This weekend I started making a new game mode called Tunnel Ball.
If you've seen the gif, you probably already know what it's like. Here it is: https://i.imgur.com/jvQhRB4.gifv
If you're not entirely clear, don't worry I'll explain how it'll work.
In Tunnel Ball, the objective is to get the green ball into the enemy's goal. You can focus on trying to keep enemies off the ball by fighting them, or getting hte ball into the goal yourself. You can shoot the ball and bump into it to make it move.
For the map editor, I could've made some boring goal objects that had 1 purpose, but instead I made a trigger area specifically for the tunnel ball, and if a ball enters those trigger areas they can enable logic gates. I made a "Score Goal" logic gate you can attach to it for a typical Tunnel Ball map, but with this trigger area you can also use tunnel balls in Mission maps for puzzles and stuff.
My main concern with this mode will be lag obviously, I've tested a bit with a poor network environment and hitting the ball around can be.. unsatisfying since it will have a delay. It works well obviously when you have a healthy connection to the server, but that's not always the case with actual players.
There will also be one more game mode on the way, which will similar to Survival mode. You'll be able to play it in single player and with co-op. That's all I'll tease about that for now.
I'll also try to add more weapons/ships/modules along the way, but I'm not going to force it if I don't have any good ideas. I appreciate everyones weapon/item ideas but I'm a bit weird with that sort of feedback because it feels like I'm "stealing" the idea from the player. But I dunno keep em coming because maybe it'll spark something more original for me.
I think we're getting closer to release, as after all of that, I'll only need to finish the campaign. That itself will take a while, especially since my creativity for single player levels is pretty dull. I would like to add an rcon system for servers before release, but I think I should release, test for networking problems and then add it otherwise it'll just make the networking headache worse.
If you remember, I made a post about the lack of players, but I deleted it because I suppose I was too forthcoming about it. I'd still like to addendum here about it, so like I said before an Early Access release isn't a full Steam release since you don't get on the front page. On actual release day, it will show up on the front page of the store and that should bring in a crowd (hopefully).
That's all from me, thanks for your continued support.
-S