I think it’s important to have goals – aspirations to strive for, things you want to achieve. I think games need goals too. By this, I mean their should be certain things that the developers of the game deliberately set out to achieve with their game. It can be features, technology , emotional impact or something else. I’m pretty sure most games have an intrinsic goal – entertain the player. It’s the ones that the developer(s) explicitly decide upon that are most important however.

I’ve set a couple of goals for the gameplay in Star Hammer, and I want to share them with you.

Star Hammer is an action game, so therefore, having lots of action is pretty important. However I’ve found with some action-orientated games that I’ve played over the years, that too much action can be overwhelming, and that’s not fun. I’ve also found that action without context can be pretty hollow.

So, based on these observations, goal #1 for the Star Hammer project is to create a game that provides an intense action experience, but also with some context that provides some depth to the experience.

To me, context means story. Human beings are inherently storytellers, and have been since we could draw on cave walls. There is story everywhere around us, and games are just the latest manifestation of our need to be surrounded  by stories. I have to admit to being a bit conflicted about the role of story in games. Story telling is one way, from the teller to the listener. Games are (supposed to be) interactive. There is an obvious conflict here. I’m not trying to resolve this conflict with this game, however I do want to use story to add context.

I’ve also noticed that many of the independent/indie games these days bypass story completely. Maybe it’s a issue of budget, or skillset or something else. As Nick observed a few months ago, there is a trend towards “toys” being sold as games.

If I’m playing a game, even if I can’t influence where the story goes, I’d rather have it there and be taken along for the ride than have to find ways to engage with the game myself. A story is like the skeleton that everything hangs off. Without it, instead of a fully formed animal, you’ve got a flaccid lump of fur and organs that can’t move anywhere!

Goal #2, provide a good story that the player can follow and be a part of that provides context to the action and gives the player a reason to keep playing.

These are really the two most important points for me with this project. Other stuff, like attractive graphics, great sound, etc are important, but will count for nothing if I don’t get the experience right. That experience might not suit everybody – in fact I’m sure it won’t as I think space shooters have become very niche these days – but I hope that it will be a good experience for the people whose taste that games premise does appeal to.

Today has been a very productive day in Star Hammer World!

Dan suggested that the way autopilot worked needed some adjustments, so I’ve adjusted it. Actually, re-written is a better term.

Previously, missions were spread over vast areas of space. Each area of interest was termed a ‘nav point’, and to perform a mission meant visiting a nav point, doing stuff like blasting aliens, then moving on to the next nav point. So there were phases within each mission. It was ok, because the breaks in action are good for pacing, but admittedly, they made the missions feel a bit disjointed. I’ve also observed that people don’t always ‘get’ the autopilot functionality.

So, it’s all been changed.

Now, the missions have been redesigned so that the various points of interest are closer together, and it’s not necessary to have to skip vast areas of space to get to the next nav point. There is still an autopilot function, but it now just turns your fighter towards the next nav point. This means that at any time, if a player is not sure where to go, they just press the ‘Y’ button, and they’ll be guided back into the action.

On yeah, and I added support for mipmapping. For the non-technical reader, it’s a technique that improves the appearance of 3D models, especially when they are far from the camera.

The image on the left has mipmapping turned off. Notice how is looks more pixelated, whereas the image on the right has smoother transitions of color across the model surface.

It’s amazing how easy turning on techniques like mipmapping are in XNA. It was literally 1 line of code in a shader, and one option change on the texture maps, and it Just Worked!. Awesome!

Lots of other smaller improves today too, in relation to balancing. Good times!

I’ve been hard at work putting together a web site for Star Hammer. Now it’s live! I even managed to pick up a decent address – visit www.starhammer.com to have all of your questions answered! Props to Simon Boxer for illustrations on the story page. Go Simon!

Last night I made a new gameplay video. Now that I’m getting together some production artwork, I figured I’d share it with the world. Here ya go :

It’s still a work-in-progress though. I’m not happy the blue nebula background. Need a new approach, I think.

Like any game developer, one of my goals for Star Hammer is to create an immersive and compelling experience. I think that story is a part of that, and over the last few months, the games story has received a lot of work.

Lately I’ve been working on a game system to surround missions with short animated sequences. Whilst 2D overhead is a fine way to view the action during a mission, it’s a bit limiting in terms of setting the scene, and creating a sense of being part of a larger game world.

By showing a take-off animation (like the cases in the video), the player will be able to see what is going on around them as the mission starts. I think it helps establish a starting point for the mission. By combining these sequences with some dialogue, I’m hoping to draw players into the missions more and make the objectives more clear.