Aiming for an Early December Alpha 2

Hey everyone, I've been working on Vacuum and I'm hoping to have a rough version of the "state" system in place for characters needs. They'll need a place to rest and a place to eat in Alpha 2. Alpha 2 will also feature the newly revamped Vacuum system which shouldn't effect game performance. There's one little bug I've found in it right now that I'm trying to work out. I'm aiming to have this newest alpha out sometime in the first two weeks of December. I'm also going to be moving to a new distribution system, it'll be a code that gets sent out and then you can download the game at your leisure through itch.io.

The Good and the Bad

This week I've tweaked the "event" and their likelihood to occur to make them much more manageable. Pirates no longer raid you constantly, which is a hugely good thing. I've also made asteroids smashing into your space station a much less likely event(they're absolutely devastating right now since there's currently no way to repair destroyed walls, it's coming down worry). The bad news is I'm not sure when I'll be able to get the build out. I'm working full steam ahead on it and I'm really excited about the progress since the last alpha. The game is really coming along well. I'll try to post a gameplay video sometime to show off the progress so far.

Coding AI "Needs"

So this past week I've been working on making the AI have "needs". It's currently rather simple now but effective. Characters on the space station now need rest and food. Without either for too long they'll suffer ill effects. Marines become slower if tired and anyone who suffers from hunger from too long will die. This has also led me to have to work on space chickens more. I'm currently trying to strike a balance as to how quickly space chickens should repopulate on your station.

Lots of Optimizing

So the past week I've really been working on improving code across the board. I've re-written the unit movement code. This has stopped the space marines from sometimes randomly vanishing off into space when they collide with a partially closing door etc. I've included an update to my previous list of known issues from Alpha 1 and whether or not they've been fixed.

1. "Return to Game" button on Escape Menu crashes game.

2. Credits not always displaying.

3. Escape Menu covered by Station Walls

4. Various problems with Vacuum "spread".

5. Marines occasionally vanish to up left-hand corner.

6. Doors will get stuck if a unit blocks them on closing.

7. Marine shooting image occasionally faces the wrong direction.

8. Zombie Survival Version (Kickstarter Stretch-Goal)

The door issue should hopefully be fixed by today. As I've said in a previous post I'm also hoping to make the shooting AI work a little better. Now that I've fixed the movement AI the shooting shouldn't be too much of an issue. I'm also hoping to tweak the spawn rate of random events in the game to make it a much faster tempo.

Fully Re-written Vacuum Code

Well this weekend was a huge success. I've completely re-written the vacuum code for the game and it's now 100% functional again. It required a redesign of the space station and tossing hundreds of lines of code but I've got it all much, much, much more efficient. The code that handles vacuum on the station used to be hundreds of lines, it's now a few dozen. Also, instead of thousands going on tens of thousands of objects flooding the screen and performing collision checks there's now only about a dozen objects. This should drastically improve the performance speed when your station is falling apart. What does all this mean? Well re-writing and tweaking this code cost me a month. I think in the end it was hugely worth it though, as the game can now utilize it's primary mechanic without the rest of the game suffering. Going forward I'll be able to add additional features as opposed to tinkering with this primary component. In short, I'm hoping I can finally start adding tons of new content to the game.

Getting There

Rewriting the Vacuum code is proving tricky. While I was quickly able to get a new, much better "fill" for the vacuum, having it rescind has proven much more difficult. I'm devoting this entire weekend to working it out and making combat more prominent in the game. It's gonna be 48 hours of crunch time as I want to push out another update before October ends. Also working to incorporate some of the last backer oriented "events" although they won't be fully implemented until some of the more complex AI systems are involved.

Updating the Vacuum Code

So for any of you who have played the first version of the Alpha you know that too much vacuum in the space station can really slow down the game. I've been working hard to overcome this and nearly have the entire vacuum system retooled. Rooms in the station are now much smaller and more modular. This should make combat much more interesting and allows for the game to much more easily handle a spreading vacuum. Previously the game was trying to calculate where the vacuum was spreading with thousands of calculations and then check for collisions. This resulting in tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of calculations happening on top of all the typical game material. This new system reduces that load to a few hundred, more a thousand or two maximum, calculations occurring (and that's assuming you've vented all the air in your station). So everyone should see a drastic improvement in this aspect. This update also allows doors to function more easily and to re-air sections that were exposed but were then closed off from the location of the vacuum.

