infinitestars

First Look - Khalil Abbadi

Meet Khalil Ayaan Yusuf Abbadi

He is one of the security officers you could meet on the UIC Tabitha. There is so much we want to share about him, but we'll wait for his full color sprite next week.

Marketing Results: 2021-03-21 to 2021-03-28

We seem to have found our "new normal"

I'm guessing that the amount of views and downloads will continue like this with some minor deviations.

There should be another spike in traffic once we do some more Reddit posts next month. We also renewed our VERY cheap paid advertising campaign. Honestly, we're spending something like $20 every 6 months for some great views. I'll share some graphs in our big March in review post that I mentioned earlier.

I've been looking into Reddit...

srsly, how old are you?

Amongst the dozens of choices you make for your MC, one of the first ones are how how old he or she or they are. Depending on what you chose, some crew members will react differently to you in certain scenes and instances. It's mostly small, flavor pieces but I feel it will greatly enhance the immersion.

“Oh! But you are still a child? What are you doing here? How did you get on this ship?”

- Dr. Amaya Kiaria

I've been having ...

Infinite Stars - How to tell the story.

I've been working on some dynamic content for the story of Infinite Stars, and the implementation keeps bugging me.

Episode 1 and 2 had a set script where your choices would influence the story. I'm comfortable with writing and coding content like this. It's easy and straight forward.

However, with Episode 3 I've been wanting to introduce a MC, that can navigate around the UIC Tabitha, triggering dynamic events to tell the MC's story. The idea is that you as the player can talk to...

Aeroponic Chambers

These stackable chambers are made from reinforced glass and used to grow the Tabitha's crew's various fresh veggies. The water inlets and outlets feed into and from the algae tanks where some fish are also kept.

It has a single, rotating pole in the center with plant receptacles where seedlings are planted. These receptacles are used to keep the plant in place, allowing space for root growth and ensuring that the plant doesn't accidentally topple and lose light exposure.

The entir...

Dev Update 2021-03-26

Some good and bad news! Good news is my day job has had a very busy week that yielded some extra income that will be pushed into the Infinite Stars project. (We've commissioned and paid for another 7 character sprites with their expressions that will be delivered in drips going forward.)

Bad news is I didn't have too much time to work on Infinite Stars. I did however manage to approve the finalized art for the new character 2021-03-26 09:11:38 +0000 UTC View Post

Second Look - Lebeny Fuchs

She has come such a long way from her line art drawing we shared last week.

You'll be able to meet and interact with her bubbly personality soon! She is also the first of four new characters that we'll be introducing over the next few weeks.  Still to be revealed is a strong, brooding male security officer, A smart and calculating female communications officer, and the awkward yet loveable young male eng...

Marketing Results: 2021-03-14 to 2021-03-21

Continuing with our efforts from last week, here is the latest itchio results.

It's been continuing pretty steadily. You'll notice the spike in traffic and downloads on Wednesday. This was caused by the lovely ladies from Andromeda 6 retweeting one of our "Go Download the Game" tweets. Normally Twitter views aren't worth much, as while it might garner tons of likes, it seldom converts to traffic, except when Andromeda 6 RT's us, then it's almost guaranteed clicks.

We also had a sa...

Episode 3 - Your glass is always half empty.

As we've mentioned, Episode 3 has tons of story options that will allow you to customize your character. One of those options will enable you to define your character's general outlook on life. The decision you make will have a subtle impact on your story from time to time.

Last week we shared one of the descriptive paragraphs that you might see if your character is one of those people who always seem to be h...

Optional Romance Options

It's no secret that we've been courting the romance market, and Episode 3 will allow us to start including romance options and side plots.

I want to mention that Infinite Stars will always focus on the wonder and adventure of space exploration and that the added romance options will in no means water down the focus on the story, but rather carry an equal amount of weight while being entirely optional.

2021-03-20 21:01:00 +0000 UTC View Post

First Generation Relay Stations

These deep space listening posts are becoming obsolete now that humanity has joined the concordat. Now that we have permission to use the entire Jumpgate network for communication, the relay stations are slowly being decommissioned.

Their original use was to relay communications between systems and Jumpgates. A single human individual operated each relay listening post,  maintaining it and taking care of any critical repairs. These deepspace assignments were intended to last a deca...

Dev Update 2021-03-19

As some of you might have noticed, we've really been ramping up our engagement and marketing efforts. This is being juggled with the ongoing development of Episode 3, and my day job that funds the majority of the development costs.

We previously mentioned a potential release date in February, and while it is technically possible to push the update in its current state, we decided to rather postpone and implement more features as we originally envisioned for Episode 3.

We've been w...

First Look - Lebeny Fuchs

Meet Lebeny Fuchs.

She is the lead botanist onboard the UIC Tabitha. You might recall this post from earlier where we explored what and how the crew eats during their missions and now you get to meet the person in charge of the UIC Tabitha's Aeroponics section.

We'll tell you a bit more about her once we share her full color sprite!

Marketing Results: 2021-03-07 to 2021-03-14

So I'm trying something new. Since Infinite Stars is a collaboration of sorts where players can write their own stories for Infinite Stars or use our game assets to create their own games under the CC-BY-NC-SA* license, I wanted to take it a step further... Sharing our marketing stats with Patrons.

I upped my marketing game last week by renewing my effort, and you'll see it shows in the graph above. You might also notice more regular posts on Patreon, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. (...

Episode 3 - Your glass is always half full.

