itch.io

It was too big. Right now I'm working on a much smaller diving game - you can see me stream it at twitch.tv/cperko from time to time.

After that I'll almost certainly be doing something similar to this idea, but a bit better scoped.

Thanks!

Interesting! I've also noticed some problems with scene reset. I think I know the problem, so I'll fix it up before the next release, thanks!

Thanks!

Hm, I thought I replied, but I guess it got eaten!

I'm not sure what's up with your build, but the game's behavior is extremely strange. I'm not sure how these things could happen - I'd expect it to either work or not work: crashing on random resolutions is very strange. Is your video card fully intact? No corrupt onboard RAM or anything?

Thanks for trying it out!

Your bugs are noted - most of them aren't bugs, but misfeatures. However, it crashing it obviously an issue.

I honestly didn't expect it to run on any Linux machines: so far, most don't see the launcher, but it plays OK otherwise. You have the opposite problem! Very weird!

It bothers me that you had to reduce to 800x600 and "fastest". I wonder if it's simply that your drivers don't do GPU instancing. That could easily cause both the Linux crash and the Windows slowdown. It's hard for me to tell. :|

I plan to add some debug features in to help users figure out what's going wrong, but I don't think that'll help with your Linux problem. If there's a crash log, I'd love to see it.

Hey, I played your demo! Here's some feedback, as requested.

The animations and art feel pretty good. If you can get the combat and controls up to snuff, I think things will really shine.

Double jump should have an animation attached to it and a different feel. I recommend making the wings thing the double jump instead of having it separate. Then right click can be the super blast instead of alt. I think this would feel more natural and more interesting - it was hard to get used to hitting left mouse or alt to use weapons, hard to remember to use arrows and right mouse to dash.

Up shouldn't jump. 99% of action games use up for interact or pick up, instead, and there's a reason for that.

When jumping and hitting a ceiling, consider having the character either bounce down or grab hold - just floating along feels weird and weak. This may be less of an issue if the second jump is that jet-assisted wing thing.

Weapons: a gun which pushes you a little bit feels waaaaaay better. Try it, you'll see. Also, in these non-ortho-gunfire games, you should make a circular impact sprite and use masking to put it behind solid objects. Otherwise it 'floats' off the walls when you shoot them at an angle.

Basic running: consider a somewhat fast initial burst followed by a more steady run. This is ideal for games where dodging is a consideration.

Enemies: bullet sponges are boring. In general: more weaker enemies, or enemies which strongly react to getting shot. For example, robots could lose their arms and then dash at you in a self-destruct mode. If an enemy takes more than five shots, you'll probably want to rethink it, because it stops feeling satisfying.

Camera: screen shake is good, nice. Lots of screen space wasted on areas outside of the level, though: may want to constrain the camera to level bounds, if you can.

You'll want to recapture mouse constraints after losing focus, or your game will be unplayable if anyone checks twitter while playing.

Anyway, good luck!

Really enjoyed this. Very clever way to do Star Trek. :)

Good luck!

For a young dev, it's pretty solid. The tilting ship is a particularly nice touch. I look forward to what you make in the future!

Right now the pacing is pretty stiff, like it's a tutorial you followed rather than a game. Adding in some kind of boss thing, weapon powerups, or clustered enemies rather than one-by-one enemies would add a lot. If you're having hard time making assets, consider teaming up with someone.

When I play a shmup like this, I really want to feel my life is on the line. There are loads of simple tricks you can use: try searching for Jan Willem Nijman / Vlambeer. There's several great videos about simple things you can do to make your game intense!

Pretty solid effort, even if this is as far as you take it. It'll look good on future resumes, especially if you spice it up.

One of the things about this game is that there's not much real-time travel, so there's no reason to have small planets. My planets also aren't voxel, there's not any memory advantage to small planets, either. So I plan to have large ones.

But I don't know that you'll notice? This isn't the sort of game where you'll try to walk across a planet in realtime.

I have a whole YouTube list of dev videos if you have some time to spend and like the sound of my voice.

Feel free to talk dev and ask questions either here or in your own thread!

Whew, I finished a major update for my project: now you can build ships and create crews! Still a bit of a tech demo, but I'd appreciate people telling me if it runs for them, etc.

Feel free to pop on over to the dedicated community forum if you have complicated comments. It could do with some new posts anyway. It's a shame major features take so long to develop.

https://craigp.itch.io/the-galactic-line

https://craigp.itch.io/the-galactic-line/community

I think there might be a bug, since I can't figure out how to find the goblin. It looks like the road is supposed to take me there, but it doesn't.

Either way, the game runs, so you can make any game you want like this!

Verrry neat!

I need to add some more parts before my next update, to give you a reason to come back.

This forum is too unwieldy to post to much, but as a quick update:

New prototype available: the construction kit! https://craigp.itch.io/the-galactic-line

I've been streaming on Twitch a lot: https://www.twitch.tv/cperko/

New prototype available: the construction kit! https://craigp.itch.io/the-galactic-line

I've been streaming on Twitch a lot: https://www.twitch.tv/cperko/

I'm planning to do a 99% shader solution on the planets, no tessellation or anything until you're very close (landing range).

I don't have any patreon or paypal.

Oh, you can catch me on Twitch ( https://www.twitch.tv/cperko/ ) twice a week, or I post around one video per week on YouTube. I'm making steady progress, although it's not fast since it's a hobby.

Today I had a livestream, polished my interior view transition so you can really get a sense of what's inside your ship. Also made a few more ship components. But I'm still a long way from having a fully functioning game!

Sorry, my planets are totally placeholders right now.

I will be using almost a 100% shader-based technique for my planets when I put them in, and I won't bother with creating detailed surface meshes until you're basically on the surface. Shaders are so much cheaper than mesh manipulation!

By the way, I haven't stopped working: we're all the way into the "building functional ships in the solar system map".

I've been streaming to Twitch, here: https://www.twitch.tv/cperko

Well, my idea is that if you can salvage components from outside your tech level, you'd probably want to build a ship around them. But ideas on that front are still pretty foggy, haven't gotten that far - but, for sure, integrating another ship's parts would be a major undertaking on par with building a new ship.

Customizable characters, playable demo, and a call from Mecanim help!

https://craigp.itch.io/the-galactic-line

Starting on some serious rigging for the avatars.

Let's talk about the prototypes and tech demos here. Keep in mind that tech demos aren't final products!

Here's the most recent piloting demo to get us started. Tell me how it runs for you.

New prototype, go play it and tell me if it runs for you!

https://craigp.itch.io/the-galactic-line

Ship piloting update, I'll be updating the prototype later this week.

What am I working on now? People!

If you want to chat about it, head over to the dedicated forum: https://itch.io/t/22618/technical-talk-avatars

This thread's about the technical challenges of people and suggestions on how to overcome them!

Let's talk about clothes and the popping off of heads!

Making progress, slow but steady.

Well, the game could be modeled by a spreadsheet, but the power of the game comes from the human faces, the giant starships, and the feel of it.

I don't mind making update videos, but tutorial videos need to be accurate and useful. Update videos take about as long as update posts, so that's no biggie.

We haven't even begun to see the game in these tech demos, so my outreach is really at a bare simmer. Once we have some gameplay, I might get more proactive and worry about it more. Still, the once-a-week tech demos are a nice target to keep me motivated.

I'm not sure how I'll be putting missions out there yet - the characters don't even have stats right now. But it's pretty easy. I decided to focus on Ship Components this week instead of crew, though.