- Removing Game From Sale. - 16 June 2025
Afternoon All, As you can tell i haven't had many updates this passed year and just because of business costs ive decided to remove the game from sale and close down 359 Games Ltd. My understanding is you should be able to keep it if you have it installed, if your a fellow coder and you are interested in some of the tech (the flight system and thermal damage systems i was really happy with) feel free to contact me on reddit or discord (i'll leave the parabellum galaxia area on there).As a lessons learnt for those interested, my plan of keeping the game multiplayer and initially VR only probably didn't help with my marketing and message. I did start to pivot mid last year to develop a single player story mode (which seemed to be what people wanted) but i could never develop the right story mode. I gained a lot from developing it, coding wise i really built up my understanding and as a te…
- Updated Mission Builder + Other fixes - 29 June 2024
A few small updates namely.. Mission Builder not working fixed - turned out at some point gameobject links were lost these were restored and fixed. Added Trigger Events - Here you can have user messages, ship events destruction/arrival/departure all activated based on position based, or time based triggers. There is one sample mission included. Added a HyperSpace Graphic - For arrival and departure based triggers this now results in a hyperspace graphic of sorts. If the player leaves on arrival at trigger, this results in mission success. Mission deck unencoded, in theory you can now make missions purely in text form in json format. To be added.. Audio Links to be added to triggers, this will probably be done json scripting as a local link. This could allow time or location based triggers to be added. Event based triggers - ie. on destruction of a ship. Im still not happy with the new s…
- New Ship Builder in Preview Build! - 10 June 2024
Apologies for the delay, quite a few changes in this build as it contains the new ship builder alongside the legacy one and I have included a number of fixes. New Ship Builder - Works in VR and Desktop, this is a 'freeform' type of approach where you draw a chain of beams, join them together to make the framework of the ship and then apply armour on top of that. This should lead to much more versatile designs of ship but initially it can be a bit confusing. I havnt fully fixed the weapons menu's, in that i need to make the models for the various configurations. The UI needs a good pass to make things clearer as well. To build a model currently, you work on one side of the symmetry, for desktop mode you go up and down with the camera to change the vertical plane your building on. In theory asymmetry is supported but i havnt enabled it yet. 3D printer output - Any ship made with the new s…
- Updated Ship Builder Coming (Very)Soon! - 8 April 2024
I've been making really good progress with the game and the updated ship builder to the point where i am very close to launching it in a new version (definitely by end of this month, probably sooner). First off I'll list the new features: Much faster and better coded than previous. Robust Joint and Beam modelling such that it can reliably make most Frame shapes and models. Relatively Robust armour generation through use of spline surface. Again can do most shapes and geometrys. In any case both are far in excess of the previous ship builder and it does allow for more or less any shape. More real and 3d looking ship, internal components are joined together and onto the frames rather than floating, the external components attach onto the armour internally. More Engine Designs - Nacelle based designs with both forward and aft thrust along with turreted dual thrusters. The turreted thruster…
- Asteroid Desctruction coming soon. - 25 February 2024
Test of my Procedural asteroid and asteroid destruction method.. The method while still requiring some work/tweaks runs pretty fast so shouldnt interupt gameplay and works by virtue of modelling concentration of masses within a asteroid and those denser regions will form fragments from which a embedded explosion seperates them. The gameplay mechanic i will build around this is to say have nukes which could be used against fleets, but they will likely shoot them down and the energy dissipation means they wont be hugely effective. But if you could use a burrowing missile into a large asteroid (video is approx 3km wide) that can fragment large pieces of asteroid flying away at a speed that could easily take out a few ships or severely damage them (since the fragments are about 500m). With this approach if defending a region from attack you can carefully place your missiles to burrow on a c…
- Development Progress - 29 January 2024
Happy new year all as i think this is my first post of the year. I've been quite quiet on the updates front as ive decided really to dive into the latest version of the ship builder as quite frankly the current/old one has its limitations and i really wanted to remedy that. I'll start by listing what i feel is wrong with the current builder and how going forward ive started to implement changes that should enhance the building process massively. Not putting the current version down but since i started this game my programming skills have come on leaps and bounds and if you think of building a game like working on a house, if you keep patching over things rather than getting to the root problem your just going to spend all your time patching it up. Designs typically come out rather boxy due to the frame based approach The current process is slow to generate the ships.. Its prone to gener…
- All builds up issued - Preview build includes environment builder. - 1 January 2024
