Stellar Warfare - eLIET
Stellar Warfare has been in development for three years by a very small but very dedicated team. After
almost a year of play testing and implementing feedback from patrons, I am finally content to let the game go into Early Access.

Players will be thrown into the aftermath of a galaxy spanning conflict between the humanity and
the zealous followers of The Light. Events have taken place which has thrown the galaxy into
chaos. It is up to the player to find answers and safeguard his people.

The player can choose to build up their fleet slowly, but can also start raiding right away. Hour-long
buildups are not required for those who desire instant action. Killing enemy units allows you to find
blueprints which you can then use in between games to modify your units. There are currently well
over a million possible ship configurations you can choose from.


After Early Acces + current situation:

So there you have it. On August 4 this game will be released into Early Access. Once that is done I will collect feedback from you guys and implement some of your ideas. You can read more about that in the Early Access section of the Stellar Warfare steam store page.

I will keep you guys up to date of what I'm working on like I have been doing for the last 10 weeks or so on a weekly-ish basis. That way you guys can always keep track on whats happening with the project. Speaking of which, this is the update for this week:

  • added the Hunter andd Speeder (light ships)
  • added the Starangel and Delta destroyer(heavy ships)
  • working on the 4k scaling of menus
  • disabled the 'loading...' text in the main menu. It wasnt styled. Will re-enable once its styled
  • ship editor now properly scaled for 4k screens
  • changed the damaged blueprint tooltip to 'The recovered blueprint was damaged beyond recovery. By the looks of it we already have this blueprint anyway. Lets hope the next one we find is in better shape. ' to make it more clear in any case
  • fixed scaling for the Credits screen
  • fixed scaling for the The Light screen
  • halfway through ingame menu rework + updated dreadship, light frigate and mastodon stats
  • fixed logo on steam store after Brackmans suggestion
  • unlocking ships now works in the new menu
  • styled the new menu
  • moved unlocking of support, artillery and esalation buildings to the new menu
  • building menu data is now retrieved correctly as well
  • you can now buy buildings with the new menu
  • powerplant costs in build menu are now updated automatically again
  • added all economy buildings to new menu
  • added all Escalation buildings to the new build menu
  • added all defensive structures to the build menu
  • added all artillery structures to the new build menu
  • added warp jumps and constructionb oost to the new menu
  • added shipyard upgrades to the new menu
  • fixed a potential bug of not being able to buy shipyard upgrades after restarting a game
  • updated steam tags
  • all the buttons are in the new menu, but im still fixing things here and there. And it still doesnt look great, but i will look into that too (thanks @Algor (GMT+3) )
  • updated icon
  • commented out a lot of functionality of the old build menu. Need to double check a bunch of things there such as unlocks though
  • fixed double menu through eachother
  • everything after the dash for building names is now removed for better readability
  • the new GUI now has a progress bar for ships and buildings
  • Fixed bug which required building buttons in the new build menu to be clicked twice (took me 40 minutes to find)
  • moved top menu resource display code to a new area
  • added bleeps to build ships buttons
  • added bleeps to build building buttons
  • restyled tab backgrounds
  • when you press ship build buttons they now have an overlay making clicks more clear (have not done this for buildings yet, not sure if should)
  • new ship icons now retrieve the correct names + they display the amount in queue
  • new menu now uses the correct shipyard upgrade costs
  • artillery, escalation and support structures tab is now red and disabled if you have not unlocked that tech yet
  • tested hyperspace with the new menu
  • fixed but with artillery unlock having the wrong cost
  • shipyard flak now has an effect when bought
  • shipyard weapon upgrades are no longer exclusive, but they are currently all placed at the top of the shipyard
  • you can now press tabs again in order to hide them
  • hyperspacebutton is now hidden if there is no jump structure yet
  • buildbars are now more individual
  • fixed overlap of building and ship progress bars over the buttons and restyled colors
  • it should look exactly the same (but the 4k resolution is twice as high, obviously)
  • removed a bunch of commented out lines from the old GUI script
  • set the minimap zoom properly for the new scale
  • minimap restored, but the functionality still doesnt scale properly with 4k
  • only took me 3.5 hours but the minimap now scales to 4k mostly properly
  • tweaked Fish stats slightly
  • fixed pause button messing up the rotation of ships
  • I've written a press release for the Early Access (with LaOchs help) and I've contacted someone who helped me with the first press release since I can't remember where I'm supposed to submit those press releases (there was a website that allowed you do submit them, but i'm not sure which one it is)
  • fixed adma engines
  • updated blueprint looks
  • fixed blueprint bugs
  • reworked blueprint tooltip display so that you see different visuals for weapons, modules and ship frames
  • new blueprints
  • new layout for ship drops
  • new module drop visual
  • new weapons blueprint visual
  • wrote press release for early access on august 4
  • press release is online
  • added the new tensegames logo to



