Make sure to search case insensitive. Build your own ship using a modular construction system. I tried my best to be accessible to the players via multiple channels: I checked the Steam discussion forums every day, was always logged into Discord and read the “F8” feedback logs regularly. This generally worked “okay,” but if I do a similar game in the future I would like to see if I can find a way that does not break saves with new content. I didn’t touch it again for almost two years. Shortly afterwards you notice your people getting sick. Combined with a pessimistic tail model, that could be as low as $30,000 lifetime, and that’s before Valve took their revenue share. the star system at 14.3 X -3.5 doesn't have the planet, and . Hundreds of unique planet anomalies, space discoveries, artifacts and more! At this point I felt I had enough experience to attempt to make a game with the goal of doing it professionally. Ed Kramer), F-1400 Starwolf (#) - Flexwing Astro Fighter / (Lt. Tom "Bandit" Waldron), Battlecrane (#) - Combat Cargo Lifter / (Sgt. Explore the beautiful and myster... Windows Vista/7/8/10, Intel Core i5 2.2 GHz+, 4 GB RAM, 2 GB Direct3D 11 Capable video card or bette... © GOG sp. Targeting worked fine afterwards for me. The game’s best feature was really hard to communicate in a short clip, GIF or marketing blurb: the sense of exploring a mysterious open universe. An example: There is only one system with a blue star that has the same number and colors of planets: The exact location is -18.68 X -42.49, just one hop away from the Provisional Capital of the Araona. and look for the name of the anomalies mentioned in the guide. The card images are high-res renderings of some of my favorite anomaly images. Edit. It wasn’t until I observed a player in a live session that I realized some players thought they were supposed to follow the ship that had given them their orders, and had their eyes fixed on it, ignoring the glowing, flashing arrow in the corner of the screen. Suddenly thrown into an unknown galaxy, you must explore, fight or befriend aliens and transform your ship from a small survey vessel into a powerful battlecruiser to unravel the mystery of the forces that brought you here and find your way home. Universe is now generated with a hybrid procedural/designed system. Nexus. Starcom: The U.S. Space Force is a 1987 animated syndicated television series inspired by a motorized toy franchise manufactured by Coleco. Investigating it gives you the quest “Primitive Vessel”: To find the planet that launched it (no quest target marker). I made a list of YouTube streamers and journalists who had covered those games. 130+ unique planetary anomalies/scan discoveries. As long as I kept it in “experimental pre-alpha side project mode” I never had to confront the possibility of putting my hard work out there and failing completely. All rights reserved. Land repeatedly until you got the research data, run. "Secret" Swofford), Six-Shooter - Multi-Deployment Fighter / (Capt. I tried to convey the exploration elements by showing planet surveys, alien dialogues and space artifacts, but my trailer ended up focusing mainly on the most eye-catching aspects of game play: enemies exploding in fireworks of particles and pretty space settings. Tim "Ranger" Murphy; Sgt. . Starcom: Nexus, An Indie Dev Story - Starcom: Nexus Exit Kite Station, wait a bit or just exit the system and come back and talk to Pilman again and he’ll unlock the research for you. However, to those who don't have such equipment, they offer only a death trap. Early Access (EA) is a program where players can buy a game they’re interested in while it’s still in development, like a paid beta. Steam Community :: Guide :: All the locked research options and where ... Hm, I divided the radii (radiuses?) Try searching your Log using the keyword 'benchmark' to find the information about the neutronium benchmarks you hopefully found, the inscriptions on these give the information you need. Your email address will not be published. These fixes to the first half hour of the game were huge: consider 1000 players starting the game. Starcom Nexus by cheathappens.com ----- Activating this trainer ----- If not state otherwise below, press F1 at main menu. E.g., a game that sells 100 copies in the first week could expect to sell 300 to 600 copies in the first year. Some of those were also Early Access titles and a dozen of those had graduated by this point. Hundreds of unique planet anomalies, space . Starcom: Nexus - An Action RPG of Galactic Scale Purchase “The Story of Entarq’s Citadel” for 35 platinum from them, which will give you the password needed for the Citadel. There is a scarcity of hard data to predict a launch success, particularly for EA titles. Showing 1 - 3 of 3 comments The Lone Badger Jan 1, 2020 @ 3:59am Try searching your Log using the keyword 'benchmark' to find the information about the neutronium benchmarks you hopefully found, the inscriptions on these give the information you need. It’s like including part of your boss’s salary when someone asks how much you make. Rip Malone; Lt. Bob T. Rogers; Sgt. This was probably intended to be a fun challenge by […], Starcome: Nexus is full of secrets and events you encounter when you explorer the galaxy. Luke Dec 15, 2019 @ 12:14pm You've got the distances wrong for the radius, but your method is correct. With practice, I learned how to improve