Moving Forward

Hey everyone, just wanted to say I've been ironing out gameplay issues and hoping to have a great showing for Alpha002. September was unfortunately a very crazy month. Between a family bereavement, a wedding, law school, and coming down with a nasty cold I wasn't able to get nearly as much done as I intended for Alpha001. I've been programming the game on my MacBookPro since day one. While this worked great for the first portion of the game I eventually had to ditch the older GM4Mac that I was using in favor of the much faster and more updated GM:Studio. This required me to run Windows on my Mac, as the software isn't supported on Macs. This got me to where we were in September perfectly fine. However, when I went to export the game I learned that I wouldn't be able to export to Linux or Mac (ironically) from a Mac running Windows in a virtual machine. I took the next step to purchase a PC and begin developing on that. It's been a great transition for programming. Not only am I able to export to all my intended platforms shortly, but the software runs much more smoothly and I'm hoping development will be nearly twice as fast as it's been. I'm hoping to have some much more pronounced updates for the October release. I'm also hoping to release the Zombie Stretch goal, or the first iteration of it, in time for Halloween.

Updates to Version 001

Hi everyone, I sent the Kickstarter Backer copy of the first alpha. It's incredibly buggy but that's the nature of alphas. I just wanted to let everyone know that I've already correct two of the issues that people noticed, the game crashing when hitting the escape key and selecting return to game and an issue where the credits sometimes didn't show. Below is a list of known bugs or planned features for the next Alpha 002. You'll see them with a strikethrough if they've been finished for the next version. 1. "Return to Game" button on Escape Menu crashes game. 2. Credits not always displaying. 3. Escape Menu covered by Station Walls 4. Various problems with Vacuum "spread" - Moot, implementing new Vacuum system. 5. Marines occasionally vanish to up left-hand corner. 6. Doors will get stuck if a unit blocks them on closing. 7. Marine shooting image occasionally faces the wrong direction. 8. Zombie Survival Version (Kickstarter Stretch-Goal)

Balancing

Good news. Today I've moved into balancing the alpha release. It involves me playing the game a lot (something that's already been happening). As I've said before, it's a pre-alpha. So it's far far far from complete and most things are far from finished or polished. I've been trying to get as many backer events and tiers into the game as possible but I'm planning on including most of those in a big push for the backer content as soon as everyone gets everything back to me as to what they want from their tier. Long story short, I'm trying to make the gameplay better given the level of content that's present. This is my dream project, so it'll constantly be getting tweaked for quite awhile.

Annoying Bugs

I've now spent the better part of a week squashing bugs in the game. Of particular note was a bug that didn't allow the player's marines to shoot at space pirates. This is really aggravating because as I try to work on balancing the gameplay it's hard to do when one of the most deadly aspects of the game can shoot at the player and the player can't return fire. I've also begun to get back to the stretch goal, a separate zombie survival game mode. I'm really hoping to include it in the initial alpha release on the 15th.

Confirmed Kickstarter Alpha Release

As I add in more and more feature I feel confident in my ability to give a release date. Keep in mind that the game is still in early alpha, so there are a lot of features and gameplay that aren't going to be included in this initial release. My plan is to release a new update every month with new features included. So expect to see an e-mail with a link for the initial alpha on September 15th. Starting in October I'll probably move to an end of the month release cycle for all of the updates.

Is this Door Open or Closed?

So one of the current issues is having the option for the player to create doors in the space station while simultaneously being able to open and close them. This allows for a lot of emergent gameplay and is the primary idea behind the game. Being creative with how the vacuum of space can destroy or save your space station is a lot of the fun. The primary issue is determining whether or not every door is open or closed and when the atmosphere within the station can be restored. The current solution I've been working on actually uses wherever a breach has occurred and sets an invisible marker at that spot. Then whenever the player tries to stop the breach, either by closing doors or repairing the wall a calculation is done between any sealed-off area and the breach marker. I use a typical a*algorithm calculation to determine if a clear path exists. This is the same method I use to calculate the paths of units whenever you move one in the game as well. It's all highly experimental right now, and far from perfect, but I'm hoping it'll work well enough. I've also toying with the refugees within the space station putting down their own beds.

