Delta V Online: Development Blog

  • Still pluggin’ along!

    Still pluggin’ along!

    I opened up my code editor and did some work on this game for the first time in over a month! All I did was fix a bug that I found after completely re-writing the outfitting system (see previous post) that prevented players from purchasing more than one of a type of ammo (e.g. more…

  • Every time I thought I’d got it made…

    Every time I thought I’d got it made…

    That’s what it took to “fix a few little bugs” in the outfitting system! After trying unsuccessfully to make the system for buying/selling outfits work, I decided the underlying issue was too systemic and required a complete refactoring of how outfits work. The initial system relied on a lot of assumptions which happened to be…

  • Whack-a-bug

    Whack-a-bug

    I updated the that NPCs load when the player takes off from a planet. Previously, the game essentially paused while the player was on a planet, so all NPCs would be in the same state they were before the player landed – if escorts had taken any damage they would still be damaged, and if…

  • Next steps, baby steps

    Next steps, baby steps

    I decided that I want to move towards a playable alpha version as soon as possible. There are two sets of tasks that I need to do to get to that point: Today I started making progress on item number one. I fixed a bug with the NPC threat calculation that was making more powerful…

  • Do it right the second time

    Do it right the second time

    Today I realized that I needed to completely rewrite the system for handling selecting ships. This was for two reasons: As part of this I decided to finally (better late than never!) start clearly annotating my code or, at least, writing comments so I know what the heck it does a year from now when…

  • Gameplay

    Gameplay

    I recorded some gameplay of the game at the current state, so folks can see where it is currently and so I can compare in the future. I noticed the game does seem to stutter a bit during the recording; this doesn’t happen when playing without recording so I’ll have to look into that as…

  • Introductions

    Introductions

    This is the development blog for the game Delta V: Online. DV:O is an online space trading and combat RPG inspired by the classic Mac game Escape Velocity and its sequels from Ambrosia Software. DVO is being developed by Topher Rhodes (that’s me!) I started working on this game nominally in 2015 (7 years ago!)…