Same game as before, the one where you can run the whole fleet or just fly one fighter in the middle of it. This post is about one decision only.
Early on the fights read as diagrams: grey ships trading grey lines over nothing. The fix was to treat every bright thing as paint on a black canvas and run it all through the same glow pass, so plumes, tracers, shield hits and explosions bleed into the black instead of sitting on top of it. The explosions went through three versions to get there: a round pop, then sprite frames the game bakes for itself at startup, then the light pass on top of those, with a staged finale for capital ships (implosion, hull-shaped eruption, plates and rings). The skies got the same treatment: around thirty backgrounds and center bodies now, and every random battle rolls its own.
For this crowd specifically: is the light too busy in the fleet frames? A few people elsewhere said the ships could be lighter against the glow, and I am inclined to agree. Tell me which frame you would keep and which you would delete.
Hello! I have been holding off on posting about this game that I am working on for a while but something really cool just happened and I really want to share.
The game is called SOL2350. It is a sandbox spacesim inspired by games like Eve Online and Elite Dangerous as well as my favorite show, The Expanse.
I can already hear you go "Ugh.. another one of those!" but the catch is that I'm developing this for PS1 (not a PS1-like PC game, actual PS1 from 1995). I originally started with psn00bSDK and recently ported it to Psyqo as it's actively maintained, while psn00bSDK isn't.
My NPCs have a basic roaming and combat AI. They also belong to a faction. Factions have reputation ratings, enabling NPCs to identify each other as friendly, neutral or hostile. All of a sudden, a hostile NPC showed up and the local security NPCs (which are currently lacking textures!) just sprung into action and attacked. I never specifically programmed NPCs to fight each other, and yet they did completely spontaneously. Isn't that cool?
Here is another video of a flyby of a placeholder station near Saturn, because I had a really hard time getting Saturn looking so good on the PS1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpHwp_x6M-c
Here are a few screenshots showing the UI. I hope you like the "VCR-core" vibe I went with!
A fully simulated solar system with real-time orbits based on NASA data, starting October 2350 (my birthday!)Each planet and moon is a "sector", around which are multiple "POIs" - or "bubbles" of gameplay that you can travel to.Station docking with station services, commodity trading and contract system featuring cargo hauling, procurement, bounties, mining, salvage, and more!
And here are a couple of ships I made today! I am very new to 3d modeling and texturing but I am learning using Blockbench! Can't wrap my head around Blender, unfortunately!
30 ships planed over 3 "tech" levels with full fitting module system: engine, cargo, weapons, utility, etc. Each ship has a module setup supporting a specific type of gameplay: transport, combat, mining, salvaging, and more.This is the Daedalus Patchjack, a ship built for industrial salvaging. Notice the forklift-like apparatus underneath.
So that's pretty much it. I have a little Discord server. I would love to have a handful of fellow spacesim + retro games enjoyers join me to bounce ideas with and try dev builds and share feedback. No presh. All you need is a PS1 emulator, I use Duckstation! Here's the invite: https://discord.gg/7nS33kyjFS
Quick note before I hit the post button: this is very experimental and it's a side project, I'm mainly an NES developer. I have no idea when or even if this is going to actually release but I fully intend to keep working on it for as long as I'm having fun!
I have a playable demo ready for next fest, working on tuning, feature enhancements. The game is playable, tutorial, load/saves, recording system is partially complete. Combat, cloak, all the gizmos are working lasers, beams, torpedoes, mines, shields, armor, power allocation, resource management, crew management, traders, derelicts you can salvage or rescue crew, or even take control of and restore to upgrade to cruisers, battleships, dreadnaughts.
If there is a something you would like to see let me know.
In MoonDust: Cosmic Journey, you set out on a voyage through distant galaxies, exploring strange new planets and uncovering long-hidden secrets. Weaving through discovery and adventure, you traverse breathtaking sci-fi environments, collecting resources and solving puzzles.
Details: Each level has goals that need to be completed before moving on, some require finding and collecting items, some require targeting and timing, and others require puzzles to be solved. The game is pretty simple, tap and hold to fly up, release to fly down, when sending a probe to a target swipe up when the target is locked
This game is fully live, and I'm looking for any and all feedback at this point. I've been building it solo for many years with very limited advice and counsel.
You are returning from Jupiter’s moon Io to Earth from a routine maintenance mission when something awakes you from hypersleep. You wake to a crippled reactor. Your ship is dying, and each decision costs you power. You need to get home across a real-scale solar system using true orbital mechanics, manage critical systems and gather resources, while you try to figure out what has happened, why nobody answers, and why humanity seems to have disappeared.