Select What You Want

So one of the biggest problems with migrating from GM 8.1 to GM:Studio is the lack of built-in menus. GM 8.1 had a great feature that made drop down menus a piece of cake. Granted, this feature would only work on a Windows computer, so I wouldn't be able to totally rely on it anyway. Well, I've finally included drop down menus into Vacuum. Although they're not terribly complex it's something that I'm not accustomed to having to program. I've tried to implement a simple but attractive system. They're really necessary for in-game events and a few of the feature. Screen shots to come shortly.

A Little Help with the Heavy Lifting

As promised, here's an image from the game. These little mechs are what you'll need if you want to move shipping containers around and hopefully down the road I'll add additional things in the game that'll require the mech. I'm imagining it smashing pirates and holding open doors that would otherwise be closed.

I'm also very optimistic to get a build out to backers before September. It won't have all of the backer requests in it, but I've already incorporated a few of the backer suggestions, etc. into the game.

Updates, Updates, Updates

Hello everyone, the past week has seen me busily working on Vacuum. This past weekend the GMC forums had a game jam competition. I know what you're thinking, "But Scott, a game jam means you're making a completely new game and wasting a weekend not working on Vacuum." This is true to an extent, but every game jam I enter into I take the theme and use that to work on some aspect of a major project I'm working on to truly iron out the kinks. I view it as a way to isolate a current feature that's a serious feature and devote a substantial period of time to it. Suffice to say the initial reviews of my game jam game don't seen too good thus far. However, that's great for Vacuum. I completely neglected play-testing my jam game for fun. Instead I was constantly tweaking AI and Construction aspects. Two things that are already being transferred from the jam game into Vacuum. Up until now I didn't really allow players an option for purchasing anything within Vacuum. This will all have changed by this weekend. The only question that remains is 1) Do I allow you to build the whole station? or 2)Do I allow you to take a random space station that you have to explore and build around what you randomly encounter? I'm currently trying both of these methods. We'll see which turns out better. More to come soon.

Back in the World

The past week has seen me cut-off from the internet after some issues with my ISP. Suffice to say I was paying a lot and getting a new service set up has been a long ordeal. Fear not, I'm back and the time without internet has allowed me to work on the game distraction free! I actually run GameMaker on a Macbook Pro running Windows 7 in Parallels, this gives me a huge range of options for graphics design and programming but can make it difficult to get quality videos and screenshots. I'm going to try and get a good number of them later this weekend so people can see how things are progressing. This week has seen me finally resolve the issue of having a decent background. Before the stars behind the space station where just white dots in the distance on a plain black background. We now have some really great backgrounds that are randomized every time you load up a game, leading to different designs, colors, and the formations of various nebula. A huge aesthetic improvement. I've also been toying around with including health bars for the units to make it easier to see which units are injured and which aren't. Not to mention some additional units to select from the UI and I've been trying to write some "zombie" code for the separate zombie survival version of the game. Tomorrow I'm hoping to play around with my idea for unit movement. Marines are currently setup to follow a very traditional RTS style movement system although I've been formulating a plot to try and spice that up a bit. We'll see how it works. I may end up releasing two different versions to see how people like it down the road (assuming I can code it to turn one off and one on easily enough). Look for some more in-game photos soon as well as more tidbits later this weekend!

All the Little Things

As I work on the game I realize just how many little considerations are needed when putting together a game. Usually after I implement something new to Vacuum I try to "play test" it to make sure it's all running the way I'd like. This makes development of individual things a little slower but it ensures higher quality for whatever I do have. Going about this I've gotten to the quite where I realized I really need to start making some decisions for the game such as do I offer it as a windowed game? Fullscreen? How should the menus operate? Should I include a tutorial or simply go the Minecraft route and throw people in? Let me know what you think, follow me on Twitter.

Music

So Vacuum now has two music tracks. I haven't decided if one is going to be a "menu" track and the other in the game or if both will be game tracks. At any rate, here's the intro to one of the tracks for the game.

UPDATES!

