Hi! Long time no see. Let’s hope on to a quick update on the current status of All These Worlds game, and the path forward for the project.
Why no release?
The latest version of ATW was released in May 2019. That’s really a long time ago. The year 2019 saw a lot of major new features, like for example the new AI, sensor & comms systems re-work, introduction of the map view, and many graphical upgrades. In contrast, 2020 and 2021 were very difficult years for me personally, so little work was done. What’s worse, all those major new features brought new bugs, broke existing missions, and the new “command demo” turned out to be no fun after all. To be honest, I believe that all of the missions are pretty underwhelming. They were good content placeholders while the game was new, but they need major re-work to be actually engaging. So, even though I started 2022 with some good progress on stabilizing the game, as of today it still remains un-releasable.
When release?
I intend to move forward with the following plan:
- Finish up the work on the “missiles” milestone,
- re-work all 3 missions,
- stabilize and release.
This is a lot of work, so no promises on when that happens.
What’s wrong with the missions?
For starters, the AI improvements made the missions much more difficult, as the computer opponent can do much more damage even with the pitiful ships it’s given. It doesn’t help that many of the game features are still in placeholder state, and that some of them are poorly written, make incorrect assumptions, or are just really old.
The fighter demo simply spawns new foes until either the player’s ship or the space station is destroyed. It gets pretty boring after a minute or so. I’d like to have more types of enemies, and for them to come in increasingly stronger waves, and for the player to be able to repair and upgrade their ship between the waves.
The exploration demo is just plain boring, and that’s a huge disappointment given the amount of time and work that went into making it. The exploration ship should be made much faster, and the solar system more lively, with more clues for finding things, and the pirates should also be more pro-active in preventing the player from finding their base.
The capital ship combat demo needs a lot of re-balancing. While the mission itself is pretty fun, the uphill battle against the pirate cruiser is still not quite living up to my original vision. The bigger ships and their turrets should have more health, and I’d like to increase the scale of the battle too.
That’s it. Thanks for reading.