Game development isn’t always fun and… uh… games. Sometimes there are just things to do that aren’t always cool or flashy. Then there are other things that start as mundane but present ‘opportunity‘. I took on such opportunity this past week when working on some of the internals for the mission structure and navigation screens. The galaxy sector screen is starting to look a bit more interesting….
lookin good… can’t wait to see if those pictures of planets not liberated are indications of how infested they are by the colouration …
Well, the coloured spheres of planets seem… interesting. But I like the idea that you’re really going there, so maybe the worlds you’ve not cleared could be more blue, to represent being covered in creeper? Just a logical thought.
Nice job, V!
nope, they would’t be. because virgil has already shown us/said that worlds with creeper emitters are still free of creeper goo. the emitters only start pumping out the creeper once it detects a threat,which is us( i would say humans, but virgil has hinted that humanity may have been defeated)
Perhaps planets that are paused, and still in progress, could be seen as more blue?
I would like to see finished planets as being covered in green, to represent the green colouring layed down by the collectors.
There are indicators for completion and “in progress” that appear behind worlds. There will also be indicators for other items of interest at worlds.
Don’t listen to the insane babble of one infected with the Loki Virus.
I’m pretty sure that hint was not that humans were defeated, but that the race we’re identifying with is posthuman.
or pre-human 🙂
What I mean by posthuman is not “coming after humans”, but a race that humans evolved or otherwise developed into.
Pre-humans in this context would be monkeys.
Interesting.
The Planets seem to reflect the map somehow.
Is there also a relation between the planet and map size?
The blue Connections between the owned Worlds are new!
And there is now a sector name!
The blue connections show across the map whenever you move the mouse over a world. It shows the shortest path to a target world so that you can plan a route of acquisition efficiently.
But that isn’t the shortest path, you could go to the planet more in between the 2 end ones instead of going to that far away planet
That would require a path through a planet that hasn’t been secured.
That’s the shortest path that is available to the player without capturing another world.
Oh, i didn’t know if you could travel across a planet that isn’t completed.
Will the distance be of any part of the game or just for the looks of it?
Also it is looking good atm.
we’v seen virgil move the mothership, and from its speed in the video(assuming he has not changed it) it will take less then a minute to move anywhere.
Your ship only has a limited range between planets. So yes.
Why exactly you can’t just cross open space (in terms of lore) is still a mystery… any help on this one Virgil?
The story will address why you can’t just rift everywhere at will…
Space is pretty big, you know. Crossing between planets takes months, let alone solar system – the nearest solar system to the Sol system is 4 years away – at light speed.
That said, it’s obvious you’re not using a reaction drive like any kind of thruster. Once we establish that FTL is being used, the particular restrictions that kind of FTL carries we can pretty much just make up.
Looking good, it now looks like actual planets and not stars that turn out to be planets. 😀
at long range, planets can’t be seen because of their stars that they orbit. so if you aren’t zoomed in it’s appropriate for you to see a star instead of a planet
<3 <3
Nice, I love the feeling it has now. So are the worlds procedurally generated, or somehow derived from the map it represents?
Currently there are just a batch of pre made textures. This is by far the most efficient. I’ve not decided if I will use the map data to procedurally make the worlds. Since the maps are not seamless (right to left) they don’t wrap onto sphere without creating a line on the sphere. Another option is to make a random world but to derive just its colors from the actual map textures. I’ll have to think about this as well…
Just DON’T let the planets rotate. Put the seam on the back side. It works for our moon. Not appearing to rotate that is… not that there is a seam on the back. 😛
There are solutions to things like this that can be coded without too much difficulty . . . remains to be seen if it’s terribly worth it.
Are sure? A seam would be one of the least disturbing things that could lurk on the backside of the moon..
nice one 😀
Think back to photoshop techniques. To tile images you need clone stamps and blurring, but making a contiguous horizontal strip out of a texture is much easier.
I don’t think it’s necessary though – planet surfaces will never really be very informative. Wrapping rectangular textures around a sphere causes too much distortion.
Somehow the planets look as if they were made in the game Spore. But besides that they really look fantastic. Can’t wait to see the released game.
I think Spore planets are less detailed, hehe.
Sphere with a terrain texture. Then another sphere around that with an atmosphere texture….
looking goooooooooooooood
I dont think there should be overlapping lines in the selection screen. But great idea, try to make some randomized planets with generated pictures so that nothing is the same. Great work!!!
I just don’t think your looking at it right, I see it as a 3D representation rather than a 2D one but i doubt that’s how it works.
Why are you so cruel?
I want an Alpha please
I want a GA release 🙂 In time…. in time.
We all want alpha or beta. 🙂
It already looks like so much fun. I’m throwing money at my computer screen, but it’s not working. 🙁
Wow this looks cool already I cant wait to see an entire sector and along with that this is promising because this detailing means the game is nearing (at least above 50%) complete.
Not necessarily – remember, the map linkages and etc are part of the very fundamentals of the game, which are some of the first things that it’s necessary to have complete.
