SpaceSimCentral

New game play video out and blog https://www.projectoriongame.com/dev-blog-21/[/url]  Gone a bit Battlestar Galactica at the start :good: , like the little detail of the thruster being fired on the ship as it turns , weapon sound are still bit on the weedy side and what is that red honeycomb that appears, shields?.

 Gone a bit Battlestar Galactica at the start :good: , like the little detail of the thruster being fired on the ship as it turns , weapon sound are still bit on the weedy side and what is that red honeycomb that appears, shields?. Glad to see you like the launch tunnel, it was definitely Battlestar inspired. I've forwarded your feedback on the weapon sounds to our audio guy, and he agrees. He's been wanting to take another crack at them for a while, but has been pretty busy with voice acting. That red honeycomb indicates the edge of the level. It's not the most elegant way of showing it, but we haven't thought of a better way of doing it yet.

That red honeycomb indicates the edge of the level. It's not the most elegant way of showing it, but we haven't thought of a better way of doing it yet. You could always just have the ship computer/AI tell the player to "stay on target" (guess which films that from :biggrin: ) and have the player ship change course automatically.

You could always just have the ship computer/AI tell the player to "stay on target" (guess which films that from :biggrin: ) and have the player ship change course automatically. Haha, yeah we do have code in there for a voice prompt when you go beyond the border but we've never tried taking control of the ship to force you back. Might give that a try in the future to see how it feels.

I would definitely say take the red honeycomb out as it just looks totally out of place.

New dev blog out https://www.projectoriongame.com/dev-blog-22/[/url] Last week we ran our first large-scale playtest session in almost a year, and were happy to report it went great!It took place at Algonquin College (where Project Orion began) and involved almost 30 current Game Development students. We’d like to take a moment to thank all those students for playing and everyone who helped organize the playtest, it will definitely help make Project Orion a better game!Having the testers and developers in the same room provides a great opportunity to see issues that might otherwise go unreported. The playtest involved two Missions with different environments and objectives, and our primary goal was to get as much gameplay feedback as possible. Our testers provided us with great detailed feedback on what they liked, what they didn’t, and most importantly why they held those opinions.The immediate result is that we’ve prioritized several changes that will make the game drastically more fun and satisfying to play. We’ve also compiled a list of new features and issues to fix that are lower priority but will definitely help improve the experience.For our Alpha testers reading this and wondering “When will we get to test the new build?!” we have good news: we plan on having a new release within a month! The work that went into the playtest was exactly what needed to be done for the next Alpha build, so we’re very close to having a new version ready to release. The only things remaining are those newly identified high priority issues and putting the final touches on the Project Orion launcher so we can release patches and new builds easily.

New warp video and dev blog out https://www.projectoriongame.com/dev-blog-23/[/url]  Think that might be a nod to Starwars or the first Star Trek film. wounder if they sorted that honeycomb issue out.

Looks pretty good, I take it the warp process can be interrupted by outside forces other than you stopping the process?

wounder if they sorted that honeycomb issue out.The honeycomb effect at the edge of the mission area is still on the list of things to improve. For now we've toned it down to make it less solid-looking and less intrusive. Looks pretty good, I take it the warp process can be interrupted by outside forces other than you stopping the process?Definitely. The main thing that will interrupt the process is becoming unaligned with the vector, so collisions would definitely cause issues there. Also, if anything were to come between you and the warp target the jump would no longer be safe and interrupted as a result. There may be more mission-specific things as well, like warp field disruptors and such. We're also toying with the idea of the jump requiring enough energy to execute. As an example, if your shields are online and you're taking damage you would quickly be too low on energy to jump.

new dev blog out. https://www.projectoriongame.com/dev-blog-24/[/url] Customization UpdateShip customization is a big part of Project Orion. It’s the best way for us to allow players to tailor their experience to their specific strategy and playstyle. This month we’ve been working on everything from the user interface to how we handle weapon and attachment data internally.The first thing we should talk about is how you get more weapons and attachments while playing. Previously we tried an approach based on a currency we were calling â€œresearch points”. Completing missions would reward you with these points which would in turn allow you to acquire a new attachments. They were limited, so you could only acquire a limited number of attachments by the end of the campaign. While this added to replayability and made choosing a bit more difficult we also realized it limited the player’s ability to try new things. We’ve now moved to a tiered approach, with new tiers being unlocked as the story progresses. You can then mix and match all the new weapons and abilities without any artificial limitations.The only limitation now is how much power you have to work with. Different attachments have different power requirements, so you’ll have to balance more powerful attachments with those of other systems. Another important consideration to make is that remaining free power is available to use in combat when routing energy, so maxing out your energy usage with attachments might not be the best decision.We’ve also been spending a lot of time implementing the new user interface for customizing the Orion. While the layout and appearance are likely to change down, the road the UI is now fully functional and ready to go! This is one of the last big milestones we needed to reach before we felt comfortable releasing a new Alpha build, so stay tuned for more information on that in the coming weeks.Here is short video showing how the interface functions. Excuse out placeholder assets!  This month a lot of work has gone into deciding which attributes of the Orion are controlled by the attachments you have equipped. Some are fairly straightforward, like top speed, hull strength, and shield resilience. Others focus on the Orion’s unique energy abilities, and in many cases there is an entirely separate set of specifications for when energy is routed to a system.All of this information was previously saved in a way that made it impossible to modify once the game had been built, making it very difficult to test and balance these values. To remedy this issue we spent a lot of time converting all essential data to be read from external files. This is typically how this kind of data would be stored, but unfortunately it wasn’t how we initially designed these systems two years ago. While this isn’t a change you will see directly when playing Project Orion it will really help our internal testing and balancing, resulting in a better experience overall. Read the rest on the blog.

