That said, I'm very happy so many people are so enthusiastic about the game, so by no means take this as a request for a cessation of feedback!

Furthermore, amazingly, this site is now on the first page of the Google UK search results for "space exploration", crowding out various real-world space probes. I feel almost a bit guilty about this. (And Metal Beetle's site is on the second page for "beetle".) The algorithm seems to have taken a liking to my sites.

So what has my analysis of the feedback messages thrown up so far? Well, the most frequent complaint has been that fuel in dev 9 is rather too tight. This is simply an oversight on my part, and one I will address in dev 10. Of course, fuel will never be plentiful, since the limitations that fuel imposes make up part of the gameplay by making the player choose where they can afford to fly.

Relatedly, many people report that they consider games where they haven't managed to reach all stars on the map to be games they "lost". This is a bit confusing to me, since it feels akin to saying that any game of Pac-Man not played until the final 256th level - is lost.

Still, what these two things boil down too is that the game is rather too hard for may, and also too unpredictable in its difficulty. Then again, there are also plenty of players who like the difficulty as it is. The obvious resolution is to add difficulty levels, which is indeed what I intend to do.

So what's the plan for dev 10? The main focus will be on the space combat, where I plan to more or less rewrite the combat user interface, and introduce planets and a larger playing field. Beyond this, I'm not certain yet. Difficulty levels, perhaps.

Numerous feedback messages have also stated that there is still very little variation in the game's encounters, and this is obviously true. So far, I'm still concentrating on improving the game's engine, rather than adding lots of content. This is simply because the engine needs to be more or less finished before I can write content for it. The encounters that are there so far have been rewritten numerous times, and I would rather not have to rewrite a hundred encounters each time I change something about how the game works.

The above points aren't the only things I have learned from the feedback messages, but this is already quite a long post, and to detail each idea for improvement and its reasoning here would make my hands fall off.

But rest assured that there is plenty of thought going into my plans for the game.

I will get back to every single person who wrote feedback and included their email address, but just like last time, it will take a few days.

For example, two people mentioned a case where Bethesda Softworks released a $2.50 add-on consisting of nothing but armour for your horse. Other examples mentioned are Half-Life, where the first episode was "meaty", but the second one was not - and cost the same as the first. Another one is Spore.

They appear be to thinking: "If we do add-ons, we can chop up the gameplay into lots of little bits to sell to the customer at a higher price, and end up with more money for no extra effort. And we'll just keep on cranking out more content until no-one buys it anymore."

This is not what I want to do.

In the rest of this post, I'll explain why I want to use the "expansions" model for selling SE:SS, but first some promises:

1. Even without any expansions, the full game will be entirely playable. There won't be nearly as many encounters, so they'll start to repeat themselves rather quickly, but there will be no game features (as opposed to content) that are only unlocked by buying something.
2. The expansions will be few, and meaty. Each of them will take me several months of work.
3. If I do feel the need to release a minor expansion or add-on, it will be free.

So why the expansions?

I've spent about half a year of development time on Space Exploration so far. I expect to spend another three months or so on the game itself, and then maybe another three doing nothing but writing encounters for the first expansion. I will then release the game and the expansion. If the expansion does well in terms of sales, I will start work on another expansion. If not, I will move on to another project. Assuming people really like the game, and I have enough ideas, I might do three or four expansions, spending maybe a year of my life doing nothing but writing content for the game.

So I could spend that entire year up-front and release all of the content rolled into one release people can buy, and which costs about as much as the three or four expansions put together. (That is, about as much as a normal shareware game.) But if the game proceeds to sell badly, I will literally be unable to buy food, and will have thrown away a year of my life. Which is a rather depressing outcome.

So I want to have a dialogue with my customers that goes something like this:
Me: "I made this game, do you like it? If you do, I'll spend more time making more of it."
Customers: "Yes!"
Me: "OK, I'll go and make more."

or, alternatively:

Me: "I made this game, do you like it? If you do, I'll spend more time making more of it."
Customers: "No!"
Me: "OK, I'll go and make something else you might enjoy more."

