Feb 10

Solar War - aim.mcmeans

Welcome, everyone, to yet another development blog, where I pour my heart out to the bleak empty void! I’ll be talking about more shiny new features today in a desperate bid to get more people to buy this game!!!

All jokes aside, this development blog will be quite long; I have a LOT to talk about. Some of the highlights include: The third solar system, and a method to tour through all of these solar systems instead of sticking with a single solar system until you wear out and die.

The Third (and final, for v1.0) Solar System will be called Epsilloni

Welcome to Epsilloni! Although this solar system may be a bit lacking in planets, there is still plenty to see, because each of those planets has a ridiculously large amount of moons. Seriously, who put them all there??? (Spoiler alert: it was the developer)

As you can probably see from the description I put in the last paragraph, this solar system puts a lot of weight into its moons. How much weight? Well, here come the statistics!

Epsilloni will include 5 main sequence planets. These planets can spawn moons, of which there are… 47 in total. (10 of which are annoyances, but still!) There will also be rare events, and 8 (regular) bosses were also thrown in because I felt like it.

The main sequence planets themselves are large gas giants (with the exception of Crisp, which looks suspiciously like Mercury…), and likewise are slow-moving and come with a lot of health. Most of the moons come from these gas giants, with a record-setting 14 moons from Gargantua, which also happens to be the largest planet in the game, boasting a size twice that of even Jupiter!

Rather than share a bunch more boring facts about this solar system, I’m going to instead shut up and show you a bunch of pictures instead.

Caption: Here’s some of the planets!

Caption: Here’s some more planets.

Caption: Oh look, a boss has shown up! And you’ll see, this boss is special because it promotes its moons to main sequence planets!

Caption: OK, that’s enough planets now…

Caption: Whoops…

Don’t forget: I wanted to talk about Tour Mode too

Yes, yes, there’s a new Solar System. But what about Tour Mode? I wanted to talk about Tour Mode as well!

Now now, what is Tour Mode anyways? Well, Tour Mode is an alternate game mode where The Earth hops around from one solar system to another. That way, they get to experience all of the solar systems!

Before we continue, let me get one thing straight: The only reason why I said Tour Mode is an “alternate game mode” is because Tour Mode was not the first game mode to be added. Arcade Mode, where The Earth stays in a single solar system for the entire game, was the first game mode to be added, and was included in the demo. Tour Mode came second, but that doesn’t mean it is less important.

Let me reiterate, Tour Mode is not one of those Fun Options that can be enabled for laughs and giggles. Tour Mode is a legitimate way to play! You’ll even have the choice to select it on the Start Game screen, instead of having to go into the Fun Options screen! Seriously!

Caption: See? Proof! I have proof! I’m not making it up!!!

(Don’t worry, I don’t see Fun Options as an “illegitimate” way to play. Haven’t you heard about acting?)

What is Tour Mode??? I want to know!!!

Alright, fine, time for serious talk where I actually talk about game features instead of making fun of myself.

In Tour Mode, you do not get to choose where you go, which is in contrast to Arcade Mode, where you can choose the solar system to play in. Instead, Tour Mode will tour through all of the solar systems one by one, starting with The One and Only Sol, then going to Alphy Centauri, and finally going to Epsilloni, where players will stay for the remainder of their run.

In each solar system, players will battle it out like normal, though greater bosses will be allowed to spawn sooner. After a few bosses, the sun boss will spawn! The Sun Bosses, which are more like checkpoint bosses rather than the climatic final boss, have reduced health so that players can get through them faster. Once the Sun Boss is defeated, players will be shunted off to the next solar system.

Epsilloni’s Sun Boss is the exception, though. I won’t have a climatic final boss for Tour Mode (at least for 1.0), so Epsilloni has normal health to compensate for that. In addition, once Epsilloni is defeated, players will stay put in that solar system.

That’s pretty much the gist of Tour Mode. Any questions? Good!

Oh, by the way, if you have the Angry Sun fun option enabled, then the sun bosses won’t have reduced health. Then, you’ll get to face the full fury of all of the suns, one by one! Oh, what fun it will be!

What’s next?

So all of that has been added to Solar War. So, what else is coming?

Well, in terms of game development of new features, we’re *mostly* caught up. However, there are still some features that I have been keeping secret, and probably will until launch. (You don’t want to know all of my surprises, now, do you?)

That being said, game development for me comes in sprints and lulls. I’ll work on it heavily for a while, then not work on it very much for another while. Currently, I’m in a sprint, and I’m pretty close to finished and can see the light at the end of the tunnel (I just hope it’s not an oncoming train!)

As I add more new features, I’ll write (most) of them in a development blog. I currently anticipate releasing a few more development blogs at a pace of around once every other week until launch (not including release announcements).

Alright, alright, I’m done now!

I’d like to speak to the people who somehow made it through this entire development blog and are thinking “Wow, this game is looking really good!”: Why don’t you follow this game (and add it to your wishlist while you’re at it) so that you can receive notifications when I post another of my lectures development blogs?

Until next time!

-Andrew