Post Game Jam Update

Game Jam Feedback:

During the GMTK Game Jam, I received a lot of feedback to help improve the game. One of the biggest issues was players becoming lost and not knowing where to go. Some were also just confused by what they were supposed to do and why they could not attack planets with armies. Some also mentioned being spawn-camped by enemies upon trying to respawn due to other factions becoming too dominant. I tried my best to respond to all this feedback at the time to determine what changes would best improve the game to fix these issues.

New Update:

To address the issue of getting lost, i have added an arrow icon directing you to the nearest star, so you can always follow it back to civilization. Additionally, I have added a small help window to the pause menu that explains the controls and a basic idea of what you can do to help guide you. In this same menu, I have added the ability to swap teams mid-match, which can negate spawn-camping issues. Also, I have added shipyards for continental and ecumenopolis worlds that generate some turrets to defend them, and added planet classes to further differentiate every planet. To flesh out combat a bit more, new explosion and impact animations have been added to make every hit easy to see.

Performance:

One big issue with the Game Jam build was the performance. A badly written shader resulted in excessive loading times, and a high amount of collision pairs was causing lots of lag during large battles. I have heavily mitigated these issues and plan to make further optimization improvements in future updates.

What's next:

One of the big next steps is adding the ability to call in army ships and fleets to follow you into battle. I plan to utilize the shipyards for this function, though I am not entirely certain how to do so. I could do a lighter, more conventional approach by making it a simple menu while docked at a shipyard, but I am also considering generating new shipyard levels for the player to explore as their character, go to shops, and maybe even get into combat. Additionally, I will be looking into differentiating ships and weapons a bit more by changing the bullet lifetime between different types and will be adding more ships, including some that will be tied to certain factions. I will also be looking into ways to make my factions and their story a little more unique, though I will expand on that later once I have gotten some other work done.