Sorry for the lack of updates, it's not for lack of my work on Vacuum, I can assure you that. So since my last update we've had a successful Kickstarter! I've been hard at working trying to get as many features as possible into the game for the Kickstarter release for backers that will be hapeening ASAP but no later than September. After a bit of time for the Kickstarter backers to play the game and provide me suggestions I'll release the initial alpha to the public, probably sometime in October. I've been tweaking things for the space station, as well as adding asteroids as a random occurrence that strikes the space station and rip a hole inside. I'm currently experimenting with some other alternative ways to seal up the station and allow engineers to repair these broken holes. I've also been working on the Kickstarter Stretch goal that was reached, which allows for an alternative game move of zombie survival. The zombie sprites are currently being worked on, as are some others, so I hope to post those shortly. Until next time! -Scott

Kickstarter

Well today I launched a Kickstarter to try and afford some software upgrades and additional costs for my graphics guru. I've included the link below and would be humbled if you'd check it out and spread the word.

Kickstarter

Finally, New Updates

So after spending nearly a week fine-tuning everything with the software update there are new features in Vacuum! I've attached two screenshots below. One is of the new and improved "energy field" that is used at hangars to allow ships to enter and leave but keep oxygen from spilling out into space. The other is of the new menu bar. I'm pretty happy with the look of it and although it only has one button right now (a button to call in additional marines, for a fee) the logical has all been fully worked out. So it's now only a matter of me deciding what things I'd like to allow people to be able to call in and pay for or build.

Spring in Your Step

So the past week has seen no actual developments with the game. Instead I've been going through the painstaking process of migrating the game from GM4Mac to GM:S. It's a slow process but it should pay dividends. Not only will it allow me to release the game for Linux but I'll also get a 2-3x speed increase in processing speed. This'll allow me to have even more units and larger levels in the game. So next week expect some new feature upgrades and stick with me, as I know it's boring hearing there have only been performance tweaks but it'll allow for lower end machines and now Linux to run the game as well.

Losing Oxygen

So today I finally refined the "Vacuum" that fills the ship when an event happens. As you can see in the below images, the older method wasn't very convincing that there was a ton of air being sucked out of the space station. I'm really happy with the change between these two systems and I'll be refining it a bit more but I'd say it's about 90% there now.

Old Breach

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New Breach

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Simulation

So the programming side of this has been a bit slower than usual and that's due largely to me reading up on AI simulation. Fear not, I'm currently working on implementing a huge bulk of the game AI. It's a huge aspect of how the crew on board the space station operate and I'm hoping that by the end of this weekend I'll have integrated how the crew behave and how the economic system in the game work. I've also been working on a few more simple aspects of Vacuum. Below you can see a shuttle arriving at one of the hangars and dropping off a refugee.

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Housekeeping

So today there wasn't anything too exciting going on with Vacuum. As the number of images and units continues to grow I've had to do some serious housekeeping. I spent two hours today just organizing everything into folders and trying to optimize code. While working on the zoning to create rooms I noticed the zoning itself was really slowing down gameplay. No worries now, I've not only optimized that specific code but gone through, line-by-line and optimized everything. The game is already running much more quickly, even with dozens of units on the screen at once. All this is before I'll be upgrading my software too! So I'm hoping for up to a few thousand units to be able to be represented at once.

Trade this for That?

I've been working on the trader and here's some of the progress. You can see the cargo containers that will deploy when you buy or sell goods. The traders will then fly into your hangar and drop-off or pick-up cargo. The energy fields are currently placeholder graphics.

New Model

So I now have a new model, the first trader ship to be created for Vacuum. Tonight I'll start programming on how to make it have a role in the game but suffice to say it'll play a vital role in ensuring your space station can trade with others throughout the galaxy.

Soon, full speed ahead!

So this week I will be wrapping up the bulk of my obligations for the remainder of the summer. This means that I will be able to give significantly more attention to Vacuum for the next few months, so you should see a slew of updates coming every week. I'm really hoping to have some kind of gameplay video/alpha version available at the end of May or toward the beginning of June at the latest. I'm currently producing the game on a a Mac running GM4Mac. Unfortunately these means I can only create .dmg files, not .exe. This is something I'll be trying to find a workaround for. If yoyogames had a GM:Studio release for Mac it wouldn't be a problem. Regardless, I'll post more on this matter as we get into the summer. Fear not though, Vacuum will be released on Windows, Mac, and Linux regardless of what I have to do to sort out this currently existing issue.

