Saturday, January 16, 2016

StarWright 0.4.0 - Laser Blasters!

Today I released version 0.4.0 of StarWright. The big feature of this release is a new weapon: the Small Laser Blaster!

The Small Laser Blaster is an energy weapon that fires pulses of raw energy. Unlike the cannons, the laser blaster draws its power from plasma batteries instead of using ammo that has to be manufactured elsewhere. Compared to the cannons, the laser blaster deals less damage but has a higher rate of fire and is considerably more accurate. Its rounds also cannot penetrate inside enemy ships, unlike the cannons, making it more effective at destroying perimeter systems than interior systems.


Related to the addition of laser blasters, the player now starts with a new class of ship, which I dubbed the Model-1. The Model-1 is a bit smaller than the previous starting-ship, and instead of having two Regular Cannons it has two Small Laser Blasters. I made this change to reduce the number of game mechanics that the player has to learn and understand at the beginning of the game; laser blasters use no ammo, and so the player only has to understand the power mechanic instead of both the power and ammo mechanics. Also, because laser blasters are more accurate than the cannons, new players will be frustrated less by missed shots.


I have also made some major balance & pacing adjustments in this release. First of all, the damage dealt by all weapons has been greatly increased (cannons do more than twice as much damage); a change I made to increase the pace of combat, which I felt was feeling sluggish. Also, the thrusters and the Ammo Factory both use power much more rapidly, which, combined with the power-consuming new laser blasters, makes balancing power usage and providing sufficient reactors & power supplies much more important.

Go ahead and download it now! I welcome all of your feedback!

23 comments:

  1. This makes me so happy that you are back and working on this! If you get this to a releasable state, I would buy this on steam. I hope everything will go smoothly with your future and this game.

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    1. As a suggestion that I think would be cool, adding some hangar bay doors and/or docking hatches for ships and stations. Also, maybe you could add missiles that require a missile tube to shoot and you have to pay in the blueprints screen to get them back. These are just suggestions and are definitely not needed, but I think it would be cool.

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  2. I like the way you are making progress, hope there will be something like lazer shield or something like that :)

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    1. I don't know, I really like the idea of space warfare without shields, just hull.

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  4. Hey guys!
    I made some ships!
    Aka Red Shark Series!
    GoogleDrive link:
    https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzbjyR1CLes8X2pQUzNwUTVIRGc

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    1. These are awesome! With your permission, I'd love to put a few of these in the game as enemies to fight. I will credit you.

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  5. If you use RSS ships can be too tough.(I modiefed weapons)
    If you want request ship design or just aks me:

    Skype:Steve14555
    Email:Azzza9233@gmail.com

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  6. Red Shark Series© was updated recently,please,redownload folder with ships.

    Skype:Steve14555
    Email:Azzza9233@gmail.com

    And yeah,Walt,what about translation to russian?

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    1. I'm certainly planning on having translations in other languages, including Russian. But that's a pretty low priority right now; right now I need to make the game *great* before I can afford to spend time writing the code to support multiple languages. Once the support is in place, it'll be up to players to provide the individual translations from English.

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  7. I'm so glad that there's finally a stable version of the game available!

    One question though, I can't find the ship options menu (the one you used to bring up by right clicking a ship) that existed in the prototype; is it gone now or has it been moved to a new hotkey?

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    1. The menu is still there, but you have to hold the alt key while right-clicking on the ship.

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    2. I have a question in regards to the sandbox. Previously you could build, save and spawn any ship in the game using the ships menu, but now you can only spawn 4 that are small test ships or something. Is there a way to get all the normal ships to be spawn-able in sandbox?

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    3. You need to build your own ships,or download my ships pack:
      https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzbjyR1CLes8UUVjaU1VX0tFeUE

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    4. Thanks, I didn't realize it installed in roaming as well, I should've but I got it now. Thanks again.

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    5. Most of the old ships are in 'C:\Program Files\StarWright\Data\Bounty Mode\Bounty Ships'. If you copy those into your Saved Ships folder, then you will be able to add them to the sandbox.

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  8. Here is a station (highly immobile ships) pack for Starwright, Includes 3 full size stations, 2 blank stations and 5 defense platforms.

    https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B9znYMoaxO0wTzNWWVhCS1lWcTA&usp=sharing

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  9. Replies
    1. You can blame XCOM 2 for my slow progress... :p

      Seriously though, I'm hoping to have a new version with sound out later this coming week.

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    2. I wanna Tutorial And Russian language...And yep,Sound.

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    3. I would say this is being updated quickly enough; after all this is an entirely unique game.

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