After having so many problems for so long, I feel like this week we’ve finally gotten back on track. I’ve done a lot of work on several little things that have been nagging me, and they all add up to get us closer to our first public Alpha.
Since all these updates are rather eclectic and sometimes unrelated, I’m gonna go into bullet-time-mode. Woah.
- Radar system now emits a sonar ping when new hostile contacts are detected. This helps you keep you eyes on where you’re going rather than checking the Radar every few seconds and has boosted my enjoyment in the game immensely.
- Fixed bug that sometimes cut the text short on GUI buttons. Hey, it’s the little things.
- Implemented the battery system. Every ship now has a battery ( more like a very large array of capacitors ) that stores and discharges energy. This is used to fire weapons but could be expanded upon later. Different weapons use different amounts of energy of course, and eventually you’ll be able to craft bigger batteries that can recharge faster. Oh, also I am not a nice man. If you don’t have enough energy to fire something, it doesn’t politely leave that energy in your battery for the next time. It drains that bad boy. So don’t just sit there mashing the Fire button expecting magic. This is how electricity really works.
- Much further along implementing the Inventory. Natural resources you’ve mined show up as rotating cubes. The more mass you have of a particular item, the slower it rotates. Hovering the mouse over an item brings up a tooltip with the name of the item.
- Changed the screenshot function so that it doesn’t freeze the game every time you take one. Not sure why I waited so long to fix this.
- Fixed NPC AI so that it doesn’t circle-fire around your dead corpse like a dumbass.
Aside from those updates, I’m trying really hard to get a stable platform upon which I can record and upload video so you can see what we’re up to for yourself. Despite having a decent gaming-rig this has been pretty difficult for me up until now. With luck I can record something this weekend and upload it.
Have a good one!