Very nice screenshots Jabberwocky 🙂 Hopefully you are getting ever closer to the release date?

Jabberwocky, on your 2nd pic. I take it this is a screenshot of maybe the equipment/ship merchant? If it is and your on base, what is the radar looking object in the right corner? Is that a mini-map for the base itself?

The screenshots look great and good work on the look of those different aliens in the character selector.

Nice shots Jabberwocky, 😎 can you change the stats of your avatars during the game or only at the start. ❓

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

Hi Geraldine. We are getting closer, but don't hold your breath quite yet. I'm shooting for early 2011. Of course, us devs love to screw up release dates. 😉

Greetings, Keeper and Supreme Master of the website!

Yeah, this screenshot is taken in your home base space station. The ship panel will open when you talk to the ship engineer. Actually you can open it anytime (even in space) to check out your ship stats, but the upgrade buttons will only work while you are docked in the space station.

Yep, that's a radar. It's more useful in combat situations on enemy or alien planets, where enemies show up as red dots, and friendlies as green. But I leave it open in the space station as well. Sometimes I use it to ping the location of someone you need to talk to, like the mission officer.

Hey PINBACK. You can't actually change your character stats at character selection.

Each of the different playable factions have different strengths and weaknesses. In this character selection screen, I try to give you an idea of their relative abilities, as well as their primary weapon types and specialized skills. You can mouse over the icons and you get a tooltip description of each. The idea is to help players pick a character that suits their playing style.

But there are plenty of stats and advancement you can earn during gameplay. There are equipment upgrades and skills for your character. There are component upgrades for your ship. And there is rank (for completing missions) and reputation (for shooting down enemy ships).

Thanks farcodev. Go Canada! 😎

You mention reputation there Jabberwocky will this have an effect with the other factions behavioral towards the player in the game and is there any other ways that the player can effect a change other than by shooting enemys. Ie will there be any moderator on the station which can mediates for a price between the groups?

Hi PINBACK,

A lot of great space sims do have really cool per-faction reputation. Mostly space-trader style games. I really like this mechanic for lone-wolf trader or mercenary-style space sims.

Salvation Prophecy takes a different approach. The setting is more of a militaristic one, where the factions are at full-on war with one another. There's no making friends with the other factions. It's kill or be killed. While this does close some doors on the game design, it opens others. It allows the game to focus on creating some epic battles (both space and on planets) between the different factions. For some added variation, there are some explorable alien planets, but even these will relate in some way to the war between the factions.

I hope Salvation Prophecy offers something a bit different as a result of this.

We are a very small development team, and one thing I've learned is that it's best to pick something and try to do it well, rather than spread your design too wide. Although actually, many of my friends and colleagues in the game industry think I'm nuts for trying to create a game as big and wide-scoped as Salvation Prophecy. 😉

Sound good 😀

So will that mean that you will only find one faction in each of the systems or will the factions be fighting among themselves. so you could end up with a three way fight or more in a system or on a planet

It breaks down like this:

- there can only be one space station per planet

- there can only be one colony per planet

- if you want to take over a planet, you need to destroy any enemy space station or colony which may already be built there.

This will usually mean you fight one faction at a time, as you take part in a space battle against the space station, or a drop ship invasion mission against the planet. But the AI factions will also be at war with one another, so it would be possible to see a battle between 2 opposing AI forces.

Does this mean that we might see faction wars between the AI to take over each others assets in the game? Or maybe we have to face more than one faction to take a space station or a colony?

Yep, you'll definitely be aware that that the AI factions are at battle with one another. These battles get reported through a "galactic news" interface, which tells you the result of a battle. And if you happen to be flying your space ship at the right place, you could watch the combat unfold live.

In general, battles will be between exactly 2 factions, because the factions never team up together. It's possible a space station could be attacked by 2 enemies at once. But this would be a fluke occurrence, only if 2 enemies independently decided to attack at the same time. That would suck for the space station. 😉

It's not just you, the website is down. It should be back up pretty soon.

Just so you know, I'm really bad at keeping the website up to date. I'd like to try to give it a major overhaul before the game is released, but right now it doesn't get much love. 🙁