You can help!
Last but not least: you can help the project if you want. We have a very small team and everything is self funded, so our marketing budget is non-existent.

That means that you can help the project a lot by sharing the link to the store page store.steampowered.com/app/1113030/Stellar_Warfare or the patreon patreon.com/tensegames or by just spreading cool gifs of the game wherever you can.

Tell your friends, share in your discord/facebook/reddit/twitter community groups and you can have a serious impact on how well known this project becomes.

See you guys next week!
Jul 10, 2021
Stellar Warfare - eLIET

The plan for this week was to get the steam page approved. Once that is approved I will announce the official release date for that date + 1 month. The extra month is needed to give the press the time to write articles.

Unfortunately the logo on the header image was not fully readable causing the review to fail. I have fixed that and re-submitted it. It should be approved in 2-3 business days now. Once that has happened I will announce the early access date for that date +1 month. Assuming that's Wednesday the store page will be approved I will put the official final early access release date on roughly 11th of August.

Apart from that I did the following this week:

  • Changed some weapon colors based on projectile type
  • Temporarily increased Bubble Size of nano repair hubs. If you guys try it out and it works well as some form of 'overshield', then i'm keeping it in
  • The shield for The Brick is now Brick-shaped. If it looks too ugly ingame I will remove it again, but i thought it would be nice to have some extra distinction between ships
  • Changed weapon model textures based on projectile type for 60% of the weapons
  • Disabled all isTrigger on mesh colliders to fix the dodge bug (should be fixed now)
  • Made The Brick shield square
  • Fixed Flaktracer and FlakTrippler models
  • Tweaked Flaktracer and FlakTrippler missile speeds and lifetime
  • 100% sure i found the issue with the emperor now. one of the rays it casts was inside the ship
  • Added a new raycast for dodge behavior for ships. This one is in front of the ship to make sure that if something is right in front and the other rays cant reach it that it still dodges properly
  • Set screen height limit from 1080 to 2160 because I will be working on the scaling soon. Got a 4k screen to test it now (even though i cant really afford it i can afford to release the game without proper screen support even less xD)
  • Reworked Corisant a bit and its engines too
  • Added The Adma ship frame
  • Reduced power and metal income from 200 to 150 per minute. Before this week it was 100, but I increased it. Yesterday I noticed it was far too much
  • Has habitat-mining ring that generates 10 metal per minute
  • No longer true because that caused a bug. Instead i just gave it some more health
  • Changed the damage values of the Heavy Galactor, Blaster and Plasma Barreler based on Algor, Brackman and LaOch's suggestion ( #the-council )
  • Added campainette to the correct menu, disabled the button though
  • Did several blueprint visualisation tests


Changed the near-raycast checks for the following ships from 1 to:
  • Frigate 1.5 / 3
  • Hammer 1.5
  • Heavy corvette 1.3
  • Heavy frigate 1.5
  • Lanver 1.6
  • Longback 5
  • Lunaria 3, but needs vertical recenter and retest
  • Mammoth 3
  • Mastadon 1.6
  • Megalodon 2
  • Orbital cruiser 1.5
  • Repair cruiser 2
  • Sconca 3.2
  • Stareater 3.4
  • Sunfish 1.5 , but needs vertical recenter and retest
  • Taibe 2.5
  • Taibera, 1.5 but needs vertical recenter and retest
  • Terroriser 3
  • The brick 2
  • Jaap 3.3, but needs vertical recenter and retest
  • Toshiron 3
  • Towerer 3, but needs vertical recenter and retest
  • Tsu 2.3, but needs vertical recenter and retest
  • Type- c 2

Jun 25, 2021
Stellar Warfare - eLIET

I'm a bit short on time this week, but here is what has been done this week:

