What' s New

This last week I've been working on features for the "World Test" map. "Battle Test" is pretty much complete, as it was meant to just test out movement and combat, and ensure the basic loop is fun. "World Test" is where I'm proving out the core mechanics for the planned full proper open world.

The basis of the open world is an economic simulation, and that's been implemented in "World Test", with the three non-pirate stations producing and consuming different goods. Transport missions now generate to carry deliveries between these stations, and the player can accumulate money through fulfilling these. The AI also uses the missions to move items as well.

Models

OtterAlpha from the discord server has graciously volunteered to make some models. The first of which is already in game, and the second of which is still in progress, but looking great.

Features

• Economy, production, consumption, subs moving commodities between stations.
• UI for commodity trader, buying/selling commodities
• Player money tracking, tying into commodity buying / selling.
• Added first pirate station to open world, tweaked behaviors and patrols.
• Added Firereef pirate station.
• Added patrolling minisubs (called sparrows) around stations in open world with strafing attack behavior.
• Added OtterAlpha's seeker model.
• Fixed AI subs firing torpedoes simultaneously, causing them to hit each other
• Fixed Hudson and Novarus being neutral on the battle test map.
• Added first steps towards economic missions, populating imports / exports at commodity trader.
• Economic mission generation.
• AI picking up and delivering trade missions.
• UI and logic for player accepting and delivering missions.
• UI for showing current cargo and missions.
• Destroy missions on timeout or agent dying.

What's Next

The Overall Plan

The big picture plan is to keep adding features to the "World Test" map until it more or less is "feature complete" for what I want the full game to be (minus some aspects that require the full world). Once that's complete I'll start working on the full world itself, which will be a spherical moon about 800 km in radius. This will involve a mix of procedural generation and hand crafted areas.

The current set of remaining features for "World Test" are:

• Patrol Missions
• Bounty Hunting
• Narrative quests (distinct from the generated, non-narrative missions)
• Equipment Customization
• Buying new Submarines
• Dynamic Player Reputation
• Pirate Economy / Looting Wrecks
• At least 1 more submarine
• A full map view, including terrain and manually placed waypoints.

Immediate Next Steps

The current work is to wrap up the current delivery missions, adding waypoints to guide the player to the destination station. This will lead directly into patrol missions, where the player will have to visit specific waypoints (and destroy any hostiles in the area). This should be wrapped up in the next couple days.

Sub Rebalance

The current development version of the game also has rebalances to the full set of subs, equalizing the playing field somewhat and changing the player's starting sub in "Open World" to a more jack-of-all-trades design.