Stellar Flux - Firefly/Battlestar inspired space game

UPDATE!

So I've added stray asteroids that fly here and there. But they are not just static decoration, oh no! They are quite interactive (I mean, for a fat chunks of space rocks. Its not like they talk or camp at Starbucks) which stands for hitting each other, colliding with suns, planets, being sucked into Black Holes if too close, or even your and enemy ships! That's right folks, better install couple of those Point Defense stations. Just in case. Otherwise you might find your hull covered with holes like a Swiss cheese. Not to spoil the fun but... With the right but quite rare tools - you might find a way to actually use those stray asteroids to your advantage... (wink wink)

Now, time for some long promised - MOVING PICTURES!!!

Sadly... I could not just record a video. The game is light-weight and nicely optimized but still... My workstation PC is around 7 years old with a lot of its hardware at the edge of expiration. Video recording, specially in high definition and 60FPS always rapes your PC, regardless do you record newest Far Cry or Windows Solitary. Sadly, My PC has proven to be unable to record a smooth and solid 60FPS in HD. So instead - I've made a animated GIFs.

The bad news? The quality suuuuuuuucks & swallows due to GIF 256 colors limitation, shitty framerate and big size of the images. But hey, that's all I could do for now. Do yourself a favor and after opening this page - just leave it for a while. The total size of all images is around 50 MB. So be patient young padawan - Its worth it. Anyway, lets take a tour, shall we?

Nasty Black Hole sucking in all those poor asteroids

Yellow Dwarf burning gloriously.

An elder Red Dwarf.

Ancient Neutron Star brightening the eternal dark...

Raging Pulsar, bursting and turning faster then the human eye can see.

Small Update ""Black Holes Suck!"

So I was just about to FINALLY start adding resources (mineable roids, gas clouds crystals) to the game when I've noticed I had to do something wrong in the sector generation code. Exactly Black Holes placement and collisions detection. Its quite important because we don't want our Black Holes to spawn in the middle of sector's sun or on a planet, right? Would look stupid. So couldn't find a fix right away and I am still working on it. But before finding a bullet proof solution - I thought about some extra measures to avoid such nasty situation and... Well, now the Black Holes actually EAT planets! :O They slowly suck them in. Then, at closer distance, the planet starts getting shredded and bits and pieces of the planet fall into the Black Hole with the mother planet still getting closer. When the Planet reaches the "Point of No Return" its crust losses integrity and the planet core explodes. Bottom line - more interactions! Or as the guys from good old Black Isle used to say:

"Its not a bug - its a feature!"

Small Update (Because of the weekend)

So because there is another long weekend going on - I cannot work too much on the game. But I did found couple of spare minutes to check something out. I've made a test music(?) for Stellar Flux . It was something new as I've never made space music before. My domain are rather creepy, brainmelting, horror tunes. But this ain't that bad. Give it a listen and tell me what do you think, but don't expect Mozart. Its the result of around 30 minutes of work. So no fireworks.

You can listen to/get the music for free from here

And ANOTHER update! <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_biggrin.gif" alt=":D" title="Very Happy"> (I am on fire, oh yeah!~ )

Ingame VIDEO! <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_biggrin.gif" alt=":D" title="Very Happy"> Finally I am getting my shit kind a sorted after all those holidays and I have something that's in motion. There is not that much to do ingame, but there will be. For now - its more of a showreel of how the in game looks and feels. I am trying my best to make the game world feel and be both interactive and alive. So nothing is pure "decoration". Stray roids can be catched. They smash into sun, spaceships, planets and each other. Planet can collide, black holes sucks everything in, suns burns. And I am adding new elements each day. Hope you'll like it. I am doing my best.

Oh my god! did you make those graphics? please share! lol

Oh my god! did you make those graphics? please share! lol

I am a One-Man-Army. I create practically everything for my games. Be it music, sound effects, voice over, graphics, animations, code. You name it - I do it. It might sound like I am bragging but actually... My selection of skills was never a case of choice but... Need. I just never found a suitable partner to team up with. So I ended up learning everything - so I can produce what I need without asking for help or waiting for the help to come.

If you mean the graphics of space - those are actually a result of some tricks and clever use of the engine. The whole background scene, under the grid is made of 5 different images. Where 3 of those 5 often do not spawn at all. The key here is reusing the same graphics but in a different fashion.

