August 30th dev update

August 30, 2016 Faenrir Leave a comment

We have a new logo!

Augmented Irreality (or nightmare?)

ClemenC has been working on this site (the old one was something i quickly threw together a long time ago and forgot a bit about) and has created us this beautiful new logo which will also be used in a new splash intro to replace the old (ugly) one.

As for myself, I have been working on finalizing the enemies for the Betelgeuse sector (the infested planet one) and ran into some trouble with a simple bezier curve (mainly because i had forgotten how to use the function which is, in fact, fully functional). But the enemies are coming along nicely and should be done shortly.
Next up will be the boss which i know will be a fun one. We want to keep the surprise for the full game but believe me when i say you’ll have fun fighting it !

Things have quieted down a bit after the alpha demo launch but thanks to Gamejolt which put us on the front page, we have had a lot of exposure and, as a result, videos of the demo and the first previews of the game on softpedia, indieretronews and other websites have surfaced. The feedback is very positive and we are glad to see people like the game. We have a lot of areas to improve, obviously, but this means we are not working in vain and our efforts will pay in the end. Can’t wait to finish the game and see people play it on a full release.

With that said, removing new undiscovered bugs (there were only a few, thankfully), launching the demo and marketing it and communicating a lot around the game has taken me more time than i wish and as a result, i am lagging a bit behind schedule. I hope to turn this around by working more this week than usual (i’m probably going to end up working all weekend).

That’s it for now…

devlog, DreadStar, Pixel Art

Level 4 graphics are nearly finished

August 26, 2016 ClemenC Leave a comment

I have been working for more than 2 weeks on level 4 graphics, including background, enemies and bosses. It is nearly finished, at last.

For the background, I wanted to add a little bit more atmosphere, so I decided to add rain to the background. At first, I wanted also to draw a dark background, something in the night, so the atmosphere would have been heavier. But because other backgrounds are rather dark, I prefered to stay on something taking place during the day.

For the boss, because of animations, it took much more time than I planned to. It is long to animate even small parts. But it seems okay now and I am waiting for them to be included in the level (at this time I will have some corrections to do, but that is part of the game…).

On monday, I start drawing level 5. A rather dark, this one.

devlog, DreadStar

Dev update ! August 24th

August 24, 2016 Faenrir Leave a comment

I said we were going to post more often about the development of the game so here goes nothing !
We had a bug that allowed the laser to destroy enemies behind another enemy on very particular occasions (it only did it on the Claws boss from the faraway sector…the laser was able to destroy the homing bullet when hitting the boss).

With all this solved, i am back to enemy and boss design, notably new enemies (new type of enemies that are on the ground and don’t collide with the player ship but still get hit by bullets and fire bullets as well) and some boss logic for the Cylon sector.
I am hoping to have the boss finished and the enemies well on their way by this time next week.

We will be updating the alpha demo with the solved bugs (Claws bugs…the laser thing and the fact that he was both too easy and not invulnerable when arriving) shortly! Probably tomorrow or Friday.

Stay tuned…

devlog, DreadStar, Pixel Art

The alpha demo is out !

August 19, 2016 Faenrir Leave a comment

Hi everyone. I haven’t posted here for a while but we have been very busy working on the game, posting on facebook, twitter, google+, indieDB, steam greenlight and it has been pretty exhausting.
The good news is that the alpha demo is now out and you can grab it on Itch.io

or GameJolt

DreadStar demo — DreadStar’s demo is now out !

I have recently removed a lot of small bugs and added a bit more feedback to several areas. There is still a lot of work to be done, we need to make new sounds (there are a lot of sounds missing right now) and i am now working on the level 2 boss fight.