  • Weapon booster now has the proper icons
  • Fixed objects position in tutorial
  • Added a crossfade to the combat music. The combat music now starts/stops more gradually
  • Disabled power and metal income indicators until it becomes smooth/reliable enough
  • Fixed Terroriser 2nd weapon slot @Algor (GMT+3)
  • Fixed auto brawler angle
  • Forced smartlasers to hide, just in case
  • Fixed scorescreen scaling
  • Fixed score screen scaling and options screen scaling (at least mostly)
  • Also improved the looks/readability/replacing as much of the ugly old GUI as i can
  • Increased artillery ranges
  • Increased artillery range, changed minimap and toggle buttons
  • Removed build-lines temporarily (with the exception of buff buildings)
  • Disabled combat music for now because the check to see if you are in combat is messy
  • Cursor now flashes red when targeting enemies
  • Updated our todo list and project board to prioritise what we should do next better and make sure we dont forget anything for early access
  • Simplified all 53 ship mesh colliders to increase performance
  • Checked if new colliders work in MP (they do)
  • Redid mesh colliders on 30 buildings
  • You now have to press N to enable FPS
  • Removed flagship label in regular lobby
  • I think i fixed teams
  • Removed Hostname on transport tooltip
  • Removed unneeded column inside lobby
  • Fixed transport icons in BR

Next week I will be on a holiday with my mother and brother. As soon as I get back I want to make sure 1 thing works well and then announce the official Early Access release date. Although I think steam also has to approve something before then.

All in all a fairly light week, but I'm excited for early access!
Stellar Warfare - eLIET

This week I've improved on the cinematic camera behavior, added new projectile visuals and worked on the audio mix. There has also been some balancing I've also done the following:

  • Added Agressor, Terroriser and Avimimus ships
  • Added Plasma Barreler, Plasma Repeater, Blossomer, Tracer, Streamer weapons
  • FIXED DOUBLE CLICKING ON ICONS (only took my tired brain about 5 hours in total)
  • Worked on audio mix
  • Set audio default volumes
  • Lowered Smartlaser volume
  • Removed destroyer MK2 and other weapon testers from the scene
  • Researching early access release requirements on steam
  • Learned some stuff about game release. Implementing into plans now.
  • Compressed 4 soundtracks and added them to the game
  • Modified more sound volumes for background tracks
  • Changed fire sound of the wrecker because it stood out too much
Changed damage multipliers for weapon/armor types. This is used to determine how much damage a weapon does against a certain armor type. The less suitable it is for the role the less the damage modifier is.

Old modifiers:
damage_exactMatch = 1f;
damage_offByOne = .75f;
damage_offByTwo = .5f;
damage_offByThree = .25f;

New modifiers:
damage_exactMatch = 1;
damage_offByOne = .5f;
damage_offByTwo = .25f;
damage_offByThree = .12f;


  • Re-imported 9 tracks and compressed them all in Audacity because the volumes were still off/incorrect. Removed old audio files from the project to decrease project folder size
  • When in combat you now get a combat track. not really crossfaded though but yeah
  • Modified damage modifiers based on suggestions
  • All friendly units should now die when you've lost
  • When you're dead your power and metal value will become 0
  • Might have fixed both jump bugs + move bug (at the cost of possibly some optimization)
  • After unlocking medium or heavy ships you now cant build ships for .3 seconds, fixing the 'click once buy twice' bug
  • Increased shipyard base health from 2500 to 3500 )
  • Custom weapons fire sound overrides now also use the position of the object thats firing to indicate if it should be audible or not
  • Fixed missile rotation
  • Modified missile particles
  • Updated flak
  • Added long blue, long orange, orange trail and blue trail projectile visuals
  • Cinematic camera prioritizes ships that are in combat over ships that are not in combat. This did not work in multiplayer, now it does
  • Cinematic camera will now pick both enemy and friendly units as a target if there is no combat going on

Thats it for this week. Trying to prioritize early access so that I can release it for you guys asap. Also might have to start working an extra job again or start a kickstarter or something since I'm almost out of money. Either way the early access should be on steam in a month. I want to announce the official date hopefully next week!
Jun 12, 2021
Stellar Warfare - eLIET
This week I've worked mostly on different types of levels for the player in Skirmish, Battle Royale and Wave Defense modes. I've also fixed a few dozen bugs and added some new weapons and effects.