All builds have been updated, the below details the additions ot the preview build. Feel free to enable and do let me know what you think :D. Environment builder preview - There is a preview of the environement builder in desktop mode. To do add asteroid region or cloud region, add the main feature then press on the screen to add spheres. Once happy with the design tweak settings and press middle mouse button to issue. Pressing ctrl and middle mouse button deletes the spheres. To delete features double click on the X. Range UI. This is a XY visualisation that shows the ships maximum weapon range (red), visual range (Green) and radar signature (blue). Note radar signature is just a visual indicator. To enable and see this in desktop mode, you need to put plane on with ship selected. In VR mode it should display when activating the right hand selector window. Tweaked Bomber Landing - This…
- Various Gameplay Fixes - 27 November 2023
This update is a interim update to fix some gameplay issues, this again has not been heavily tested on VR but has been on desktop, thus its gone to preview. This is a interim update and does not include all fixes i want to make. Added group assignments, on PC go left ctrl + number to define a set, to select a set just press the associated number. On VR the process is done when holding the right hand select option, press primary/X or A to toggle between group select and group create and use the right joystick to create or select the group. Added power/thermal graphs in advanced menu in desktop. Fixed issue with ship roll towards enemy when drifting (would invert roll direction). Fixed behavior of Beam weapons on ships, player ships now aim properly. Ship will slow at same time. Fixed follow behavior on start up, initially no formation offset was set. Fixed some advanced menu options not…
- Environment Builder - Progress - 21 November 2023
This is just to give a bit of a update on the future environment builder which the mission builder would then build off. From the clouds method used in the main game, today I've built a procedural variable method of building and shaping clouds using spheres of variable size. This i feel is a easy to use method of building them that is lightweight and procedural such that a cloud is represented by a colour value, various size parameters, selected particle type and then a few coordinates and radius. The below image is the cloud along with the spheres used to produce it. Within the cloud the idea would be the users ships would have sight and radar but would be invisible to the enemy. This would start to bring in strategic elements where the user could hide ships in a dust cloud and ambush say a convoy when the defensive fleet is attacking the hit and run part of my fleet. My hope is to hav…
- Mission Builder Update and Quick Mission Fix - 19 November 2023
This build has a number of fixes and minor tweaks. Quick Battle options should now be working again, there was an issue where min/max ship size was the wrong way round Plane option in desktop is more clearly available Added Enemy Spawn Region to mission builder This again is in preview branch only whilst testing occurs. Week updates will be gameplay focused to sort out ship behaviors' and responsiveness.
- Preview Update - Ship Builder Fixes - 13 November 2023
This update is in the preview build (since ive not been able to fully test it in VR yet!). This has come about from user feedback with the ship builder and hopefully will have fixed many of the issues that can occur.. A lot of these fixes are likely due to moving game engine versions. Fixes VR keyboard wasnt working. This was due to the script becoming detached from the gameobject, the fix hasnt been tested but the fact the script was missing leads me to think this should fix issue. Bulkhead selectors were not rendering in VR correctly (only in one eye). This has been updated as it was found to be using a old renderer which i thought i had got rid of. Moved to URP rendererer as per rest of the game so this should fix this issue. Deletion of components was not possible in some cases as Box collider was missing. This has been sorted by having sereperate versions of components depending if…
- Fixed Ship Builder Issue - 8 November 2023
This is a light change based on some feedback from a player on the youtube page (Thanks for letting me know!). *Fixed Internal Components not being added in ship builder - This is tested in desktop but should fix VR as well. The issue was the component referred to a old system that was no longer on the ship component. This was a quick fix and likely came about when moving between unity versions. *Added external component rotation for desktop - The keys now rotate 15 degrees the external component on the surface. *Updated Mesh Algorithm - Initially this was going to be a 'proper' algorithm like a delauney integration. However when testing this the quality was no better and it was slower to boot. Instead i updated some of the issues i had witht he current mesher, namely the algorithm assessed all nodes within a TRI and two of the edges, but somehow i neglected to do all the checks ont he…
- Fixed Major Issue - Crashing - 30 October 2023
On top of the recent preview updates described , ive also gone through and corrected two major errors which were game breaking. Fixed Crash when hovering over a ship as it is destroyed. This was a bug i should have caught earlier and was due to the UI and Ship Destroy systems writing to different command buffers. Fixed Crash when multiple ships attack. This was fixed moving to a single thread on the weapons collision handling, When multiple ships attacked there was potential for parrallel writing to same array entry at same time which is game breaking. Since per frame this should only deal with 10's of entries it shouldnt be a problem moving to single thread for this system.
