It’s been a while (sorry!), so here’s a quick update concerning the state of Capital Command, last year's progress, and what comes next.
State of Development
Core gameplay is still the major focus. I've gone through a couple of iterations and settled into what I believe will be the final version. I'll write a separate post with more details about the gameplay iterations and the current, and hopefully final, model, but briefly:
Firing Runs!
Space battles are now based on firing passes: ships flying at high speed toward each other, firing their weapons while the enemy is in range, then turning around to do it again, and again, until someone either gives up or blows up. The implementation is mostly done:
- Game Engine: Fortunately, I didn’t need to change the flight model - ships move realistically, missiles track their targets, projectiles hit or miss, same as before.
- Stats Adjusments: What I did need was some heavy stats tuning — like making artillery short-range but more effective against missiles, and tweaking the ships' engines to work better for firing pass dynamics.
- AI: This took some doing. The ship's autopilot got a significant rewrite, and the enemy AI is still work in progress as I'm typing this. Fun times.
- UI/UX: I'm not doing a full redesign, but some work is definitely needed here. Mostly, just cleaning up old elements that no longer provide useful information for the firing pass model. It's always a balancing act between having too little info, which is frustrating, and showing too much, which creates clutter that obscures the important stuff.
2025 Roadmap:
The plan for 2025 is basically to lock down the flight simulation and then focus on the campaign.
- Core Gameplay Completion: I aim to bring the flight and combat models close to their final state, and freeze them until release.
- Updated Demo: There may be a playable demo of the final state of the flight and combat sim, but I'm not sure yet—it’ll depend on how much work it might require and the state of the project at that time.
- The Campaign: The single-player campaign is NOT done. I have a reasonably accurate idea of what it will be like, and that's pretty much all I have now. I expect to start serious work on the campaign sometime next spring.
- More Ships! I'm really looking forward to adding more ship classes to the game. I'm planning to add destroyers, light and heavy cruisers, and battleships, in addition to significant reworks of the corvette and the battlecruiser.
That's it, now you know what's up :)
Thanks for reading!
The dev