Hey Alex,
Would have sent this in a PM but thought that others might gain something from your answers if you ever actually make it this deep into the forums to notice this
We've finally gotten started on our university assignment for obj prog/design and was wondering if you could answer a few questions we have now that you are where you are in the development of StarSector that we might use for discussion? Also, the others on the team are most welcome to share their own experience and thoughts if they wish to do so? Anyway, will just post these up:
1) Roughly how much time passed between your decision to develop a game title and actually laying groundwork?
2) Did you know at the beginning of the project that you were creating a space 4x/RTT?
3) What was the first phase of your project, did you draw structure diagrams and charts or have another method of planning?
4) Did you start main coding with blueprints of the main components (such as sound handling, inventory calls, update cycles and other methods) or did you implement these at a later stage?
5) What helped your final decision to favor top-down 2D-sprites instead of say a 'rendered 1px high 3D-sprite analogue' that might have offered greater scope of rendering and post-processing effects for little extra overhead?
6) If you were at the beginning of your planning/development cycle again, would you use kickstarter/desura to generate interest and funding during development?
7) follow-on of 6) above, would you lock availability until beta following the initial KS/Desura offering ended as Dan did with Stardrive?
It seems you have favored an approach to army(fleet) creation of combined arms units but do you really feel that ordnance points give an accurate representation of a given ship or did you consider a more unpredictable and dynamic distribution?
Will there be a way of 'masking' fleets in the future? ie: Fleets 1+2 engage, 22fp vs 41fp but unknown ships that could be freighters or maybe not?
9) Do you plan on revisiting/expanding the current "squadron-launchbay-hanger" carrier dynamic in the future? If so, we would love to see a way of controlling the deck vs launch bays as was done in the Homeworld games or perhaps the ability to jump reinforcements to captured map beacons!
10) Is the next update this year or will it be delayed somewhat as you dive into Stardrive and begin 'harvesting and assililating' inspirational features that might be comfortable over here?
We'll wait of course, ever patient for you to put it down and get back to work!!!!
Thanks for your time guys,
Fly safe!
