v0.88 new TEK, Progress, UI, and Story

It's been 5 months since my last post, so here's the deal. ATS is out and selling well, so I've got the breathing room to come and work on VA. Firstly thanks for buying VA in it's rather rough and funky state. Glad people have enjoyed it. I wish I had more time to put into this.

Firstly look at this swish new Main Menu! I made new button and panel graphics, and change the layout. I like it.

OK, onto the big new thing.

TEK

Games like this are fun because you get to be the master of your own success. It's your ship design, with your plans, your decision. Awesome.

Part of giving people decisions to make is tradeoffs. Do I have more thrusters for speed, or more hull for health? Do I have more point-defence to shoot down missiles, or do I suffer the missiles but hope my guns and health can get me to the target so I can blast them to pieces?

AWE (Absolute Weighted Energy, awesomeness) is the 1-dimensional tight rope upon which this entire game balances. If one thing is too good, or too weak, suddenly you have less decision to make. eg. "Oh lasers are just better than guns, so there's no reason to ever use guns" stuff like that ruins the fun, you have less to do, and less decision to make.

TEK, (Total Engineering Komplexity) helps me add a 2nd dimension to block prices. TEK is just a fee for blocks that do really weird stuff, or that are just straight up better than other blocks. But TEK is limited far more than AWE, and means you have to be very decisive with what you do. Haha, good more decisions.

So all Reactors, Shields, Armour (which have been buffed) and powerful equipment now cost TEK. Meaning you can either have regenerating health (shields), or more power for your guns (reactors) but it's a balancing act.

But acts are fun and with any luck it means I can do far more interesting stuff with a lot of equipment both early and late game.

INTERFACE

The UI across VA has always been good-enough. Not great, not terrible. But I've learnt a few tricks and skills to now start making my own UI graphics and make them look nice. So we've got new buttons, new panels, and a whole new Constructor Layout.

Steam post imageI like it.

CAMPAIGN

The campaign story and map continues to develop. I'm going to get the Great Skies feeling grand.

I've been doing a lot of writing for the new "Visual Novel" cinematics between missions, that should really entertain people that like feeling immersed in a living world.

Steam post image'

UNIFIED WORKBENCH

Finally, as noted int the interface photo above, the Composer and Workbench have been unified. Whenever you edit a fleet, that fleet is now loaded into the Workbench, and the bench configured to save and handle the fleet. This means you can edit the blocks and do all the normal Workbench related stuff.

MODDING

While working on my main game Annihilate The Spance, I've figured out how to make a pretty good mod-loader. For making your own blocks and hull and stuff. I won't get to it anytime soon as it's a lot of work but I am planning to get it done in a future update.

Ok, that's it for now I have work to get done!

Cheers!