UI and the visuals look great. But just like any ship customization's you have to try them out to see how they act and if balancing is decent. Balancing has got to be one of the toughest jobs in game design.

UI and the visuals look great. But just like any ship customization's you have to try them out to see how they act and if balancing is decent. Balancing has got to be one of the toughest jobs in game design. Thanks for the comment on the visuals! You are absolutely correct that balancing is not an easy thing to get right. We're lucky to have a team member who has professional experience with QA, and his only responsibilities are to find bugs and test balance. Hopefully that combined with tester feedback will let us balance everything well.

New dev blog out https://www.projectoriongame.com/dev-blog-25/[/url] and they will be at long last heading towards Steam EA. http://store.steampowered.com/app/376620[/url] After a long wait, we’re finally prepared to start our alpha testing in earnest. One of the final steps was deciding the best way for our testers to get access to the latest updates and fixes as we finish them. We realized the easiest way to do that is to take advantage of being Greenlit and release them directly through Steam! We’ll be in contact with our alpha testers in the coming weeks with more details on the process and how to access the Project Orion alpha on Steam.As part of preparing for Steam distribution of test builds, we’ve also released our Steam[/url] store page! This marks a big internal milestone for us as it shows just how far we’ve come. It’s been a long road, and there is still plenty of work ahead, but the feeling that comes from hitting these milestones really is one of the most rewarding parts of the development process. Along with this we’ve also updated all the screenshots in our Media[/url] page, and a new gameplay trailer is in the works. One of the bigger changes we’ve decided on for this month relates to aim assist. Originally the game had no aim assist whatsoever, and while that was OK for players who had experience with flight and shooters in general, others found it very difficult to even hit their targets. To help newer players we introduced a limited form of aim assist that was tied to difficulty. We were never fully happy with that solution from a realism point of view so we’ve decided to change it. Have they put a leading target indicator in as I noticed it was missing from the videos we have seen. also a match target speed key would help.

New dev blog out https://www.projectoriongame.com/dev-blog-25/[/url] and they will be at long last heading towards Steam EA. http://store.steampowered.com/app/376620[/url] Have they put a leading target indicator in as I noticed it was missing from the videos we have seen. also a match target speed key would help. Target lead indicator is definitely coming now that we've decided to have weapons that have no aim assist or target tracking abilities. All the logic is actually already there as we use it in the aim assist system, we just need to handle the visual component. We implemented a match speed button a little while back and it does really help when you're trying to follow enemy ships. I should also clarify our Steam news. While we have launched the Steam page we currently have no plans to do Early Access. We just don't feel right with the whole concept behind it and we think it would hurt development more than help at this point. We will be sending Steam keys to our Alpha-tier Kickstarter backers and those who pre-ordered through our website very soon. These keys will allow them to download test builds directly through Steam as we release them.

I should also clarify our Steam news. While we have launched the Steam page we currently have no plans to do Early Access. We just don't feel right with the whole concept behind it and we think it would hurt development more than help at this point.Personally I thank you for this, too many developers are doing early access and then staying in that state for years sometimes.

Alpha now on Steam. :gamer:

New blog out https://www.projectoriongame.com/dev-blog-26/[/url] I been playing the Alpha over the last week and I'm pretty impressed with what they have done so far, although their are only 2 mission to play through and the first one throws you into a big battle. So expect to die a number of times until you get used to the keyboard layout which is standard one apart from the tab key which I keep thinking is the afterburner key but in fact is the camera change key, note that all key can be changed in the options. The game does have an auto spin as default but it can be turned off in the options and I also found it was necessary to reduce the mouse speed as well. One thing I don't like is if you fly through the red honeycomb the game will give you a number of second to return to the battle and if you don't it kills you and it game over. No crashes which was bit of surprise given that it an Alpha and my only technical problem was that the game did not like my monitor settings and old graphic card so I ended up playing it on the low setting and with an odd screen format but it ran silky smooth and once they get around to optimizing it some more I should be able to go back up. As it an Alpha not all the equipment loadout was in place and the UI still need some work on it, but it's a great start and I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the game. I wont say much about the story as so not to spoil for anyone apart from the fact that they have not gone down the usual space cadet story so beloved of theses games (at least that's my impression so far) and the voice acting pretty good as well.

New dev blog out https://www.projectoriongame.com/dev-blog-27/[/url] looking forward to seeing more of it.

I been off Steam for a about a year so I have not being doing any updates and sadly this is one of the games which does not appear to have had any updates in about the same time. hopefully they will come back.

Their website is dead, so I think the project is dead