Independent Game Studio
wx3labs@gmail.comBig news! After maintaining radio silence since I wrapped up development on Starcom: Nexus, I’ve been hard at work on a follow-up title, tentatively called Starcom: Unknown Space. Checkout the brand-new trailer on Steam and add it to your wishlist: There’s a lot of work left to do, but I’m optimistic that it will be … Read more
Following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, I’ve considered what I want to do beyond state my support for Ukraine and condemn the terrible violence ordered by the Russian president. I’ve decided that any sales revenue that Steam identifies as being from the region (Russia, Ukraine, & CIS) will be donated to help the Ukrainian … Read more
Starcom: Nexus has about 65,000 words of text, roughly the length of a short novel. How does an indie game dev know which languages, if any, to translate into? Translation costs vary, but I’ve seen estimates ranging from $0.02 to $0.08 per word if you use a freelancer or $0.10 to $0.30 per word via … Read more
For the past few months I’ve been dividing my time between preparing bug-fixes/patches for Starcom: Nexus and starting development for my next title, likely some kind of follow-up game in the same vein. In the past few weeks I’ve developed tendinitis in my left arm and wrist. Until it recovers on its own or I … Read more
My Start My career as an indie game developer got off to a late start. I spent most of my professional life as a web developer, initially as a general purpose “webmaster” before specializing in UI during the dot-com era, then switching to server and database development. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-thirties … Read more
The progress of time really seems strange these days. I have been working on two things since the last update. First, is the post-mortem for Starcom: Nexus which will describe my journey in making the game, what I learned, what went wrong, what went well, etc. It’s almost done. Second, I’ve begun implementing some UI … Read more
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve begun work on a new project that likely will be some kind of follow-up to Starcom: Nexus. For this week’s update I thought I’d do a technical discussion of one of my efforts.
I hope all our commanders out there are staying safe and healthy! No major updates this week. I’ve been plugging away at creating the foundations for my next game (which I still plan to be some kind of sequel to Starcom: Nexus). This has involved developing a number of systems that I know I’ll need … Read more
A few weeks ago I talked about the possibility of a sequel and posted a link to a short survey for those who might be interested in more Starcom: Nexus. I asked you what you did and didn’t like and what you hoped to see in another game like it. Based on the several hundred … Read more
Earlier this week I pushed version 1.0.11 to the default branch. This fixes several minor interaction bugs, including one which required a restart if you exited to the main menu during a survey. The bigger change is that the game has now been fully translated into German and Russian by native speaking translators, replacing the … Read more