Other ships

Hi,
No worries about all the questions I will do my best to explain.
I originally had a very strong stance against adding Alien life forms into the game and I kinda of went against that with "Echoes". While I do think I could get away with another alien based story I won't be able to do that right now. As you already pointed out, I do most of the work myself. I am have currently one other 3D environment artist available that works on the game. (He created a number of unique assets as we speak) so creating a completely alien looking space ship is sadly out of the question.

We actually have one unique space ship in the game and another one planned. Other then that I just simply have to work with the limitations that are in place right now. That said I do personally hope that I can grow the development team after its released. What I would like to do is to be able to hire a dedicated artist for completely new ship models and a character artist to update the existing characters as well as one or two full time environment artists. That way I could update the game post release and have them on board for our next game and be able to create something with a lot more unique assets. They would also be able to help with new side missions.

I will not have anything like a sandbox mode in the final game. It's just not what I envisioned the game to be. While the game does have very small open sections like that (On board Aryn's ship and Aryn's apartment) having such a mode would distract from the main story. I also just don't have the resources to take on something on that scale. On a personal note I believe that randomly generated content would also hurt the story elements of the game. I rather have something tightly focused then leaving things up to chance.

I hope this helps. Ultimately I do believe the main experience of the game won't detract too much from the restrictions and limitations I have to work with and the game should be able to look nice enough and be strong enough in its story that players wont notice them as much.

Well. The levels nor the game in general were ever designed to be fully sandboxed, however I do think there's a certain degree of it in the game. It just depends at what stage you're at in the main game. For instance while you're exploring the first ship in the game, you can, at any time, just go back to your own ship through the airlock and while there's no real reason to do this I just wanted to add that extra level of freedom. You won't be able to do that during the latter portions of the game but you will always be able to go back to earlier parts. The ships will be designed in a way that everything at some point will be connected through multiple paths without having to backtrack too much.

Once you completed the game you'll be able to choose the side missions at any time which loads up the starting part of the game (On board the STARDOCKS) where you'll be able to choose whichever mission you feel like. So while there's no true sandbox feature in the game, and as I said the design simply won't allow this, there is a level of freedom that I think people will enjoy and will make the game feel less linear. This is especially true the further you advance within a portion of the game.

And thanks. I try not to make a big deal out of me doing so much alone because I don't want to make a big deal out of it. I sometimes wish I was able to get some more help but I cannot let the team grow too large. If I did I migh very well risk being able to grow as a developer. So baby steps. After the game's finished I hope to be able to expand gradually with each game and hopefully one day, be able to make games with a tight team from scratch and increasing the scope of these games.

Not a destroyed/battle damaged ship perse, but I do have something pretty cool planned. I have to stress that I want to keep a more light hearted feel to most of the game. While there is a good portion of more serious/heavy topics that I delve into I want to keep the game as far removed from something resembling violence as possible. There's a hurdle in one of the side missions that's not been sitting well with me so I most likely have to change that aspect. This is a very personal choice. I also avoid personal conflicts between characters because it just wouldn't add anything to the story or the game in general. It's now what I think the game needs either.