There are a lot of new features to report.  Please consider adding Disaster Lander to your collection here on itch.io.

Development

• Surface Landings
  • Habitable planet surface generation
• Spacecraft modules
  • light module
  • female docking module
  • unmanned command module
• Flight
  • gravity management improvements
  • multilayer debris field additions
• Intermission UI
• UI Toolkit based menu for player action between flight missions

Challenge

There is also a major challenge to report. I jumped the gun upgrading to Unity tech stream 2022.2 and there are two nasty defects affecting gameplay. One is a frequent crash early on during gameplay regardless of player action. The other is a crash that results from executing some of the spaceship destruction code after collisions.  However, a lot of the work listed above was accomplished on a prior version of Unity. This prevents any new gameplay footage from being created currently. These issues still exist on version 2022.2.4.f1 of Unity. Hoping the upcoming releases of Unity address this and a new gameplay video will be released with the February devlog.

This hurdle was actually a blessing in disguise as it caused me to focus on learning Unity UI Toolkit and begin work on the UI the player will use between flight missions. These will involve navigating through a solar system and designing spacecraft from recovered modules.

Details

Fortunately, the gameplay development listed above occurred prior to upgrading Unity. Some of the most fun development involved the terrain generation for the habitable planet. Code to generate surfaces is fun because tweaking algorithms generate different shapes. Mountain and caves are now part of the lunar surface and a new kind of hill is part of the habitable planet.

The three new spacecraft modules will make gameplay more interesting. The light module provides a way to illuminate spacecraft modules, landing surfaces, and the debris field including layers the debris fields behind the spacecraft. The female docking module allows for somewhat easier connection of the standard male docking module. The unmanned command module allows piloting a spacecraft without risking a human crew.

Upcoming Development

For the foreseeable future work will continue on the intermission UI. The first feature to be built out there will be navigating the solar system. Also planned are spacecraft design, viewing inventory, viewing a list of rescued pioneers, and of course save game functionality.