I never numbered any of these posts, let's give one the arbitrary number of 99.
Welcome to blog post #99 where we give you all the amazing insights on what we do with your thousands of backer dollars/euros/yen/rupees/zeni/credits that you've poured into this project to make all your dreams a reality.
I can't believe we keep getting away with this. Let's just never release anything and keep raking in the money.Let's start off with some genuine ~feature creep~
As Axem was working on an amazing Nordera model, he decided to finally ditch Wings as a 3d modelling program and step into the world of Blender. And in order to get to know the program a bit better, he decided to make a simpler Nordera ship as practice.
Without consulting me, can you believe the nerve of this guy? Unbelievable.Thankfully, it came out cool and neat. Because Axem is awesome like that.
The Nordera raider is fast, it's furious, it burns a lot of fossil fuel and it's terrible for the environment.
![](https://i.imgur.com/jtw3lKo.png)
Its primary role is to serve as a light attack craft with it's forward mounted fixed cannon and as an anti-fighter platform with it's various point defense turrets.
Banana for scale
![](https://i.imgur.com/3gULsYu.png)
Since Axem made the Raider with various destroyed subsystem states, it suddenly started bothering me how every other large multipart turret in the game just vanishes when destroyed. So I went and feature creeped a bit myself and made destroyed turret models for the majority of capital ships:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/j8eiotyqm6haxz7/Fs2_open_Wings_of_Dawn-EX15-SSE%202018-09-21%2016-35-05-79.webm?dl=0And since we're on the subject of turrets. I mentioned that Axem is working on another Nordera model. Which I'm not going to spoil. I'll just show you this small part of it:
![](https://i.imgur.com/KuoqQxr.png)
Ten barrels?
![](https://fi.somethingawful.com/safs/smilies/0/a/eyepop.001.gif)
Who designed that even? Or perhaps a better question, why hasn't anyone designed this before?
But let's leave the feature creep and absurd turrets behind and let's instead look at the current status of the missions of episode 1 and 2:
MissionsTutorial -
A bit improved, done.E1M1 -
Remade, done.E1M2 -
Remade, done.E1M3 -
Mostly unchanged, done.E1M4 -
Remade, done.E1M5 -
Remade, done.E1M6 -
Remade, done.E1M7 -
Mostly unchanged, done.E1X1
(The optional distress call mission) -
Mostly unchanged, done.E1M8 -
Mostly unchanged, done.E1M9 -
New, done.E2M10 -
New, done.E2M11 -
New, done.E2M12 -
New, done.E2M14 -
New, done.E2M15 -
New, done.E2M16 -
New, done.E2M17 -
New, done.E2M18 -
New, done.E2M19 -
New, done.E2M20 -
New, done.E2M21 -
New, done.E2M22 -
New, done.E2M23 -
New, done.E2M24 -
Not started yet.E2M25 -
Not started yet.Looks suprisingly green.
Disclaimer, though, they are 'done', but not playtested yet by anyone other than me and occasionally Axem. And the entirety of episode 2 is not even in a campaign file yet. But still, isn't that a nice list?
The Visual Novel segments are a bit harder to list, some are done except for editing, some require some art or a cutscene to be made etc. And I can't really name from the top of my head what the status of each file is without going through them in depth. And there's a lot of
words to go through. My amazing buddy, mpgrey, is still helping me out with editing. I can't even promise him fame and
exposure yet he still takes the time to correct all of my bad writing.
VNVN1-12 -
Done, some editing/spell checking may still be required.VN13-23 -
In various states of completion. Majority of work has been done.VN24 -
Not started yet.ArtAll characters are done.
![](https://i.imgur.com/fAvODN5.gif)
There's still some tweaking here and there and some expressions that still need to be made, but the vast majority of character headani's and vn portraits are done for episode 1 and 2. There's still a few story related drawings that have to be made and most importantly, a lot of
anime titties that have to be drawn for the 'R18 patch'. Since I figure I'll release WoD as a relatively 'family friendly' game, and have people opt in on all the
filth fine culture through an optional patch.
