Galak-Z - a Rogue like space fighter PAX East 2014 UPDATE
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
847 words · ~4 min read
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Linus Tech Tips coverage of PAXis 2014 is brought to you by Intel and Corsair.
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All right, guys. Now we're checking out Galaxy Z. So, what have you guys done since PAX Prime? Uh, we've been hard at
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work. Uh, you know, a lot of things have changed. We sort of went from a
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partially procedurally generated system to a full-blown rogike. That was a big
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change. A lot of new content, a lot of new enemies, uh, a lot of new abilities.
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We have a big customizable weapon chain now. Um, that's kind of half implemented
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in this. just a couple pre-baked like versions of the weapons stuff in, but
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it's a very flexible, pretty comprehensive uh weapon upgrade system,
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uh hull upgrade system, you know, new locations, um the fact that the content
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is now endless. Like we have a procedurally generated level designer that, uh, you know, takes all the things
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we learned about what made a solid level in our earlier version, the pacing, the
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timing, the kind of the difficulty ramp up, broke those down into a bunch of algorithms and are like now recreating
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that endlessly. So, it's awesome even for us because we play it every day and
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we get new adventures every day now. So, all good. That's probably really nice
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for someone who's testing the game, actually. Yeah. I mean, tuning everything, even though I designed all
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the levels, like there are these rooms that have these spawn nodes where a
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different kind of enemy can spawn or a different kind of weapon. And so, even
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though I play them all the time, it I never know what to expect. I don't, you know, I don't even recognize the rooms
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half the time. So, it's it's all good. So, you guys aren't even seating off of
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like that much core information. It's a lot of randomness. Well, all the rooms
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are hand authored. Uh, you know, I go in and I draw out the space and then I like
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will choose like where enemies could patrol like a couple different random patrol routes. Um, and then kind of
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like, you know, where the things like the spikes and all the spores and all the kind of weird plant life and stuff
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will spawn, where bugs might be, where loot might be. So, a lot of the loot is
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kind of off the beaten, you know, off the hidden path kind of rolling around.
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So, you have to kind of explore if you want to get all the cash. Great. It's great, right? But it's a combat game
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first foremost. You can always just follow the arrow to the target. you know, you never get lost and are
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backtracking and stuck in the game, which is good, but there's a lot of
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stuff off that beaten path to go if you want to get more weapon upgrades and you
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want to get more health and cash and missiles and all that kind of stuff, but a lot of times there's kind of a high
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cost there. It's big demons and spiders and all these kind of creaky things in
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these tunnels and stuff. So, honestly, that's one of my favorite things in like
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FPS games or space games or whatever when it's not necessarily designed for
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exploration. I usually like exploring more because it's like, oh, what what is
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going to happen if I go over here? Was Am I supposed to go over here? Am I going to see something really cool? Am I
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going to get some really interesting loot that maybe my buddy didn't find? Maybe I'll get some crazy cannon or
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something. I don't know. But that sounds awesome. Is there anything else? The thing is the uh you know, the
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interactions have have gotten a lot deeper now. So, we've got the four factions. Your faction, the Imperials,
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the Space Pirates, and then these giant bugs. And they're all at war, too. So,
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you know, you could like come into something and have a bunch of guys in your tail and like you run right into a
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big pirate patrol and the Imperials and the pirates blow up into some big fight
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and you can kind of clean up the remnants and like get out of the way, let your shields get back into it and
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you know, you can use the environment and use the enemies against each other in a lot of really creative organic
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ways. So, it's just never the same thing. It's great. That sounds awesome.
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Thanks for giving us the update on Galaxy Z. We're going to move on to check out some more updates as much as
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we can. If you want to subscribe to line of sec to see all of our PAC's content,
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I'd recommend doing that. And as always, thanks for watching.