Annoucing the official Loadstar Discord server - discord.gg/bGPab7CXxp

The focus for [c]alpha 3[/c] was crew [img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/45776259/63b1e3be2ad2c1ac833658f2738083a6ba2e9d20.png\"][/img]

Rooms

Before I could add crew, I wanted the interior of the ship to be made up of individual rooms with doors rather than a grid of individual parts. This means the game has to be smart enough to group similar parts together into a single room and surround it with walls. It also ensures that there are enough doors so that the crew can reach every point on the ship, and adds a console to each room that needs one so that the crew can operate it.

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Automatically adjusting the layout as parts are added\n

Helm

The existing ship layouts gave me a problem because some classes of ship had several separate islands of part slots - no good for the crew to walk between unless they want to do a space walk! I also realised that there wasn\'t a bridge, a room where the captain can boldly go. I solved both at once by adding a new ship part, the helm. Each ship class comes with a single helm part preinstalled and which cannot be removed. I added this where the canopy was on all the ship art and this \"bridges\" the gap between the different islands at the same time!

\n[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/45776259/8a028f177a6cf2b2e953c0ca9e88f63781cbb691.png\"][/img][img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/45776259/a02a198f2dde6d3c8b6d7f0b73401ff69b420075.png\"][/img]

The new helm part unites separate parts of the ship

Crew

Of course, the main event, I added crew manipulation to Loadstar and along the way I had to figure out path finding and animation. Rooms which contain a console can be worked on by a crew member in order to give a boost to that room\'s performance.

• Helm and Thrusters -> improves evasion

  [/*]

• Shields, Weapons and Point Defence -> improves recharge speed.

  [/*]

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Early prototyping of crew pathfinding and room editing

Alternatively, crew members can repair damaged systems. This also meant it no longer made sense to make the player pay for systems to be repaired in space dock so now parts auto repair after combat. Crew members gain skills as they work, levelling up and gaining better bonuses as they progress so you can have an elite pilot or a weapons expert on board.

[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/45776259/dbd342c617d65a3f4ec1805206c1f25965ca5330.gif\"][/img][img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/45776259/92fe87f5c33c47276a9272b7e41c605cb3ec3ff1.gif\"][/img]

Piloting the ship and fixing some damage

Recruitment

I want to recreate the feel you have in games like Elite or Sid Meier\'s Pirates! that you are the captain of the ship rather than a disembodied observer controlling the crew like pawns. To achieve this I decided that at the start of the game you will have a crew of one, yourself. You can choose your character\'s name and appearance and off you go into the black. If your character dies, the game ends.

But as you progress, you can take on extra crew by adding Crew Quarters parts to your ship. You can then recruit new crew from a local Tavern while in spacedock. Recruits have randomly generated names and apprearances along with a set of skills and an expected wage.

As the career aspects of Loadstar develop I\'m planning to find new ways to incorporate the crew into the setting, like rumours, backstories, homeworlds, vendettas to bring the world to life.

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Coming up next

With crew manipulation in the game, combat is really starting to feel interesting with plenty of decision points and strategies to discover. I think it\'s time to turn my focus away from combat and crew and look at the context in which combat happens. So next up I\'m going to get hyperspace working and look at adding traffic to the solar system to replace the current, Final Fantasy like random encounters.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next devlog!

Welcome to the first Loadstar Devlog!

I plan to publish a devlog with the completion of each alpha version tracking my progress towards the finished game and the features I\'m adding along the way.

`Alpha 1` marked what I considered to be the minimum viable trailer version of the game. Everything I needed to put together an initial gameplay trailer and launch the Steam page, no more, no less. Following on from this, I plan to focus on a specific area or \'epic\' in each successive alpha version.

The focus for `alpha 2` was combat

Interiors

One of the first things I wanted to take a look at was how the insides of the ships are drawn. In `alpha 1` I used sprites showing all the parts inside the ship. This looked cool but made it hard to see what was inside the ship vs. what was outside. In `alpha 2` the parts are represented by icons. The icon colour shows the damage level, the borders of the cells clearly show the grid and I can also show if a ship part is powered or not by changing the background.

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Old on the left, new on the right

You might also notice I\'ve popped the weapon sprite on the outside of the ship because...weapon sprites look cool!

Bonuses

Something else that\'s new is bonuses based on where the ship parts are placed. Certain parts get a bonus when placed next to each other. For example, if I put cargo bays next to each other the total cargo capacity is increased.

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Plus icon shows adjacency bonus

Some locations on the ship also offer bonuses to engine performance and to the number of hit points a part gets when placed there, so you\'re encouraged to put engines at the back of the ship and to put your most valuable ship systems in the centre.

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Large cargo bay placed on 9 defence bonus squares

This means it\'s often better to cluster similar parts together but that means putting all your eggs in one basket because...

Weapon Attack Patterns

Rather than hitting a specific part within the enemy ship, weapons now target a number of grid cells with each weapon having a different attack pattern.

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[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/45776259/8234a188dec9eb31e2b4e9073a6691b272a6d1d1.gif\"][/img]

Lasers hit squares in a line, where as missiles hit in a cross shape

And some weapons such as Flak scatter randomly based on how far you are away from the target because I also added...

Range

The beauty of FTL\'s combat system is that you focus on what happens inside the ship rather than the positions of the combatants in space - just like a Star Trek episode. But a core part of combat in games like Elite is controlling the distance between yourself and the enemy.

That gave me the idea to implement range in Loadstar. By powering up the engines and setting the helm control you can choose to close with the enemy or pull away. Each weapon has an accuracy based upon whether you are currently at long, mid or short range. A missile makes a good stand-off weapon whereas flak cannon work best when you get in close.

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Closing in on the enemy

Another thing to consider is sensor range. At long range you cannot see the opponent\'s interior, as you close to mid range you will be able to see where all the systems are placed and at close range you can tell which systems are powered up. If you\'re planning to pirate a ship and plunder its cargo, you\'d better get in close to make sure all that precious cargo doesn\'t get blown to space dust!

Missiles and Point Defence

Also new in alpha 2 is projectile weapons including torpedoes, missiles, rockets, flak and railguns along with point defence to shoot them down.

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Pew pew

Coming up next

In `alpha 3` I plan to look into something which a lot of you requested...crew!

Catch you in the next devlog.