In the two months since my last post I have released Captain Jameson 0.4, taken a holiday, ported most of Captain Foraxian to XBLIG, abandoned Foraxian XBLIG because ports of games in unpopular genres and unpopular styles are, unsurprisingly, unpopular, and devised a wonderful plan for Captain Jameson 0.6. Oh, and I’ve been working on 0.5, which is the subject of this post.
Captain Jameson Alpha build 0.5, to use its proper title, is not a major milestone. There are no sweeping design changes and there are no amazing additional features. Instead, 0.5 contains all the little adjustments, tweaks, and bugfixes that I’ve been putting off for the past year. It won’t make the game substantially different, but it should make it substantially better. Of course I couldn’t help making a few visual adjustments, as illustrated by this screenshot. Items of note are:
Snipe laser targetting
These show where a snipe laser will fire, and make the module feel a lot more snipey. It’s surprisingly fun to use.
New blurst shield visuals
The original blurst shield (in Captain Forever) was an ultra-rare component. Very few people ever saw one, so I didn’t think much about its appearance. Now blurst shields are relatively common, so the bizzare vibrating sausage graphic has disturbed many a player’s vision. In response to forumite prompting I’ve redesigned it.
New mouse cursor
I may still fiddle with this, but so far I like it. The crosshair is oriented in the same way as the player’s ship, which makes some sense when you then use this cursor to attach modules.
CJ0.5 is still some way off, but for now you can still play 0.4, 0.3, 0.2, and even 0.1 if you’re particularly sentimental or masochistic.
Enjoy!
<3 Farbs