ships, building platforms, etc).

I added sound effects to most of the weapons! I’ve had to play around a lot with the spatial variables to ensure that weapon sounds from half a map away aren’t so prominent. That’s still a work in progress as ships that are farther in the map lose sound far too quickly.

The last change I made today was to begin fine-tuning the player ship variables and adjusting weapon variables to balance everything. I was having turrets fire at targets 2 screens away and ships flying around targets from too great a distance. Not exactly conducive to landing successful hits.

My next set of tasks are:

• to actually create the rest of the weapon platforms to go along with the player ships
• finish the collider event system that will be used in the objective system
• adjust the ship movement system. Right now ships can move too far beyond the camera’s bounds which makes it hard to select them and to see their glorious battles

While testing the new ship and weapon variables, I was able to get some pretty cool screenshots for your viewing pleasure. There’s also a short video showing the 2 generalist ships and a fire-support ship taking on a small fleet of hapless enemies.

It's been a while since I've posted an update. Fair season has started so I've been pretty busy making my handmade damascus knives to sell. Gotta pay the mortgage, right?

I've been working on adding the small details to finally reach the vertical slice needed for the demo. I've also been adding sound effects, music, and tweaking the audio manager.

Here's a truncated list of the newest additions/changes:

• Visual notification of the damage being done to ships. Shield damage spawns blue numbers while hull damage shows red numbers. 
• Added tooltips to various parts of the UI.
• Added an event system to the beginning and end of each wave.
• Added the initial enemies.
• Started working on the first level which acts as the tutorial.
• Tweaking ship and weapon stats.
• Adding AI generated voices to player ships (I know, I know. But at least all my code is made by me!)
• Lots of other little things which I didn't do a good job of keeping track of.

I don't have that much I want to add before I release an initial demo for feedback. The main things I need to add are:

• Various setting menus
• Start scene
• Special weapon for each ship that's unlocked at the final upgrade
• Some extra special effects to add that little pop
• Boss for the demo

I don't really have that much to finish up. But life has a way of getting in the way.