  • Changed build grid visualisation
  • Reworked asteroid spawning. There are now three presets; rocky, nebulea and deep space. In rocky you have no zabu mines but more asteroids. In nebulea you have more zabu complex. In nebulea you have more zabu power.
  • Added spread to weapon stats in ship editor
  • Map is now randomised for singleplayer wavedef and skirmish
  • Map is now randomised for multiplayer battle royale
  • Added planets
  • Added nebulea
  • Added planetary bodies
  • Added 3 level presets
  • Tweaked asteroid spawn to be more mirrored (still random, but the same amount will randomly spawn on your side of the map)
  • In Rocky map preset in multiplayer you now get no zabu mines but more medium asteroids
  • In DeepSpace map preset there are some extra zabu generators
  • In Nebulea preset there are more zabu plants
  • Removed test ships

  • Changed color of sun based on map
  • Removed difficulty modifier x10 and instead just made the slider go from 1 to 100
  • Fixed wave boss bug (the game would restart in a certain wave because the wavecounter did not reset in between games)
  • Score screen for wavedef
  • Disabled healthbar on mouse hover when cinematic camera is on
  • Disabled radar ping when cinematic camera is on or GUI is off
  • Disabled extra weapons spawn for waveboss
  • Fixed waveboss devastator visual
  • Changed gauss visuals
  • Changed wavedefboss text in top of screen when winning/losing
  • Changed variable type of difficulty variables from doubles to floats
  • Reworked both flak and plasma flak to not use 1 long animation but regular explosions in a timed fashion
  • Added passwords to multiplayer rooms
  • Made it so that the password input box dissappears when no password is set,
  • Added field to enter password to host options,
  • Re-aligned visible options in lobby
  • Fixed 'bug' of players making a room without password because they forgot it, then leaving, then rehosting the room with password and the password not showing up because of that
  • Limited passwords to 4 characters
  • Styled input boxes
  • Fixed repair rate
  • Fixed formation near repair buildings
  • Increased repair range from 60 to 80
  • Repositioned top turret on The Jaap, decreased Medium Cannon volley interval
  • Switched ship slot 9 and 10 in the ship editor (they were inverted)
  • Fixed transport move bug battle royale
  • Fixed skybox not changing correctly in battle roayle
  • Increased resources mined per trip from 30/35/40 to 50/60/70
  • Tweaked skybox
  • Changed healthbar based on suggestions of
  • Fixed SP wave def no win condition
  • Fixed BR ships set as mine
  • Removed some photoshop files from the project folder, reducing the project size


Next week I will go over the checklist for the Early Access and see how far we get ^^
Stellar Warfare - eLIET


Weapons, modules and ships:
  • Added missile acceleration
  • New medium ship: Dreadship
  • New heavy ship: Tsu
  • Added Slammer missile launcher
  • Buffed repressor
  • Devastator missiles tweaked
  • Added "Double Cannon" which is intended vs heavies




General:
  • You can now see how many weapon and module slots a ship has in the editor
  • Fixed duplicate weapons being shown in tooltip
  • Added almost accurate costs for buildings to be used for the AI
  • 'Unit' icon overlap bug was actually as intended. However it did mix up the ally and friendly colors, so i have added checks for that
  • Added radar ping to loot being dropped
  • Re-enabled missile trails
  • Reverted projectile render space to local instead of world (rounder projectiles)
  • Force cursor visible in score screen
  • Manually checked the impact points and collision boxes of 37 ships and removed the extra team row in the multiplayer lobby
  • Improved alignment in multiplayer lobby and removed 'duplicate' team field
  • Added labels to multiplayer lobby + removed 'duplicate' team display
  • Added campaign button to main menu, made a campaign select screen, saving completed campaigns on disk, hiding campaign mission start buttons that are not unlocked yet, enabling relevant campaign scripts during gameplay, tested saving of missions, tested button clicks, tested victories saving the mission as completed
  • Disabled singleplayer campaign button in main menu until release of EA
  • Reduced distance at which audio is played from 250 to 200
  • Missiles now make sound when impacting on objects
  • Changed audio volume limiter to not go above .99f
  • Ship editor now displays weapons and module slots
  • Reduced size of explosions of missiles that 'miss' their target (end of life)
  • Left click + V in on the minimap OR middle mouse click on the minimap now shows a radar ping to allies
  • Radar pings visible for allies
  • Added an additional check that won't let you win or lose a game in battle royale mode until after all players have been spawned (thus preventing the instant lose/win that has been reported)
  • Instead of 'delete confirmation' upon deleting units I have added buildigns to the 'currently selected' list to the left of the screen so that you can see what you are going to delete, even if it is a building
  • Harvesters no longer go into asteroids that often & stop beforehand. They also use cutter beams now
  • Cinematic camera now goes to friendly units first, then to enemy units. It will also look at the target it is shooting at in 25% of the cases, all the other times it looks at the ship thats firing because that one is more important to the player (their own ship)
  • It will now also prioritise friendly units over enemy units (it wont inspect enemy units unless it cant find friendly units with targets)
  • Added flybys to the cinematic camera


