Finalize the weapon/ship upgrade systems and accompanying UI in the 2.5D space arcade shooter I'm working on

The DK 30 was such an amazing experience to be a part of. It was super motivating to work so hard alongside so many talented and passionate people, and it was a huge help in pushing me to achieve many goals along the path to completing the game.

I’ve decided to start a patreon to fund continuing development of the game and it can be found at https://www.patreon.com/RadioFreeEuropa

I want to say thank you so much to the community for letting me be a part of this and for all the kind words. I’m planning on taking part in the next DK30 as well whenever that comes and I will be on the Day 9 discord but it’s time that I start putting more energy into establishing a community of my own around the game I’m making.

For anyone interested in more game updates but don’t want to join the Patreon, come hang out in the Discord at https://discord.gg/2ZS8tvV

I’m not quite ready with a new upload, but here are a couple previews of what’s in the next update!

Better Beam FX:

Better Menus:

Download 0.4.24.1 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wLt4O4MIln9PIYFRShvAwtU2_J-qyC_O/view?usp=sharing

Update Video:

Video Text:

Hello, and welcome to the Radio Free Europa Update video for patch 0.4.24

This is a big one for a few reasons.

The first is that I now have the actual name and logo of the game, Radio Free Europa, in the game instead of the working title Project Override. The plan is for update 0.5 to migrate to Unreal Engine 4.27 and that’s when I’ll change the actual application name.

The second change which I’ve teased previously is the new Main Menu layout and accompanying new music.

The next few major changes are all invisible, but I’ll quickly explain them. The interaction between Ships and Guns has been completely reworked from a firing standpoint to accommodate different firing modes for different weapons and also to facilitate another addition, which I’ll get to shortly.

Previously, guns had no internal logic, they simply reported states to the ship object and the ship blindly fired whatever weapons it was being told to fire each frame. Now, there are discrete start and stop fire events not just for the ship, but for individual weapons. This allows for things such as a shot being charged up before firing on release, or a delay before the weapon starts firing. It also allows for things such as projectiles being fired when you pull the trigger and detonated when you release it. Unfortunately I haven’t implemented examples of these yet (that’s for next patch) but all the functionality of existing weapons has been reimplemented using the new systems. There’s also some additional weapon parameters to play with such as a forward spawn offset, which primarily makes it so that you can have a volley of shots spawn fanned out in an arc instead of directly on top of each other but I have some other really interesting plans for how to use this with boss AI.

Next up is Damage over Time. Projectiles can now deal damage over time instead of just on impact. This includes the ability to apply forces and other effects just like regular damage and scaling is appropriate. Currently it’s a little broken in that every tick of damage increases your combo, but next patch this will be changed to only apply a maximum of 5 times per second.

And then we have Beam weapons. These required the gun system rewrite because instead of just spawning a projectile and launching it off, they need to continuously update the beam position and apply damage and effects over time. The effects aren’t final by any means, but it’s possible to make beams that go straight through everything in a line, as well as beams that stop at the first thing they hit.

I have also made some changes to Homing projectiles. There are now two methods homing projectiles can track their targets by. The previous method I’m now calling “force based homing” and the new method I’m calling “rotation based.” Rotation based homing makes the projectiles loop around in big arcs at constant speed, and it makes slow homing projectiles much more effective and fast ones much more interesting. The Force method is still in use for the Hydra missiles though, as to me, it better evokes that “missile swarm” feeling.

Finally, there’s also Game Over music! It’s pretty bleak and dire. But I mean it’s game over, so that’s a pretty bleak and dire situation.

Anyways that’s it for this update, I’ll be back very soon with more but until then have fun IN SPACE!

New Main Menu Preview:

The new build should hopefully be out tomorrow. I re-wrote the way homing projectiles work. I re-wrote the entire interaction between guns and ships to allow for weapons with more varied firing controls (like charge and release to fire). I made it so that projectiles can apply Damage over Time in an area. And there is a lot more as well. For now here is a preview of the new Main Menu layout along with that new music.

New Menu Music:

I will release a new build soon with a ton of new things. It needs a bit of tweaking and I want to have a video explaining the changes but I wanted to put this up as a teaser for one of the big additions.

My friend Levente has been helping me with the music on this game and he made an awesome ambient piece for the main menu.

0.4.23: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15LN0Rh2yJ1jxQyj9oCo05Bob4kGjY8ak/view?usp=sharing

Gameplay:

I have been slightly sidetracked from my DK30 initial goal, but I believe I’m still on track to finish the whole fitting systems and UI redesign by the deadline. And that’s not to say I haven’t been adding and fixing things. I will put up full video and picture update notes later, but I posted a video of a playthrough on the new version.

