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CERES is a cyber-tactical space combat game, where you lead a squadron of ships in an exploration and battle-filled single-player campaign. Inspired by Homeworld, Elite and Paradroid, it features thorough ship customization, advanced cyber-warfare and elaborate space combat. Command your ships in a rich 3D environment, manage your crew and artificial intelligences, mine, explore and trade your way through multiple missions -while keeping clear of alien monsters, rogue machines and dangerous transhuman mutants.

Post news Report RSS Yet another development update.

Development update. The last months I've been working on various things. Graphics, game play, bugs and missions. Ship capture and salvage.

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Development update.
The last months I've been working on various things. Graphics, game play, bugs and missions.

Graphics,
almost all the ships have now physical based rendering. Very nice and pretty. This really adds nice detail to the ships and gives them more depth. No longer flat and boring.
anti aliasing has been added too. You can control it the the menu.

I've also updated damage effects and created some very nice dust clouds.
Also the asteroids have been given a once over, a little more detail added, mine-able asteroids now have a distinct look depending on what they contain.


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Gameplay.
Not much has actually changed, but I've added the ability to launch boarding drones to capture ships. How it works is that you launch a drone that contains a certain number of crew (This won't affect your own ships crew). If the boarding drone reaches its target and attaches itself to the target it will start fighting the on board crew. If it wins you will gain control of the ship permanently.

Each drone contains a small number of crew, so that if you were to try and capture a frigate, you would probably need 2 or 3 boarding drones and for a cruiser 3 to 6. Once you gain control of your target ship, you can control it immediately but the ship will have limited crew and no captain, so it will perform rather poorly. If you have no room for another ship in your squad, the captured ship will be moved to your ship reserves.

You can also find salvageable ships to fix and gain control over at the cost of Solaris (money).

I've also added a simple difficulty level into the game. It simply changes how much damage the enemy deals to your ship. Its pretty basic. I did think about making the difficulty level control the number of enemies in each scene, but that is a headache for another day.

Also some new environment effects have been added, Gravity wells and lightning clouds.
Gravity wells either push or pull, they affect all ships, missiles, and projectiles. If an item gets too close to the center of the well it will start to take damage.

Bugs.
Same old, same old, hunt down minor bugs here and there. I've stopped finding game breaking bugs in the game. Most bugs are just annoying little errors.
The save game feature is always a bit trouble some, lots of stuff to keep track of.

Missions.
I've been adding missions here and there, but mostly I've been focused on the main mission.
Currently is split into 8 parts which and each part should take an hour plus to finish.
The main mission takes the player to new interesting and hopefully fun areas, including the inside of a gargantuan asteroid, corrosive and/or lightning clouds and other dangerous places.

The asteroid was a bit difficult. But I used blender and "metaball" to create some caverns and tunnels inside the asteroids. Ship navigation inside the asteroid is quite easy. One just has to be a bit careful.
Although I had to turn of the frontal collision avoidance system for the ships inside the asteroid.
The ships tried to go around the tunnel, which is not possible.

A few new ships have been added, mostly cruisers, but I've created some domes to attach to asteroids, to act as weapon bases. Rather deadly.

I've added a new type of missile, Cluster missile. It fires like an ordinary missile, but when it's within a certain range of its target, it breaks up into multiple missiles and tracks the target.

I've also added friend or foe missiles. I've yet to decide if those missiles system can be bought or you need to use a perk to get them. They are quite powerful.

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Pixelbombgames
Pixelbombgames

Don't say 'yet another' like we don't wanna see it - we do! It sounds awesome!!

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