Dev Log #5: Mining, Exploring, Equipment and UI
Galactic Crew Patch Notes — July 3, 2020
Aggregated from Steam, cross-tracked with Battle.net coverage on GamePatchNote.
Dear players,
I wanted to give you an update last week, but because of a surgery, I was not able to do so. However, I was able to complete multiple milestones in the past weeks.
Asteroid mining
In Galactic Crew 1, you had the possibility to mine asteroids in space to obtain iron with a chance to collect energy crystals and rare loot like diamonds. For Galactic Crew 2, this mechanic remains, but there are also other types of asteroids in one belt. For example, you can harvest silicon to craft building materials. Asteroids will also be fully animated to create a more dynamic feeling.
New equipment & UI is completed
I finally completed the work on the user interface and made some further improvements to it. For example, the view below shows the current state of the crew overview. It is similar to the one used in Galactic Crew 1, but is more cleaned up and all features of all pieces of equipment are listed.
This is also important, because there are new wearable armors! The hazmat suit was just merchandise in Galactic Crew 1, but you will be able to equip them in Galactic Crew 2 to walk safely through hazardous terrain. The artist who made the hazmat suit models are created more armors including a sci-fi flak armor and a marine armor that might be featured in a later update. All new armors also come with new special abilities.
These new armors won't be the only new pieces of equipment for Galactic Crew, but they are the ones which were fully integrated into the game since the last update.
Endless space!
Galactic Crew 1 had a random map generated when creating a new game with an average of 117 planets or systems. Galactic Crew 2 will feature endless space! You start on a map of the same size as Galactic Crew 1, but you can scroll it in all four directions. All newly found systems are also randomly generated depending on the features you activated during the game creation setup.
The Galactic Map also features more details when moving the mouse cursor over a system. For example, it lists the remaining resources in an asteroid field.
Quality of life
I want to expand and improve almost all features of Galactic Crew 1 as I mentioned in the very first update. One of the minor improvements I made in the past weeks are new indicators for selected crew members and I added indicators for all enemies. They feature the creatures' orientations and indicate where they will most likely spot you.
What's next?
I made improvements on various topics in the past months. I will take two weeks off to fully recover from my surgery and go back to development after that. The next big task is a complete overhaul of planets. I will change basically code everything new from scratch with the knowledge I gained from creating the first game. Like dungeons, the new planets will feature way more variety in flora, fauna and game mechanics. This development will take some time, but I will give you updates on the progress every few weeks. You can expect the first update on it mid August.
As I mentioned in the very first update log: When I am coming close to an Closed Alpha version, I will try to find a way to provide a free key to Galactic Crew 2 to everything who owns a copy of Galactic Crew 1. Because I did not do any research so far, I can't say how it will work, but be assured I will try everything I can to make it happen!