This week has been mostly about a boss fight. This is good news because it means that there is going to be a boss fight. When I prepped a map and an opposing fleet for the next steps in the mission/story – I realized that once it was all said and done, without a boss, it is just another space battle that. So in those terms boring and not unique. With the help of a Kickstarter backer I’ve had an idea for a boss, and was lucky to get an 3D model to be able to put into the game.

So the week was spent on tweaking the 3D boss model’s texture/geometry. Adding weapons, defenses, etc etc. I don’t want to say too much because it would be a spoiler, but I’ve added the ability for ships to “turn towards the enemy” in certain ways. The best term is “broadside” attacks – like naval dreadnoughts.

Another unique addition to go along with the boss is the ability to attach “something” to it. Right now this is fairly basic – but it can easily be expanded to support “sub systems” or just plain blowing off parts off of a object – for example a wing of a ship. The biggest issue is that I don’t have 3D assets to support such a thing, but this opens up cool possibilities for future updates.  A bit of a challenge arose here due to the (somewhat) recently added “physical turrets” – turrets that are part of the physical game world – not just visual representations. The physical turrets and the attached object were colliding with each other, causing physics glitches. Had to do a bit of research and filter out some collisions that don’t have to take place.

Finally – I hope that there is another surprise waiting for the player – don’t want to say too much, but it is another chance to turn something from fairly dull to memorable.