the quality of my anomaly images, so I was able to scale up the image display, but I kept the shader effect because it made the images seem more alive. I am probably not unique among indie devs in that marketing is not my favorite game dev activity. But it was very far from a complete game. Even if I hypothetically implemented one, it would compound QA enormously. My first attempts to create distinct environments for the anomalies were not very good: they looked like the pre-rendered backgrounds from 90’s adventure games. Games that achieve sufficient traction are shown more prominently by Steam’s algorithm. Combined with the uncertainty about how the game would fare, this was producing a large amount of stress. This wasn’t a huge problem because the game was still fairly short at that point, but the lack of building a solution early on made the eventual mission log feel bolted-on and less than ideal. Maybe you noticed that (in the current game version at least) the planet reverts to a (!) To view reviews within a date range, please click and drag a selection on a graph above or click on a specific bar. How to Solve Sunken Ship Quest Solving the Quest At one point, you will find a planetary […], Each alien species uses a different resource as their base currency. Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window), Translating an Indie Game with a Whole Lot of Words. Introduction Missiles Additional Deep Space Speed Less Turret Energy Consumption (Bose-Einstein-Condensate) Energy Increase When Near Star (Solar Converter) Havoc Warp Hopper Comet Detection Laser Weapons Drones Axial Ultragun Shields Debye Sheaths Swarm Probe Suppressor Side Quest Researches - Kolnar Treatment Sure it’s just a light shuttle, but you’ve got to start somewher. I also simplified the UI by removing the separate scan window: the player just flew to the planet and pressed a key or controller button. The ability to give feedback any time allows me to captures impressions that players may forget by the end of their session. I also added the potential for penalties, like the loss of crew. But that sounds like the right area. Keep this in mind while writing your review: {{'2019-12-12T00:00:00+02:00' | date: 'longDate' : ' +0200 ' }}, Fully open-world universe with numerous quests and storylines. If you get stuck in the game, check out the video walkthrough and gameplay for the game. With a Steam Beta Key. New content: sectors, anomalies, new races, etc. All in all, they offered plenty of moving parts (hidden compartments, cannons, folding wings, etc.). Shawn Reed / SB-Cargo Station Fuel Pumper, Col. James "Dash" Derringer / Battle-Group Commander, Capt. First, is the post-mortem for Starcom: Nexus which will describe […]. Actually combining those two concepts in a way that produces fun and coherent game mechanics is harder than it sounds. If you can’t seem to target them with lasers or hit them with plasma, ram into them. In my examination of recent Early Access graduates, I think I had subconsciously “rounded down” some of the graduation ratios (ratios of graduation week review counts to launch review counts), possibly in a sub-conscious attempt to avoid severe disappointment. From a sales and marketing standpoint, entry into Early Access needs to be taken seriously. Somewhere is a Planet with an anomaly titled “Excavation”. Copyright © 2023 Starcom: Nexus. There really wasn’t a simple way to port saves forward. Visit a phage system to the north-west of kite station, like the one at -2.52 X 6.42. When I go to submit a change in Git, there are suddenly fifty prefabs who have decided that their m_Mesh objectReference or whatever has changed from 99772313 to 129203923 or something, despite me not having changed anything. You’ve finally made it out of the academy and have been given your first starship to command. This sped things up enormously, but created a problem: multiple missions are managed by a few characters. [1] The characters were adapted for animation by series creator Brynne Stephens, who also story edited the show. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. The most important thing is the colors - there are only a few blue stars. By late October things felt good enough that I could launch in 2018 before the Winter Sale, so I announced a release date of December 12. I.e., while most launches have the bulk of their first reviews in the first week, many EA graduates saw the reviews spread over 2-3 weeks. I had a couple of ideas for games, but with no game-specific development experience I decided to start small with a fairly basic “tower-defense” game called PlanetDefender. Let the game stand entirely on its own merits. Sign in to add this item to your wishlist, follow it, or mark it as ignored. Suddenly thrown into an unknown galaxy, you must explore, fight or befriend aliens and transform your ship from a small survey vessel into a powerful battlecruiser to unravel the mystery of the forces that brought you here and find your way home. Technically, I could provide some API for modders to create assetbundles to import into the game, but a) that’s going to be a challenging workflow if they don’t have the original project (which I couldn’t distribute if I wanted to because of 3. In my marketing journal, the day before full launch I wrote: “My best guess is that first month of graduation will sell between 700 and 3000 copies, but that’s a wide range.”, A few hours later, apparently gripped with pessimism, I added: “I have now convinced myself after looking at Steam that it will get no boost above a normal sale.”