However, you won’t want to spend your whole time in space. There are planets to explore, each with their own residents who you can do jobs for or even befriend. Some of these people might even have the right skills to help you crew your ship and complement your own skills.
How you choose to live your life is up to you. Be a hero, a rogue or a reputable businessperson. Whatever your choice, the stars will hold adventures aplenty.
SPACEWARD HO
There are twenty systems to travel to. Each one with its own economy and risk level. Warp between systems and traverse the sometimes dangerous path to the systems space port - which can be either planetside or on a space station orbiting a less hospitable planet. Prepare to defend yourself against pirates, especially in the riskier but more lucrative systems. On the other hand, if you engage in piracy yourself, prepare to have the added challenge of the local police ships who will happily put an end to your illegal activities. Additionally, most systems also have an asteroid belt that needs to be successfully navigated through (never tell me the odds).
PLANETSIDE
While on the planets or on board the space stations, you can buy and sell commodities, refuel, or repair and upgrade your ship. But there's more to do than that. There are many residents who have their own stories to be explored. You can talk to them, do quests for them, or give them gifts - all of which will progress (or perhaps regress) your relationships with the characters. You might even make a special friend - or maybe even one in every port. It's up to you.Each settlement has unique activities to undertake. You might be able to buy rare goods, or engage in gambling, or did someone say "cat racing"?
There are also some additional locations on some planets, giving you an opportunity to have further adventures: old ruins, bandit camps, etc. You need to learn about these locations through talking to residents, doing quests or exploring the space ports.
HOME IS WHERE YOUR SHIP IS
Your ship is your home. You can upgrade some of the systems to get better combat performance, or speed, but it is your only ship. You wouldn't trade it for all the coffee on Ryser. However, you have your living quarters on board, which you can customise to suit your style. Collect various decorations and artefacts, or a new bed. Make your home the comfiest place for you.
ECONOMY
The economy within the system is simple but dynamic. Events beyond your control can have a temporary impact on the prices in a system. A pandemic on one planet may cause a increased demand for medical supplies, while a recession on a high tech planet could cause cheap prices for their manufactured medical supplies. You can take advantage of the situation and ferry supplies between these two planets. But these conditions are only temporary so you need to act fast.THE OUTER REGIONS
The outer regions of each system are worth exploring too, but it is a gamble. You might find valuable resources to mine, or an old wreckage of a cruiser to explore, but be casreful, because you could just easily find yourself in an ambush by pirates.CHARACTER CUSTOMISATION
The player character is completely customisable, with their custom portrait appearing during dialogue sequences in the game. You can customise their face, skin, hair, nose, mouth, eyes and other features.
GAMEPLAY
The gameplay in Orion's End is designed to be very diverse but uncomplicated, incorporating gameplay from retro games but with with more modern influences. Shoot 'em up gameplay in space, and shoot outs on planets. Minigames at settlements, and life sim social encounters with the local residents. All of the mechanics are designed to be simple enough to just pick up and play. There's no steep learning curves or complicated systems. There are lots of things to do, but not all of them are necessary to enjoy the game. Do what you enjoy doing most.Hi everyone.
The game has finally recovered from having the new building system implemented. Ive spent the last week making sure that the controller and keyboard/mouse work well with each other because there were a lot of conflicts. Its much better now, and the game is back to a playable state. Of course it still needs a lot more work to make that experience a fun one though.
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/42632333/abe466f6e072d3e5e87256bb7cadbcf621ea690e.png\"][/img]
The new grid based levels used for building allow for some really cool things, though.
Base Building / Planet Map Editing
This is already implemented, but more building components and architectural styles are still coming. The building works best with mouse, but the controller does also work. The controls will be refined over time.
The key points are:
1. Planet maps that are edited in anyway are saved to the save game folder. One planet loading zone takes up only about 25kb of space, so the amount of planets/areas that can be saved to this folder before the file size gets bloated is pretty big.
2. Towns can be edited or new towns built on uninhabited planets or areas. Shop counters can be placed inside a building which will spawn a shop sign and shopkeeper automatically, and beds placed in houses which will spawn unique NPCs.
3. Saved maps can be copied from your save game folder to a shared folder, so that map is available to all of your save games.
4. Saved maps can also be shared with other players. So if there are enough players it would eventually be possible to have a massive galaxy hand built by many different players, but curated by you.
5. If you want to return to original planets, you just remove the map from the relevant folder.
6. All architecture styles are available at the moment but the idea for the full game is that the player scans architecture on different planets which makes that style available for building.
7. Building is without cost at the moment, but will eventually cost credits to build each component. I dont want to use mining/crafting to allow you to build. You can mine to earn credits if you want, or you can trade, or you can hunt pirates. Then the credits are debited by the fabricator whenever you use it to build something.
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/42632333/516d7b060c99ea681e448234edef9e3ef69997d8.png\"][/img]
Mining
Mining is now different. Previously there were rocks that you shoot to mine, but now you mine into the terrain to find resources. Doing this allows for mining tunnels, or even building inside the excavated areas.
There are only three levels to the terrain. Ground level, the mineable layer, and the layer above that which remains in place after the layer below is mined. The higher layer is current very basic and plain, but will have\n
Planet Terrain Generation
Im using a different method for terrain generation now, which I think looks a lot better. While there is still loading between areas, the shape of the terrain now connects to the terrain in neighbouring areas.\n
Farming
Not implemented yet, but the grid based save system will allow for very easy implementation of a farming system. It wont be overly complex as it isnt a main focus of the game, but it will involve harvesting seeds from plants on worlds which then can be planted on other worlds for farming or just landscaping a nice garden or park. Plants are likely to be specific to climate types.
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/42632333/4fd43584498090abfa6e2d3eb80ce22947a881b3.png\"][/img]
Town Generation
Initially the towns on inhabited planets will be chosen from a assortment of hand built maps. I will be able to design the maps using the same equipment available to the player in game, and copy the maps to another folder reserved for the default maps. Theres only a couple at the moment, but I will add more as time goes on. The layout and architecture styles will change depending upon the planet.\n
Linux Build
Im sick of Microsoft Windows trying to force feed me AI features. It was the final tipping point for me, and Ive converted over to Linux for the majority of my computer needs including game dev. The transition has been pretty smooth overall.
The important thing is, though, that now Im able to build native Linux builds something that I had struggled to do in the past without a dedicated Linux machine.
Safe Journeys
\nDave
Minimum Setup
- OS: Linux Mint 20.3
- Processor: Intel Pentium Dual T3200Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Intel Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics
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