May 28, 2021
Stellar Warfare - eLIET
This week I have worked on adding new weapons and fixing bugs, since the campaign is pretty much done. I just have to have the voice lines recorded and implemented.

There are now 48 ships, 47 weapons, 23 modules. Ship module slots range from 1 to 5 per ship, and weapon slots from 1 to 5 per ship. Someone can probably use that data to calculate all possible configurations



Weapons, modules & ships
  • Fixed weapons not firing
  • Fixed Lasershield
  • Nerfed Gauss Cannon
  • Nerfed Gauss Repeater
  • Reduced harvester cost
  • Nerfed refinery costs
  • Made several defense buildings cheaper
  • Fixed fish moving weirdly
  • Added Gauss Shotcannon
  • Added Plasma Shotcannon
  • Reduced camera lag
  • Changed Corvette tooltip
  • Made Emperor ship cheaper
  • Made Longback ship cheaper
  • Added a Heavy Corvette
  • Made the Heavy Frigate tankier
  • Added the Dageria heavy ship (fast, cheap, fragile)
  • Added light frigate
  • Added Heat Sinks module
  • Added Weapon Booster module
  • Added the MissileDef cannon


Bugfixes
  • Removed stealth icon bug
  • Improved wave defense boss weaponry
  • When you win or lose you will no longer automatically leave the game. Instead you will get a leave button.
  • After win/lose your HUD / GUI will dissapear apart from the minimap
  • 5 seconds after win/lose your win/lose message will dissapear and the Leave button will move to the bottom left
  • Cinematic camera can now be used after losing
  • All other options apart from building new things will stay available after losing
  • All of the above basically boils down to that you can keep watching after losing
  • Made weapon tester into a neutral building + camera smoothness is now different for cinematic cam and follow cam, and regular camera smoothness is more instant
  • I've moved the check to see what units can jump elsewhere (excludes buildings and AI units). Then checks if the selected unit is a friendly or not. It makes a new list from this then uses that list to jump. That should exclude any errors caused by 'wrong units' being selected for jumps. This seems to have solved the jump issue.
  • Transports now spawn more randomly
  • Rewards for killing transports is now between 250 and 350 per destroyed transport in multiplayer and between 250 and 750 of each resource in singleplayer
  • In BR now 3 transports spawn at random positions instead of 1, making it easier for players to get them
  • Made transports easier to target
  • Zabu beacons in multiplayer are now spread out more
  • Battle royale jump cooldown is now 1/3 of regular jump time. I have also set the jump cooldown very low temporarily to test it
  • Added check that unit must have more than 0 health before being allowed to jump
  • Added an extra check that won't even send the network command to jump a unit if its health is lower than 0
  • Made all blue and green projectiles less bright by setting the transperancy from 255 to 70. Also changed projectiles visual
  • Tweaked recoil
  • Fixed neutral transports needing to be dead to win in BR
  • Testing neutral transports needing to be dead to win in BR fix (success)
  • Added a check to see if unit references were still set when seeing if player should lose in br
  • Noticed that when you win the win in br the win screen almost instantly dissapears. Just checked it, same goes for the lose screen. Has to do with screen sizes, fixing now.
  • Increased time that the victory or lose message stays to 10 seconds
  • Improved leavegame positioning
  • transports in BR now give between 150 and 300 of each resource
  • Repair stations in BR work again
  • Decreased jump delay by 1 second (will take 3-4 seconds to jump now instead of 4-5)
  • Fixed Reinforcement beacon (+ build speed increaser) from applying benefits to allies
  • Removed 'music playing double' until it can be reproduced
  • Might have fixed the population bug. Can't really test, almost impossible to reproduce. But I suspect its because the owner of the units of the ally that died were counted as friendly units, reducing your own population below 0. I've added an extra check that checks if those objects are owned by the local player to hopefully fix this issue
  • Added the same check to populationCap
  • Increased loot drop chance in all singleplayer game modes by 30%
  • Added some checks that if selected units are null that they get removed from the selected units list in the formation helper. Might fix move issues
  • Cleaned up shipyard death
  • Repositioned leave button
  • Increased height indicator display distance while placing buildings
  • Changed height from "xx Meters" to "Height: xx"

