Hope you've all been well. I enjoyed my week off, and caught up on some games.

Demo Feedback

Got some decent feedback from the demo, here are some key things people had problems with:

• Don't like the borders around the play area.
• The waypoints being around the screen are harder to see or aim ship towards.
• Inventory UI looks like crap.
• UI not showing when you can't take on more jobs due to inventory limit.
• The game asking for network access despite being single player.
• There's not much to do outside of deliveries, some players wanted NPCs.

These are some of the primary things I want to start working on, before I start adding significant amounts of stuff.

New Stuff

I wanted this week to be slightly light in terms of adding or fixing things. So the first thing I worked on was a new circular HUD around the player. This was based on the feedback I listed above. A player suggested having a ring around the player that the waypoints would rotate around, which would make them easier to rotate towards. By sheer accident, it ended up working really well with the velocity and directional markers that were already there, so I'm quite happy with it. Furthermore, I changed the positioning and scaling of the text HUD elements, and added a speed variable to the UI.

Another thing I noticed was that players were just spamming the deliveries menu and wondering why they couldn't take on any more missions. So I added a bit of text showing how much inventory space is being used, and when there's no space, missions will be non interactable.

Things To Add

A Lot More Art

There needs to be a lot more art in general. Space Stations, new ships, cargo, background objects, etc. I don't know when I'll get around to that, but hopefully soon. In addition, I keep saying on stream that I would look at some fonts, but I never get around to it.

NPCs

Even beyond just set dressing, I want players to interact and trade with NPC ships. A lot of things need to be done though, behaviours, art, UI for trading menus, etc. It is something I really want to add soon. Maybe some random SOS encounters would be cool.

Management/Survival Elements

As you may know from the demo, there's a bunch of percentages for fuel, oxygen, etc. They're not there for show, they do exist for a reason. I just need to implement them. Furthermore, I want to let the player upgrade their ship, add additional storage space, and so on.

Letting the player manage their inventory better would be nice as well.

Other Gameplay Stuff

Limiting the player's speed seems like a good idea at the moment. Maybe having a warning on screen to let them know when their approaching their destination.

I want to have cargo get damaged on impact and have it affect the amount of money and reputation you get.

Speaking of reputation, I would like to limit certain deliveries or interactions based on how the player is doing.

The game needs a map. Badly.

And there's so much more.

A Question For You Guys

Would you guys want to watch me do a stream where I try and relearn C++? Let me know.

See you next time.