9 mission buttons superimposed over a map of Jupiter: Mission 1 - Bomber Interception, Obviously Mission 2 - Operation Scalding Water Mission 3 - Battle Against a Formidable Duck Mission 4 - Breaking the Siegebreakers Mission 5 - Bringer of Missiles, Ultimate Mission 6 - The Goddamn Duck's Back Again Mission 7 - Operation Sapphire Wrath Mission 8 - The One Where You Play As A Tank Mission 9 - Why Won't This Stupid Duck Leave Me Alone

After a lot of consideration from the team, we've decided that #NovaSquadron is going to pivot away from being a roguelite, and instead have an action-packed, bespoke campaign.

We're very excited to reveal the mission lineup for Part 1 of the campaign!
#gamedev #indiedev

Quick update on #NovaSquadron 's cloud rendering:
...sometimes things have to look worse before they start looking better.
"Make a plane game set on Jupiter", I told myself 5 years ago.
"You won't have to worry about terrain then!"
"It'll be so easyyy!"
#gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

A Phoenix fighter plane surrounded by clouds. Said clouds have decided to be jet-black where the sunlight's reaching them, with radioactive green shadows.

Now the clouds have decided to have weird tartan grid patterns on them.

Okay, now they're sort of rendering correctly, except they're upside down. And half the height they're meant to be. And have melted across the bottom of the screen.

They look great now! I mean, they're only taking up the bottom-left 1/16th of the screen, but they look great!

I've been hard at work on #NovaSquadron 's clouds again! Fortunately, dual-filtered volumetric froxel-based Henyey-Greenstein phased fBM cloud rendering is as simple as it sounds, and totally doesn't do anything weird if you mess up slightly.
#gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

The next #NovaSquadron tour stop was meant to be the Regio Obscurus, but it's on the other side of the planet...so I'm borrowing the Grand Viaduct's mag-railways to get there faster.

Ground-attack planes weren't meant to go this fast.
Not even red ones.
#gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

Welcome to the Scarlet Fields, a corner of #NovaSquadron 's Jupiter with such a high density of rare resources, it actually tints the clouds red.
Very ominous and angry.
Totally not making me hungry or anything.
#gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

You know how when you open the mission select menu in #NovaSquadron there's a bunch of arrows and numbers and stuff?

And none of them make any sense?

Yeah, we're getting rid of them. Introducing the new start-of-run Region Select menu.
#gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

This week I made a bunch of little tweaks to #NovaSquadron:
- post-processing is a bit better
- lighting is a bit better
- the aurora is a bit better
- rim lighting?!
#gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

In the order I drew them: Fenrir, one of the two protagonist options, a young woman in a flight suit with long, bright orange hair and a slightly bemused smile. Commander Özdemir (or just Öz to most people who know him), a stern, grey-haired man with a pristine white uniform, bionic eye, and magnificent moustache. AWACS Storm Chaser, a purple-eyed emo girl with dark green hair tied into a messy ponytail and a brown leather bomber jacket. Perigee, the other protagonist option, a young man with blue hair, a slightly scruffy beard, and kind pink eyes. He's also wearing a flight suit, but his is, well, actually rendered properly.

The first four characters from #NovaSquadron, in the order I drew them.
I've still got a very long way to go, but holy HECK that's a big improvement in my pixel-pushing skills already (especially with the fabric work)
#gamedev #indiedev #pixelart

A man in a partially unzipped flight suit, with long blue hair tied up in a short ponytail and a short blue beard. His purple eyes look kind but also a bit silly. (This is because he’s kind but also a bit silly.)

Perigee in-situ for a mission briefing, saying “You know, Öz, I understand why you’re excited, but I’m kind of hoping the giant deadly robot doesn’t show up this time.”

You've already seen Fenrir, but it's finally time to introduce the other playable character in #NovaSquadron, callsign Perigee!
I know what you're thinking, "Is he as much of a dumbass as he looks?"
and no, he's not.
He's even more of a dumbass.
#gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

So to celebrate hitting 1000 followers over here (omg hi everyone!) I thought it'd be fun to set up a mission in #NovaSquadron with 1000 planes.

This was a mistake.

Join me on my quest to try and stabilise the FPS by blowing them up as fast as possible.
#gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

Ever got into a situation where you're focusing on the combat so much, you only realise afterwards that you have no idea what anyone's been saying over comms?

Yeah, me too.

