So, you’ve come to our page and downloaded the Alpha
release, wondering to yourself just what you’ve gotten into. Playing the game, you find holes. Why wouldn’t you? It’s not yet nearly complete. This may raise the question, just where is Baby Ninja going to take the game from here to arrive at something that I’ll want to play more than once? Well, in addition to a number of tweaks and bugfixes to make the experience as unobtrusive as possible, we also have this laundry list of objectives to meet for our Beta release next month (11/14):
- At our publisher’s suggestion, we are removing the unit dialogue, replacing that feedback with unique chirps and tones for each unit. We will also be re-recording the Mothership dialogue to give one consistent announcer’s voice to the game.
- Our AI programmer will improve the movement of all units in the game, allowing the medium and larger units to turn more efficiently in addition to giving the small Fighters acrobatic capabilities.
- We will be improving the camera movement controls as well as adding commands to stop units before they complete their current directive.
- Our artists will revise current 2D and 3D assets to give the game a layer of polish and make it look more professional.
- With help from Team Quantum Fury and their particle editor, we will be adding unique particles for different units’ weaponry and thrusters, as well as feedback for player actions, such as unit construction and group formation.
- We will be adding shield effects for damage, depletion, and recharging, as shown by our shield state concepts.
- We will be removing the build HUD from the Mothership’s selection ring and replacing it with a popup window that can be called up by holding down the spacebar. The spacebar’s current functionality of jumping to the latest combat ping will be moved to Tab.
- We will create and add a help screen to assist the user with the basic controls and objectives of the game that can be called up with the F1 key.
- And perhaps most importantly, we will be adding a new player-triggered ability for each unit type to give them a temporary edge against the type of unit they are weak against.
So there you have it. Expect to see one or two intermediate pre-Beta releases with some of these changes in place over the next couple of weeks, in addition to a number of pictures and videos of our game as we get more to show you.
