Full notes
Full Contingency Plan update
Read the full published notes in a cleaner layout. The original post stays linked below.
Repeated intro
Hello everyone, I took a break from development for a few days, but now I am back with a few changes for you. Thanks for playing!
What changed
- UI and audio
- Gameplay
- Balance
- Store
QoL:
New player onboarding - Added text prompts around the ship explaining many aspects and systems of the ship, as well as a general outline of how to play. These labels can be enabled and disabled from the settings menu.
Added settings persistence between sessions.
Added some particles around the ship (externally) to help show direction and speed of movement in flight.
Added nametags on players to be able to more easily tell who is who.
Gameplay:
Added player "ragdolls" which spawn when a player dies, giving better feedback and cues to other players when someone dies. Also it's funny.
Added a penalty for dying - 15 damage straight to the ship's hull. Let me know what you think of this change. (also added a warning to the respawn button in the menu about this penalty)
Added a cooldown to the menu's respawn button to prevent easy griefing by rapidly respawning yourself and quickly running down the ship's health.
Planned:
Settings to Invert certain axes of ship controls
Better client experience for rover training level
Better guards/incentive to keep the player ship inside the playable area besides invisible walls, such as damage to the ship (as well as an indication on how to get back)
Movement stick deadzone settings to be added to the settings menu
Enemy ships
Better cockpit ship views
On a more personal note, thank you all so much for playing. It's been a blast to see so many people playing (and hopefully some enjoying) a game that my friends and I have put so much work into. Reading the reviews and feedback is a lot of fun; even the bug reports because I am insane and like solving them (and writing patch notes). Reading "this game has a lot of potential" and "I can't wait to see where this game goes" inspires and gives me pride beyond what I can express across text. Even seeing the game listing in my Steam library was a surreal experience. At the time of writing, we've had over 10 thousand people claim a license from the store, and over 400 people actually download the game and log playtime. Not a great conversion rate, but 400 people is still more than I thought we would get in the first place so I see it as an absolute win. That being said, this is was a student project we made to display on our resume and get a job with. Mission accomplished. Most of the team has job offers now and, as you can imagine, are very busy with them. I myself will be preoccupied with moving soon to a new job. For the past few updates it's been just me working, but I too will soon have other commitments. Make no mistake! I can't speak for the rest of the team but I am committed to making this game the product I know it can be. Hopefully, I can check off a few more of the planned features before I move - I really want to get enemy ships up and running. With the introduction of a day job development can no longer be "whenever I feel like it" and must instead be "whenever I have free time to". I hope you can understand. Expect slower updates. But they will come nonetheless. Thank you for playing. -Thomas
Source
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