Well, it sure has been a while since my last post! As an aside, that post somehow got flagged as being mature, and I can't see the button to appeal it. Doesn't matter too much to me but I really wonder what on earth the algorithm saw that caused it to flag my post!
In any case, I've been keeping very busy, and I've gone through almost everything programming related on the lists I previously posted. My sleep schedule has been somewhat iffy so after each day I'd feel too tired to make a blog post, weeks turned into months, you know the drill! I have a bunch of topics written up so I think I'll be good going back to a weekly posting schedule.
With that out of the way, welcome to my new research user interface! A lot of the text is placeholder because I have completely revamped my research projects to fit in nicer with the other systems (like the AI matrix) and progression within the handcrafted dungeons/campaign.
Nevertheless, the UI is fully functional - we have a nice prominent list of current research instead of two dinky tacked on left/right arrows which were hardly visible, first and foremost. The list of materials in the bottom shows the newly-added scrap cost for research, doing away with bars that would tick up over time to show research progress, as research is now instant.
Finally, you have the somewhat simplified main window. Most playtesters found that the scientific-paper-style I wrote the research in was overwhelming and very text heavy, even when I highlighted the important bits. Now I'm going to keep it to a couple of lines of prose, a succinct description of what you unlock, and maybe repeating the materials/scrap cost within the window, as it is quite big and might otherwise look too empty.
In the video, you can see me accept a bunch of research, and see new ones appear in the list as you clear their dependencies. And of course it's completely navigatable with both mouse only, keyboard only, controller only, or some unholy combination of the three.
Thanks for reading, look forward to more big changes!
This is what happens when I accidentally save the entire dialog database to the system information portion of the save data, lots and lots of locations - oops! Honestly, I'm surprised the game didn't crash and handled it...
In other news, as part of the location maps revamp to be custom rather than procedural, I added a feature that lets me export each floor of a location as a separate CSV in a format that roughly approximates my current format for importing custom locations. The reason I'm doing this is so that I have a rough idea of the general generation characteristics and parameters, and work using them as a reference:
It's a bit messy like this looking at the raw csv data, but when I import it into Google Sheets I'll have a few rules that automatically highlight cells based on what's in them to give me a better idea of the layout. Most importantly, small and big X's are the rooms/corridors, empty spaces are walls, and letters are the general class of feature like m for machine, t for treasure, s for stairs and so on.
In my actual custom maps, the non-x letters are replaced with a number representing the specific feature ID I want generating in that location, using underscores if I need to define any additional characteristics like whether a set of stairs goes up or done, etc.
I could have directly output the IDs of these features but weighing up the pros and cons (accuracy vs readability) and that I was more interested in the general structure of the dungeons rather than specifics, I think this was as good of a compromise as I could manage.
I'm dreading the save data rework because currently I am only saving one system, at a time, and with the advent of unique systems you'll be able to travel back and forth between, I'll need to keep the entire suite of locations saved so I can keep track of which tiles have been explored.
Stellar Terminus master change list (part 5 - finale!)
We've made it to the final part of the blog series where I talk about the changes I'll be adding/have already added to Stellar Terminus, with a focus on user experience, transparent mechanics, and overall simplification of non-core systems. Here we go!
Research Revamp
Research projects are getting quite an overhaul - they still are key to progressing through the game, unlocking new features, and the main resource sink before crafting becomes available. However, before they were dressed up as scientific papers which was very much in line with your science gathering mission but made each research item very verbose for not much gain, in addition to only being able to display 1 project at a time on screen.
I've dramatically decreased the amount of fluff text and am also planning to add a menu where you can see the names of each research item simultaneously, in order to provide a better overview for the player. In addition, I used to have 54 separate research items, each potentially unlocking multiple things. Now I've pared it down to 35, each only unlocks 1 thing, and many of the quality of life research that had to be unlocked are now given by default.
The other reason for reducing the list was to manage feature creep a bit better. It is easy to add a new line in my research database saying that I'll add such and such new mode to the game, but it's an entirely different story to then have to spend the time to program it in. So for now, things like an endless mode or a sector finder (irrelevant given the now set sector progression) or a mode where you explore bigger locations in your ship are off the table, but down the line who knows...
