For months, I’ve been gradually adding small improvements and bug-fixes to Super Space Galaxy. I think the time is coming near to release a third playable demo. It’s also a useful opportunity for me to look back at the work I’ve done and take stock myself! It’s easy to forget how far the game has come when you’re just working on one thing after another. Of course, you can still download the second playable demo right now.
Un-sexy though it is, the game now has a robust selection of menus that cover important functionality. The New Game menu lets you name your Captain and ship, as well as choose what galaxy-seed you’ll explore. The Load game menu works how you’d expect, with the added bonus that you can change the colour of each individual save file! I think it’ll be a nice touch to personalize your playthrough or maybe let different people colour their save files differently. Finally, there’s the Settings menu that lets you change volumes, the size of the window, or the UI colour. Now it even has options for the controller vibration and screen shake.
I took the time to overhaul the way objects flash different colours in the game. I soon realized that the same hue-based system could be used to overhaul the colours of the planets, too! Now planets come in an interesting variety of extra hues and the variety of the galaxy is greatly increased.
The fabled ‘Little guys‘ now appear in cities. Their portraits all come from ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com; if you need a way to make NPC portraits you might find it useful yourself. So far the Little Guys mostly give you basic information about the galaxy and some extra tips, but in future updates they’ll be involved in the game’s Quests as well.
I’ve also added all sorts of little improvements, like:
- Your money is now highlighted while you use a shop.
- The Plasma Globes weapon no longer sucks, and homes in much more reliably on enemies.
- The Burst Shot weapon is now in the game. It shoots in a three-round burst that’s satisfying to fire.
- When you land on a planet, a large radius around you is explored automatically. This has worked wonders for killing the dreaded ‘lawnmowing’ and keeping the player’s eye on the action, not the map.
- The random encounters with the Drone enemies have been improved. Instead of triggering simply by distance travelled, they’re now placed invisibly over the map. It’s not an obvious change by any means, but I think it’ll prevent the Drones from being annoying, as well as make your exploration of each planet more fun.
Waiting for a minute in the parks in cities now activates the Serenity bonus, which slows down enemy projectiles a little. It’s a strange, experimental feature even by my standards. In a game that’s otherwise about rushing forward, having an incentive like this is is an interesting thing to add.
When I made the new planet-generating system it was a risky move. Overhauling the system from the ground up meant getting rid of a lot of things I’d already implemented, like distributing resources and Doodads on the map. I’d also arranged for certain Doodads to spawn extra resources. It was only this week that I’ve finally restored them. Now, large rocks in the Rock planets can spawn Rarium again, and the… weird-looking constructions in the Nether have a chance to spawn extra nether slime.
Perhaps the most obvious addition is a host of new music-tracks for the game, most of which are written by Super Space Galaxy‘s longstanding musician, Allan Zax. We now have music for the cities, and four variants of the music to make the cities feel more unique. Combat now has its own music too. More are expected to be on the way.
I’m still doing some more bug-fixes after giving an early demo to Allan for feedback, but I expect that I’ll be able to upload the third playable demo of Super Space Galaxy soon. Subscribe to the blog if you want to know when it’s ready.
Thanks for reading,
Kenneth Dunlop
Kenneth Dunlop's Game Dev Blog 