Independent Game Studio
No game about space exploration would be complete without planets. The original Starcom Flash game had them, but they were purely ornamental landmarks. There were a half-dozen or so bitmaps with color tint shifts to give the illusion of greater variety. As decorative features they worked quite well: the game would have felt much less rich without … Read more
In a 2D world, whether top-down or side-scrolling, as soon as something moves outside the screen’s bounds, it’s gone. In a large universe where the player can freely move in any direction, keeping the player oriented is a challenge. It’s particularly difficult when your universe is literally the universe and the background is often just a field … Read more
This is a technical post on managing a large universe is Unity geared mainly towards other developers. As always, features described are about a work in progress. The finished game may differ from what is described here. The player is exploring a large 2D universe in their spaceship. Some parts of the universe have been … Read more
In the original game, there was a “Havok Defense” passive upgrade that could shoot down incoming missiles and fighters, but was a fairly minor effect. In Starcom: Nexus, the Havok system will still exist, but as a short lived power up you can activate as needed. It will be much more powerful than the original … Read more
As promised in my last post, here are some in-game screenshots (click for full-sized images):
It’s been quite a while since there’s been an update on Starcom: Nexus. I wanted to post a brief update to let people know what’s going on. Development stalled a bit after I got distracted with some other unrelated projects. I returned to it in June and have been working on it full time since … Read more