itch.io

Another major update, the game now has some graphics. Mostly it’s still using placeholders, but even so it’s a lot nicer to look at than previously. I hope to be adding some with each release.

Object in Space is the current placeholder target for recovery missions, so that would make sense. What I find really odd is the timing… If it would have crashed if you were departing from the object after doing the mission, that I could understand, because I did indeed just fix a bug in the last release that could cause such a crash. But when departing from the station, that seems really odd. I’ll have to play around a bit and see if I can reproduce this somehow.

Thanks a lot for bringing this to my attention, and sorry for the inconvenience (and my late reply). If I read this right, then this crash happens when you push the button to set the flight plan, is that correct?

Indeed, from the log it almost sounds as if you’re trying to set a flightplan without having a flightplan… but of course then the button should be disabled, and usually it is as far as I can tell.

If you could describe exactly what you do/did before the crash, that would help a lot.

Major update released! There’s now a neat UI, Sound, Music, more variety, more mechanics. The one thing that hasn’t changed is that I’m still happy for all the feedback I can get!

Thanks a lot for your feedback, and your kind words. Both are highly appreciated!

Regarding the technical issues that you mention:

The game crashed a couple of times, particularly when the in-game currency was in the negatives. Would you like me to send you the save data when this happens?

Just the last log entries would probably be enough (log is in the same folder as savegames, though it depends on the platform where that is exactly…).

The slide and checkboxes at the top of the screen seem like they should be read-only. Currently, I can interact with them, but they just reset when time passes.

Whoops. Makes perfect sense that that would happen, little oversight on my part. Thanks for pointing it out!

As to your suggestions, most of them are in fact somewhere in the backlog. UI-animations like change highlights etc. are planned in the complete UI overhaul that I hope to get done somewhen until July. Loans are an absolute must-have feature in my opinion, as they are the thing that ultimately makes time a limited resource. But before I add that I first need more precise planning, which means I need to stop faking orbital mechanics and actually doing them, which will take some time.

And as for actual midgame/lategame scenarios, obviously I have thoughts about that, but it’s entirely too early for that yet. Working on actual goals and progression is planned for the second half of this year, so some of that will start showing up. I’m always happy to hear ideas though.

https://randomactsofconstruction.itch.io/orbital-margins

Orbital Margins is a character-driven small-business dicerolling RPG that puts you into the shoes of an independent spacecraft operator in cis-lunar space. Try to survive in the margins of a merciless orbital economy where your most dangerous enemies are propellant costs, mortgages and customs clerks that are having a bad day.

The game just had a major update, adding (some) graphics!

I want to keep developing the game, but there’s so much to do at this point that it would be very helpful to hear other peoples opinions on how they enjoy the experience and what they think is most important right now, so I’m happy about any reply, comment or review.

https://randomactsofconstruction.itch.io/orbital-margins

Here’s a poll. Please hop over and vote if you’ve played the game, it would help me a lot: https://take.quiz-maker.com/poll4992567x4Cd5477C-153

It is obvious the game needs work in all areas. That much was clear even before I did this proof-of-concept release. So based on some feedback I came up with a next milestone, put everything in there that would be needed to start making the game really fun, and ended up with an estimated effort of about a year (measured in the time I can currently dedicate to developing the game, not full work hours, obviously).

That too is not very surprising, given the raw state of the prototype. But I need to slice up that milestone into more sensible chunks. And so I thought it may be smart to ask the people who actually played the game for a couple of minutes what they think would be most important now. The obvious answer is “everything”, but that is just not very helpful when trying to prioritise.

So I made a poll. I thought I could make one here, but the itch forums unfortunately don’t seem to have this feature, so I made one on some poll maker on the net. I would be delighted if you could hop over real quick and and choose the one that you’d think would be most beneficial for the game right now. This will determine the priorities of development over the next year. Or it may result in me axing the project and investing my time into more promising endeavours. That’s always a possible outcome of these things, unfortunately.

I’m new to making games, but not to making software. Experience has taught me a few things, and one of them is that non-developers frequently misinterpret version numbering, which can lead to false expectations and disapointment. So I’ll just clear this up right from the get go.

The short version: The version number is in no way any kind of indication for the completeness of the project!

The longer version: The dots in my version scheme are not decimal periods. They separate a series of running indices. This means that 0.9 is not followed by 1.0. It is naturally followed by 0.10! In other words, the version number does not exist to give an idea about the completeness of the project. It’s merely here to differentiate between different releases of the project.

In case you’re interested in the exact versioning convention I am using, it’s semantic versioning. This means that for minor fixes and improvements, the last index increases by one. For major new features, the middle index increases by one. And yes, in case of an actual commercial release, the first index would indeed increase by one and become the mythical version 1.0.0. But I can guarantee you it won’t follow on 0.9. More like 0.38.52 or something (This is an example. Do not quote me on the exact number, ok?).

The first ever release of what I hope will be many, in an incremental process towards an actual game.

Please use this thread for general feedback concerning this version. If you want to discuss something more specific and in-depth, feel free to open a new thread.