Workaround

Technology, it's great when it works and awful when it doesn't. So I keep my latest backups of Vacuum on a flash drive that always sits next to my laptop. Someone used the flash drive and deleted everything on it. Fear not, everything isn't lost. However, I have spent the entire day reworking the hunger and purchasing system. So I was set back by at least a day, possibly part of another but we'll see. I keep multiple redundant backups but they're not always the newest but always recent enough that nothing too catastrophic can happen.

Lots of New Features

As promised, there's been a lot happening with Vacuum. I've decided to list what I've knocked out in the past day below. *Full fledged hunger system. -Individual crew members now get hungry. When there hunger hits a certain threshold, but before it hits zero and they start to lose health, they'll go in search of food on your ship. I still have to program this to have pathfinding, as they'll run into walls right now, but the basic logic is there and adding pathfinding is as simple as a quick tweak of my movement code for combat. *Unlock parts of the station. Anyone familiar with Startopia will remember the ability to unlock additional "sections" of the space station. I'm implementing something similar with Vacuum. When you have enough money, or some other resource, haven't decided yet, you can unlock additional spaces on your station. *Zoning - Ever play SimCity? I'm implementing a similar zoning system into Vacuum. Select the type of structure you'd like to build and your engineers will begin to build that zoned structure inside your space station. I'm really excited for this, as it'll allow for dynamic space stations. Zone a small area for a hangar and you'll be limited to the number of ships that can come in (and the size of space pirate boarding parties). *Hangar energy fields - Since anything exposed to the vacuum of space in the game will be sucked out into space I needed to come up with some way to make hangars that allow ships to come into and out of the space station. I decided on energy fields that let objects pass through them but don't lose atmosphere. This serves a dual purpose by allowing engineers to apply smaller versions of these energy fields if a hole gets blasted into the hull of the station and people are being sucked out. I hope this slew of updates and work makes up for my lack of updates over the past few weeks. Until next time!

My Apologies

I know I've really fallen off on the updates. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten bout Vacuum. Law school exams have been kicking my butt the past week plus. After this coming Wednesday I'll be able to focus a TON more time into the game. I'm hoping to have a nice little gif video to upload tonight of the progress so far!

Newest Update

Law school exams have been slowing down the development but this weekend I was able to make some more substantial progress. I've been adding emoticons to the crew whenever something happens. So now when a a few marines die in a firefight the crew becomes depressed and scared and you can see this in real time with emoticons above their heads. I've also been working on making sections of the space station unlock-able.

I'm Hungry

Today was an early day for me. I've implemented a basic food system into the game. There is now a VERY basic menu that allows you to place space chickens. This will eventually be developed into more of a zoning approach where chickens will be raised before being able to be consumed. Think of it has a type of space farming onboard your space station. However, for now the chickens do serve a purpose. If one of your crew is injured they can simply walk up to a chicken and eat it. This destroys the chicken but restores your crew members to their full health. This is especially nice because your crew can gain increased health which can be replenished to whatever it's maximum is by consuming chickens. I plan on introducing another method for restoring health as well, one that takes less effort than the chicken farming but it'll only be able to replenish crew health to its original status.

Floating through Sapce

This weekend I took a mini vacation, I didn't completely neglect the game though. Here's something you DON'T want to have happen while you're playing. This is the commander, floating in space. A game ending event for sure.

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Blood and Walls

So, as you can see, things are moving along. The past two days have seen me make the walls thinner. I thought they were simply too large and they were also causing some pathfinding issues with the units. I'm not promising the thinner walls are permanent, but given that its one less serious sprite I have to worry about I'm pretty happy with it. I was really unhappy with the previous walls. I've also implemented a blood pooling when a unit dies. The blood isn't particularly amazing but it does pool together if it touches.

Let there be Light

So yesterday I worked on some basic lighting for the game. Nothing too fancy. However, I did want the lighting to change when an "event" occurs. This could be anything from being boarded by pirates, to the plague breaking out, to an explosion causing crew to vent to space. I've included a quick image of just one of these alarm or klaxon lights going off. (No sound yet)

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Beware of Walls

So today I spent a good deal of time working on some basic pathfinding. Nothing terribly complex and I'm certainly going to have to go back and tweak it later on but at least for the time being when you select a unit you can click somewhere on the map for them to go and not worry about having to guide them through every doorway. Here's an example of what it does off Wikipedia.

