ChristianDevs Forum

In SpaceJourney, you assume the role of a lone space pilot in a small cruiser. You fly through the galaxy exploring the unknown.

Being that you're the sole commander of your ship, you command it manually from the inside. And not only can you walk inside your small ship, but you can also walk outside of it, with anti-gravity.

Through your travels you'll run into hazards and enemy star ships ready to annihilate you and battle-- either manually, in the style of a first person shooter or through your ship's systems in the style of a tactical combat game.

The objective of this game is to go to four different sectors and find four pieces to an artifact.

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Use WASD keys to move forward and strafe. Press R to switch between hand and gun mode. Hand mode allows you to pick up objects and click on interface buttons. While gun mode is for shooting enemies and grabbing objects.

Left and Right arrows turn your ship, but only when you are at console at the front of the ship's bridge. And pressing - or + adjusts mouse sensitivity. Pressing esc \ escape pauses. The rest of the controls (like for the ship) are pretty self explanatory but feel free to ask!

This game has been in production since at least 2006, but I started recoding it last year, so I'm releasing this as a beta, as it will be rough around the edges but I have not found any bugs that interfered with playing the game. So feel free to post any feedback, criticism (if its constructive) and bug reports (as there are probably many).

I have many updates planned, which will include just basic bug-busting but also significant additions, but I feel that this release captures what I had in mind since I started this project. Here's what I have planned in future (potential spoilers):


Screens:

This is cool! I like all the options you put into it. Thanks so much for showing this.

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Freelance Music Composer/Sound Editor
http://www.morgancasey.com

Thanks for playing KC! I appreciate the feedback!

I'm glad you're doing this because the world needs more games like this.

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Q.E.D.

Thanks a ton Arch! I definitely hope this game is unique.

Lava!

Awesome start to this project, cheers! This is an awesome initial slice you can itterate on and flesh out into a really cool final product.

Here are a few pieces of critique I think you should focus on ironing out first before you add anything. These aren't really in any particular order....

> Hand/Gun Mode: You have a lot of consoles in your game which definitely fits the vibe and setting, but switching between modes is really tedious. I often found when I switched back I was looking at the floor and had to re-orient myself. I'm a big fan of first person and I wouldn't suggest you ever break from that view point but I think you can make all of these buttons function in the gamespace without toggling modes.

> Combat Feedback: Need a better sense of both what is going on (no particle or sound fx on the gun) and how combat is progressing. Suit cracks are cool and tense but the difference between scratched and broke is pretty tame, I'd try to create a bigger gradient between the two. Same thing with the spiders but in reverse, can't tell how hurt they are or if I should be trying to kite them, etc. I'd just work on improving the core loop here before you think about adding different kinds of spiders, etc.

>Options Menu: It runs with a pretty low framerate by default. Don't worry at all about optimization but some basic functions would be nice (resolution, volume, etc) just the simple stuff your engine probably supports out of the box.

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Thanks for the feedback Brownboot!

Good point about doing an options menu, I'll definitely add one, maybe even with a controls customizer. And I'm down with adding sounds and particle effects for the gun (the whole game needs sounds in fact).

So with the visor cracks, are you saying that the damage should look more severe? And would you say a health bar is needed for the spiders, or were you thinking that their damage should be shown in their animations? (i.e. after 2 hits they have trouble walking).

With hand \ gun mode, I'll have to think about that. I guess it would work if the interface was actually clickable on the 3D models, but that would be hard to pull off. If I do keep the current setup, I'll make sure the camera doesn't move when you make the switch back to gun mode.

Thanks again!

Suit Damage: Needs multiple stages of damaged. A few cracks at 80% hp left, more at 50%, and so on... so that at 10% you know you're hanging by a thread.

Spider Combat: My knee-jerk reaction is no HP bars; you've avoided being too game/system-ey in every other aspect so far so it would be incongruous. But its up to you how combat is going to fit in to the big picture and how you want to expand it down the road. Is combat based on strategic choices made earlier (did I upgrade my suit, upgrade my gun, buy other weapons, did I unlock the right skills, etc)? Is it based around tactical choices during the fight (I want to stand by my ships defenses to help me fight, or I need to keep moving to avoid ranged attacks, etc)?

The answer can be some combination of the two, sometimes its helpful to write out in story form how you want the user's experience to play out. For example: A space-spider floats off of a nearby asteroid and latches onto the player's ship. A warning alarm blares inside the cabin alerting the player who rushes to dawn her space suit... etc.

Hand/Gun Mode: In unity you can render a web browser as a texture and build little java pages live in the game. In SmashMuck we use this to display our shop checkout options and wiki in the menu but we've experimented with putting consoles in 3d space before. Not sure what you're using but the tech exists so there should be options that wouldn't require you to build everything in game space, although that's doable and could look very cool. You'd just need to give everything enough space to function and be readable.

EDIT: Btw, what engine are you using?

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Thanks for taking the time to write this detailed post!

As for suit damage, I already implmented that. So I think my problem is that I need to give the cracks more detail so they stand out, and the red in the screen (when you're hurt) probably makes it harder to see them. I might also make the difference between each hit be more extreme.

But here is what is in already in the game (the first one is after you take your first hit):


The play-out that you mentioned is actually identical to how I wanted it to go with the spiders. I just need sound effects to complete it. And yeah, I think I'd go with the tactical type of game play, being that I'm trying to avoid having many different weapons and upgrades, as I want that kind of detail instead to be within the world you're exploring. Plus I think sticking with fewer guns or ships makes them more memorable.