As I mentioned previously, I also simplified the research process. Before you submit items, then you have to explore new tiles in locations and battle enemies in order to generate data for the project. Both data and items would be processed at certain rates so you'd get notifications in the log window when your research was at certain %s or finished. Now, you submit items and scrap and research is completed instantly, which I think solidifies player feedback between buying something and getting it instantly.
Matrix Revamp
I had a big 9x9 grid of various passives that research would unlock, and you could slot in cores into them to activate and enhance them. Higher tier cores would provide better effects, and was designed as an answer for all your unused friends in creature collector games wasting away at your base/inside your PC/etc. While I have the scaffolding in place and a lot of lower tier effects working, the trouble is that the mechanics just weren't very clear or engaging, and eventually you'd want to be using the highest tier robot cores in every slot, meaning all your others would be sitting there doing nothing once again.
So first off, robots don't have tiers anymore, they just have levels, as part of the new statting system I mentioned earlier, making the game's encounters more like pokemon and less like SMT. Second, I have once again scaled back the number of passives to avoid the grid feeling overwhelming, and each research will be tied to exactly 1 passive (barring the ones that unlock new sectors), shown with its name in a list rather than just the icon in a grid.
Each passive will have a certain number of slots, and each unique robot core inserted into those slots will provide a linear bonus to that passive, and this bonus does not depend on level, tier, or anything else. Simply put, if you have the HP up passive unlocked, and you insert 1 core, your party will get an extra 20hp. 2 cores, 40hp, and so on, up to the maximum number of slots that upgrade supports.
Research will unlock interesting features like trap disassembling, liquid collection, optional level scaling, teleportation, and so on, and you'll get those by default, but adding cores into the associated passive slots will provide enhanced collection rates, decreased energy usage, and so on. Basically, play with the new toys and if you find them useful, go and slot in any unused robot cores into the respective passive to power them up.
I might also make it so that cores slotted into the matrix can still be used in battle, I'm not sure yet. It'd really just be a quality of life thing and it wouldn't break the game, so we'll see how it goes once I get to revamping this mechanic.
Other bits and pieces
These are the other few items in my list of "large effort" items but there's not too much to talk about since they're minor impact but will take quite a bit of programming:
Materials revamp: Along with research and the new sector structure I will need more items available at each tier, and faction specific items. This ties in with gating research progress by needing certain items, but I'm yet to figure it out. I also need to integrate the new resources you get from trap dismantling, liquid collection, and object crushing too. I'll scale back the materials I have now which are quite generic (a few key elements + various robot components) which means I'll have to retool my parts crafting list but what can you do, really.
Log filtering: I want the player to be able to filter the log for various messages such as battle, fluff text, tutorials, and so on. I already have arrows that let you scroll up and down so adding coloured letters shouldn't be too much work? Maybe?
Dungeon pathfinding: Based on feedback regarding the tutorial, I need a way to display an objective on the map, or at least indicate its direction. I already have a system for automatically moving the player, so maybe I'll also add a path that can be set and travelled back home or to your last location, ala the routes you can set up in the Etrian Odyssey games.
New factions: Currently I have 5 main factions in the game. I need a 6th major faction to fill out one of the mid-game sectors, and then I also want some minor factions sprinkled around here and there for variety and for filling in key niches in the element/affinities/stats spaces that I don't currently have filled. I'm thinking another 3-4 for a total of 10ish. That's a massive undertaking of course and is lowest on my list of things to do, but we'll see where I'm at as things progress. I am SO rusty regarding my pixel art and animations so it'll be interesting to see how that goes when I do eventually pick it up again.
And that's all I have to say regarding the changes coming to Stellar Terminus. I already have more blogs lined up and things will go back to normal where I'll be posting about what I've been working on each week rather than these lengthy overview ones, so stay tuned for those! And of course, thank you very much for reading as usual!
You know, I've put in reminders every week to write about my progress so I stay consistent, but my gosh does the week go fast...
ANYWAY hi, here's the blog featuring... (eyeing my list)... some of the major changes that I've determined I need to do as part of the journey towards finishing Stellar Terminus!
Sector overhaul
Most pertinent to game progress will be the way that a sector (a group of dungeons) will be generated. Much like how the locations will now be completely custom (more on that later), to tell a better story and to ease to player into the game, I have also overhauled the sectors - no longer will they be collections of random locations, but they will have a thematic and narrative purpose as you travel from the outer orbits to the inner orbits, beat the sector boss, and gain access to the next sector.
