Hello everyone and welcome to the first installment in our new Developer Diary series (better late than never?).
These posts will be a bit of a mixed bag, maybe preview a new feature, go over something going on behind the scenes, let you know if any of our devs have thrown a laptop out the window in frustration, that sort of thing – something to keep you guys in the loop a bit more between patches.
Now let’s get down to business…
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Hi everyone,
Finally – it’s time to show you what’s coming to the game over the next 3 months as we walk you through the roadmap!
We’ve already started work on it, but hadn’t been ready to present it until now while it remained a work in progress. There’s been a ton of feedback in the forums and player surveys which we’ve had to condense into pill form, chew up, and spit back out in the shape of a coherent plan… An old adage is likely to apply 😉
If you haven’t seen our post from a couple of days ago, give it a quick once-over before reading on. It lays out key dates including when Beta starts and some of what’s been going on behind the scenes (and may shed some light on parts of this roadmap). That the game was developed by just two developers (until recently) seems to have shocked a lot of you – and we guess something we should be proud of 🙂
If this post is ‘too long, not gonna read’, at the end you’ll be able to find details of the chart version of the roadmap.
Please keep in mind that this is our roadmap for the next 3 months to get us to Beta – there are a gazillion features we have planned and will start on right after these. Think of the features listed here as a slice of a much grander vision – rather than the whole pie 🙂 But without any further ado:
[Read more…]Hi everyone,
Our designers are working on some UI improvements and we wanted to give you a sneak peek. They should be in the game in one of the next few updates.
A popular request from players has been to increase the quality of the strategic info at higher levels (the star map and star system views) to avoid having to go closer to look.
For example, the ability to see from the star map which systems have a shipyard, how populated a system is, and the same for each planet when within a system.
Click the below screenshots for a closer look:
Hi everyone,
We’ve made a few improvements to the wiki over the last week:
One of the next things we’ll be doing is making sure that all of the ship parts are also listed. There’s a lot of other things that need doing: updating outdated pages; adding, expanding or improving other pages. Speaking of which…
This community wiki is for Beyond Dark players and we need your help to improve it. Your contributions are not only valued, but enable us to focus more time on developing new features and making the best game possible!
[Read more…]Hi everyone,
A new Alpha patch (0.75) is coming next week and we wanted to give you a sneak peek! We’re pretty excited about this release, there are some awesome visual enhancements from our designers, as well as improvements to gameplay driven by player feedback in the BD forum.
Our designers have been busy putting together new environmental effects for the galaxy. The lighting system has been enhanced to feel more realistic, we’ve also improved the way planets and ships respond to various types of lighting. A more immersive style of nebula system has also been brought in which you can catch a glimpse of in the screenshots below.
We’re looking forward to hearing what players think once they’ve had the chance to test out the new changes next week! Will the changes bring a more dramatic feel to the galaxy? How much better will ships and planets look?
The foundations of a strong empire are its mining and freight network. Without a reliable supply of resources, growth will always be an uphill struggle.
There are five natural resources that can be mined: beron, farsu, limbalt, olzine and ziryl. Each of these resources is used for a different purpose, so strategic priorities will determine which should be mined for and how aggressively.
Weapon selection for ships and fleets will make the difference between victory and defeat. As an empire grows, so will its access to increasingly more powerful weapons. However, strength shouldn’t be the only consideration when designing your ships…
In this post, we’ll take a closer look at some of the ship weapons currently being used in the Alpha galaxy. You can find more details on ship weapons on our recently updated wiki page.
The most important point to consider when choosing a weapon is whether to go for energy or ordnance based – each option has its pros and cons.
[Read more…]Each civilization in the game has one Clipper class hull, Ocean, is Mankind’s. Clipper class hulls are neither suited for battle nor transportation, but they can do what no other class of hull can…
The Ocean is a small, lightweight hull, but it is a must-have ship for anyone playing as Mankind (likewise for each civilization and its own Clipper class: Poisk for People’s Realm, T12 for Syntis and Hunter for Ripchee)!
What makes Clipper hulls vital are their unique special slots, which make them the only hull class in the game compatible with cloaking and mine detecting/sweeping technologies.
[Read more…]During the early stages of a player’s empire, it can take a few hours just to get to the nearest star system! But no civilization should let distance intimidate their ambition or deter them from expanding to resource-laden, far-off worlds.
Through strategic usage of fuel (olzine), and the research and development of new engines, vast distances can be tamed and an interstellar empire can flourish!
When ships are ordered to move, they do so automatically using either thruster or warp speed:
The Admiral, of The People’s Realm, is a gigantic beast of a ship! It’s currently the largest ship in the game, extremely powerful, and we think it looks awesome.
Orbital bombers can only be mounted to cruiser class hulls, and fighter carriers only to battleship class hulls (via the large weapons slots on these hulls). However, the Admiral is a distinguished exception. Its large weapons slots are universal, which means they can be used to mount ANY large weapon e.g. orbital bomber, fighter carrier, or torpedo launchers.
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