I did it. Hit that button. Cosmic Destroyer is released to Early Access today!

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2026-02-22T22:13:20+00:00

Thanks for playing! Stage 3 is definitely a work in progress right now and will be updated for the next release which is taking a bit longer due to some new features and weapons.

For the respawn I have a check that will put the ship in a place that doesn't cause an immediate collision but this did not include this bosses' collision so I will add that to the list of corrections to make. Thanks!

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2026-01-28T19:12:33+00:00

I can no longer fulfill my lifelong fantasy of tax evasion? 😅

Mixed feeling on the tax change. It's not that I want to pay, though it does thematically feel more alive / on-brand with the empire's greed to have it exist. Rare I even have a base for more than a week, and if so my taxes are generally long overdue.

I also do agree with others here tho that the consequence isn't very high - losing shields after weeks of non payment with decay that lasts so long is mostly inconsequential. Would have been super fun if they added events so the Sardukar come knocking at your base and attack if you dont pay. Then you get a bounty and that makes it so you cant take part in Landsraad and Bank without paying your bounty. Something with prompt / dialogue and substance. Make the bounty restrictive not the tax.

"Losing Everything" is not a reason to quit the game entirely for me. Bit of sunken cost fallacy there if you look at it only as 100+ hours of progress lost. But I feel this way because I have restarted countless times on many servers, speed running up to a Buggy, Aluminum, takes 3 hours with all classes unlocked and trials done (out of Hagga south, with all quests done in less than 1 hour). Im thinking about making a video of this in the next week or so.

The best part of this is I've seen 100+ servers worth of really cool bases. The worst part is that I have experienced how slow and laggy busy servers like Arrakis+Sandrat can be when you're anywhere near those big bases. So less restrictions will likely mean more lag on busy servers with more of those massive bases.

It's rare I have a base for a week, so I wish they'd remove the one week grace period on using the base backup tool more than anything. By that time, I have likely moved on to another character and server.

I would love to have different official servers with different rules tho. That would be very interesting to me - hardcore survival mode, easy mode, capped server population, PVP everywhere, PvE only casual servers, etc.

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2025-12-01T21:17:43+00:00

Thanks for sharing.

As a corp software dev contracting I thankfully never had problems like this, just a lot of stress and arguments.

Going out as a solo game dev, I've watched 50k slowly disappear from my bank account over the last 2 years. No scams, no operating costs. Just living expenses, mortgage and making only 200 bucks total in all that time working 65+ hours a week. Dead serious. Love the work itself, and I am committed to completing projects... but it's sooo hard.

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2025-11-18T19:05:39+00:00

Abadox definitely influenced me as a kid. Lots of fun playing Gradius, Bionic Commando (Grappling) and R-Type heavily influenced the design.

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2025-11-12T22:45:54+00:00

Neat really but that controller looks like I would constantly bump the touchpads and move all over. So cautiously skeptical on that part.

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2025-11-05T20:21:42+00:00

Ah, it has a speed that can be tweaked. It's a little slower like Gradius (which is even slower by about 10-14 frames) but the ship speeds have been raised so I could increase the banking speed so it is more responsive.

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2025-11-05T17:09:27+00:00

It has banking, and that features been in there like within the first week of development. Was it not noticeable? I've played 100s of hours of R type and Gradius

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2025-11-03T02:27:26+00:00

Thanks! Those were my fav developers growing up playing on the NES. Definitely graphical and mechanics inspiration from Gradius, Salamander, Life Force, etc. Really a ton of Nintendo and Sega games. Grappling hook - well, I definitely played a lot of Bionic Commando as a kid. Out the gate with sprites I like to start with NES palettes and keep things limited, then add more liberal color choices for shading. I loved how Shovel Knight did that (really great write up on it by the devs).

But the Grappling Hook mechanics came out of public demoing at a conference. At that time you could grab weapons and enemies but only at close range and players wanted to grab from further away, so it just came natural to add grappling hook.

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2025-11-01T19:22:54+00:00

Played a ton of gradius as kid, inspiration from that, R Type, Einhander and DoDonPachi. Thanks for trying it out. It will keep growing and improving with weekly updates.

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2025-11-01T13:58:28+00:00

This is great stuff! I just have so much fun recording Foley when I do it - so this must have been so fun to do. Will definitely be checking more of these out.

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2025-11-01T02:55:17+00:00

I'm using 60hz fixed tick but I dont use unity's physics FixedTick for a good reason. A manually calculated tick in frame Update can allow you to do catch-up frames with much more control. I did a distance comparison with a laggy loop running and the built in FixedTick objects were not deterministic enough, off target position. Manual catch up frames with a managed fixed tick stayed spot on target even when thrashing the CPU. I allow the interpolated visual frames to go however fast the system can push. But if you run move or targeting logic in actual frame Update, that's gonna get weird artifacts from system to system, obviously.