I'm using Blitz3D. Its not as advanced as Unity (I'd love to have this game be web playable) but it's great for starting projects from scratch; as you can pretty much just start throwing stuff together from the get go.

Thanks from this one! Never came ot my mind that explanation could sometimes be done that way. That really helps otehr one to figure out what you are after.

I think you do need to make the cracks more apparent and probably have more images for the different levels of damage. Take a look at brawl busters. They do damage cracks really well. You should be able to YouTube some gameplay footage and see what I mean.

@bugala: it helps you stay on track when you're designing too.

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I'm proud to announce the first update to SpaceJourney!

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Major changes from the last version (v1.0)
(*) Gun shooting should be easier!
(*) Switching to gun mode no longer moves your view (thanks Brownboot!)
(*) More detail and variation in the suit damage cracks (thanks Brownboot!)
(*) I added a warning when the ship auto steers to avoid collisions (thanks Treecleaver!)
(*) I made all of the warning messages more readable
(*) I made the science panel actually function, with launch-able probes (so far, only for planets) (thanks Treecleaver for bringing up the science panel!)
(*) The gun now uses particles, to flicker when you shoot! (thanks Brownboot!)
(*) The menu music now plays when you StarJump.

(*) The hand holding the gun now animates! It types when pressing buttons and moves when switching between hand and gun modes.
(*) I updated the logo! As well as transparency in the menu screen

General issues fixed from version 1.0:
(*) ship no longer repairs the suit you take it out while repairing
(*) comet in sector 2 is no longer left over if you die in that sector
(*) The gun kick back should work all of the time now
(*) I fixed a bug when you turn on shields with the tractor beam already working.

New look of the cracks (only 80% to 20% damage shown):

Lava! I got a chance to play some more. Improvements are looking good. The gun and fade on the spiders helps a lot. I still dont' think the cracks read very well; here's what I'd try:



I've just put a black circle in the middle to mask off the cracks in the middle of the screen in the early stages of damage. So as the cracks get bigger they encroach on your view space. Currently you cover 100% of the screen with cracks the entire time you're hurt the density just changes but its not easy to gauge mid fight.

Second big issue is I'm having a ton of trouble flying the ship. When I go to starcruise mode I climb out and shoot the incoming asteroids to keep the ship from getting pounded. Is that the correct solution? When I get to sector 2 there's a space station in front of me, I tried to cruise forward so I could get closer but ran into it and got turned around. A controls menu inside the ship controls would help remind me how to turn in that mode.

Just a few more thoughts to think about.

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Brownboot: I really like your idea for the cracks. It will implemented for the next release

As for docking on the space station....when its selected on the target menu, the dock button will pop up. The turning controls (left and right arrows) will be mentioned somewhere in the next update, thanks for bringing that up.

About star jumping: yes, you are to shoot the asteroids outside of your ship. I'll either put that somewhere in a warning on the ship, or make a tutorial.

EDIT: But you can do a trick (not sure if its a real trick since I'm telling you how to do it, haha) with the repair system to stay alive without leaving the bridge.

What you do, is turn on your shields when you go to warp, and when they get damaged a bit (to about 65%) you turn them off and let the ship body take some damage while you tell the ship the to repair the shields. Go back to the helm \ front console and once the shield button pops up (meaning that they're repaired) you turn back on the shields and repair the ship body....then you repeat the process all over again.

Essentially you alternate the repairs between the shields and body. Letting one take damage as you're repairing the other. Giving it enough time to repair each one fully before switching them.

Thanks for playing the new update and giving feedback!

I did some retooling for the gun.

Here is the original for reference:


Here is the new one:


But I felt it needed some color:


The color was meant to set it apart from the ship, as more of an industrial tool. But does the overall "look and feel" stand out too much from the rest of the art? Especially the interior of the ship. Any input would be appreciated.

Here it is in action:


Versus the old:


If the extra colors are too much, I'll revert back to the new verison of the gun without the colors.

Many thanks in advance

display screens will be neat...

if you want to use my blender planet i made can use the graphics, the plants animals or whatever. for some sort of away mission involving a planet. they all have names, and possible uses, spent a great deal of time on them... obviously there not the finished product, where roughed in to see what else the world needed. but are pretty far along.

also need any help making some spaceships i would help with that. i've watched more sci fi then any 1 person ever should...

i know i could make a pretty cool read out thing on blender...

Gun updates look great! Good call on the yellow.

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not sure if his program can do this, but on blender you can put a decal on the sight with the cross hairs... that or make that panel see through and an interior one with crosshairs giving depth to it...



thats what i was trying to explain...

Thanks Brownboot!

Launcher: As for you graphics offer, I appreciate that. What about doing some random object that the ship can grab? I've been meaning to put out an offer for people on this forum and others to post 3D models that will be floating out in space. Currenty, there's stuff like a pogo, a gas can or a rover. So random-ness is definitely accepted. Just long as the object is not meant to be too big (bigger objects will be tackled later on) and the file format is .3ds.

Then I'll pick the best of what people post.

my attempts at formatting things look like the hindenbergs last moment... i can send blender files and things like that... as far as changing things its a disaster... it says .blend after the files, not a clue how to convert them...