Thats it for this week. Next week I will probably do more similar fixes. I've also fixed most game breaking bugs so far, so thats good :)
Stellar Warfare - eLIET
This week I've mostly worked on campaign mission 7 and 8. I had to:

  • Flesh out the script
  • Write all voice over lines
  • Time all the events
  • Check win conditions
  • Check lose conditions
  • Analyse the gameplay aspect
  • Make sure the whole lore is consistent enough
  • Test if all objectives could be achieved and the missions could be completed

Apart from that we've also worked on Fighters and Bombers. Those are not an absolute requirement for game release, but it would be very cool to have!



Each week I also play at least two games with patrons. One is a multiplayer game and the other is a battle royale game. Patrons on https://patreon.com/TenseGames also get to design ships based on which tier they choose and their name will be included on a transport ship. Without people supporting me via patreon I would have had to quit this project a long time ago, so I'm forever thankful for those who continue to help me with it.

Stellar Warfare - eLIET


General, balance, weapons
  • Added the Toad light ship frame
  • Added the Veloci light ship frame
  • Added the Discus light ship frame
  • Added Magma repeater weapon blueprint
  • Fleshed out campaign mission 5
  • Fleshed out campaign mission 6
  • Wrote global lore events for campaign mission 7
  • Wrote global lore events for campaign mission 8
  • Started implementation of campaign mission 5
  • Changed Auto Repeater weapons fire sound
  • Changed default cannon sounds
  • Fixed audio popping for cannon sounds
  • Played game with patreons + coreyloses
  • Added an extra check for sounds to only play if they are within 250 units distance of the camera
  • Tweaked all projectile lifetimes so that they detonate right behind max range
  • Added weapon recoil


Campaign mission 5
  • Added custom buildings
  • Added 8 objectives
  • Did several test games in
  • Created a special damaged ship for
  • Added new radar pings pod
  • Added escape pod


Campaign mission 6
  • Added custom buildings
  • Added effects
  • Added enemies
  • Added 9 objectives
  • Added win/lose conditions
  • Added radar pings
  • Tested win and lose conditions
  • Rewrote part of the script

That's it for this week. See you next week!
Stellar Warfare - eLIET


Ships
  • Added Patroller ship frame
  • Added Heavy frigate ship frame
  • Added Blade ship frame
  • Added Hammerer ship frame
  • Fixed Patroller shield
  • Fixed Heavy frigate shield
  • Fixed Blade shield
  • Fixed Hammerer shield
  • Reduced Longback cost
And I've made some ship stats cards:


Campaign
  • Started campaign mission 4
  • Wrote out campaign mission 4
  • Added objectives and text to campaign mission 4
  • Added objective 1, 2, 3, 4,5 for campaign mission 4
  • Written the text for the voice over
  • Photoshopped radar ping
  • Animated radar ping
  • Implemented radar ping system
  • Added objective radar pings to mission 2
  • Added objective radar pings to mission 4
  • Completed campaign mission 4
  • Increased time until first objective trigger in campaign mission 4 + changed the tooltip
  • Refined campaign story, currently 8 missions planned and 4 of them done
I also implemented this for the campaign, but I won't tell you what it is:


We also did a bunch of performance tests. If we don't use any of those new techniques right now then at least we'll have them ready for later versions of the game.

And finally the Brachio and Destroyer MKII in action:


See you next week!
...