It Takes a Colony: Another Thank You

I've said I made Dead Reckoning as a "solo developer"; that's not really true. I made it and coded it on my own. But a game this size doesn't get built by one person, and every screen you sit in front of is held together by people I've never met — people who were passionate enough to do the work, then put it out, sometimes as Creative Commons to build on. I had a tiny budget, so there are some paid commercial usages, but most of it was free. So before this game releases into Early Access, I want to put the spotlight on them. Support their work, if you can.

The Genesis — John Ayliff

None of this exists without Seedship (which you can buy at the link provided). John Ayliff's little text game about steering a sleeper ship to a new home knocked around in my head (and on my phone) for years before I ever opened a design doc. After reading some forum posts, I got scared I'd crossed the line from "inspired-by" into "copied-from", and I emailed John, expecting to possibly get told off. Instead he was nothing but warm, thoughtful, and kind. He said he'd be honoured by a shout-out, and that he's still "amazed whenever I see people say ... it inspired them to make something."

John makes games as Space Goblin Games now and he's put out a proper successor to Seedship, Beyond the Chiron Gate. If you like what I made here, go play what he made first. I owe many people thanks for being the shoulders that I stood on to start this game, but John is the start. I really appreciate it John, and I hope you know that being called "seedshiplike" is one of the biggest compliments I can receive, because that game is untouchable to me, and it's brought so many people joy over the years.

Music

I can't write a note. These people can, and they let me use theirs.

• Scott Buckley — "The Long Dark," "Decoherence," "Permafrost"

• Nihilore (James Opie) — "The Lights In The Sky Are Stars," "Crux," "Dreams of Escape"

• Kevin MacLeod — "Stay the Course"

• TinyWorlds (Rick Hoppmann) — "Narrow Corridors," "Grief and Anger," "Space Graveyard"

• Maxstack — "Awakening," "Inevitable," "Deprecation," "Advanced Simulacra"

• Christian DeTamble — "Timebender"

• Hitctrl — "Drifting Beyond the Stars"

• Ruskerdax — "Pondering the Cosmos"

• Vitalezzz — "Claimed by the Void"

• Stefan Grossman, Tsorthan Grove & migfus20 — "Continuum"

• SRG774 — "Airy," "Title"

• yd — "Out There"

Sound

Every beep, klaxon, and hull groan in the game were created by these people:

• Kenney — the interface bed: clicks, confirms, the UI hum

• rubberduck — sci-fi SFX: probes, research, alerts

• inconsequentialist / Unicae Games — the soft typewriter keys

• Bart — the cryo-wake steam release

• NASA / Houston Audio Control Room — the real STS-87 Columbia launch

• Freesound's CC0 crew — the ship's stress and alarms: bumpelsnake, SieuAmThanh, wrstone, Engineer_815, NachtmahrTV, Lewooz, belanhud, brunoboselli

3D models

The ship interiors and the ending scenes lean on models these folks built and shared.

• Mixmamo.studio — "Spaceship 003 Control Room"

• neilken — "Colony Ship Explorer"

• the_table — "Spaceship Corridor"

• Epilogue Ronin — "Cryopod"

• wpanayides — "Server Racking System"

• jakuza — "Sci-Fi Crates"

• Binkley-Spacetrucker — "TF-DS-ENGINEERING" & "Cargo Commodities"

• Tronin Dmitry (kosmotron) — "Sci-Fi Terminal"

• tnnv — "Spacesuit"

• Domenico D'Alisa — "DISCOVERY" astronaut

• engine9 — "Solar System Planets Scale"

• martinjario — "Skull"

• offbranddoodles — "Crowbar"

• chanmagomed — "Pipe Wrench"

• agung.ihackstuff — "Mechanical Room"

• sbastuff — "Scifi Room Interior"

• Lumoize — "Fusion Reactor"

• Jason_Phillips — "Low Poly Habitat" kit & greenhouse

Backgrounds, planets & textures

• overboy — OVERSTELLAR animated pixel planets & stars

• Screaming Brain Studios — seamless space backgrounds

• Solar System Scope — planet surface textures

• Poly Haven — HDRI skies & PBR metal/rust textures

• NASA, ESA & the Hubble Heritage Team — "Mystic Mountain," the Carina Nebula

These are the people that took this ship out into the stars. Thank you again. — Garan Lorn