The two main images which the background is made of are Stars and Nebulas. But scattered across 12 parallax layers with different zoom. Every time the player enters a new sector, that images are being reroll too. Size, angle, colors HUE, opacity, position and movement - all randomized. And out of those two images - I generate a practically infinite number of almost unique new sceneries.

The trick was to make the nebula texture as busy as its possible. I did that by taking some parts and bits from official NASA pictures, remixing them and blending with artificially created vistas. This way the image feels unique and like a video game, but also has this hard to catch vibe of realism, which comes from the original source.

Anyway - thank you, gosh - thank very much!

At this point I started to get afraid that I'll be only talking to myself here haha.

So let me get this straight since I'm somewhat balancing between interest and confusion

First, What we see in the videos is only the world and scenery, correct?

Secondly, You mentioned about landing on planets, harvesting, using resources etc. Will we be seeing a space ship and a character that will be controlled inside a sector in the future?

So let me get this straight since I'm somewhat balancing between interest and confusion

First, What we see in the videos is only the world and scenery, correct?

Secondly, You mentioned about landing on planets, harvesting, using resources etc. Will we be seeing a space ship and a character that will be controlled inside a sector in the future?

Sorry about the confusion. I'll elaborate right away!

The first sentence is correct. Its the game world, at least in its current state. But its a huge WIP and is missing A LOT of content. Such as resources, enemy ships, neutral alien beings, comets, asteroid fields, crystal clusters, gas clouds,, FogOfWar, and more polishing.

Its just the game world - without Player-World interactions for now. But there are already some basics World-World interactions, such as stray asteroids smashing into each other, into sun, into planets or getting sucked by black holes. Black holes, beside sucking any stray asteroids nearby, also suck and damage planets and plasma from sector's Sun.

About the spaceships - this should answer your question and curiosity Of course, as with everything above - its still an early Work In Progress and everything will be changed and polished up to my current limits of skill and knowledge.

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Oh, seems interesting and nice.

I'd like to play: yours is a spectacular universe.

Oh, seems interesting and nice.

I'd like to play: yours is a spectacular universe.

Thank you most kindy el3um4s!

Aaawlrighty, now I am on the same page here! Thank yous for the explaining The ships certainly look good.

Aaawlrighty, now I am on the same page here! Thank yous for the explaining The ships certainly look good.

No problem, my pleasure And I am very happy you like my starships ^_^ I <3 starships.

Polished and upgraded the starship sprites a bit. I think this is as close as it gets to what I had in mind. And thats the last update for Stellar Flux for couple of days... I got food poisoned and I am barely seing what I type. Plus my kid got fever so we all be staying home for next couple of days.

[CLICK TO ENLARGE]

Ouwwee... hope you get well soon!

The starships are much better now. The previous ones were good but the enhanced colors on these are much nicer to look at.

Ouwwee... hope you get well soon!

The starships are much better now. The previous ones were good but the enhanced colors on these are much nicer to look at.

Very happy you like the new version I was afraid people will get sad due to Pixel Art being turned into more modern design. Plus, I got on my feet again. Kiddo is still recovering. But I've managed to make a whooping discovery! You see, I actually started some WIP for eventual space game couple of months ago. I never really had the opportunity to use those graphics but they are very similar to those over here. Sadly, some nasty stuff happen over that time and I've lost my main Hard Drive with assets and materials worth of 10 years of game developing. Those graphics was of course on that bloody HD. Lucky for me, when I try to work as efficient and in a organized fashion - I still end up having a very messy workplace, with files and stuff scattered all across my desktop and folders. And it saved my butt this time. I've found some of those graphics yesterday, on dropbox and on my PostImage account. Why does it matter? Because there's:

1 x Spritesheet with 35 frames of Mothership graphics, Tier after Tier of progression

26 x Enemy ships from 4 different races

2 x Space Stations

2 x Player main ship sheets. Every with 10 frames, with progressive changes

After a whole day, I just finished cleaning up those old graphics. So now, instead of having:

16 x Enemy ships

3 x Space Stations

10 x Progressive Player ship

Now I have:

44 x Enemy Ships

5 x Space Stations

35 x frames for Mothership

10 x Player Assist Ship A

10 x Player Assist Ship B

10 x Player Assist Ship C

TL;DR:

I am a incredibly happy hippo right now lol.