Some time ago I shared a very early (and broken on Windows) demo of Zigfrak, my 3D space shooter.
The game has come a long way, and I wanted to share a video of what it currently looks like. It now has galactic navigation, and frameworks for inventory (items) and missions. There are many interesting mechanics in play.
I intend for this to become a serious and polished game of deep space combat and discovery, specifically for Mac and Windows. Right now, it is very close to what I would call an Alpha release (in the development sense of the word, not the marketing one). While certain things are pretty, nothing is final and there is much work to do.
Please have a look! This is a video fly-through of the five missions which are currently part of the alpha build. I will make the bits available soon.
As this was my first game project, I wanted to understand how to create the single player experience. There was a lot to learn and do on that front alone. I started off wanting to make a multiplayer game, but had to choose my battles in order to finish something in a fathomable timeframe.
I’d like to apply the lessons learned from this game to a sequel which incorporates multi-player action-- that depends entirely on how much people hate or love the first one, though :?
An invitation (apparently written by a foul-mouthed space marine with alien management issues) for you and yours to try an alpha build. I can do this because I am an independent developer with no business sense!
Some tutorial missions have been added to the game, which seem to be helpful. Please check it out, and remember that alpha means extremely unfinished.
The (temporary) URL for Zigfrak alpha downloads is:
Wait-- what are you downloading here again? An unfinished third-person space shooter with RPG elements, developed in Unity Pro 2.6, for Windows or OS X (Intel). Please help me out by taking a look!
I also uploaded a video summary of the tutorial content. The rest of the game is still pretty close to the walkthrough which I began this thread with.
i’m impressed, this game looks awesome. you should really make a ‘quit’ button though
the AI seems to do a very good job also, i haven’t played too much yet but the NPCs seemed to work perfectly.
i think - and you are probably already aware if this - that it is still too hard for new players to get started. you have to learn about equipment, flying your ship, fighting, quests and much more all at once. i think you should keep the player in the same system at the beginning for a longer time, they don’t need to learn about jumping to other systems right at the beginning. you might not even need to tell the player how to dock to a station in the beginning.
the fights are a little bit messy and too much stuff is going on at once for new players. there are also too many particle effects for a beginner. in my opinion, you should only have 1 small gun in the starter ship and no escort ships, the same applies to enemies. this is fine if you are a little bit more experienced, but i think a beginner needs to be able to see what is going on. enemies should also be marked in some way on the gui, even if they are not targeted, most of the time you can hardly see where an enemy is (or if the ship you are seeing is an enemy or an ally), unless you have targeted it, especially with so many particle effects around.
i know this is just an alpha version and you have probably thought about some/most of the stuff i said already and this is perfectly fine as “end-game” content, but i just wanted to let you know my thoughts about my first 10-15 minutes of playing.
keep up the good work! i enjoyed playing it and i’d definately pay for a game like this once it’s finished
The only thing I would note is that startup seemed pretty choppy on the older Windows laptop which I tested this on. Give it a minute or so, if it seems to be having problems (a loading screen seems necessary and forthcoming-- there is a pretty big resource loading hit, right after you choose a ship).
I would thank each of you for your feedback if I were obsessive-compulsive enough, but I’m right under the line. Thanks a lot for all of your feedback, it keeps me going.
!
