New release for #playdate: Peedee ICF-390 Grab it on itch, pay what you want: mamota-games.itch.io/peedee-icf-390 #gamedev #indiedev #solodev

Hyper Vector is out! Crankwords is releasing on Catalog next week! Which means it's time for a new project... #playdate #gamedev #indiedev #solodev

Hyper Vector releases in tomorrow's Catalog drop! #playdate #gamedev #indiedev #solodev

Finally getting metadata assets set up for Hyper Vector, launch animations are fun! #playdate #indiedev #gamedev #solodev

There's been a bit of a break in Hyper Vector development, but I've been on another stint recently. Gradually ironing out bugs and improving balance. Today I've been tweaking the slot machine payouts, here's what I'm using to simulate!

Added a log-overdue feature to Hyper Vector: an explorable map. #gamedev #playdate #indiedev #solodev

I've made a few improvements to trade in Hyper Vector, completely overhauling the Market to provide much more information, which should make profitable trading much easier. There's also more information in the Manifest on good routes! #playdate #gamedev #indiedev #solodev

Hyper Vector is nearing public playtesting! I'm working my way through the game end-to-end personally first, and finding/fixing a lot of bugs and performance issues. Device Info is my new friend! #playdate #gamedev #indiedev #solodev

Fewer updates on Hyper Vector recently, but that's because it's getting close to something play-testable and I've been head-down! I'm down to a handful of blockers, I've invested a bit of time sorting out perf issues and it now runs smoothly on-device too! #playdate #indiedev #solodev #gamedev

Refactoring how the starmap is rendered. Previously it was one sprite with everything drawn onto it - which was eating fps as any kind of update involved a lot of work to run the draw method of the whole thing. #playdate #gamedate #indiedev #solodev

Hyper Vector is gradually filling out with more sound effects, the latest is for when you jump between systems. I added a new animation for it too, it feels a bit more like an event now! #playdate #gamedev #indiedev #solodev

Working on better hitboxes for long thin ships in combat, a proper bounding box is now computed which should make for more satisfying combat. #playdate #gamedev #indiedev #solodev

When you've completed combat training with either faction, you get to visit the simulator as many times as you like to practice combat scenarios. #playdate #gamedev #indiedev #solodev

The bad: This has introduced perf. issues on-device. Lots of careful profiling and tweaking to make sure it doesn't stutter. Nothing insurmountable so far. The main culprit is the trade screen - drawing text is surprisingly slow! But I can drop the framerate here.

Playing around with some portraits. I think I've got a style that I like that works with the feel of the game. There's a lot to do but this feels like a good direction. #playdate #gamedev #indiedev #solodev

Added stats to the game over screen, a nice thing to have - although it turns out adding it was 99% tedious text formatting! #playdate #indiedev #solodev #gamedev

First stab at a main menu for the game, and a logotype. Couldn't resisit throwing in a 'high res' spinning planet for good measure. #playdate #gamedev #indiedev #solodev

A big moment, the game has an ending, a credits screen and... a name! #gamedev #playdate #indiedev #solodev

I've added a significant amount of pew pew to combat. Lasers in particular look a lot better. They're still just line segments to avoid collision testing, but I'm only drawing 1/5th of it per frame. All running smoothly on-device! #playdate #gamedev #indiedev #solodev

More work on the combat engine. A couple of new things driven by the story: battles can now have allies, and there can be conditions that cause the enemy to flee! #playdate #gamedev #solodev #indiedev

The pirate ships are more of a mixed bag. Can you spot the Escape Velocity Nova tribute? #gamedev #playdate #indiedev #solodev

More ships, this time for the Archonate faction! Ships have reputation requirements to purchase. To unlock the more capable ships, you need to get your faction reputation high enough (which may lock you out from purchasing ships from other factions!) #playdate #gamedev #indiedev #solodev

A batch of ships modelled. I'm sticking to the same basic chassis for each faction, these are for the Alliance. You lose a bit of detail on the really big ships, but I think the animation still helps see some of it. #playdate #gamedev #indiedev #solodev

More work on the ship models, I'm happy with these! Fixing the animation frame while toggling makes it much smoother too. #playdate #indiedev #solodev #gamedev

It needs a bit more work to unify how they look here with the combat view too

Today I fell down a rabbit hole and into Blender... I've been unhappy with the shop/shipyard graphics, and I think I might be happy with this approach finally. #playdate #gamedev #indiedev #solodev

Here's the log of the AI making decisions!

It turns out my angular difference check was missing a math.abs... With it in, enemy ships now behave much more sensibly! There's also now the start of a basic HUD for combat too. #playdate #gamedev #indiedev #solodev

The AI can now decide to attack. I'm sticking to simple lasers for now, as I'm worried about the performance impact of projectiles, although so far it's holding up in on-device testing! #playdate #gamedev