Lots of exciting things happening (as per the usual!)

In Episode 3, you as the MC will subtly influence how the story plays out. As an example, if your character is the more optimistic type you might be met with the following description:

Autonomous repair bots were swarming over the surface of the cruiser. Their welding flares sparked and flickered all over the hull, like thousands of fireflies dancing together to a silent rhythm that only they could hear. 

If...

Dev Update 2021-03-05

Wow, another week gone! Time is flying.

I’m excited to share a quick clip that shows the first ever animated background in Infinite Stars!

We’ll be implementing more of these animated backgrounds going forward if time allows and Zaph recons we might be able to do some small character animations without too much trouble. We’ll see what the future holds!

The Android build is ready, and will be uploaded for all Commander+ Patrons as soon as I get the time to sit down and ...

Dev Update 2021-02-26

Hey everyone. I've had a busy week, mostly filled with "interruptions" from my actual day job, but we still managed to make some progress with Infinite Stars.

Zaph had the misfortune of having his drawing tablet destroyed after spilling some liquid on it. It was his cat's fault, so we can't stay mad at the cutie. The good news is he managed to get it replaced, and we should be g...

Devlog - Itch.io Suspension & Redemption

We were recently made aware that Infinite Stars had been suspended on Itch.io - something that came as a massive surprise to us. After some investigation, we determined that the game had been mistakenly identified as a virus.
To be on the safe side, we immediately scanned our systems to ensure that we weren't inadvertently spreading malware, and our scans confirmed that our computers were clean! Phew!
Not all antiviruses are created...

Devlog Update

We're continuing work on the story for Episode 3. We're pushing extremely hard to have a release ready for Valentine's day, but I'm hesitant to commit to that date.

We've got 4 new gorgeous characters in the pipeline that we will be teasing as we receive the artwork. Zaph is currently busy working on the linework for Tabitha's AI to make it a little crisper. He's also doing the nude version of Tabitha which we'll be able to share with patrons soon.

Caba has a...

Episode 2 available for everyone to play.

Happy 2021 everyone!

I trust you are as excited about what we’ll achieve with Infinite Stars in the new year as we are!

We took a well-deserved break after Christmas, and we’re slowly spinning back up to our regular work schedule. Even though I was on break, I did tinker with some side projects where I learned some new coding techniques that I’m eager to implement in Infinite Stars going forward.

Our Patrons have had the opportunity to play the second episode a while b...

A happy holiday surprise gift

I’ve got some exciting news to share with everyone!

Following in the footsteps of Episode 1, we wanted to do another collaboration to celebrate the public launch of Episode 2.

We’ve decided to share Episode 2’s launch with Keinart Lobre from Lotus Reverie. Some of his followers and supporters will be playing Episode 2 ahead of time along with our Patrons.

The exciting part is that Keinart was generous enough to share some early access stuff with Infinite Stars patrons ...

Tabitha Design - Where to place all those rooms.

Revisiting the Tabitha’s Designs.

First, a special shoutout to our newest Patrons! Lieutenant Kagutsuchi and Commander Taka! Thank you for making Infinite Stars possible!

We’ve been working on the 3rd episode which will allow players to start moving around between the various sections of the UIC Tabitha, but we’ll do a post about that and how players can ...

Creating your own stories and mods for Infinite Stars

We've been scheming and consulting with various excellent programmers, and with the help of Murkwood and a friend we were able to come up with this!

Once implemented you will be able to write your own story script and have it imported into the game to be played as a side story. You'll also be able to upload your creations for others to enjoy.

With the addition to the Mah'Abeu content we're working on for the next release, in between the main episodes, you'll be able to choose wher...

The (last) perfect day.

(Image is just for fun and is not meant to show any actual designs or concept art for Infinite Stars)

It was the perfect day.

Ricardo was already imagining how he was going to spend his share of the Crypto-Credits. VR Sluts and booze. Real booze imported from Earth. Not the usual synth alku’ahf the outer fringe had. But first, he had to figure out how to break apart these metallic asteroids shaped like perfect spheres.

Ricardo could barely believe his luck when th...

Artificial Intelligence and their purpose on military vessels.

The AI from the UIC Tabitha is a synth-shell powered by a powerful, yet still limited Artificial Intelligence.

AI’s have developed significantly over the past few decades, and while they are excellent at calculations, critical thinking, and consuming mass volumes of digital data, they are not human. They have very limited emotions and lack intuitive instincts.

During the TPA (Terran Protectorate Alliance) era most command AI’s were just software. All military ships are issued ...

Design Insight, Tabitha Command Bridge

Those of you that have played the beta test version of Episode 2, would have seen the lovely new backgrounds. I thought I'd take a short break from writing the new Mah'Abeu content to share some design insights with you!

The above image was the first rough sketch that caba111 did of the bridge. As you can see there are some large windows staring into space. If you recall from 2020-12-02 12:12:22 +0000 UTC View Post

Patron Build: Beta 1.0220.1128

More info at this post here. 

Android version to follow after beta testing.

Episode 2 - Beta now available for testing!

As promised, I present to you the Beta version of Episode 2! In order to deliver on our Thanksgiving weekend promise, we had to cut the Mah’Abeu* content.

This is the version that a select few beta testers will be able to play and give feedback on, but as a patron, you are automatically able to give the game a try.

If you don’t like the odd typo or possible bug, I’d recommend waiting a little while until we release the patron early access build.

Patrons can get...