Im not talking about storyline or any kind of finalization like that im just talking about the fact that it is starting to resemble what it will be. Believe me I’m a starcraft 2 fan I know how long balancing and storyline can take (for those that dont know for starcraft 1 it took something like 12 years for the game to be finalized)
Looking good. If you can manage to make the worlds look like the actual map, even better.
game looks great but i am hoping you are looking into multiplayer? i’m not says 2 people on the same map – although that would me awesome – but multiple people trying to complete the same galaxy set, and maybe a spectator slot so multiple people can see the same map?
My favorite idea in MP was asynchronous coop. Two players cooperating on a map even though they didn’t play it at the same time. V talked about this idea in an earlier blog post, and I really liked the idea.
Another person hoping for multiplayer on someday.
It would be completly new dimension for this wonderfull game.
Will planets get sattelites(moons)? That would be intresting, like a bonus mission or something or just decoration that influences gravity and creeper movement.
Agreed… a bonus-moon mission… with some kind of reward… a hidden side story? Who knows. =)
I’m pretty sure most games are always flashy and developing them may not be fun, but it is games. Geddit? Because flash, like the addon for browsers? Ha. Puns. Will we be able to customize some of these graphics? So in the custom map editor you can make a color gradient for terrain, sky, and water (leave the latter two blank) and have the game apply that to a function that fills in colors. I suppose you could also use that as an input for an rng too. I have no idea how difficult that would be to code though. At least let us import .pngs, .jpgs, and .gifs for the mothership (similar to custom terrain tiles in 2).
is the central planet earth??
i just thought he could have made a design only of the planet Earth, to be the center.
Between the sector name additions, the planet designs, the paths between worlds, and the freaking awesome look for the Mothership, I would say a heap of hurdles has already been crossed on Developement Drive.
just a thought. An actual planet is really large. could you have a number of maps on each planet that could be accessed from orbiting the planet. would make the game a little larger. It would add to the thought that you have to take the hole planet, not just one map.
I strongly approve.
as do i
Me too
I see no reason why not either. I thought that the maps of 1 and 2 were HIGHLY disproportinate to the worlds they supposedly were. If 1 planet could have multiple maps, things could really be closer to logical equilibrium which is something that seems like something to achieve later in a series of games.
I wouldn’t mind all this development all this much, but I would not like being forced to descend through various sublevels of area selection to get to a level. If this causes a cascade of selecting a galaxy, then an arm, then a sector, then a system, then a planet, then a region, then a particular map, it makes logical sense, but I don’t think it would help gameplay.
Now, altering a map (such as a story map) that you’ve already completed, and making you complete it again under different circumstances . . . might be a different story.
Way to complicated. I was thinking that he could keep the setup he has now, but add a few maps to each planet. A planet, then a region, then game play.
Ohh can’t wait since it is closer to finishing is there any chance of a relese date. My idea is to have a ac dispencer that mkes ac like cw2 also can you make it so you can play with tablets the conputer kind not medicen 😉
will the size of the map affect the size of the planet?
We’re clearing the galaxy, if Earth was the centre; it being on the edge of our galaxy, we would be much less free in our exploration at the start
You should add random attacks on your ship if you go to a planet that isn’t completed, like a 1/10 chance or something were you need to set up defenses in your ship first, and have the creeper nodes go onto your ship at random location( 1-3 creeper emitters) This would be awesome…
It would get old. If you’re going to an unsecured world, you’re going to complete it, and having to fend off an attack on your ship would take time away from doing that. Also, you’d get used to the terrain of your ship over time, and so get bored with it.
Now, if it were an occasional, plot relevant attack, that could be interesting….
Agreed… plot relevant attacks witch get stronger and strong as the game progresses…
And as for HOW these attacks unfold you could simply have a wave of spores come crashing in to the ship… a rift open? Who knows! Something like that could be vary interesting indeed…
I have always wanted an upgrade for the main ship to where it can attack..even if it is just alittle.
For that matter, suppose said ship (aka the Mothership) is an orbital on the gameplay map setting and has a weakish attackability but a lot of armor since it it is logically so big considering it can carry multiple CN’s.
maybe you could use leftover energy from planets you cleared to build some sort of structure in space for artillery support
Very Nice. My son just replayed the first one. I love this sort of game. I just wish we could play some co-op missions. bet that would make coding a bit more complicated. lol
One thing that I used to do in groups is to each spend ten minutes playing, and save, then pass the savegame on to the next player in line. In the meantime, you pick up the last guy’s save. You just pass around savegames at set intervals.
You had to make do with the last guy’s resources and assets, and the last guy had to make do with yours.
It’s not quite asynchronous coop, but it’s something like it.
WOW CW3 is really moving along!
I’m more exited than I was for CreeperWorld 2!
Hi,Virgil.Great work.Come on big guy!
I have but one question.
Virgilw- Why is the CW1 song so perfect?