Which is why I'm adding a chat log to #NovaSquadron.
#gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday #accessibility

The #NovaSquadron VFX improvement pass has made its way over to laser beams now! I'm not done yet, but you can already see a huge improvement over the live version of the demo.
#gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

The new fonts are spreading! Now #NovaSquadron 's main menus are more readable and, dare I say, more classy.
#gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

New year, new...HUD?!

Yep, I've redone all the text on #NovaSquadron 's HUD (next up, the rest of the game!), and I'll be moving some more things around in the coming weeks.
#gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

Platform infrastructure and orbital railguns were next on the list for the #NovaSquadron visual overhaul...so I figured why not do both at once, by calling in a little help from above?
#gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

For today's #NovaSquadron post, it's the holidays, so I wanted to do something a little special.

We have an early Christmas present from us to you:

AWACS Storm Chaser smiling.
#pixelart #screenshotsaturday

Just adding a new menu to #NovaSquadron ...wait, is that a save select screen?

Why the heck would a roguelite flightcade game need multiple save slots?

What the hell are we cooking in 0.5.0?!
#gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

(yes that's Fenrir's canon name)

Not even Jovian warship energy shields are safe from the unyielding power of pure burst mass. The swing-wing Valkyrie has had a significant impact on Nova Squadron by @claradoth.bsky.social. #indiegame #flightsim #NovaSquadron
1/2

Meet AWACS Storm Chaser, the lady who says things like "Nova One, Fox Two!" and "Bifrost's laser's about to fire, everyone get to cover NOW!" during missions in #NovaSquadron.
Interests:
- fashion
- radar maintenance
- playing support characters
#gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday #pixelart #oc

One last bit of #NovaSquadron global UI work before I can start declassifying the features I've been working on for the past few months:

I've always wanted to make one of these silly little fade-to-black effects
#gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

I've been so busy with #NovaSquadron 's menu and subsystem overhaul that I haven't posted any gameplay videos for months, so here, as a treat for us both -
the beginnings of some new, fancy, cel shaded explosions!
#gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

Introducing the man who's been giving you briefings in #NovaSquadron the whole time, Commander "Öz" Özdemir (and his moustache!)
Interests:
- watching everyone come back from a mission alive
- mecha anime
- facial hair
#gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday #pixelart #oc

you might be wondering what I'm currently doing on #NovaSquadron, and well

I'm sat here with Aseprite open,
pushing the individual pixels of a magnificent handlebar moustache,
while the other half of my brain is busy wondering "how can I make a flightcade game play like a shmup"

I bet this isn't surviving social media compression in one piece, but #NovaSquadron 's buttons now 'fizz' when you hover over them! Lots of little floaty particles drifting around as an extra visual indicator of what you've got selected.
#gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

I've had to keep most of my top-secret #NovaSquadron work under wraps for the last few months, but I can finally start declassifying some of it now that we have...pixel art?!

Introducing the first member of Nova Squadron, callsign Fenrir.
#gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

A bunch of screenshots of people talking about Nova Squadron: "Its a plane game roguelike that's gay as <redacted>" "guys caution when joining, the game and its community might give you gender dysphoria, have fun tho!" "the lesbian piloted hyperfuturistic space a-10 game has a discord guys"

I genuinely do not know where the public perspective of #NovaSquadron as the gayest flightcade game of all time came from. 0.4.1 has, like, three characters, and they only talk about mission objectives. At this point I'm just going along with it
#gamedev #indiedev

🖖 They said it couldn't be done... but here's my attempt to analyze #StarTrek through the art form by which all #ScienceFiction must be judged: #MusicalTheater 🎶. Naturally.

#DearEvanHansen #ToBreakInAGlove #YouWillBeFound #NovaSquadron #JusticeForJoshAlbert #Trek365

Taking a break from all the top-secret #NovaSquadron stuff I can't show you, to do something I can -
the background hexagons now glow around your cursor, and sweep across the screen from different directions!
#gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

So I made a promise to a couple of people in the Discord server for @yoyoyollie.bsky.social's #DeliveryMustComplete.

The promise was that this weekend, I'd put a hat on a plane (long story)

so here you go.
Plane in a hat.
#gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday #NovaSquadron

Nova Squadron - Hotfix 0.4.1 - Steam News It needed to be done, but we snuck something extra in anyway.

We've just released the #NovaSquadron 0.4.1 hotfix, updating to that Unity patch you may have heard about recently.

We also managed to fit in some controller support improvements - if you've had problems before, please give this a try!
#gamedev #indiedev
store.steampowered.com/news/app/182...