Intercept and Escort

One of the gameplay features I’ve been working towards recently is dialogue with NPCs, both on planets and with spaceships encountered in free flight. I brought in the Caliper and Iguana models I made a few years ago to add variety to the NPC spaceships.

As Pulsar Kick features disproportionately scaled solar systems, there’s not much time to complete a conversation without travelling a fair distance across the system, which didn’t feel right. I tried pausing the world sim during dialog but this felt unnatural, and an attempt to make the ships come to a stop to engage in dialog seemed to break the flow of spaceflight too.

What I settled on is when comms are initiated, the player cedes control to autopilot which will rendezvous with the NPC. The camera pivots to a front view between the player and NPC ships to signal to the player that they’ve handed over control. The ships then follow a repeated escort course (avoiding planetary obstacles!) while the player can move through the dialog options or take in the view.

On completion of the dialog, the NPC resumes its previous course, and control is returned to the player. I like how this approach feels, and the combination of flight path and camera have allowed for some cool screenshots of the ships flying in tight formation, showcased below.

I’ve focused on getting gameplay systems in place lately and need to get back into Blender and build more characters, ships, structures and scenery now that there is a better framework to put them in.