Sectors will mostly be themed around one faction with some omni-enemy areas and one or two other faction zones to keep things fresh, and each area will have a defined level range and enemies that can be found in order to keep progression hopefully tighter than before. The level range can be as wide or narrow as I want and this gives me finer control than just labelling things as a tier 1 (1-10), tier 2 (11-20) sector and so on.
Previously, you could roll around in one of the many unaligned sectors, fight basically every enemy in the game, and not really have any sense of progression or exploration. In addition, it was incredibly hard to come in prepared for one of these sectors, in terms of covering your own weaknesses and attacking enemy weaknesses, because of the wide spread of enemies.
I still plan to have randomly generated sectors for the motivated, because the code is already there so I don't see any reason not to, but they won't be the focus of the game anymore, and probably to the benefit of it, because it was quite aimless previously.
Oh and by the way, I currently have my locations divided up into 6 sectors, with 2-5 orbits each. That's 47 locations, plus I'll have more because one of my sectors is devoid of the main faction as I haven't designed it yet (foreshadowing)!
Location overhaul
First off, pardon me if I sometimes refer to locations as dungeons, as that's what I've always thought of them as (dungeon crawling etc) but in-game they should, hopefully, be referred to as their less fantasy-coded counterpart, locations.
Anyone who's played the game already knows I have support for custom maps per-location, as the tutorial/launch base is a hand-designed map. The big part will naturally be designing the maps for all the other locations, but considering I already have the generation parameters for them, doing a more stylistic set of maps shouldn't be too hard.
Plus, I am planning to keep the random generation. As the universe is in its late stages of decay, each sector will have a ruined/decaying/crumbling/other thematically appropriate word counterpart which will be the randomly generated version of the location. This will be unlocked after you complete it and will be a mirror to the story counterpart. I would expect higher amounts of loot and tougher enemies to be patrolling these areas, in addition to a lot of different traps and machines that weren't featured in the main locations.
Research overhaul
Both of the above items also lead into the research overhaul. While I thought the initial concept was cool (that is, styling each research item as a scientific paper with an aim, method, and conclusion - the unlock), In testing, this fell flat due to the overwhelming amount of text on-screen and the ability to only see one research item at a time. That plus the data gathering in the dungeons while the research was chugging away was very unintuitive.
So I will be simplifying the research interface, showing only the necessary information, and letting the player select from a list of research rather than scrolling through each one. I haven't quite decided how to do this, but since local and relativistic navigation used to be research (that is, the ability to fly between locations and between sectors respectively), and now that travel between orbits is gated by completing the respective location on the previous ring, I will need to think carefully about how to best implement player progression.
if it comes down to it and I do implement this through the research interface I will have faction-specific materials as well as probably key materials located at the bottom floor of each location that will serve as gates. If I decide to unlock orbits automatically based on criteria, well, that'll be a different story! I definitely want unlocking sectors to be done through the research menu however, as that is a big deal that serves as a big milestone for the player.
Next week's blog should be the final part, covering the final few random items (core matrix, log window, dungeon nav, and some other miscellaneous things). Thanks for reading as always!
Due to some housesitting, I took the time to work on changing lots of things in the databases this game uses. They're only csv files so nothing fancy, but regardless these were what I was working on!
As part of the big revamp, I'm changing how enemy stats work. Instead of a fixed system where every enemy of type A has the same stats (like in Dragon Quest, SMT, etc.), enemies will now simply have a level and use the formulas that used to only apply to player growths (ala Pokemon). This will mean substantially more encounter variation AND better balancing as I'm not juggling hardcoding stats to a level I think will be player-appropriate.
Of course, that means working backwards from the player stats at level 99 - this takes a bit more mental math and I'll probably have several columns dedicated to some quick calculations at each tier (just a reminder, 1 tier is approximately 10 levels). Currently, the XP and scrap calculations are completely out of whack because their formulas were scaled to the old stats but that should be fine to adapt.
As I mentioned in part 2, enemies will also have a signature burst attack that can be used by consuming a shared point resource gained by attacking or healing with a variety of elements in battle. I first assigned a burst effect to each unit, but then decided this was a poor way to do things as I hadn't covered the full range of effects I was hoping for.
