Hi everyone.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted anything, anywhere about Orion’s End and I think I owe you an explanation.

At the beginning of the year, I was sick for a while and had a short break from programming. When I was feeling better, I returned to Orion’s End and discovered something horrible. The basic gameplay of the game just wasn’t fun. Space travel was tedious after doing it a few times and ground combat was too imprecise.

My initial idea was to base the gameplay elements on classic games from the 80s, and I think I was heading in the right direction, but I found that having a “vibe” of the 80s was great, but having the same level of controls and mechanics just didn’t work for the game I wanted to make. It wasn’t good enough.

So, I decided to go silent for a little while until I had a plan of how to proceed. I didn’t expect this to be longer than a week or two. I looked at different changes I could make to the basic game: on land and in space. A experimented with side on 2d platforming rather than top down, old school Asteroids style space flight instead of the Spy Hunter inspired spaceflight I currently had. That wasn’t right though. I loved the top down perspective and the Asteroid style space flight had been done in lots of games already – and was being done a lot better than what I was going to do.

Time dragged on and I didn’t have an answer, but I always felt just a few days away from having the answer, so I didn’t want to say anything about the changes until I knew what those changes were going to be. And it was only a couple of more days, right?

Wrong! Months later and I still didn’t have a plan to go forward. I didn’t want to abandon the project, but I didn’t want to keep working on it in it’s current direction. I thought many times about providing an update, but I really didn’t have anything insightful to say.

I realise this was a bad decision, and I should have said something … anything. So my apologies for remaining silent for so long. What was going to be just a week or two, turned into six months.

Future Direction

I think I may have a direction to proceed with now, though. I have been experimenting with a completely revamped space travel that I am quite happy with so far. I’ve spent the past two weeks solidly working on it, and now I have the bare skeleton to build upon. I will be sharing some screen capture of this in the near future.

I have also been thinking about what I wanted from the game. Realistically, I don’t expect Orion’s End to be a best seller. I think the person who will play the game the most will probably be me, so I have asked myself what it is that I want from the game that I am planning on spending hundreds of hours playing (and many more programming), and that would mean changing the game quite a bit. Or more precisely, adding a lot more to it.

The game I wanted would need to allow me to explore extensively and be surprised by what I found. So that meant I needed to use procedural generation to create a lot more planets to explore. But I also wanted to make friends with NPCs in the game and have a home base that I could always return to revisit my friends. So, that meant my original idea of having the hand crafted settlements and stations could remain. I wanted to have satisfying combat both in space and on land, so I needed to totally revamp those systems. I also wanted to discover unexpected missions and stories, so procedural generation would need to be used in the mission system also. But procedural missions could never replace a well crafted story, so that would need to be there too.

So that means introducing a few very substantial elements, and the completion date would have to be extended by quite a bit too. (I was very unrealistic with my expectations concerning a release date anyway). And, I’m okay with that. If I am going to spend so long making a game, I want the game to be a game that I'll be happy to show others and happy to play myself.

So, thanks for your patience and once again I am so sorry for being so silent for so long.

I hope to have more to tell you and more to show in the near future.

Dave

November has been a very productive time for us, and we have seen some good progress in game elements that we've wanted to put into the game for a while now.

As mentioned last month, two of these were character customisation and a customisable living area on the ship.

Character Customisation

The character customisation is not completed as yet, as it needs more variety in some of the features, such as hairstyle and accessories, but already it is offering a diverse assortment of possible characters. We have chosen to not have gender as a selectable trait and instead all features are available to every character, allowing you to create any character you like without boundaries.

There is a random creation button, and most of the following characters were created with the simple press of a button. However, characters can be created by modifying every feature individually, also. Features include face shape, skin colour, hair, eyebrow shape and colour, eye shapes and colour, nose, mouth, costume and tattoos, scars, complexion and other features.

New Ship Design

The ship has been evolving slowly since the project's conception, and we admit the design was looking a little too reminiscent of another spaceship you might be familiar with. As Orion's End developed its own character, we felt it needed a more unique look to the player's ship, and the design needed to take into account the demands and dimensions of a customisable living quarters. So, the new ship design is as follows.

Living Quarters Customisation

The ship has multiple decks, including the main flight deck, a cargo hold and the players living quarters. The living quarters is a holographic projection room, which can be customised as you see fit. As you explore the many systems you will collect many blueprints for artefacts and furniture design, which can be deployed to your living quarters to personalise it to your taste.

The living quarters functions now as it should, however it is still early days in its development. It will require a lot more variations of decor and functionality, however we are off to a solid start.

Adding More to the Worlds

We've also been adding details and character to the existing worlds, giving small insights as to what stories might be going to unfold on the planets. On Baucoi, for example, there is a large mining corporation that has taken over the grassroots operations of the locals, with the expected reaction from the locals.

What's Next?

The next thing we'll be working on is adding even more detail to all of the existing planets and starting the personal stories and quests for the NPCs. We'll also be starting to develop some new planets to visit. We've started sketching out some possible designs for them.

Safe travels in the spacelanes, friends, and we'll be sharing more at the end of December.

The Orion's End Crew