Trapped in the Sky - Weekly update 17th July blog - Ched80

I think I'm just over half of the way through all the features I want to add to the next beta. The majority of the hacks are implemented, the new NPCs are there, what's left is the basic crafting and the new explorable section. Both will take considerable time.

Here's a summary of how I got on this week:

Added 'Laser Rifle' hack. Basically a laser rifle, but uses power cells as ammo instead of bullets. As part of this I added a neat laser line that is drawn on screen.

Added Wood and Stone footstep sounds. This wasn't a planned feature, but I was getting annoyed with the metallic foot fall sounds when the player was walking on wood or stone.

Added 'Flame thrower' hack. This is what you can imagine it is. It uses fuel as ammo instead of bullets and spews out a stream of fire. I'm not 100% happy with the decal implementation for this yet, but the fundamental mechanics are in and working.

Added 'EnviroSuit' hack. This allows player to access failed sections and repair them. This has an added benefit that if the escape pods section fails, the games does not end as the suit grants the player to still repair the escape pod.

Added 'Smuggling' crime. This boosts the items found when looting. This can be used in combination with the field scanner hack to get even more loot per search.

Added a new NPC type - "Spider bot" which patrols the craft armed with a laser rifle. Being part of the ships defence systems, the bot can detect the player better than the guards.

Adjusted how Weapons are handled so that they can accommodate multiple ammo types. This was in before, but I had implemented a rather clumsy way of doing it. Now I list the applicable ammo types in the weapon definition file and the code handles the rest. The makes adding new ammo types easier in the future.

Adjusted the Armour mechanic. This now blocks all damage until it is destroyed, rather than reduce the damage by a set %. The condition of the armour is shown together with the player's health bar.

Adjusted Warning text to be semi-transparent. This is so it is less obtrusive when exploring the sections.

Fixed a bug where doors would still open even if the play's key had broken or had ran out of lock-picks.

So I'm on track for an August release of Beta three. I am a bit worried the game is too hard. I find it very difficult to get very far as I have tried to make it punishingly hard, but I have also tried to make it fair (i.e. the A.I. shouldn't cheat, they don't have infinite ammo for example).

A slight change to the usual cheeky reminder about beta two. It is still available via itch.io but now you can pay whatever you want for it. Take it for free if you like.

Feedback, as usual, is always appreciated.