This led me to work on the routines database, where the new burst attacks would live. Here I drafted up all the effects I was after, reassigned/invented cool new names for them from the old grid system, and used the existing move database to fill them out. There's now enemy-wide damage, single target damage, DoTs, and healing in all 9 elements, attack/defense/speed buffs and debuffs, plus a range of status effects and status clearing effects, for a total of 71 different effects. While some units will reuse certain burst moves, each unit will have a unique point cost to using the move, where the more points you use, the better the effect of the burst attack (more damage/healing, longer status durations, etc)
I also worked on some simplification while I was there - the UI can get quite busy and cluttered and so I wanted to cut down on the number of attacks that had multi-element, multihits, and random esoteric effects like, clearing only data-type status effects. I've buffed said moves to compensate and made their weird effects more standardised (e.g. instead of clearing data status effects, it'll clear all virtual status effects which includes data, neural, and sensory elements).
I also worked on the attack descriptions as they would be front and center when choosing the attack. I already have the cost on that pane, so I wanted to generate short succinct descriptions of the attack, for example, "Deals medium kinetic damage to one row, and inflicts Defense Down". I previously had mixed in move effects with descriptions of how the move is executed in-universe, but that is better suited for when the move is used, as it will say something along the lines of "USER unleashes a barrage of bullets" etc.
Speaking of flavor, I also changed up some of the battle dialog. Each unit now has a short snippet of text for when they are hit, in addition to a bit of polish for their other dialog triggers (battle start, attacking, recruitment chance up, and asking to be recruited). Dialog is not my strong suit so these will probably need further changes but for now this is fine.
Finally, tutorials. This is an ongoing process as more things in the game get changed, but I changed a few tutorial lines and deleted a whole bunch of irrelevant ones based on the changes that I had previously detailed in part 1 and 2 of this blog series. Naturally, there are also major changes coming up to several systems which will necessitate more tutorial changes.
That's all for now, there's going to be 1 more part to this blog with the final set of changes!
In this second part of this post series, I'll be going over the changes that I've tagged as medium effort!! Let's get started right away!
Inventory revamp
The first and most prominent thing I did in this category was a complete overhaul of how I was treating the inventory. Previously, you had an inventory limit (to encourage returning to the base and not hoarding things) and you could manually choose which items to keep on you or store. The way that having an overloaded inventory generated increased oxygen consumption was not very clear, and there was player confusion about not having the right resources available for research/crafting because they were in your suit rather than in the ship's storage.
So the revamp is now as follows:
Unlimited stacking of any one item (with a hard cap of 999)
Unlimited number of types of items in your inventory
Automatic transfer from suit to storage upon entering your base
No more transfers from storage back to suit (it serves no purpose because...)
Parts can now only be equipped at base (I found players wouldn't worry about part management in the field anyway)
Friendly robots will let you trade directly from storage (avoiding the tedium of getting the item from base and going back)
I may re-enable part equipping in the field if this proves to be a controversial decision - that's the only negative that really comes about from all these changes.
Element revamp
Elements and the advantage grid have been overhauled as well. The advantage grid used to be interacted with by hitting a weakness, healing, or inflicting a status effect with a particular element. This lit up the corresponding cell within the grid, and depending on how many lines you filled and which elements you lit up, before the enemy's next move, you would get one of a LARGE amount of effects. This was incredibly confusing and most players did not understand nor engage with the mechanic. And fair enough, it was an incredibly poor design choice! Now:
The element grid is just the 9 elements of the game in order
Doing anything advantageous (dealing damage - no longer just weakness hits), healing, and status effects causes that element to light up and you get 1 point of burst power.
Each robot core has a different burst command that consumes a number of those points, and each burst effect will depend on the robot - a support robot will do a party-wide heal, an offensive robot may do high damage, a sneaky robot might stealth the party, etc.
Further to this point, each element is now colour coded with a unique colour to indicate what class they belong to (orange for common, pink for exotic, and teal for virtual)
Element icons have also been changed so that common elements are a diagonal line, exotic elements are circles, virtual elements are diamonds, and non-elemental effects are cross shaped (see image comparisons below, with the new elements on the left)
Now, I actually quite liked the older element sprites, however, in the heat of battle where all damage/healing is typed, those icons became very unreadable just because they'd only be popping up on-screen for half a second, and weren't very visually distinct. This + the colours should help to differentiate them and easily identify what class they belong to, as the element-class relationship was not very clear prior to this. I don't think I've done it justice here to be honest, but it should be evident in game!
