itch.io

Jesus that’s a sizeable update. Like, content-wise I mean. The actual download size is actually quite reasonable.

Well done!

Assuming you’ve tried restarting your computer and that still doesn’t work, re-installing is probably your most reliable option sadly

0.1.1

Major bugs:

• Every derelict I tried to board froze the game. This happened across multiple sectors, reboots, and even on more than one save. I’ve yet to be able to land on a derelict ship at all. Didn’t have this issue in 0.1. The game locks up during the fade-out, just before the screen goes completely black. It’s a total freeze with high CPU usage but no memory increase, suggesting the code is caught in an infinite loop of some kind. In case it’s useful, here’s my save file. My ship is currently docked at a derelict.
• After landing at an outpost, I wandered over to the trading post and found a couple of missions to dispose of toxic waste, both of which I accepted. Before loading the waste, I went into the post to sell some rocks I’d picked up. I noticed that I had the option to sell a large number of “Unknown item”s for 0 credits. I cleverly deduced that you had neglected this edge case, and decided to just sell the toxic waste back to the outpost and collect the quest rewards. Sadly, it turns out that the trigger for receiving the money requires something other than simply making the waste vanish from the game, and now I had the problem of A) Not actually having the waste, and B) Having two uncompletable quests in my quest log. I believe this image neatly summarizes the experience.

Minor bugs:

• I tried to place an Oniris Device on a planet in the first system. I got the tutorial text the first time I placed it down, but the second time I did (on the same planet), the device chastised me on account of the planet already being surveyed. I have no idea if this is intentional or not.
• I had a quest to get a package off of a planet. I went down to the planet, picked it up, went back to my ship, dropped the package off, went back down to the surface, and found a second, identical package. The first one was able to be returned. The second was not, but was able to be sold as an “Unknown Item” for 0 credits, much like the aforementioned toxic waste.
• If you stop interacting with the console while turning your ship, the sound effect doesn’t actually stop. You can repeat this process indefinitely for hilarity and/or shattered eardrums. Leaving your ship corrects the issue.
• Realigning warp rings does not always seem to visually realign them.
• In the tutorial, the Star Map lists your destination as having “Mundanium”, rather than “Miraclium”. I appreciate that this is the pettiest of petty gripes.

Final additional thoughts:

• The “put away tool” button is not the change I would have made, but it’s sufficient to get me to stop complaining about it.
• New tutorial message on the coolant getting dirty is useful.
• If there’s a straightforward way of figuring out which planets are which without actively pointing your ship at them, I’m not sure what it is. (Maybe mousing over them works? I play with a gamepad.)
• Tracking time is a little confusing. I picked up on the fact that the meter in the bottom left is “how long you have to deliver your package (I think?)”, but the exact nature of cycles and the passage of time is a little opaque. I’m not sure if time passes anywhere except when you’re in travel. (Also, the bug I encountered in the version 0.1 with my initial Dripberg delivery quest crates not being collected at the destination may be explained by that quest having expired.)

Keep it up!

First, praise: In spite of its early stage of development, the game as a whole is intriguing. The humor is good, I like the concept, and on a specific note, the use of a DnD-style alignment chart as your primary dialogue controller is both hilarious and very clever from a design standpoint. I was amazed at how much the ambient audio really helps sell the experience, almost to such an extent that music barely feels necessary. You’re onto something good, and your time investment has not been a mistake. Keep going.

I’ve only played as far the warp drive (an hour or two) but I’ll probably go back and try again at some point. Maybe once I’m done writing this post, even.

Short list of issues in order of perceived severity (most to least):

• Inputs still getting processed while alt-tabbed really is a major pain, had to unbind the keyboard just to take notes
• Being unable to use your hands while holding a tool feels more annoying than interesting
• You’re right, having to hold a button to confirm actions is kind of irritating, especially when I have to do it every time I want to interact with the ship’s console
• Consider a crude map (or at least a pointer to your landing pad) to keep from getting lost on planet surfaces
• Having to drop the surveying probe on the ground in order to get a reading was mildly annoying
• The text box is a little big, and the text itself is somewhat hard to read, probably due to a lack of contrast
• When boarding other ships, your boarding platform seems to create a wall outline next to the cockpit on the inside of the ship
• Be mindful of color-coding the tools, it may cause issues for color-blind people

Regarding “mixels”: Somebody else commented on the issue of varying pixel sizes in places as an aesthetic issue. Recommendation: 640x360 is a base resolution that scales by clean integer multiples to all major 16:9 screen sizes. At 2x scale, it’s 720p, at 3x, it’s 1080p, 4x = 1440p, 6x = 4k, and so on. You can even cut it in half for a resolution very similar to the old Gameboy Advance. It’s almost ideal for pixel art games, though I’m not sure how it’d look with your current graphics.

Regarding stamina: Consider the role that stamina actually plays. In Harvest Moon and others, the purpose is to limit what you can do in a day, because the day is the fixed measurement of time around which the entire game is centered. In Starstruck, I’m not certain stamina actually serves any purpose, and even if it did, I’m not sure it would enhance the experience any.

Finally, a thought on the general direction of things: The core loop feels like it wants to be about maintenance. Polishing and tightening and sealing and sorting and what have you. To that end, I’m going to make a somewhat controversial suggestion: Abandon the navigation minigame, and maybe even the pick-a-direction interface. Just choose a destination and go, and let the main loop be about mid-journey upkeep. That align-the-intakes thing feels like it’d make for a good mid-flight minigame where they slowly drift away from what’s optimal and you have to adjust them to keep your speed up. More things like that - Rather than just having things break, have your performance be gradually impacted. Less oxygen generation means slower move speed (short on breath). Dirty coolant means your engines perform worse. You know, keep it within the narrative scope of “Keeping this worthless rustbucket in working order, I swear it’s falling apart at the seams, oh fucking Christ did Xorox drop his toothbrush in the turbines again, it took me three hours to realign the blades last time”, and so on.

I eagerly await future releases. Good luck!

I had this problem too. You have to clean the coolant tank to the left of the generator.