Dev Log #10: The Closed Alpha is near
Galactic Crew Patch Notes — December 12, 2020
Aggregated from Steam, cross-tracked with Battle.net coverage on GamePatchNote.
Dear players,
A couple of weeks have passed since my last update and it was a very fruitful time. Promotional art was created for Galactic Crew II as you can see below. As a result of that a Steam page has been created. I already got a positive review of it from Valve so I can make it public at any given time.
Free Galactic Crew II for everyone!
In my very first announcement of Galactic Crew II, I said that I will try my best to provide a free copy to every owner of the original Galactic Crew game. In the past weeks, I worked together with a Valve employee to figure out how we can achieve this. As a result, we will do it like this: Once I can start a Closed Alpha, I will create a second branch in Steam of the original Galactic Crew. That means, everyone who owns a copy of the game can, if he/she wants, download the development version of Galactic Crew II. You may know this method from other video games where you can have a stable Release branch and a Beta branch. This way, you can already test the development version of Galactic Crew II and give me feedback and report issues, if you want to. Once Galactic Crew II is published as Early Access game, an employee of Valve will send a free copy of Galactic Crew II to anyone who owns the first game. This way, you can test the development version of the game and get the full release version as a gift once it is available - and I kept my promise! ː2017stickydrinkː
Planets
Besides the project management work, I spent quite some time on planets and bug fixing. While playing the game, I found a large amount of bugs which is normal for this stage of game development. Needless to say, I immediately fixed all of them! ːsteamhappyː
I also invested some time in improving the level editor to expand its features regarding model groups. As you might have seen on my Twitter feed, I added options to configure model groups with scenario types and environment types. These information are used when creating procedural generated planets.
As I wrote in the last update, I re-wrote the entire way how paths for characters and NPCs are determined on planets. It's now way faster than before and it is fully dynamic - a requirement for procedural generated planets. Please note, the very first version you get to play will only have a small variety of planets, but it will constantly be improved until the game's release! Here are two screenshots from a pirate hideout and a research outpost.
What's left?
I need to complete the procedural generation of planets. This will require level design work and completing the algorithm and a couple of optimizations. This should be done fairly quickly.
I will need to create a trailer video, before I can ask Steam to review my game build. This will be also something I will do in the upcoming weeks.
Finally, I will create a full test plan and test every single feature carefully. As soon as I am done, I will give you another update here and explain how you can get the development version of the game. I was hoping to complete it until Christmas, but I think I will need until late January.