Talkative robots
The final change I'd like to talk about is that I needed clearer UI for when robots were talking in battle. Previously I had a single-line rectangle an a single pixel-wide line connecting the box to the speaker. I had lots of feedback about how this was very unclear, and so I've made a custom speech bubble text box for these events, which you can see as the opening image of this post.
As you can see, the box can be any colour and come out from any side, and it is a multi-line textbox with variable width and height! I have also made it so that you can talk with the assistant in your base - one of my friends suggested it to be a more direct form of delivering lore and interacting with your space-faring buddy as opposed to the randomly scattered and fragmented logs that you'd find within the dungeons, and I completely agree.
Now, depending on your level, the assistant's level, how many different robots you've recruited, what research you've unlocked, how many locations you've visited, etc. your assistant will respond and provide you with related tips and tidbits! I had fun writing up this database but am still yet to program in the triggers, but all the systems are in place to track these events quite easily.
This was again kind of a long blog, so thank you for reading to the end! I hope you found some of this stuff interesting - though I hope you'll find it more interesting to play with compared to the previous systems!! There are possibly 2 more blogs to go - one regarding the database changes and another with the big hard hitting items!
In my last post, I announced that there were indeed things getting changed, but not what they were. Since the post was getting quite long, I decided to leave that for this week's post, where I can go a little more in depth into what's changing and why.
There are three main principles that I've tried to apply when coming up with these changes. In order of importance, these are:
Apply effort where it benefits the game/player the most
Remove or simplify systems where they are unnecessarily complex and/or contribute negatively to the player experience
Reduce scope and workload for non-core mechanics
For items that I've deemed "no effort" these literally involve commenting lines of code/swapping code around for things that have already been implemented (and making sure nothing breaks afterward!). Making these changes were painful since I was removing hours of work, but for the sake of a better game it really did have to be done! These items are as follows:
Power load: Initially I had it so that robots would have a parts capacity - their power load - that limited the number and power of parts that could be equipped on them simultaneously. When overloaded, the robot would lose stats proportional to the difference in values, but you'd still gain the benefits/moves of all parts equipped. I've removed it because it was a fairly unintuitive system and parts already are limited by each robot's 5 part slot types (weapons, frame, mobility, support, universal). I also noticed that going over the power load with an item would show a preview of all the unit's stats going down, and my playtesters just attributed that to being a terrible part, rather than they were about to exceed that robot's power load.
Fuel costs: Fuel was initially needed to move between locations within a sector, and between sectors as well. The game also adjusted fuel usage, making it cost more when shifting between orbits, and even more when moving from an inner to outer orbit because realism!!! I had lots of safeguards in place to ensure that you couldn't get stuck in a location that was too difficult, but that meant fuel could be gained from both fights and exploration. None of that was really engaging or core to the experience, so now you are free to travel between/within sectors as you like!
Research data: Research is the key to unlocking new features in Stellar Terminus, and you used to need to submit both materials and research data in order to unlock the research. Research data was gained by uncovering new squares in a location and from fighting enemies, and so one would have to initiate the research, THEN go out into the field and collect data, wait for the data to be processed, and then you'd be notified that the research was ready for collection. This delay between having the items and gaining the effects of the research was meant to encourage exploration while having something cooking in the background, in practice it only served to be a big friction point for players, and weaken the association between researching something and getting a new thing to play with.
Adding scrap to research requirements: With the removal of data, each research item now has a scrap cost. Scrap currently wasn't doing much, only used to activate some recovery machines in the dungeons and, later on, to be used as a cost for parts fabrication. This gives scrap another use and gives you more incentive to seek it out in the early game before fabrication becomes available.
Flipping the move description and details panel around: Previously, a move's details would be the first thing you see, and you could press a button at the bottom of the window to check the move's description. After realising that it is easier to parse text rather than numbers, I have inverted this such that you see the move's description first, which should help the player immediately identify what the move does (as demonstrated in the left portion of the above image).