- Preview Build Updates - 29 October 2023
This update is based on new player feedback in particular with VR. This is launched on Preview branch only! *Performance on Valve Index was found to be below expectations, To resolve I have added Steam VR in addition to OpenXR launch, from experience it seemed reliable for me (using Steam VR via Quest) to launch from steam desktop and not Steam VR. In terms of game build, ive moved to IL2CPP, this is something i should have done before but previous version of unity had a incompatibility with this and DOTs (at least for me). This seems to no longer be the case although i have noted a few crashes when selecting ships in battle (thus this is preview branch). The performance increase should be seen by everyone. *Updated cloud with more VR friendly interface as well as small rocks when zoomed in. This is a bespoke VFX graph implementation. Known Issues: *Changing frame rate results in black…
- Feedback Based Updates - 23 October 2023
This update really is to fix a bug with the tutorial. *Fixed issue when running tutorial on desktop mode and not progressing. *While voice still needs to be updated, additional text prompts give key command instructions during tutorial. *Mission Start and Mission End states notify the user of issues. There are still a number of issues, for example FLAK is not effective. Note previous build has been moved to legacy build with all other builds moved to the latest version.
- Untitled - 22 October 2023
This is just a quick update on the eventual new ship builds. As a proof of concept im pretty happy with a lot of what ive produced. This includes a reliable automatic joint builder.. This can produce a model for almost any angle and any reasonable number of attaching branches (3 to 6). This along with the frames is intended to be the frame work of the future ship builder where the user in theory can make any shape and the design is qualified by a basic beam FEA. These joints and frames will attach on to the individual components internally and externally meaning the user will have to design a ship that correctly restrains all thats contained within it. It also means the user can easily move away from the basic frame based approach (as someone noted to me, most design will be 'box' like). The updated method of armour is more or less there from a mesh/geometry point of view but i need a l…
- Progress Update - Ship Builder - 10 September 2023
This is just a quick update to highlight the last few days work any my plans to really build the ultimate ship builder version. The current approach is based on a fixed frame methodology, this allows you to make a reasonable amount of shapes along with the extrude frame methods, but it can be quite limited and on a simple level everyone will make very similar designs. The new approach i am looking to implement has been in my mind for the past year but i wanted to really flesh it out in my mind and no the maths behind it before properly pursuing it. This method is essentially a free form approach where almost any frame layout could be possible. The below is the frame generated from a existing model of the carrier. The idea being that i have Spline defined frame members that connect at a central joint that can have anything between 2 and 6 (in the extreme) connections. The frame members w…
- Updates - 6 September 2023
This is a Post VR test version of the previous preview build. Existing Change notes are shown below with additions related to testing. I have made a new branch called 'Legacy' which is for anyone who has issues technical or preferential about the current default build which reverts to the previous default build. Change Notes: *Move from Unity 2019 with Entities 0.51 to Unity 2022 with Entities 1.xx. Difference in rendering method and baking (building prefabs) has meant a complete rewrite of existing code to generate Ship entities. These systems have been tested and appear to behave similarly. This should also result in higher performance than previous. *Armor Now goes transparent when viewing component temperatures and damage. This is easily done thanks to the new game engine. All advanced ship methods will probably inherit this approach in the future. *Updated Environments thanks to Sp…
- Latest Update - 3 September 2023
Hi All, Apologies for the delay in this. This build has a lot of hidden changes due to the engine update, the build has had a basic level of testing but that has not included testing the VR implementation. This will happen next week at which point i'll make it the default build. But for those on desktop mode or willing to give it a try in VR then please feel free to play. For those who want to try it, go to properties and then Beta/builds and change from the default build to preview. Change Notes: *Move from Unity 2019 with Entities 0.51 to Unity 2022 with Entities 1.xx. Difference in rendering method and baking (building prefabs) has meant a complete rewrite of existing code to generate Ship entities. These systems have been tested and appear to behave similarly. This should also result in higher performance than previous. *Armor Now goes transparent when viewing component temperatures…
- Game Progress - 13 August 2023
Hi All! This is just a progress update on the next revision of the game. As noted in the patch notes, there was a bug which seems to happen occasionally when pressure the health view, because of this im in the progress of updating the game to Unity 2022 and Entities 1.0 (released just before christmas) from Unity 2020 and Entities 0,51. To summarise, the hard fiddly bits are done and its now a case of converting code that should be like for like between the two version - eta end of august for the next update. This seemed like the best way of doing things since the issue was Entities 0.51 related and thats no longer supported, it made sense to update the game to the latest tech stack. Theres quite a lot of rework but ive gotten through the most challenging, ie. It builds the ships/entities and its now a case of just converting all the other files. Rather than doing it all in one go im ca…