For the customer, the end result of a game with expansions is the same as if I'd done a single big release, or a small release followed by free upgrades. Customers get X amount of enjoyable game playing time for Y money. The difference is just that with expansions, it happens in instalments of say ¼ X game play for ¼ Y money.

The biggest change is the way crew is handled. Instead of being just a number, each crew member now has their own name and set of skills. This adds a lot to the game, with your crew's skills and mood affecting the outcome of encounters, and the options you have.

The other big change is that the time limit has been removed. Instead, you now receive more limited fuel at the start of the game, and have to periodically report back to base to ask for more fuel. Your performance in the game so far affects how much extra fuel you are granted. This results in more interesting strategic decisions on where to fly when.

Beyond that, I've fixed various bugs, simplified the user interface a bit, and introduced a new tutorial you can access from the main menu, replacing the old in-game help pop-ups.

Combat, too, has had some minor alterations, mostly to clarify things. It will get a major revamp in dev 10, though.

As always, I'm very interested in any feedback you can give me, either by email, or through the handy web form.

Anyway, download the new version and give it a try.

Beyond the crew management, there are some other user interface improvements in dev 9, along with speed improvements and bug fixes. One thing that isn't going to change in dev 9 is space combat. That's what dev 10 will be all about.

Finally, Star Controller has a post about SE:SS that's well worth checking out.

We'll keep you up to date as things progress.

This isn't because I'm a particularly amazingly powerful gamer. It's just that if you're the one who wrote the game, you of course know all the tricks, and have spent a lot of time playing it.

So I'll be looking into toning down combat difficulty a bit in dev 9, or giving you readier access to bigger guns. But for now, here's some combat tips:

• The single laser cannon on your ship isn't very powerful, but you can find more weapons, or buy them from the Zrapta using space gold.
• You can move your cursor over any ship to get more information about its status.
• How easy it is to hit a ship depends on your distance, and on how many moves the enemy ship has left. The more moves it has left, the harder it is to hit. (The little green dots on the left of the ship represent the number of moves left.)
• Most enemy ships want to stay within a certain range of you. You can cause them to exhaust their moves by moving too close or too far away, making them easier to hit. Hence, with some ships, it makes sense to chase after them, and with others, to be chased by them.
• If you are fighting multiple enemies, eg robot drones, you can kill some of them, run away, and then come back with full shields and armor to finish off the rest.
• You can avoid nearly all combat situations with the right encounter choices, so if you're not powerful enough yet, be meek.

With this release, the engine of the game is nearing completion, baring minor features and more optimisation. From now on, we'll be concentrating on massively upping the number of encounters, and writing the first expansion.

Download it, discuss it in the forum, or have a look at the press release.

Feedback is as always highly welcome, via the forums, or via the feedback form.

The aim is to prevent the feeling that you're just "doing one thing after another". Instead, the you and the game should construct a little narrative each time you play. You make meaningful decisions which affect the rest of your game, and you can see causal links between things.

The number of encounters in the current dev versions is pretty small compared to the number there will be in the release version. (And indeed there will be several months at the end of development where the game engine won't really change and we'll be busy writing encounters.) But even now, I try to strive for a well-connected game. Compare these two diagrams.

 

The first one is a diagram of the connections between encounters in dev 6, and the second is the same diagram for dev 7. (With the encounter names obscured, because there are now some plot-related encounters in there I want you to discover for yourself.)

As you can hopefully tell, the second diagram is much more interconnected and confusing than the first one. (And features such lovely terms as "vvivv' tetetehete".) As I add more encounters, this diagram will become more and more interconnected, and less and less readable, until we end up with a giant tangle of connectivity-wool.

That's what we're aiming for - a giant tangle of connectivity wool.

There has also been a lot of code cleanup and bug fixes, which will really help the project in the long run. Next up for dev 8: tactical space combat.

Since we're still very interested in your feedback, we've made a proper website for the game and started up a forum. So if you have any comments or suggestions, or need help with the game, visit the forum.