Starship Builder - New Art (again)

My previous attempt at creating a new art style for Starship Builder was such a failure that I figured I'd try again! I'm not thrilled with the result, but I do think it's better than the original, and much better than that previous attempt.

Here's what it looks like:

Future Walt thinks that those sickly green people are really ugly.

Download this latest version for PC and Mac.

Starship Builder - Multi-Ship!

The past few days I've been working on a big new feature that I've been wanting to add for quite a while: multiple ships! That is, each player can now control up to four ships. I think supporting multiple ships per player is important because 1-vs-1 ship combat, while fun to watch, can be a bit dull and non-interactive to actually play. By allowing multiple ships, I'm opening up more tactical possibilities, such as flanking and maximizing the strengths and weaknesses of different ship designs.

Once in the simulator, you can add a friendly or enemy ship by pressing either the "Spawn Friendly" or "Spawn Enemy" buttons. Once you have more than one ship, simply click on a ship to select and control that ship. The rest of the game works just the same.

Download for PC and Mac.

Here's a full list of the latest changes:

• Added support for up to 4 ships per player.
• Ships are now more intelligent about how they fly to a location: they will fly directly to the location at the maximum speed and then will rotate into final position once arrived.
• Bullets now fly through space twice as fast.
• Big performance improvement to physics calculations.

Starship Builder - Automated Crew

Before I talk about the latest new features of Starship Builder, I want to mention that I decided to dump the new art style that I tried in my previous post. While much cleaner and more "slick"-looking than my original uber-crappy programmer art, the new style just didn't *feel* right for a game based on a detailed starship simulation. Also, it reminded me too much of the art style of Captain Forever.

Anyway...

In recent versions, it was possible to directly control the crew of your ship, explicitly assigning them to various stations. This proved to be too hard to manage, especially as ships were constantly moving about and rotating -- it was too hard to select the desired crew and tell them where to go.

So in this latest version, you no longer have any control over the crew on your ship, who are now completely automated. The crew will now by themselves seek out jobs to perform -- you don't have to worry about that. Different jobs have different priorities so that, for example, the person manning the Cockpit will never leave his job to man a cannon. Eventually you may have a way to adjust the priority of what jobs the crew is performing -- say, manning weapons versus repairing systems -- but this feature is not implemented yet.

However, you do have control over which systems are activated and which are not. By default all systems are active, but if you select one or more systems and press the C key, then any crew manning those systems will automatically leave and find other jobs to perform. Press the C key again to re-active the selected systems.

Download for PC and Mac.

Here's a full list of changes:

• Player no longer has control over crew. Crew is now completely automated.
• Select systems and press C to toggle them on and off. Deactivated systems use no crew.
• To move the ship, press M and click the destination.
• Can double-click a system to select similar systems.

RGB

I spent my free time during the past week or so working on an experimental prototype for a new gameplay mechanic.

RGB is an experimental prototype of a 1st-person puzzle game. The core game mechanic is based on the idea that "if you can't see it, it doesn't exist", such that if your line of sight to an object is obscured, then the obscured object will no longer exist. There's also the added twist whereby many objects only exist in one or two color dimensions, and those objects will only obscure other objects of the same color. For example, a red object will only obscure other red objects, while a yellow object (a mix between red and green) will obscure red, green, and yellow objects.

Puzzles consist of finding proper vantage points, pressing buttons to change the colors of objects, and moving blocks around. The puzzles are physics-driven, but physics is only a supporting element to the real challenge of mixing colors.

You can download PC and Mac versions of the prototype.

Starship Builder - New Art?

Wow, it's been almost 3 months since I posted anything about Starship Builder! Mostly I've just been taking a break from the project.

I would like to share with you a new art style that I'm experimenting with. I'm not sure if I like it yet, but figured I'd share it to get feedback. (Click the thumbnail to view full size.)

Future Walt says: It sucks.

This build also has a few other changes:

• Removed the concept of ship control "modes".
• Double-left-click to move the ship to a location.
• Left-click and drag to select weapons.
• Hold C while left-clicking and dragging to select people.
• Removed Repair Bays and Small Cannons.

Download this build for PC and Mac.

48 Hour Film Project: SGmOVIEmAGIC's Quack

Last week we (us Schell Games folk) wrapped filming on our submission to the 48 Hour Film Project. The result is called Quäck. I play Zombie Hitler, brought back to life by a magical umbrella. So be warned, this film should not be viewed by anyone easily insulted by Nazi jokes. Here it is:




Oh, and we made this awesome poster too!

Starship Builder - UI Revamp & More

I've spent the past couple weeks making a lot of little improvements to Starship Builder. Most importantly, the game's user interface has been totally revamped to be a lot cleaner and more self-explanatory. Here's a full list of improvements:

• Added repair bays. Crew stationed at repair bays will automatically seek out systems needing repair.
• Lots of user interface improvements, including tooltips for just about everything.
• Movement is now back to using the left mouse button. Future Walt wonders why he kept changing this.
• Can right-click to target all weapons while in movement mode.
• New thruster particle effects.
• You can pick what team you want to play on in multiplayer.
• Can now play with up to 8 players. (But only 4 teams are supported.)
• Added an observer mode to multiplayer.
• New blue-ish background image.
• Lots of bug fixes, performance improvements, and tweaks.

A screenshot showing off the new Builder user interface:

And another showing the new background:

Download this build for PC and Mac.