I didn't think this writeup would be so long, and I still have the small, medium, large, and database items to go through, so I'm going to split them up into their own posts! Thank you for reading!
Well, my first "real" post in over a year! There's lots to say, but where to begin, I guess the demo that I released in October 2024 is a good place to start!
Demo recap
The work leading up to the demo was intense - some anticipated such as all the code needed to finalise it, and others not so much, mainly the many, many different sized assets assets and dev account validation process that steam required. As a sidenote, I know wikihow gets a bad rap but this guide was actually perfect and told me everything I needed to know.
Working towards my self-imposed deadline, I didn't do much in the hype-building/advertising department, and that being said I was floored with the response I got! I'll have to check the stats again when I get the chance, but it was 1000s of downloads and 100s of wishlists, which was honestly incredible. I got noticed by some cool Japanese game aggregator too so demographics-wise, Japan was the second highest country to visit my page!
First person dungeon crawling is a niche genre, and getting feedback from enthusiasts was incredibly helpful and is shaping my work this year. Compared to the download/wishlist numbers, I only got a little bit of feedback across the steam forums, a couple of enthusiast sites, and Tumblr, but it was all very valuable nonetheless!
Post-demo activities
I decided to take a break after the release, in order to gather feedback, reassess where I was headed, and prevent burnout. Little did I know that it had already set in, and I just didn't know it yet. There was still a ton of work ahead and this was very demoralising. Weeks turned into months and throughout 2025 I had around 4 quite disruptive periods of housesitting, and a couple of other life events that made development on Stellar Terminus come to a standstill.
If you have been following this blog for a long time, you may know that I am working in Gamemaker Studio 1. The new version of Gamemaker used to be called Gamemaker Studio 2 (GMS2), but has since rebranded to Gamemaker. GMS2 was released in 2016, so GMS1 was absolutely ancient at this point. I developed several smaller games in GMS2 with my friends in order to check it out, and wanted to port my code over to it due to the nicer UI, more performant compiler, and additional language features it offered.
Unreleased as of yet, but I also developed a board game roguelike prototype in GMS2 during one of my housesitting stints that takes an expanding board and lets you build an army from various chess/checkers/shogi/xiangqi pieces that I'll write about at some point in the future.
I also prototyped a bunch of boardgames through Tabletop Simulator, some for gamejams and others just because I wanted to explore a cool idea or mechanic. Whenever I get an idea that I can't stop thinking about, I have to get it playable in some form otherwise it drives me crazy!
Another housesitting session, I had a cursory look into Godot and had my first go at a simple first person 3D game where you climb a randomly generated tower containing various easter eggs on each floor. It was my friend's idea and they envisioned it as a chill game that you could turn your brain off and play/stream while on call with your other friends!
We are so back: 2026 edition
Anyway, it's 2026 now, and I was of two minds in terms of completing Stellar Terminus. On one hand, there was still so much work to do, and I was nowhere close to finishing it, and I was also not enjoying development due to how old and messy the codebase is, in addition to GMS1's clunky interface. On the other hand, I was still very much in love with the idea of the game and what it could be, in addition to finishing it for all the other people (you guys!) who want to see the finished version.
One of my friends threw me a curveball and gave me a third option, one that I embarassingly hadn't really thought of: finish the game, but revise the scope such that there was less to do. With all the various dev activities I've been doing over the past couple of years, I really do feel like my design philosophy has evolved a ton and has tended more towards simple engaging mechanics that together give rise to emergent complexity.
I know these words might be ringing alarm bells in some people's heads (my own too, honestly), I want to state this clearly: nothing central to the game is being changed. The setting, combat, exploration, aesthetics, progression mechanics, and the main loop of explore > fight > return home and recover are all either staying the same or getting some polish.
What I am doing is working to trim the superfluous and confusing mechanics that, at first I thought "wow this is so cool and adds realism to the game!", but I now realise that they just only add unnecessary friction to the game! I have a big list and have been working through it currently, but these include removing fuel, power load, inventory limits, and revamping the elemental advantage grid, research, core matrix, and galaxy structure.
If those words mean absolutely nothing to you, great! That's because they were obtuse, poorly explained, and underutilised mechanics! This blog is already very long so I'll have a separate blog going through all of them and more.
Oh and the big one? Hand-crafted dungeons for the majority of dungeons instead of random generation. Yes I know I said I wanted to make less work for myself but if I'm going to put in effort, it might as well be where it will make the most impact to players.
