Current Features and How-To-Play.

I'll be providing a few copies of my game for testing to some friends shortly. For ease, the below is a guide listing the items and features in the game and how they're used.



Starting a new game:

After launching the game and clicking 'New Game', you'll be asked to select a world size.

The red slider will adjust the world size.

This option will determine how many systems there are in the world - the number after 'Selected' will be squared to give the total amount - e.g. a world size of 10 will give 100 systems.

Click 'Start' to begin.

World Layout and Systems:

Think of systems like 'rooms' in a dungeon. A random selection of premade room shapes will be generated in a rough grid pattern. After these are created, they'll be surrounded by a red 'Dead Zone' border - currently for development purposes this does nothing but it will eventually give a warning and destroy the player.

Here are some examples of world layouts as seen in the editor. The green objects in the centre are the rooms, the circles on the outside are the border (which actually appear as squares in-game):

A world size of 10 - or 100 systems.

A world size of 20 - or 400 systems.

Each system will be one of the following 'types':

Asteroid Field: Big asteroids drift around this room, spawning smaller asteroids which can be destroyed with missiles for loot.

Debris Field: Same as above but with space junk/debris.

Shipping Lane: May contain asteroids or debris.

Fringe Space: Pirate fighters will spawn from here.

Planets: Oooooooh, flashy lookin.

Shipyards: You can stop at a shipyard to restock weapons, repair and purchase upgrades. Neutral ships will spawn from here - currently, 3 types of cargo ship - and Police fighters.

Space Station: Offers goods for trade. Also spawns Police fighters.

The GUI:

Top Left - Score, credits, health and weapon supplies.
Underneath: Reputation with the two factions.

Top Middle - Name and type of the current system.

Top Right - Throttle and speed.
Underneath: Goods currently in hold.

Bottom Left - Missile loaded prompt.













Things to mention:

Currently, the only progression is the ability to purchase ship upgrades from the Shipyards.

Fly around for a bit and allow the game world to settle in and start spawning various objects. Similar to chunks in Minecraft, the background/controlling objects and scripts are active only when the player is nearby (a few systems over), so it can take a while before you start seeing other ships flying around. Hanging around in one area (say a group of 6 or so systems) will cause that area to get more heavily populated over time.

It will likely feel a bit empty anyway, I'm still adding stuff.

Find some Fringe Space (and try not to get killed) or a Space Station.

Collect goods to sell at Space Stations by shooting debris and asteroids with missiles.

Kill other ships for goods and supplies.

Experiment with the controls, swap between Arcade and Sim controls (H) and see which you prefer (Arcade is easier but Sim feels a lot cooler once you get the hang of it).

THERE'S NO QUIT BUTTON YET. What?!..... I'll get to it.
To quit, either die to get to the death menu or end the game via Alt+F4 or Task Manager.

Controls:

Please see the included text file containing current controls.
Also - cheating is bad!