Bored to tears on a big empty space ship, the battle hardened Marines start taking joyrides on the conveyor belts..

The feedback for the final beta release has been trickling in. I am happy to note that it has largely been positive, the main concerns that I have been receiving about the game is a lack of variety - in sound, the enemies and the environments.

I have been negotiating with a local audio engineer to get the 'sound scape' of the game remade from scratch. Hopefully this will bring a more immersive and less monotonous aural environment to Derelict - groans and screams of monsters, hums and beeps of electronic equipment, crackling gunfire and roaring explosions, air being pushed and pulled through ventilation units, and the sound of marine boots landing on carpet, tiles, metal and grass. I'm really excited about getting this aspect of the game done right.

Most of the way through Derelict, you're only facing one kind of enemy, so surprises are few and far between. The game is inspired by Space Hulk, but taking inspiration from another source doesn't neccessarily mean you should take its weak points too. So I gave it some thought, what monsters could I add to the game within my limits of time and 3d modelling ability. I thought about an enemy in Duke Nukem 3D that used to SCARE THE CRAP out of me, and figured I could do one based on him. I may also add a couple of other new enemies, though i'll be keeping them under wraps until the game is out.

A couple of people have mentioned, after the first few levels, the environment starts to become a bit samey. I'll definitely spend a fair bit of time over the next few weeks adding more signs, textures and objects to the levels to make them more unique. One thing I have just added is these conveyor belts which will be seen in the cargo areas, as well as maybe a few other places. I'm not ruling out having conveyor based puzzles, but it'll definitely not be Chips Challenge style where you have to build bridges out of blocks of dirt.

Oh, the only other thing i've done is refined the map screen a tiny bit, click on the screenshot for a closer look. Doesn't change the gameplay at all, just makes it looks nicer is all.