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Venting to Space

So as I work on many of the essential features of the game one big aspect is getting a hull breach to appropriately "flood" the ship. What this means is a somewhat realistic vacuum sucks out the air in an area. I don't want it to be instantaneous, as I feel it'll be more fun trying to scramble to get vital people out of a room that's been breached before they're sucked out or to close doors to stop the vacuum from spreading. Below I've included gifs of what the "vacuum" breach looked like initially, not very appealing from a gameplay/realism perspective and the new and improved although unfinished vacuum breach.

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Hopes for the Future

Working on the game a little later than normal today. I'm planning on working on having crew enter a "floating" animation whenever they're exposed to a vacuum or space. I've also been tweaking the death animation a bit too.

I'm really hoping that once I get the foundation of the game worked out I can start to transition from having mere 2D sprites to incorporating some better 3D models. I played around with Blender once ages ago, and just downloaded it again. I can't promise I have a ton of free time to experiment with 3D modeling, and I'd honestly rather devote my efforts to tackling substantive game issues at this point. The point of bringing this up? I know the graphics right now aren't amazing so please keep that in mind as I work on the programming and gameplay aspect first and then I'll be moving forward to tackle graphics.

Now on Indiedb.com

I just wanted to post quickly and let everyone know they can also follow the development of Vacuum over on Indiedb.com. While I'm going to do my best to keep content updated across both platforms I currently feel a little more comfortable using Blogger. Expect me to use Indiedb as a tentative source to release content and software updates once I can get some playable prototypes out.

How I Keep Track of Everything

Developing a game is a lot of work. On several forums people have discussed how they go about managing the daunting task of creating a game by one person. Below I've included a small image of my game design schedule. I list the general feature I'd like to implement, then I have an asterisk system for the difficulty of the feature. The more asterisks the more difficult (I've intentionally only shown the easy tasks, I want you to keep reading!). Lastly is the portion that shows if I've finished the task or not. This is last part is hugely beneficial, as it staves off depression of having a massive list of tasks to accomplish. It's like a to-do list where I can check off challenges. As I stated previously, I try to accomplish one thing a day, usually that means one item off this list.

Nothing particularly special today. I've been working on making the floors look better than just bland grey. Something that's actually proving quite difficult, as I don't want it to become too repetitive and rough on the eyes.

I'm also working on changing the sprite animations so that when a crew-member dies their sprite reflects as much. Now some games have the sprite corpse stay around forever and this places a heavier burden on older machines. Some games simply have the image vanish which isn't very realistic. I'm hoping a happy middle ground is to have the image stay in the "dead sprite animation" for about a dozen seconds.

Space Chickens

I'm a law student by day. In my spare time I've been working on Vacuum off-and-on for about two months now although it's been a percolating thought for over a year. Last night, at around 3am, as a break from my work for poverty law I decided I needed to create a food source in Vacuum. Being an avid Dungeon Keeper and Rust fan I figured chickens would be an excellent source of nourishment.

I give to you the space chicken. Imagine these guys running around and nesting in the nooks of your space station. Nests bustling with wires and scraps of wrappers instead of straws and leaves.

As far as the game development goes I have one rough goal I strive for. I try to add one thing to the game every day. Somedays, like today, it's relatively small and simple. This new chicken sprite (soon to be an animation) and mouse scrolling.

First Post!

So my goal is to try and document the creation of my first full-fledged game Vacuum. I've drawn inspiration from dozens of games, notably Startopia, FTL, Black & White, RimWorld and even the Battlestar Galatica series. Vacuum is my attempt to create a realistic spacestation crew-management and combat simulator.

Some key aspects that I believe will set Vacuum apart include:

• Creating a vacuum that sucks crew members into space when the hull is breached.
• Crew experience - The longer your crew have been with you the better they are at what they do whether that's shooting, fixing things, or just making people happy.
• Escape pods - When your ship is too badly damaged run for the escape pods. It'll allow you to save some of your crew for your next station.
• RTS style ship interior fighting.
• Physiological effects of space combat. Battle depression as your crew becomes frantic from too many deaths. Fight disease as you rescue refugees who infect your crew. Has your station run out of food? Issue the cannibalism order and watch your crew carefully as they become distrustful and delusional. 

Here's an early test photo of the crew interacting with one another.