Sol-Ark (2D Space RTS/SandBox/Rogue-like) Big Announcement and New Devlog news

Have you ever wanted to build a spaceship, take care of astronauts, mine asteroids, and subsequently watch your vessel get obliterated while your crew chokes to death on interstellar void? Come join us as a volunteer tester for Sol-Ark’s demo.This will be a closed test, super secret, and used to help us with our full demo release at the end of June.

Sol-Ark is currently running through its pre-flight checklist and is looking for a handful of brave (and unpaid) testers to strap themselves to our rocket and see what happens. We’re reaching out to those who have commented on our posts and articles so far, basically anyone who showed any sort of interest in the game to date.

Sol-Ark is still in its prototype phase and we are looking to get some broader feedback before we put out a hardened, finite demo for everyone to get their hands on. This means that the builds you’ll be playing will be limited in some capacities and don’t represent the final gameplay and graphics that we’re shooting for. There are placeholder elements for the user interface, windows, menus, that sort of stuff. Some gameplay mechanics will be switched off so we can focus in on things we know need to be tested, we’ll test all aspects of the game a bit later. You may encounter errors and bugs or lags, and we’re hoping you find some! We need this kind of feedback and want you to report back to us with all your thoughts, opinions, and experience. All of your input can be submitted via a feedback form we’ll provide you with should you be chosen for our little deep-space experiment.

What we’ll need from you:

1. Your email address
2. An internet high five ( ^∇^)ﾉ
3. A promise you won’t blog, tweet, post or hoot and holler about everything you’ll be playing, at least for a little while.

Still interested?

Shoot an email off to solarkgame@gmail.com with “Tester” in the subject line.

So keep your eyes on your personal message transponders and look out for an incoming message signal from a far off galaxy. It’s either an invitation to test, or a distress signal because I miscalculated my required propulsion (again) and have flown clear out of the solar system.

List of performed work:

• These bugs are fixed:
• With enemy ship connection when there is a big difference in speed between it and the Sol-Ark;
• With incorrect correlation between changes in rotation speeds for locations after their collision;
• With ability to control some of the enemy’s tehcnics after connection with an enemy ship;
• With clearing of task list window after beginning a new game;
• With clearing of dynamic menu after selecting one object from several others which are on the same tile;
• With disappearance of “resource” objects from the micromanagement map level after gathering only some part of its total amount;
• With incorrect performance of “technics replacement” task;
• With clearing windows and lists in the crew menu;
• Other bugs;
• Ability to set the task priority was added for NPCs with exoskeletons or without them;
• The button to run a gravity brake was added for the local space map level. The same ability was duplicated with the hot-key;
• From now on, the sprite’s curvature effect influences planet sprites as well;
• New sprites were added for the object “blood pool”;
• New effects were added for morale influence on NPCs while they perform different tasks;
• Indication was added for resource types which are inside a container;
• Explosion was added for when an object which contains oxygen is destroyed;
• Ability to scroll the star map by mouse was added;
• Pause during a space-suit wearing on/off by NPC was added;
• New type of technics “recharging platform”, which recharges exoskeletons, was added;
• New parameter “charge” was added for technics type “exoskeleton”, and when the charge is depleted an exoskeleton becomes inactive;
• Operational recharging algorithm was added for an exoskeleton which uses “recharging platform”;
• Algorithm was optimized for sprite’s curvature when there are two or more points of curvature;
• Checking logic for necessity to use an exoskeleton was changed for NPCs;
• Operating logic for how to choose a type of space-suit was changed for NPCs when there aren’t any space-suits of the selected type;
• Operating logic for technics type “hydrolisis platform” was modified;
• While mining resources that contain water only water tanks are loaded which are not in the complex of technics;
• Visualization for the space maser was modified, new effects for its appearanceand disappearance were added;
• From now on a single container can only save one type of resource;
• Mining resources algorithm was modified;
• All ship templates were saved with new parameters;
• Work continues on the visualization algorithm for the micromanagement map level by the GPU;
• Work continues on the first official teaser video for the game;
• New music tracks were created; work continues on voice, sound and music coverage for the teaser video;
• Work continues on polishing balance, fixing small errors and creating content for the first demo-version of the game to be released to a broad audience;
• Work continues on filling and polishing the GDD;