SpaceBeam development

Previously, space combat was mainly in a open space environment.
I can now place fixed elements, and combat is much enjoyable and tactical.
Even if ennemies have no proper IA, you can hide behind crates and try to sneak them... promising !

You can see in the video below new features of SpaceBeam:
2d HUD showing enemies
Different ship...

I just want to introduce my new blog, about thinks I'd like to share about technical art-related things in videogames.

Feel free to comment content or ask for new articles I'm always open to suggestions...

Redefined blocks from 8x8 to 16x16 (thrusters & wings not updated yet).



Few visible progress because I'm designing and coding the fact to place blocks that are not only 1x1 square, with some smart rules so blocks like weapons to know that they can only be added near a hull, and so on (these already exist...

Added two different weapons : Bullets and missiles.
Bullets are short-range, high-speed. Missiles are slower, longer range, and can be "controlled" with the ship direction.
Added some particle emitters for thrusters, bullets and missiles, that give a trail feeling.

The video shows a combat between my small ship and 3 generated ennemy ships.
...

After some reflexion on structure (I'll be back to this later), I worked on some cosmetic features:
Explosion effects
Background planet
Zoom in/out
Enemies can now fire on...

Structure of breaking
These last days I worked on spaceship structure. As I want it to be break nicely, I built some kind of structure from ships described in text files. The result is not perfect yet, but it works, ships can be broken firing at them ^^

Here's an image of a ship structure, built automatically starting from cockpit and kinda...

• You can see in the image below the first graphics for SpaceBeam. As I'm not a pixel-artist, the final result is not perfect, but it's already good to have some graphics & colors. Also, determining graphic styles helps to define target audience.

There are also bullets (only pushing ships, not destroying anything yet),...

Here are 2 videos showing progress manipulating a ship.

The first shows how system activates the good thrusters at the good time, depending on player inputs.
More explanation here : The physical ship
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I think I'll start a game. A 2d game. About space, ships, building your own ships & stations. Exploring unknown areas. Would like to have it asynchronous multiplayer.

Game
Start with a small...