That about wraps things up - if you have any feedback regarding the game and its current/future trajectory, please don't be shy, now is absolutely the perfect time to let me know what didn't work for you! Comment here or tell me in private with an ask or whatever, I promise I'll read and respond to it all in some form or another! Many thanks again for being patient with me!
Thank you, and same to you too (actually, to everyone who reads this)!!
In other news? I'm back on my bullshit this year (read: finishing this game) after an interesting 2025, and will be back with an update post soon once I have finished my gameplan for this year.
For anyone with the patience to still be following the blog and/or still be interested in Stellar Terminus, know that I very very much appreciate it!
Anything new going on? Or old going on? Is there anything at all going on?
Hi there, thanks for checking up on me!
This blog has been super super quiet lately because I've had a few changes in living circumstances over the past half a year (mainly housesitting in various forms) so unfortunately I haven't really been in much of a state to post or do dev work sadly.
I have done a bunch of changes since releasing the demo late last year but nothing substantial enough to write about!
I thought I might as well do something productive while I didn't have my usual setup and look into Gamemaker Studio 2. I've been working on a small thing in it (I might post about it soon) which also includes lots of code that will be reused in many future projects.
GMS2 is really nice to work in just in general so I might move the game over, as hesitant as I may be, I think the boost in productivity will be worth the troubleshooting I'll need to do regarding code compatibility.
Still though, that all said while I am still thinking and planning regarding the current game, I haven't actually done any coding on it in so long it is effectively on hiatus now, at least until I can get back to my usual setup and get back into a proper routine! Kind of sad to say but that's just how things are at the moment unfortunately!
Have you ever read The Five Ages of the Universe by Fred Adams and Gregory P. Laughlin, your game reminded me instantly of this when I read the descriptions of the very far future and the remnants of old civilizations orbiting black holes
I haven't but that sounds awesome - it's 100% on my to read list now once I get into more lore writing etc etc.
Also I'm so sorry I have no idea how long this ask has been hanging out in my inbox - I mainly use tumblr on PC and I didn't see any notifications for this :(
Probably the best place would be emailing me ([email protected]) or posting on the discussion thread in the steam forums - I have some more detailed instructions there about submitting a bug report, but to keep it short, if you could send me what you did to cause the bug, the crash message (if any), and optionally attach your save slot's file and log, found at C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\StellarTerminus\default), that would go a long way to help me track the bug down!
Hi, I recently played the steam demo of Stellar Terminus and while I like a lot about it, the one thing I found the weakest are the procedural generated dungeons. I remember a long time ago reading you also planned pre-set handcrafted dungeons on the main story path, is that still in the game?
Hi there,
Thanks for trying out the game (and apologies for the late reply to both your steam forum posts and your message here!) I wrote a more lengthy reply on the forums but I've copy-pasted the relevant dungeon part of the response here:
Regarding the dungeons, I initially wanted to keep the scope of the game small and not have too many hand-crafted dungeons, but after designing the tutorial area, it honestly wasn't too bad. Definitely for the key story areas they will be hand crafted, and I was thinking as an in-between to have set piece rooms that can be placed within the randomly generated dungeons.
The main drives for exploring different dungeons are not quite in at the moment (there is only one boss) but I plan to have different resources, parts, and bosses available within dungeons belonging to different factions. Furthermore, I have another major type of dungeon planned, this being wide open areas with various features scattered about, think a planet surface rather than its cave systems. I know these points don't necessarily alleviate your points, however. I definitely agree that things need to change in order to keep dungeons fresh going up into the various tiers. I'll have another look and keep considering what else I can do to make exploring different dungeons more interesting!
In any case, thank you so much for putting the time into the game and for giving me very valuable feedback!!
Hello, I found out about this game on Twitter and installed the demo version!
However, I'm Japanese and can't speak English 😔
Are there plans to implement Japanese in the future?
Hi there, thank you so much for your question!! I saw that a popular Japanese account retweeted my store page when it released and I was happily surprised!
In terms of localization, I would love to localise the game eventually once it has been completed!
The majority of my text is in databases which are easily translated, though I have a lot of UI text that is currently hardcoded, which will be a lot more challenging to get translated.
