3.1.13 - A Fury Void Update (Goodbye, Alpha)

March 1^st marks the last day of Fury Void’s official Alpha-phase development.  In the past 2 weeks, the rush to get features into the game has been full of vitality, but avoided any sense of ‘crunch’.  The following is a summary of what was completed to hail Fury Void into its time of Beta.

To follow-up on the reporting last time of saved games, profiles now may be loaded.  The previous standalone save feature was only usable in the fact that Fury Void would let Team Fury know if a save had been made, and of what variables, while developing.  When loading a saved game, thus far whatever ship was selected last time is automatically selected, along with the player’s choice of weapon and score.

When objects are destroyed in-game, the player’s score grows.  Now, when those point-giving objects explode, a pop-up of the point total for that object is displayed.  It appears quickly, and then leaves.  Such a feature delivering this form of visual feedback to the player is hoped to have only beneficial consequences when Beta testing is conducted.

Further development of the previously mentioned black holes has led to a few new tweaks.  The first is that black holes spawn in-game given a random probability when a sun is destroyed.  Second, the black hole no-longer pulls objects in indiscriminately; neither do the holes warp themselves in the 3 dimensions of the play-space, as restrictions have been added to their movement.  The third tweak would be that the black hole visually grows in the game to help show the reach of the object.  And again, the player will be caught by the black hole – there is no way to escape a black hole’s pull forever.

A note on AI enemies would be that patrolling, shooting ‘drones’ are now in-game.  They currently are manually generated without the random placement featured in the rest of Fury Void, but refinement of the feature is to be handled in the coming weeks of the Beta-phase of development.  However, these enemies currently dodge out of the way of planets, they occasionally dodge the player’s fire, and follow randomly created pathing-nodes if they are not chasing-down the player.

Next, an introduction text cinematic has been included at the start of the game.  It gives credit to Star Wars in how the message of the game is presented (scrolling up into infinity).  The screen of the cinematic also has a soundtrack to play while watching the screen in an attempt to keep the player’s senses fully engaged when watching the cinematic.  Lastly, a simple button press will allow the viewer to escape to the main menu, as Team Fury hopes to include further details on the game being played.

On weapon switching, more options have been added for the player’s options.  All weapons can be assigned different colors in their projectiles, while development of engine color, weapon effects and damage, and player speed is currently underway.  Future tweaks will likely be greatly influenced by player feedback.

To scheduling, the week preceding March 1st was to host the feature-lock of the game.  Team Fury proudly met this goal, with time to spare.  In reality, Beta-phase was instantiated on Wednesday of the week, putting Fury Void on an early track for the coming Beta development.  This occurrence spurned an in-house QA walk-through of the game, keeping a special eye to any and all bugs, things that need a visual or code tweak, and places were additional functionality would be key.  A list was compiled, and now offers a constant reservoir for future issues and issues that have yet to be handled.

The week after March 1^st is considered Spring Break, and will most certainly dampen the work put forward by Team Fury.  However, many tasks scheduled for the week are of a brainstorming and sit-and-think variety.  If any work is to be done on the Fury Void game, handling the ever-growing bug list will keep any team member busy.  After Spring Break, major changes specific to the Beta-phase will take place.

With what has been laid-forth, Fury Void is safely said to be one of the top 2 best developed games of the Dakota State University Game Design program.  Team Fury is excited to present their game to the world, but is arguably just as excited to work on the project, as every week sees accomplishments made.  If interested, the final Alpha-phase build is online, and Team Fury encourages all to play it and give feedback to any member of Team Fury or at furyvoidgame@gmail.com.