Monsters Loot Swag Early Access Update 2

This is Pauk The Engineer, she drives Mecha-Boris, the Spidertank. Spidertank, spidertank, does whatever a spidertank does ...

September saw two Regular Updates for Steam in one month, but that mostly because I brought early October's update forward a day to coincide with Friday and the start of the weekend.

Regular Update 1 did pretty much what I said it would in August's blog; the main emphasis was on the player requested radar system so players could find each other in online Co-Op multiplayer mode, and the rest of the update was tweaks and bug fixes.

Regular Update (because that's what Steam calls them) 2 has just shipped, and as this was the first update to have an actual month of work available since launching last month, it has a whopping 50 fixes, improvements, changes and new content.

I forgot I wasn't in developer mode on Steam, got killed, and permadeath erased my own save file - bugger ...

 The main focus for this was to revitalize level 5 and turn it into a broken industrial aesthetic, complete with shattered piping system leaking toxic goo (not a comment on current events). I also fixed the chatHud so that players can talk to each other in multiplayer game mode, whilst waiting for the game to start, and after the level is complete and everyone is waiting the 60 seconds before the next level loads.

There was also a whole load of balancing and bug fixes, and the portrait and loading screen for the level 3 Monster Boss, Pauk; see above. One of the changes was to drop the Shipping Build from the executable which I have long had suspicions causes instability (like 10+ years), crashing when any other build would have managed to get through the error alright. This also allows for the player to access the console, which can be useful when they come across a bug because they can then send me the console.log text file and I can see where the script loop got up to - and I am a dev who likes a lot of script echo to log to find out what is happening (printf too).

And here is a video of what Level 5 looks like, though I decided to remove the ground fog in the end.

So that was the month that was, I removed the summer duvet in favour of the thicker Autumn one. Next month I will probably be working on a whole new level for Monsters Loot Swag; the Water Temple. Ninty plz no sue.

Backbone Required

 So I've gone and FUBARed my lower back.

Current state of development ...

Hilariously this was caused, not by the hike I went on to do some deliveries and check on the welfare of vulnerable people, but by the innocuous action of stepping out of the shower afterwards ...

Least painful position right now ...

This has somewhat stalled progress due to sitting be the most painful position to be in and lying down - away from my PC - being the least painful.

This has led to watching lot's of train cab rides, mostly from Japan, which has some really pretty scenery.

Previous to incapacitating myself, I had continued to work on dogfighter game. I had detailed various datablocks of different fighters and set the AI pilots to slug it out in numerous tests. I had also finally added the player into the mix, allowing myself to take to the skies as one of Blue Team and take on the dastardly foes of Red Team, with each team comprising of a mix of aircraft types - though currently all using the same placeholder model for the time being.

Location damage GUI was broken here

I had also added a couple of different radar resources, one standard top down and the other the 3D style radar from Elite. I found the 3D style to be somewhat confusing and so removed it and stuck with the more simple top down radar. I added toggleable ranges and made sure that different teams displayed in different colours.

Top left overhead radar and below the more confusing 3D version

The one I settled on

I also changed how the aircraft classes handle so that they are obviously more different. Fighters now lose a lot of speed when turning, whilst interceptors lose their maneuverability when gaining speed, and strike aircraft are somewhat midway between the two.

I improved high G stall turns for the player, so if you get them right you can swing the aircraft round quickly, and if you get them wrong you'll stall - hence "high G stall turn".

Basic combat stats for a mission are now stored with assists, kills, shots and hits being recorded for the player. I decided to use the same system as one of the game which inspired this project which was the old space dogfighter Descent Freespace: The Great War.

The one IP Volition has no intention of ever bringing back :(

I made a few other changes, tweaks and improvements here and there, like stopping the Ai from spawning above their aircraft ceiling limits which immediately threw them into a death spin dive.

So next month I think it will be time to actually model some custom aircraft and start to deal with physically showing damage to individual vehicle parts such as having the wings shot off and the such like.

Also probably a good idea to do some exercises to strengthen the lower back when I am able to get up and down from the crapper without needing to lean on two crutches ...

Until then, time to lie in a more comfortable position and watching the Hiroshima to Fukuen line whilst the pain killers kick in ...