If I may join in here, Starsector is kinda "the game I was born to make" ...
... I literally almost typed that
exact thing, word for word, but then thought, "that might come off a bit melodramatic". Ahem. But yes, that's how it feels.
... I've wanted to make something like Starsector since I was a kid.
Same, I've been trying to make basically this game since I was like 14 and made an Asteroids clone. It even had pixel-by-pixel sprite rotation code! I'm still proud of that. Wish I had some screenshots... and, oh man, that reminds me. I started my game-dev journey by writing a graphics editing program. Because you need the tools first, right? This is back in the DOS, pre-MS-Paint days. Then I used *that* to make a font, that I then used in that very same graphics editor. Damn thing even had RGB palette editing, since VGA supported that. That was about the point I realized that, while I could make a palette editor, I had no idea how to go about making an
actual palette.
... also, typing in the assembler code for a mouse driver, by hand, from a magazine, so I could actually use the mouse in my programs. And it *worked*! Kids these days, uphill both ways, and so on.
(The graphics editor also had support for animations. I mean. What. And a custom file format that was *awful*.)
Anyway, fun times!
(Also, working with Alex is great. He's gracious and respectful in collaboration and is all-around a real solid dude. But y'all probably could guess that from seeing the product of his labour and talking to him here. 'Course he takes out his evil side by pulling some seriously crafty moves in games of Dominions.)
(D'aww; right back atcha. Especially the bit about crafty, evil Dominions moves.)