There will be smug Cyrvans in episode 2, isn't that lovely?
Weapons and shipsI kind of wish I had kept some kind of actual change log history on all the various weapon tweaks I've done between episode 1's release and now. But since I haven't, I'll just try and mention the noticable things I can remember for the weapons that you, the players, have actually potentially used in episode 1.
CHI-MPC1v Proton - This used to be a cycle weapon and nobody really seemed to like it much. Because it was cycle firing, it's push effect didn't really shine, and it seemed a bit weak in the damage department.
The weapon has received various buffs and tweaks, changing it to burst fire and generally improving its allround performance. It's a very solid energy weapon now, that can properly knock an enemy off course.
Type-74 Cannon - This weapon actually did twice the damage it was suppose to. Since it has a explosive radius, which meant that the game applied the damage of the weapon twice. First for the shot hitting itself, then again for anything inside the blast radius. This has been adjusted (nerfed) so it won't be one shotting targets it's not supposed to. It's still a powerful weapon, though. I personally love putting this weapon alongside the CHI-MPC1v Proton in the Ray MkIII. Since you can keep switching between each weapon and significantly increase your damage output that way.
VX-08 Plasma - This Nordera buster has gotten a bit faster in its projectile speed and its shield damage has been increased a small amount. Otherwise mostly the same.
VK-03N - Has mostly remained unchanged.
Missiles have overall been much improved and feel a lot more solid and fun to use. A lot of their previous performance woes have been due to the majority of them being 'swarm' missiles. Turns out that making a missile a swarmer, apparantly alters quite a bit of its characteristics. Target tracking becomes significantly worse,
especially when you fire the missiles off bore. Changing all of the swarmers to be 'corkscrews' instead, instantly made a world of difference.
The
DHSM-3c Dart is a lovely dogfighting missile now, that is supremely useful for finishing off a target that is going evasive while you're on its tail. The
SMHS-15 Wildfire has become a bit more potent in its damage, and now fires a volley of 5 instead of 6. Which means it won't cause weird ammo counts and a half baked last volley. Speaking of volley's, the
VFAS-16 Volley has been reworked, for it felt supremely unrewarding to use. It now has double the ammo count, though its range went from 1800 to 800. It's turn time went from 1.1 to 0.5, making it extremely nimble. Instead of firing a standard salvo of 4, it will now lock on each seeker individually, so the longer you let it lock on, the more energy missiles you can unleash on your enemy. (This wasn't possible before, because the A.I. couldn't fire any missile with multilock attributes. Thanks DahBlount for changing that)
Of course, ships have been endlessly tweaked with too. The Dragonfly-EX has gotten a significant boost to its afterburner, letting it reach a speed up to 170 (vs the 160 of the MkIII) and it accelerates significantly faster than before. But since you, the players, didn't get an opportunity to fly anything other than a MkIII and the Dragonfly EX in episode 1, there's not much sense listing a bunch of changes that won't mean anything to you.
Model asset wise, the vast majority has been covered. Axem is working on the last critical model for episode 2. And after that there's two more alien capital ships on the to-do list, which are technically not critical for episode 2's release.
Anyway, that's all for this dev blog post.
Until next time!
Edit:
Actually that's not all. I forgot to mention
Sound. Which is again an aspect that has been massively improved since Episode 1. Since there's a whole bunch of new sound code features that lets the overall soundscape be a lot more diverse. Taking the Nordera as example again; they used to have just a single cannon sound effect that was used over most weapon variants. But with the new sound code, that cannon sfx now has 4 seperate variants that play randomly when fired and also differ in pitch and volume each time.
And this new feature has been applied to a large amount of sounds, like shield impacts and laser hull impacts and the majority of weapon fire.
Not to mention that with the old sound code, most sound slots were hardcoded to be played only a very limited amount at the same time. Which often led to sounds stuttering or being cut off when a new one overwrote it. None of that anymore!
Okay that's all for real now.
Until the next next time.