My low resolution font may also be another challenge - I will probably have to omit kanji and just use hiragana/katakana.
I've translated my answer into Japanese with Google Translate:
A week ago, I had Lucinius play a near-complete version of the demo build and he had a bunch of good suggestions after playing it for a solid few hours.
One part of his feedback centered around how move information was displayed. Previously, in non-battle menus, the move info would follow your cursor, and thus you weren't able to mouse over the various stats or check the description (which would have outputted to a log that isn't visible anyway).
Now I've made it so that clicking on the move icon displays the window in a static pane, letting you mouse over the various icons. Also, the description now appears in-line inside the window, regardless of where you're looking at it!
I made a whole bunch of other changes, and ahead of tomorrow's demo release (I can't believe it's finally happening), you can read about them below the cut!!
v0.18 - Demo Build 1
Features:
Auto-deposit materials is working and on by default
Mouse over now shows curr/max for hp/en/ammo + stat title
Going past the max floors now sends you back to the ship
New trap added that instantly spawns an encounter
Clicking on an attack icon with the mouse now makes the info panel stay open
Clicking the description button/pressing pause with a move selected now displays it within the panel
Archive sprite added to base
Game now tracks enemies encountered and killed
Added target marker to tutorial area
Archive can view logs and tutorials, and enemy names
Balance:
Starting area has slightly more loops
Starting area has slightly higher encounter density,
Removed local relay from starting area
Added spatial constant to starting area
Added Holepunch routine to Punch Press
Slightly increased passive random recruit chance from 1 to 2%
Buffed max damage recruitment rate divisor from /3 to /2.5
Nerfed heal recruitment rate divisor from /3 to /4
Changed starting system escape fuel needed to 20
Gain a small amount of fuel when researching local/relativistic navigation
Added party size to the base matrix research rather than subsequent research
Features now scale around the mid floor of the dungeon instead of around floor 2
Dungeon floors, rooms, and corridors get bigger as you go down
Damage/heal recruit function ceiling'd so you make at least 1% progress when you do the correct action
Slightly revised title screen animation
Revised enemy encounter formula to scale around the center floor of the dungeon + adjusted dungeon encounter mass respectively
Changed Gimbal Lock's status from stun to slow
Made summons recruitable
Buffed all part slots and changed power load formula to compensate
10% buff to large enemy stats for each square above 1
Make killing with an element apply advantage, even if it resists or was neutral to the element
Polish:
"are likely in rooms" -> "are more often found in rooms"
"can be used for fuel" -> "could be used for fuel"
"once a line has formed" -> "once a line has formed in the element grid"
"the astronaut has been destroyed" -> "your suit has been critically damaged"
"the robot core's power load." -> "the robot core's power load (to the left of the equipped parts)."
Power load tutorial only comes up when you exceed it
Changed POWR to HEAL when looking at a healing move in the attack description
Disabled interaction with central 3x3 core area and changed description
Changed first strike/ambush bar colour and text
Added fuel unit value to fuel item descriptions
Added filter menu icon
Deep Diver sprite updated
Burrow sprite updated
Recruit chance icon doesn't show mouseover text when invisible
Swapped weapons 1 and 2 equip location on the assistant to match sprite appearance
Removed extra line on the bottom of the big map
Equip vfx effect now appears under move info panel
Black outline added to all dungeon features
Made recruitment pink text appear over the damange numbers
Made it so that locations can't spawn directly behind the black hole image in the navigation screen
Made the main black hole image slightly transparent in the navigation screen
Reordered research tutorials
Scan description revised to indicate it can reveal more and more information progressively
Updated matrix tutorial to talk about core tiers
Changed equip sprite fx to green
Swapped arm that has the arm computer in a cutscene
Tutorial edited to say cores have innate routines
Edited lowest_5levels to be an accurate tutorial
Bugs:
Disabled the ability to look at the big map during the beginning of an encounter
Floor scanning effect now shows all the time for unexplored tiles
Removed debug value allowing you to interact with lore objects infinite times
Priority of mouseover is only cleared with the text now
Fixed player recruit chance status doing the opposite of what it says it does
Fixed healing-type recruitment not working
Fixed no item tutorial firing incorrectly because research inventory manager was not ready
Conduct animation was not happening when the conducted element was not the last hit on an enemy