The major update is to the visuals of the first three levels, they all take place around different moons of Saturn. There are still many changes to come to these, but they are at least the proper locations now.

The other major update is to the look of the minimap. I think it’s much more cohesive and readable now.

There are many balance changes including boss weapon patterns and reductions to the amount of knockback the Falcon and Photon take from enemy fire.

WIP Preview of the new look of the first level

0.4.22 https://drive.google.com/file/d/18APyc9upKqFfIYrfMn31cbhZo3XNNOrd/view?usp=sharing

I added a bitcrush effect to the music when your ship’s shields are down. I learned a whole bunch about how Unreal handles audio during the process, and I managed to cause and then fix a game-crashing bug during implementation.

Additionally, I pruned a bunch of unused assets from the project and managed to reduce the file size by almost half!

https://youtu.be/vbdVj7IROeY

Update Video: https://youtu.be/_4kt87-Uqmw

0.4.21 New Version! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mQ03iQAua5gXad7qPUeRWzikI-6GEFeq/view?usp=sharing

Hello, and welcome to update 0.4.21

This update has quite a few major changes so I’ll just start going through them.

The first addition is UI navigation sounds to provide more feedback when navigating menus and the upgrade interface

In addition to that, separate controls have been added for SFX volume, Voice volume, and UI volume alongside the existing Music volume control.

There are several major changes to the actual gameplay as well:

There is a support carrier that the player ship launches from at the start of a level, which reappears upon clearing a level to upgrade and repair the player ship and warp it to the next level

I changed the appearance of most of the bosses to further differentiate them from the design of the player support carrier, and changed some firing patterns to better suit the new ship models

I fixed the bug where projectiles were impacting the invisible AI logic spheres around a ship instead of the hull of the ship itself. However, I also added collision to the shields themself. The net result of this is that ships are easier to hit while their shields are up, but harder to hit when they are down, and this goes for both the player and for enemies. It’s most visible on cruiser-class enemies with large shield HP

The final major change is to the way thrust is applied when boosting. Instead of locking in a direction when you initiate a boost, the direction of boost thrust is recalculated every frame of the boost to follow your left stick direction. The total amount of thrust is unchanged but you can now, for example, snap the stick in the opposite direction at the end of a boost to sharply cut your momentum and avoid an incoming wall of bullets.

That’s all for this update, see you again soon…. IN SPACE!

It’s been a few days since I have updated, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been hard at work. I’ve taken a few detours fixing bugs and balancing things a little bit, changing the appearance of bosses etc. I’ve done some major hitbox overhauls as well, shields will take the impact of projectiles at their edges now while they are raised, but when they are down projectiles will be required to hit the ship body itself to deal damage. This means that I want to do a pass on all the enemy ship shield sizes before I release another version.

The other major change that will be coming in the next version, that I almost have fully implemented, is that you now launch from a carrier at the beginning of a level, which warps off only to return at the end of the level to scoop up salvage and repair your ship.

Latest version 0.4.20 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uCsVuIasDW_0kMjeYLsYy7bX4D71LwVi/view?usp=sharing

0.4.20 Update Video https://youtu.be/-NwnLMuRDZQ

Text of voiceover:

Hello and welcome to update 0.4.20

This video will also cover some changes that were added in 0.4.19, as there wasn’t a video made for that update.

The first major change, you will see immediately upon starting a run. The old countdown has been replaced with an introduction to the current sector.

The next major change is that instead of spawning near the center of the map, the area they spawn is offset based on the player’s position. They will usually spawn towards the center of the map, but if the player is far enough away from center they will spawn further out instead, to disincentivize just kiting backwards.

AI skill levels have been slightly randomized to make them less likely to clump exactly together. The AI gains a bit of skill with each level cleared, and now the skill of an AI ship is randomized to a range between the previous and next level’s base AI skill levels.

Boss projectiles have had their shapes changed in an effort to make dodging them more reliable.

The main reason behind this is the two new bosses, both of which feature fairly intricate bullet patterns to dodge.

The lighting in one level was fixed to be less blinding.

I changed the timing on some of the UI transitions, particularly when completing a level and when defeated so as to give the player a chance to breathe for a few seconds after all the action

Additionally, the stats screen now properly tracks how many times a given ship has been used.

That’s all the major changes for this update, see you again soon with more updates, IN SPACE!

I didn’t have time to make a video for this but I thought I should upload the update right away because I fixed a potential soft lock scenario in addition to fixing lots of UI bugs.

0.4.19 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v2bHPNjmvf68cnvM6kJP2HwpejVOuyLL/view?usp=sharing

I decided to try to make a proper update video this time!

