Hiya Rebels, As promised, here's another devlog coming atcha~ Just wanted to let you know that [b]you can play Star Renegades[/b] if you are going to PAX East this month! We will be there at Booth #13073 as part of the Indie Megabooth. Come find us for limited merch, pins, and tasty milk candies! Sooo before all that happens, I just wanted to give you all an update on what we’ve been mainly working on: [list] [*] New enemies [*] New Combat UI [*] Free Exploration Map Mode [/list] [h1][b]New Enemies and Units[/b][/h1] So you might recognize this little fella here from the last announcement. We mentioned that we opened up character design decisions to our Discord community and they came up with the following ideas: [list] [*] l a s e r [*] sonic blast rawr [*] bad breath [*] guard chameleon doggo [/list] [img]https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/32326506/faafc7775d9978a94aa5fa41ec36908cffb5c68f.gif[/img] Aaaand here were some of the ideas we animated! We loved your ideas so much that we definitely will be dropping more characters in the channel to hear what you think they should do! [h1][b]New Combat UI[/b][/h1] In our previous demos, we used blinking blips in the health/shield bars to denote how much damage would be done to units. We thought that it was simple and players could visually see exactly how much damage is being done to their squad. However, for those who are absolutely OBSESSED with numbers and data sheets, we’ve decided to change the health and shield bars to meters with numbers that will tell you exactly how much health/armour/shields you have left instead of approximating it based on how many health blips are left. We felt that this gives the player agency to be extremely accurate with their calculations (so if your squad wipes, that is 100% your fault :P no pressure) [img]https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/32326506/ff7dd8d20a1b33e3e8c878df942170d513d71f2e.gif[/img] [i]Old Combat HUD[/i] [img]https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/32326506/4c28cf2dadee520bf562ff600bdca9b33b08de0d.gif[/img] [i]New Combat HUD[/i] [h1][b]Free Exploration Map Mode[/b][/h1] I would say this has been the biggest change to our demo so far. We went from a node-based travel system to a free exploration map. Before Bryan (our pixel art machine) would be hand drawing all of these big maps. To avoid bottlenecking his process, we switched to using a layered tile map for our engine so that our team could generate maps and populate it with events ourselves. [img]https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/32326506/ea3890fe2b8fb6bb69faec5b28426ee2c6f58f4d.gif[/img] [i]Layer on~ layer off~ layer on~ layer off[/i] We felt that node-based travel created too much friction if a player wanted to backtrack to get take a different path and we felt that it broke game immersion at times. We wanted to create an explorable world which gave our players a sense of agency in the universe. [img]https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/32326506/28c113401982a8bd952ff150f5c0be005f38a097.gif[/img] [i]Timeline of our world map process (that glow up)[/i] We also removed the time counter for Imperium reinforcements arrival and simplified it with “turns taken” to perform actions. This should make things more clear for players deciding whether or not to take a certain action while deciphering where the enemy might be traveling to next. [img]https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/32326506/52dd746caab2d2069bd3101854a6f53182294037.gif[/img] [i]Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!! New Free Movement map travel![/i] We’re still playing around with making our maps a proper size so that there isn’t TOO much barren space, yet balancing it with enough event tasks and objects so that there is a clear path for you to venture around. It’s all a work in progress but this will be quite close to the build we will be bringing to PAX East.. sooo if you’re going- please do drop by our booth to say hi or poke your fave streamer to check us out. Thanks for tuning innn! Softcookie + Massive Damage Team P.S. We have also posted this devlog on our site if you'd like to see GIFs in their less-compressed glory: http://massdmg.com/2019/03/star-renegades-dev-log-4/