http://7drl.org/2014/03/16/rogue-station-success/The 7 days of development is over! What a grind!
I spent way too much time on the invaders this final day, when I should have spent those hours tweaking/balancings and just polishing the “product”, but I decided to go a little crazy and try to grind them in. The idea in my head was that they would add this cool extra dimension to the experience where you’re not as “in control” over the situation as you might be with a hull breach that just stand still. After a few failed attempts at an AI, I came up with a solution that worked, and the invaders will now hunt you down and eat you alive! They will also degrade any station equipment they bump into on the way, as well as eagerly consume your precious oxygen! Thus I think the invaders added some interesting dynamics to the gameplay that was really needed.
I did also find time to add the shoot ability, even if it’s super simple it’s a little fun to be able to shoot these things at a distance. They probably won’t outsmart you anyway.
I did some touch-ups to the UI as well. Initially we had the Station Power displayed as a percentage of the max power the station could hold at the time, but since every decision you make with respect to station equipment and gear affects power consumption, we really had to show the raw number, so now we do. I also added an instruction screen at the main menu that both gives the short version of the story/scenario, but also tells the player which buttons are in effect as far as user interface goes (keyboard-only).
One of the technical mistakes we did (which is a bit Unity specific), was that the entire game was set up in a single scene, instead of letting the UI and Global things sit in one scene, and the game specifics that needs to be reset with every new game sit in another… so there are sure to be bugs in there now related to just that. When you die (or win) and start a new game, strange things may happen!
All in all though, a great experience. We actually managed to get some gameplay going this year, as opposed to last year’s entry (Han Yolo)!
Thank you Kenneth Gangstø for joining me in this challenge! A big thanks to Bill Lowe and Petur Agust for providing some artistic input and suggestions, even when our focus and time wasn’t spent there at all. A huge thank you to Mirko Ruckels for allowing us to use his superb music in our game, check him out at
http://www.last.fm/music/Deepspace!
I’ll provide the download links to the game itself in a follow-up post to this one (without all the development report stuff).
Thank you all for following our progress, for participating in the 7DRL Challenge and good luck surviving the Rogue Station!
