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Official Updates (Last Updated 6/15/2014)


LeoCeballos
(@leoceballos)
Petty Officer Registered
Joined: 12 years ago
Posts: 47
Topic starter  

UPDATE: Version 0.8b This release is a further development of the "Wolfpack" mission and friendly AI. Aside from some cosmetic changes to the UI overlays for friendly units, I've added wingmen "targeting orders" around enemy targets, letting you assign one or both of your squadron-mates to attack a specific target. You do this by clicking the little icons flanking an enemy's ui display (left icon to give orders to Alpha2, right for Alpha 3). Feedback on this feature is welcome! 

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Welcome to the Official Darkdawn forums, now graciously hosted here at Spacesim Central! 

 

Due to repeated issues with spambots and the time it was taking to deal with them, I've decided I needed to find a different way to host these forums, and DarkOne and SSC have been awesome enough to help out. 

 

Now, its been a long time since I've been able to communicate anything about the state of the game, so lets get down to business:

 

What has been going on?

 

Work. And sadly not nearly enough of it on the game. The last couple of months my day job has been monopolizing far more of my time that usual, and combined with the forum issues, Darkdawn has sadly lagged behind. The good news is that for the most part, that is over and done with. I've been able to get more done in the last week or two than I had been able to do in months before. A lot of it is in laying down the groundwork for campaign mode, which while very important, sadly has little visible effect on the game as it currently stands. But it will be paying off soon! My main focus since getting development back on track has been to rewrite the mission building and AI systems. While the AI's actual combat performance is more or less the same, its now much more modular, allowing things like setting goals, waypoint navigation, and best of all, friendly units. On the mission side, I'm now tracking ships by factions, class, and flight group; the end goal is to emulate a (very simplified) version of the Tie-Fighter/X-Wing system which allowed for some very dynamic and complex missions to play out.   

 

I've also been working on some new art, and I hope to be showing some of that off in these forums, soon. 

 

Since my last update on the old forums, however, I did launch the Windows Phone 8 version! I had already converted an earlier prototype during a Microsoft event, and after being contacted by a Nokia representative, I was convinced to go ahead and launch the game on WP8 in its current Early Access state. 

 

So what comes next?

 

Quite a bit! The very first thing coming will be version 0.8 and test scenarios. Test scenarios will focus on new aspects of gameplay as they're added to the engine, serving as both test (for me) and previews (for the players) of new mechanics coming in the campaign. The first will focus on the aforementioned AI changes, allowing friendly units for the first time, and the second on the stationary defense platforms already visible on the ship data viewer. The goal is to get these new mechanics polished up in the 0.8x cycle before focusing on art and interface improvements on the 0.9 cycle. And 0.8 isn't something on the distant horizon; the first test scenario should be out in a week or two. 

A little bit further along is a Windows 8 Universal version. Unity has promised the capability for building these will be added during the summer, and I can't wait to give it a shot. This would allow the game to be purchased on the Windows Store and be played on ANY Windows 8.1 device, weather a phone, RT tablet, Intel tablet, or desktop with touchscreen OR mouse/keyboard. The best thing is that it should be a fairly painless porting process as I've already tested on all of those devices individually; I just really don't want to be charging players separately for each version if I can help it. 

 

The iOS version will be following later. For various reasons, I want the game to be in a more mature state before I push it to the Appstore. I've done some test ports though and it all works great though, so I don't expect any problems moving it over when the time comes. 

 

Watch this space! With this new home for the forums, I hope to update much more consistently. 


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DarkOne
(@sscadmin)
Supreme Dark Emperor Admin
Joined: 8 years ago
Posts: 7856
 

Nice updates, I know this isn't totally game related but the improvements to Unity Engine really open up the possibilities and hopefully simplify development on multi platforms.

 

I think the majority of us know how work and family impact our gaming desires and in your case getting a game out. I remember when I actually had time to do reviews regularly, not any more 🙂


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LeoCeballos
(@leoceballos)
Petty Officer Registered
Joined: 12 years ago
Posts: 47
Topic starter  

Nice updates, I know this isn't totally game related but the improvements to Unity Engine really open up the possibilities and hopefully simplify development on multi platforms.

 

I think the majority of us know how work and family impact our gaming desires and in your case getting a game out. I remember when I actually had time to do reviews regularly, not any more 🙂

Hey DarkOne, yea, Unity continues to mature and add platforms. I'm hoping to see that "windows store universal" possibility soon! Not to mention the updated UI stuff they've been promising; I might not switch over right away, but its likely that at some point in DD:E's future it will switch over the the new UI toolset. 

Regarding the work/family stuff... yea its always hard to balance things. In the case of SSC though, you provide a great donation-only service, while on the other hand I've already taken people's money for the Early Access version. I hope whats already there already feels worth the (low) price, but I do realize that its on me to deliver on what I've promised. 

The good news is that test scenario 1 is basically finished as of last night. It'll probably still be a day or two of tweaks until I upload it, but its very close.  


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