Starside chat included head of design and narrative Liam Hill joining Barker and Graham to talk about new features, including the new Patrol game mode.Phantom galaxies"We discussed: "
Key insights
- 🎮 The team has been working on new environments for smaller, tighter games, which Liam is excited to share.
- 🔫 Shooting in the game is designed to feel as impactful and intuitive as possible, with a strong emphasis on finding and acquiring cool weapons.
- 🌌 The challenge of creating a unique space combat game that sits somewhere between action and simulation is exciting and rewarding.
- 🎮 Player matchmaking infrastructure built from the ground up, allowing you to party up with friends or random players.
- 🤝 The goal is to make the PVE experience on Patrol more team-based so that all players feel like they're helping each other out, rather than competing for kills.
- 🖥️ The switch from Engine 4 to 5 brought benefits as well as efficiencies in achieving higher fidelity, allowing us to increase the visual fidelity of larger elements like mechs.
- 🎮 Using UE5 for game development allows us to achieve new levels of fidelity and efficiency, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in games.
- 🗣️ Liam Hill emphasizes the importance of community feedback and participation in game design and narrative development.
The team is committed to creating new and exciting gaming experiences with a focus on impactful shooting, unique space combat and improved player matchmaking.
- 00:00 🌌 Liam Hill discusses the challenges and improvements in designing and developing Phantom Galaxies' new environments, patrols and game modes, emphasizing the importance of spatial relationships and unique combat environments.
- Liam Hill, head of design and storytelling for Phantom Galaxy, joined the chat from the US,WADAAnswer questions from the community in the format.
- Liam's favorite star fighter is the missile Breach, and he's looking forward to sharing the new environments he's developing for patrol.
- The design and development of Patrol was a massive undertaking, especially in terms of putting together player groups, matchmaking, and the server-side technical aspects.
- The game has an emphasis on finding and acquiring cool weapons, with improvements to design and shooting that make it feel impactful and intuitive.
- Speakers will talk about the importance of spatial relationships in gameplay and exploring unique environments to bring Phantom Galaxy style combat to life.
- Developing new game modes is difficult due to the lack of a solid example, as it requires trial and error and respect for the work of the development team.
- 06:49 🌟 The game adds new features and infrastructure, including random matchmaking and frequent rotation of available patrols, providing fresh challenges for players of all levels.
- The random matchmaking infrastructure is being built from the ground up, allowing players to manage their own player groups and party up with themselves or random players.
- Speakers spoke about new features and infrastructure being added to the game, as well as the release of new patrols for the community.
- Players joining patrols and logging in daily to collect data will help developers identify and address issues with the game.
- Future updates will bring more interesting gameplay scenarios, including a more frequent rotation of available patrols and the possibility for patrols to evolve in different directions.
- Content is reusable and varied, built to provide fresh challenges for players of all levels with new environments, enemies and features.
- 12:03 🌟 The game will be updated to encourage cooperative gameplay, add new dynamics such as control points and time limits, introduce difficulty settings and new enemy classes.
- The XP reward system during patrols has been changed so that all players who damage enemies will receive kill credit, promoting a more cooperative, team-based gameplay experience.
- The next update will add control points, time limits, cannon placement and more, adding new dynamics to the gameplay.
- Speakers will talk about potential future additions to Patrol, including modifiers, difficulty settings, and control points, all aimed at bringing value and variety to the player experience.
- Future gameplay for Phantom galaxies will include new elements such as varying difficulty levels for patrols and control points, adding additional challenges for players.
- The design and development team is working on features that will make player death in the game more in keeping with the fantasy of being a heroic mech pilot, increase the difficulty, and force players to think more about their decisions.
- The game introduces a new class of enemy and the update brings major changes to the enemy gallery.
- 20:23 🌟 New enemies and patrolling Breacher Missile tweaks, more cooperative PVE content, an evolving economy and rewards system, and a focus on in-game storytelling and faction formation.
- Patrols will introduce new enemies with varying levels of difficulty, and the breach missiles on patrols will be rebalanced due to performance issues with large enemy groups in a tight space.
- While the Breacher Missiles are overpowered and need tweaking, Patrols are the starting point for the game's main repeatable content.
- The game will feature more cooperative PVE content, including short session gameplay, longer and more challenging patrols, and end-game content for 4+ players.
- The game's economy and reward system will evolve, moving away from the current straightforward and simple model and offering more diverse and complex rewards for engaging in patrols.
- Speakers spoke about the need to provide more background and context for patrols in the game, as well as increased activity and new characters being introduced in the short to medium term.
- There is the potential to add more lore and tell the story through game modes.
- 31:15 🎮 The development team discusses the transition from Unreal Engine 4 to 5, emphasizing increased fidelity and efficiency for long-term development and high visual quality.
- Different parts of the game, such as new enemies, environments, sounds, etc. take different amounts of time to develop, with the majority of sound development being handled by the audio department.
- A variety of artists and designers worked together to create the in-game environments, utilizing Unreal Five technology and multiple disciplines to ensure everything looked and functioned as desired.
- I switched from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5, but I'm not a technical expert.
- Speakers will talk about the improvements in fidelity and efficiency in the transition from Engine 4 to 5, specifically the gains achieved in parallel with the rendering of higher quality assets and efficiencies.
- Using Unreal Engine 5 for the game enabled a new level of fidelity and efficiency, despite not having the largest team.
- Using the best engine for the game was a step back, but it will pay off in the future as it allows for long-term development and high visual quality.
- 37:52 🌟 The next update will add an XP bar, with weapon range adjustments and monthly updates planned.
- XP bars will be added to the game in the next update.
- The level cap was supposed to gradually increase with each update, but that didn't happen and now the new level cap is a huge jump.
- The speaker will talk about the future of game updates and the decision to limit weapon range in the game.
- Phantom Galaxy gameplay aims to increase the range of player weapons, tune falloff damage to have less penalties, and bring common combat ranges closer.
- Balancing updates in game design is difficult, but the team aims to deliver monthly updates to make certain elements more dynamic.
- Monthly updates are the norm, and sometimes changes are too dangerous to implement in the current build, but improvements are planned for future releases.
- 45:06 🌟 The Skill Tree will return in a different form within the Fusion system, focusing on space battle bosses for the time being, and incorporating ground battle content in the future.
- Skill trees return in another form within the fusion system, offering class refinement and gameplay variation.
- For the time being, the focus will be on space battle bosses, with plans to incorporate ground battle content in the future.
- Bing will be monitored and SL will be banned. Focus on setting realistic expectations and giving developers time to create features before announcing release dates.
- The speaker will discuss the implementation of various reward systems andNFTHe spoke about the use of , which provides players with visible restrictions and controls, as well as invisible tracking to enhance safety.
- While players have visibility for a limited time, our tech and web development teams have the tools to track down and close loopholes without giving too much information to exploiters to prevent damage to the game and community.
- 51:22 🌟 Liam Hill is a regular participant in the Starside chat, openly discussing game and scenario design.
- Liam Hill joins Starside Chat whilst on holiday in the US and becomes a regular participant.
- Speakers are welcome to discuss a variety of topics related to game design and narrative design, and they plan to invite more team members to provide insights and feedback to the community.