I had a quick trip to Madrid and back this week so I managed to sink quite a bit of time in and I tinkered on a few of the missing features.
The first was an alternative to the random event system. So preiously the only way to interact with other probes and rings was via random events that put random A.I. objects on a collision course with you. But this doesnt give the player much opportunity to seek out battles. So this week I implemented an alternative event system where random transmissions are placed randomly around the player's location. These transmissions either come from active probes or rings, but the player will have to change course to find them. The transmissions are only identified to the player via a little satellite dish icon on the edge of the scanner range pointing in the direction of the signal.
You won't know how far away the signal is, nor what is creating the signal (i.e. is it friendly or not). One the signal is within the scanner range it behaves the same as the current A.I. I feel it adds a slightly different direction for the player to take now. If they have designed a battle hard craft, they might want to seek out transmissions in order to collect materials and cash, whereas if you have designed a more passive craft, they will want to avoid or just ignore the transmissions.
Later I will probably expand the transmission system to handle mission objectives. Say you take on a mission to recover a lost probe, the direction towards the mission objective could be handled in the same way as the trasmissions, but I will probably use a different symbol so you can easily see which direction to go in.
I also started expanding the stats collected by the game, so that the "game over" screen can provide a bit more detail on what you achieved in the play thorugh. I'll also be using the stats to unlock achievements, but I won't be thinking of the achievements until the game is nearly finished.
I added a number of upgrades into the game. Up until this week there had only been two, a power boost and an oxygen boost. Now I have eight:
- Cash +25%
- Food +25%
- Food -25%
- Oxygen -25%
- Power +25%(this already existed)
- Power -25%
- Science +25%
- Waste +25%
- Waste -25%
It might seem dd that you'd want an upgrate that Waste increased waste production, but there will be the odd port that will pay for Waste. I've decided to change the look of the upgrades. Originally I wanted them to look like bits of equipment, but after I had made 3, it wasn't obvious, looking at them, which upgrade boosted power and which boosted science. So I've simplified them so that boosting upgrades are green, reducting upgrades are red and each upgrade has a hadly symbol indicating which resource they affect.
I'm thinking of putting up the current state of the project next week for people to take a look at and let me know what they think. I'll then update it each month fixing bugs (probably adding more), adding features and content that sort of thing.