New version is 0.4.18 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rhaFUjQnzQejfgb3cfzQqoeUaAvoxiuL/view?usp=sharing

https://youtu.be/9i4TOhVF-LM

Update Video VO text in case you don’t want to watch:

Hello, and welcome to patch 0.4.18!

This patch focused mainly on fixing issues introduced in the 0.4.17 mods overhaul, but there are a few other fixes and tweaks that are worth going into.

The main change is to the Purchasing UI. In 0.4.17 there were a couple of issues where only the first eligible weapon at a particular hardpoint would be available to place mods on. When I fixed that, it revealed another bug where it was impossible to navigate between adjacent guns on the same hardpoint, and so this was also fixed.

The other major change is to the behaviour of turreted weapons. In the past, turrets would automatically fire in whichever direction the right stick is pressed. Now, by default they will only fire when the primary fire button is held.

If the right stick is pointing in a particular direction, that is the direction the turrets will fire.

If no direction is being held on the right stick but you have a target locked, the turrets will fire towards the targeted enemy.

If no target is locked and the right stick is centered, the turrets will fire directly forwards as if they were standard non-turreted primary weapons.

Pressing D-Pad Right will toggle turret auto-fire, so that in addition to firing when the primary fire button is pressed, turrets will also automatically fire whenever the right stick is moved from the neutral position.

Speaking of toggling, the modes set for both turret auto-fire and which stick controls ship rotation are now saved between levels and until the game is closed.

In addition to these changes, the dodge chance for the AI for any individual shot has been slightly reduced, to make easy foes dodge very infrequently and hard ones slightly less predictable and more vulnerable to slower-firing weapons.

Also it’s now impossible for the flare launcher to show up in the store, as most ships already have one and the one that doesn’t has homing missiles of its own which would also get re-targeted.

That’s it for 0.4.18

See you again soon… In Space!

Week One Update

I thought I was way ahead of pace at the beginning of the week, but I ended up being much busier with other things that I ended the week only slightly ahead of schedule.

There are a ton of updates to the game though, some of them are largely cosmetic like the updated effect for the Ion Blaster

(Old on left, new on right)

Some changes effect gameplay more, like adjustments to weapon spread, projectile lifetime, and gun placement

The major update was changing the base functionality of how guns attach to ships and how mods attach to guns though, and then I also needed to remake the store interface to work with the new model (And then go through all the existing classes that referred to the old objects and change everything over)

The old store UI was borked anyways

New UI is less broken!

Anyways, there is a new gameplay video up in the playlist and the new build is playable on the discord at https://discord.gg/2ZS8tvV

Or the direct link is https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hH6lp3ykwkghaTT6jPilyipzdCwhfz6C/view?usp=sharing

I meant to update this every day, but I was too busy yesterday to post. Part of the issue is that what I’m doing initially is by design indistinguishable from the way it was before, given that I’m remaking systems that already exist to build the same things in a different way. The good news is that I’ve already done everything I thought I’d accomplish in the first week in just a day and a half, so I may be able to expand the scope of what I accomplish over the course of the DK30. The important thing is just to keep working at it!

When I first started this project I designed a system where there are weapon hardpoints which have a tonnage limit, and on those hardpoints are installed weapons and mods. Both weapons and mods have fitting weights, and both count against the tonnage limits for the hardpoint they are installed on, with mods affecting all weapons on the hardpoint. This works ok, but it limits the scope what the mods can be, because they need to be able to be applied to most if not all possible weapons.

The major change I want to make is to apply the mods individually to the weapons themselves, this will both make balance easier as well as allows me to customize the mods to be more individually applicable to specific weapons and have effects that are more exciting than just stat boosts.

Gameplay videos can be found here https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeaf0xC6CqeUyG4GJdgxfGDj6iLn-MxgR

If you’d like to try the game yourself and give me feedback it would be much appreciated! The current version as I write this is 0.4.16 and a link to that can be found at the bottom of this, but I always post the newest builds on the Discord for the game (tentatively titled Radio Free Europa, although all the art in-game is still under the working title of Project Override)

Anyways the discord is at https://discord.gg/2ZS8tvV for new builds and feedback/discussion

Here’s the direct game link

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d8QgLsymcDKT7pq0ZgTkahqnaLKMQ3cN/view?usp=sharing

EDIT: The game is played with a gamepad, controls are:

LS-Movement

RS-Rotate(+fire turrets if equipped)

LB-Boost

LT-Afterburner

RB-Fire Primary

RT-Fire Secondary

Y-Equip next secondary

B-Target Closest Enemy

R3-Flare

also Dpad left-toggle flight mode (sometimes useful for turret ships)

Dpad right-toggle turret safety(so you can rotate w/ right stick and not fire turrets. I’m in the process of re-working this but I’m listing it in case you hit it by accident)