. Rusty Caldwell / SB-Cargo Station Gunner, Pfc. Gives you the ability to build drone modules, which allow you to send miniature attack craft against the enemy. "Yank"; Sgt. You most likely visited that system before. Starcom: Nexus v1.0.12 Trainer +8 As mentioned previously, when I decided to commit to Starcom: Nexus as a serious endeavor, I also committed to start taking marketing seriously. Howl (custom figure) / Counter-Insurgency; Shadow Spy Pilot, Capt. By this point, it was clear that I needed a new engine for the project: the writing was on the wall and Flash’s days were numbered. I also had ambitions of an open-world PC RPG that could evoke feelings of exploring a large and rich universe full of wonders. I spent most of my professional life as a web developer, initially as a general purpose “webmaster” before specializing in UI during the dot-com era, then switching to server and database development. All rights reserved. #1 My games had made a lot of people happy and I don’t think people should be valued based on how much money they make, but realistically I couldn’t afford to continue as an indie dev making less than minimum wage. A good way to quickly get all three parts is to invade the isolated system at -19.50 X -27.55. At 10.55 X -0.47 is a planet with the anomaly titled “Frozen Observatory”. So in late October I announced a December 12th release date, exactly one year after the initial launch. I had a base of several thousand players with a positive experience who might be interested in a sequel. Stars now do damage to ships coming close, Gateway transitions are now constant time, Lots of bug fixes, minor tweaks, balance changes. As most people are probably curious about one specific research they’re missing, refer to the following image. Starcom: Nexus is a 2019 space-based Action RPG developed for all PC platforms by Wx3. This is because you did not have that quest at the time, revisit it and you can actually survey it again. {{ notifications.notificationsCountLabel }} pending, See new chat messages, friend invites, as well as important announcements and deals relevant to you, Play, chat, and share experiences with your friends on GOG.com. "Bear"), Starmax Bomber TMC - Transport & Missile Cruiser / (Capt. Divided over the entire development lifecycle so far, that worked out to $16,000 per year. As with all the other extra weapons, you’re required to collect 3 parts of this weapon to build it. Translation […], For the past few months I’ve been dividing my time between preparing bug-fixes/patches for Starcom: Nexus and starting development for my next title, likely some kind of follow-up game in […], My Start My career as an indie game developer got off to a late start. Rick Ruffing / M-6 "Railgunner" GAV Driver, Staff Sgt. And don’t forget to head […], Big news! Also at this point the industry was well into the so-called “Indiepocalypse”: every week a new story would appear on my radar of a developer who had spent years on a game only to sell a few hundred copies (or worse). sounds about right. Which is the starting state for all games, and it can seem like a low priority when you aren’t even sure how you are going to get players or how to make your game long. The plot of Starcom: Nexus is initially quite simple. Vic "Dakota" Hayes / Laser RAT Driver, Capt. A slightly more optimistic model was 800 copies the first week. "Champ" O`Ryan / HARV-7 Driver, Sgt. After my last web dev contract wrapped up, I set myself on the task of developing my third game: a multiplayer real-time roguelike dungeon crawler called Lost Crypts. In the first 24 hours of full release Starcom: Nexus sold over 1000 copies, and another 1000 in the next 24. The key to finding it i snot actually the planetary image or the text block in the upper left, it is the star map on the bottom. Ramor), Shadow Parasite (#) - Attack Fighter / (Lt. Magg), Shadow Vampire - Enemy V.T.O.L. If that shift holds true for other Early Access titles, it would explain a good chunk of my underestimation. VAT included in all prices where applicable. Interact with different alien races with their own personalities and agendas. This makes figuring out a good/bad deal very difficult. As a download. It’s difficult to support modding. With the previous disappointment of Lost Crypts, I was afraid that another commercial dud would effectively be the market telling me: “You’re so bad at this, you don’t even know how bad you are.”. © Valve Corporation. Subnautica is probably the most well-known example, going on to be one of the best-selling games on Steam, but there are plenty of others: Rimworld, Dead Cells and Slay the Spire are a few examples. Surveying this planet will give you the quest “Lost Probe” which includes a map marker. and any information that can change. "Hammer"), Skyroller - High-Rising Supertank / (Sgt. It’s what they consciously report liking and not liking in the game. The vehicles and playsets also delivered Power Deploy features, which uses automatic wind up mechanisms that allows them to perform multiple actions all in a touch of a button, without the use of batteries. It took maybe a month or two in my spare time. The player can offer to help if they have sufficient resources.

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