In Alpha: Smugglers of Cygnus space sim

Here’s some previews of what we’re working on in Godot 4:
The early access alpha (currently at 0, but about to get a big patch to add missions) is free on itch: Smugglers of Cygnus - Early Access by Longplay Games

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Another shot, since I can only post 1 at a time :slight_smile:

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How did you get such a nice looking space sky/atmosphere? im curious as to how it was set up to look as good as it does

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In case you’re wondering how to create a nice nebula texture, I made a short video about it recently: https://twitter.com/simonschreibt/status/1716479406342824060

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Looks nice! :+1:

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Thanks! We use an 8k EXR skymap projection on a skysphere, more or less the same method you would use in UE.

I am also trying to make a space sim on Godot.
yours looks Amazing.

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Awesome! The world needs more great space sims

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Just to update - we released the Alpha 1 of our game yesterday, finally bringing missions into it.
Took me a while, making a super flexible mission engine powered almost entirely by plain text for our writer gave me a harder time of it :smiley:

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Very impressive project! Been meaning to play a bit for a few days and finally got there, and the experience was confusing unfortunately :frowning_face: I would like for this project to succeed though, so here’s a bunch of points from me:

Initial experience

The menu and the ship UI was pretty good, and I’m excited for all the possible options to customize the ship. But when I was initially thrown into space to use my ship, it felt like there was a lot of things to read on the left, and it vanished before I could go through it all. And then I had no idea how to bring that text back again.

Nonetheless, I could figure out controls with a bit of fiddling. Note that I’m playing on an XBox controller, so there’s not too many buttons/inputs to try.

I’m sure this is due to the game being in alpha, I would do something similar for my own games too :slight_smile:

Controls

Both ship and in-person controls felt weirdly stiff. The ship felt like it had no weight - I moved the analog stick, and the ship rotated instantly. I released the analog stick, and the ship stopped rotating instantly. Aside from acceleration, whichever way I moved the ship, it was instant. I expected a bit of heft to it, like when I move the left stick, the ship start to rotate slow at first, then builds up some angular momentum, and when I release the stick, it takes some time for the ship to stop rotating.

For the acceleration, I didn’t expect it to work the way it works - my first instinct was to hold one of the triggers to accelerate. But this is probably a design choice, and I’m fine with that.

In-person controls felt sensitive, the move speed was very fast. I expected my character to casually walk around since noone’s in a hurry, but instead it felt like I was sprinting at people.

Camera

The camera also felt stiff, especially with zooming. I press the button, it instantly switches places. I think transitioning smoothly between zoom levels, or just generally between camera positions would be a nice bit of polish.

Especially since currently the zooming feels like the ship is moved relative to the camera, and not the other way around. Granted, I think this is because of the vastness of game space, because if I play with zooming next to the landing zone, it feels more like it’s zooming and not shifting the ship back and forth.

Bad Luck Bart’s Bar

Unfortunately my PC couldn’t muster 60 FPS indoors, but it was still very playable at ~50ish fps. What I had difficulty with was the NPC interactions - since I didn’t know how to interact with them, walking towards them and getting hit with a dialog box was a surprise. Sometimes it triggered even when I was looking away from them but happened to go in their direction. I think an explicit “press X to talk” popup would work well, since sometimes I just want to walk around and explore in their proximity, instead of talking to them.

Also I could walk through furniture.

Mission loop

I took Bart’s quest and want on my way to collect his stuff. The ship felt slow. Again, this could be due to the vastness of space, but it felt a tiny bit tedious. Granted, I was playing with the Spectre, which has a slightly weaker engine - I’m not sure if this means it’s slower, or if it’s faster since it has a smaller hull for it’s engine to move.

On another note, I wanted to talk to Bart a bit more about the bar and the surroundings, but after accepting his quest, there was no option for that, only to talk about the quest status.

I’ve collected all the cargo, but didn’t return it, instead quit the game. So this morning when I jumped back, I went back to Bart and completed the quest. Then I tried talking to him again and I completed the quest again. And again. Without jumping into my ship.

So I went to the job board and pressed B on my controller. There were multiple times were and empty panel came up, and then closed. Not sure if it’s related to how long I press the button.

What confused me was that all the jobs said my ship doesn’t meet the required specs, even though the cargo was less than the ship’s capacity. Even the job specifially requiring a small ship said my Spectre isn’t meeting the specs.

Not caring about that flag, I took a job with a small cargo and went outside. A screen told me I’ve completed something which I didn’t think much about, then checked my jobs - no jobs were there. So I went back inside and took another job. When I accepted, I got a screen about completing something. Without leaving for my ship. This happened again. So I think I somehow got stuck in a bug.

However, after going out and back again, Bart has no dialogue, so at least I can’t complete the same quest again.

Various other things

  • Ship thruster effect is barely visible in the default view, especially when zoomed out
  • Ship thruster effect has no transition, instantly jumps to current thrust level
  • Ship UI resets paint color when I go back to Ship tab
  • Not sure if AA is on or not, some edges are smooth, some edges are jagged ( especially around specular highlights )

Overall, there’s a lot of excellent things going on, including the graphics, the music, the vibe of driving around your own ship, the customization, so I’m really hoping you succeed, and that’s why I threw all of this feedback at you :slight_smile: Also the trailer is well done! It’s brief but it gets the point across and sells the game well.

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Thanks for the really thorough feedback! I’ll talk about some of that in the patch stream in a few minutes here.
https://www.youtube.com/live/HNOr29-YE3g?feature=shared

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Thanks!