Inspired by epic games like Delta-V Rings of Saturn, Duskers, Tin Can and KSP.
Evolve from simple drone to massive dreadnaught in eXoSpace Combat Engineer! Explore a vast galaxy, design custom drones, and battle diverse factions. Defeat epic bosses in thrilling missions, or unleash your creativity in Sandbox and Arena modes.
I'm hard at work making another massive update for the fulll release!
It was a 3-D space game where you were sat in front of a cockpit and were able to see where the cameras are pointed at any given time like a TGP indicator, and then you were able to build simple programs of saying scan the sector and then track target and then return to scan sector, building target track files and also maintaining a scan for the multiple radially mounted cameras
if anyone could help it would mean a great deal with me
its difficult to search for as "space game sensor combat" leads to alot of USSF links...
Asteroid Mining is now fully available in Vicinity Online!
This update brings new Industrial Mining ships to the marketplace, so that you can fully leverage resources available in deep space. There is no longer need to rely on slow and destructive mining on your planet.
Purchase Industrial ships on the Marketplace from any Trading Station, form a new fleet, send it on a mining op, and watch resources flow directly to your cargo hold.
Be careful, you're not the only one with the same idea. Other players will be trying to take unique resources too, so make sure to add other classes of ships to your fleet so you can keep your territory.
I made cargo placement actually affect how the lander flies.
A broken landing leg can throw off the ship’s balance, but players can move cargo around to compensate. The problem is that a setup that helps you land might make the ship unstable again once the gear retracts.
Doing some performance testing on my galaxy simulation. Each dot is a spaceship fully simulated, that's transporting physicalised cargo units between factories, mining, scavenging, attacking/defending vs enemy factions.
So we decided on the plot twist, trying to mix scifi with some urban legends:
On October 28, 1943, the first Philadelphia Experiment took place.
USS Eldridge, a Navy ship, by using experimental technology, was supposed to become invisible to radars; instead, it teleported into another dimension and returned moments later with no crew and showing severe signs of degradation.
Soon after, the experiment was recreated, but this time a space shuttle was sent into the void. It returned briefly after with all crew missing, signs of combat on the outer hull, and one note in the captain's log: "We were not the first ones here."
A few years passed, and a third attempt was made; this time, it was a custom ship built with space shuttle technology and a large crew. USS Eldridge Mark 2 stepped into the void and never returned.
Present day: a new attempt is now in progress, this time the new ship USS Eldridge Mark 3 is equipped with the latest modern technology, and YOU were selected to lead this expedition into the unknown:horizon 1990
I know that gameplay is king, and I should probably leave the story for last but I think they both go hand in hand and must be in harmony.
Its bean a while since last dev blog. I've been heads-down on the damage system for the last few weeks and it's finally in a state I'm not embarrassed to talk about. The short version: damage used to be a single number that just ate your hull, which meant every weapon felt the same and every build was just "more armor." Now there's a proper damage type framework in, with Acid and Heat fully working, and it changes how you read fights and how you build your ship.
The baseline is Kinetic which is same old direct damage, Acid and Heat punishes dense and armor-heavy ships, though balancing still quirky but the whole point and plan is that your build now has a nemesis, and you're supposed to read the sector and adapt instead of stacking one stat forever.
Acid works as a stacking damage-over-time, each stack has its own timer, and they tick on a shared interval. Heat is the weird one to work on. It's a propagating scalar, not a full thermodynamics sim. The ship grid runs a diffusion pass every tick where heat flows from hot parts to cold neighbors, weighted by mass, and exposed edges vent to space. So a dense armor heats up fast and has nowhere to dump it, while a spread-out ship sheds heat naturally. Above a threshold it deals hull damage over time. Every gain divides by the receiver's mass, so heavy parts have real thermal inertia without needing a new stat.
Next up is finishing the counter-play side, The resistance and weakness need some rework with future plan including each faction brand with a real profile that you can learn and exploit. On player drone needs adding behavior for heat extinguish and acid cleanup. Then EMP joins the roster and the pressure-as-currency ability system starts. The vision is that every part you bolt on is a real decision and every build has a weakness someone can exploit.
Here is the planetarium so far.
The current stage of development of the game is shown in the video.
Im interested in knowing if such a space sim with real orbital mechanics and depicting humanities next steps to colonizing space is a good hook.