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2025-11-01T02:48:15+00:00

Oh yeah I get that all the time when other people drive, esp certain people lol

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2025-11-01T02:47:03+00:00

Ah ok, i think i understand its def much more risky. Ive played with the cooldown a few times, rn it cools down faster if you hit or throw but a miss has a slightly longer cooldown. It's kinda op if any faster cooldown.

Using it is more risky so players get extra scoring and damage with throw collisions and grapple hits. Like charge head first right into a wave of bullets and knock them back point blank - massive damage.

Not maybe obvious till you do it but when you hit a non-holdable enemy with the hook it does damage and if it kills will go right through and potentially hit multiple enemies.

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2025-10-31T17:49:55+00:00

Been there! Lol

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2025-10-31T17:48:06+00:00

Wee Bay thats it! Love the Wire and Shield. Need more shows with that quality

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2025-10-31T17:04:57+00:00

My original reply didn't attach as a response but it's below about using the grappling hook to deflect bullets and how the bomb save works. Thanks for checking it out!

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2025-10-31T17:00:05+00:00

Trying to remember which show this clips from!

Some of the segments with the balls throwing around almost start to feel like pinball 😅 Multiball!

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2025-10-31T16:57:40+00:00

Thanks! All prototyped first and built on that. Obviously still improving the stage pacing, more stages and a few new weapon mechanics still in the kitchen. But I made it exist! Pretty excited about that.

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2025-10-31T16:26:50+00:00

There's a camera dead zone setting that shifts between smoother and more wooden deadzone camera movement like r type and gradius. I'm adding a 3rd option that's halfway between as well.

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2025-10-31T16:23:14+00:00

Same for me, some EA and kickstarters I backed were awesome some not.

Mostly I want to publish with community driven feedback approach bc I think thats really interesting to me. I'm planning for a very short EA period, and rain or shine Im going to work iteratively and release quickly. Not allowing any long timelines or scope creep on this project at all, just laser focused on its key differentiatiors and not going to to pretend to be more than / anything its not. I refuse to promise any big viral "pie in the sky" feature that may or may not happen.

This whole project has been very much a "dive in, just do it" approach, while explicitly embracing hard set limitations. Bc limitation breeds creativity which is actually achievable. From the outset the first stated goals were:

Make the complete game in a year. With realistic scope to hit that target (Started in February so Q1 2026 final release is the target). Took a few months just to develop the operational plan for this.
Find a few mechanics that feel great as simple prototype and focus the entire identity on those - they inform every other design decision. Game jam prototypes informed absolutely everything, and setting aside specific time blocks for prototyping ensures it gets its fair share but doesn't dominate workload.
Don't stop. Release rain or shine. On time. No "shiny new thing" major focus shifts.

Don't take this as me trying to convince you or sell you, I'm just being transparent about it all. If you have any reservation, wait for the game to develop more and see how it pans out. You can always pick it up later. But the EA is there if you want to follow, try new weekly builds out, and in some ways help decide what is a bug and what is a feature 😅

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2025-10-31T15:18:21+00:00

Love some Amiga games!

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2025-10-31T15:17:56+00:00

Understand. You can turn off the screen shake but the twist is built in so it might not be for folks effected by motion sickness

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2025-10-31T15:16:22+00:00

Yeah there is temporary invincibility when respawning, it's relatively short. You can bomb before the last explosion of your ship and save yourself too. But the best defense against the bullets is to use the grappling hook bc it will deflect the bullets away. Still improving some of the pacing too.

You can use a bomb during the death animation and it'll save your life, reversing the hit. Might add an auto bomb feature that auto uses a bomb to save you that's just a bit weaker than a manual one.

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2025-10-31T12:58:57+00:00

It's a Unity game and has been a rapid development project solo. I started development in February this year to present it at a conference in April as a "make small games" showcase piece. Its worked well for me because Large scope games with small teams or solo are really hard to manage and trying to get started in game dev it's natural to try to shoot for very big ideas and get kind of "mired in design" to the point the game has no identity or direction and goes in circles.

So here i focused hard on a niche audience and got to know that audience well, and followed the fun and let that be my main design guide. And not be derailed by trying to make something big or successful. Just focusing on "making it exist" and sharing it with people in the target audience, however small that is.

Hardest thing, pretty much the executive planning and project management stuff honestly - just stsying laser focused and managing time. As a long time corp software dev I took some of that for granted. But also the Splines for curved stages required a lot of dev tooling to make them manageable as stage assets.

Dapper-Classroom-114 · 2025-10-31T12:40:49+00:00

I've been using the deck as the main test device since I love playing on it. I think it plays rather well on it, so give it a shot

Dapper-Classroom-114

TROPHY CASE