Okay, where to start.
Well, I think the big headline is that it's finished.
Almost.
We're still working on all the last-minute clean up and launch prep, but it's true - Dust Fleet is launching REAL SOON™. We're gonna be on Steam, GOG and the Epic Game Store.
So what's in the finished package? Let me talk you through it.
THE CAMPAIGNS
Dust Fleet comes with two main campaigns. The first is Prelude, which is mostly a tutorial. Those of you who have played the demo will have played this already, although it is slightly tweaked from the demo to account for some new gameplay mechanics. The main campaign, though, is all-new. Defence of the Dust Zone sees you pitted against a rogue element of Earth's government intent on finding something hidden deep within the Dust Zone. You as the player have to help the people who live there, the Zoners, to fight them off and protect the Dust Zone's secrets. To do that, you'll be playing through a series of story missions and initiating your own battles to keep the enemy at bay.
All the missions are fully voice acted by a great cast, and I'm really proud with how the story turned out.
But that's not all!
SECTOR ASSAULT
Once you've completed the campaigns, Sector Assault is waiting for you. This has similar gameplay to the campaigns, but on a randomised map with no story missions. Just you vs an AI. You can tweak map size and difficulty to get the kind of challenge you want. The full tech tree from the campaign is here too, giving you plenty of scope to try everything out that you might not have gotten to in the campaign.
THE EDITOR
When I was making Dust Fleet, I quickly realised that hand-coding scripts for the missions was just not going to work. So I wrote an editor. But I didn't like it, so I wrote a better editor. And then I decided that if it worked for me, it could work for everyone! So, the game ships with the same editing tools I used.
Now, these are a little complex, and the game won't ship with a full manual for them because it would be huge and no one would want to read it, but I think I'll probably do some walkthrough videos to help you get started. I also can't guarantee any particular level of support for the editors - it's just me here, and I just won't have the bandwidth to be able to answer all questions and issues that might arise from using them. But as long as the game is alive, I will make it my goal to tackle bugs and make sure they continue to work. Ultimately, if the editors see a lot of use, I'll be relying on you the lovely Dust Fleet community to help each other where you can.
Also, the editor and game includes support for mod.io. If you don't know what this is, it's a place where users can share mods for supported games, a lot like Steam workshop, but it'll also work for our players on Epic and GOG. In the case of Dust Fleet, the mods will be campaigns created in the editor. With just a few clicks, you can get your campaign up onto mod.io, and other players can download it in the campaigns menu of the game. So any campaign you make can go straight into player's hands.
IT'S ALMOST HERE
So, the game is coming real soon. You might have caught me chatting with Justin from Media Indie Exchange and Jirard from The Completionist during the recent REMIX live event, where they played through 20 minutes of the game. That was quite exciting, my first ever media event. If you missed it, I've posted that part of the livestream to the Dust Fleet channel. We've got other things in progress as well, so you should be seeing a lot more from Dust Fleet very soon.
I'm really proud of Dust Fleet, and I hope you enjoy playing it.
I'll see you in space!
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See Dust Fleet's appearence on ReMIX Live 2023 (4:05:20)
Oh cool, I didn't realize the game was so close to release. I'd missed the Steamfest demo due to lack of promotion, will you be putting it back up at all?
Hi Lord_Mordja. I don't think the demo will be going back up now that a release is upon us.
Amazing news. I just recently discovered your project through some youtube video streamer giving out his 2023 RTS space game recommendations. The fact that you even include your own dev Editor is something that every triple A studio can learn from.
Think about Half-Life, Operation Flashpoint, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Age of Empires, C&C and so many game titles that did support modding and their fans kept these games alive even 2 decades later. In turn providing the studios that produced those titles many years later still some income.
I will never understand foolish Publishers or game studios that prohibit modding support. It's after all the player base and the game it's long livability that decides on a game's success.
Anyway I'm definitely going to get your gem of a game. It looks fantastic!
Will we be able to add new factions into the game, or edit and add assets to present factions or are these things hard coded in your game?