Hi All,

It's been quite awhile since an update so I thought I'd put up a new in-development version to download instead of trying to remember all the changes I've added since last version. this is very much a dev version without any polish, little testing and most features still incomplete if there are there at all, use at your own risk ;)

hopefully this will still give you an idea of what I am aiming for and a little bit of the feel of the game. Happy to hear any feedback or questions you may have with the current version and the design of it.

Enjoy!

http://www.sendspace.com/file/8zxp6g

Hi,

I've still been spending a decent amount of time continuing the game. Lately I've been working on ship and module damage and starting work on the effects associated with it (added turrets while I was at it!). I'm got a short clip showing the early test of taking damage and the effects applied to the ships (super early version, very basic explosions for now)  

Still have a bug that I am still trying to find the cause that you might notice near the end of that. Otherwise I'm slowly getting the details in that I've been planning. Still have the basic shaders and effect for the ships but this is just for testing, it's still a 4X game and you never zoom in that close to the ships.

I plan to work a bit more on the ship design screen and interior views then add another ship size with equivalent weapons for it then should be able to release another public test to get some feedback!

Any feedback or queries welcome :)
Thanks, 

Hi All,

Just a quick update, I've been expanding on the ship designer at the moment, I have placeholder meshes for loading for internal modules (which will also have collision meshing for weapons that penetrate through the armor\hull when hit). These load with a mesh based collision footprint (doesn't have to just be a square, any mesh shape with work) for positioning and overlapping checks. 

Loading, saving and modifying designs is in and all working now, I think next I'm going to start work on the internal damage simulation so you can see internal damage and even weapons pass right through if they have high penetration stats and the ship is already damaged, etc.

Below is an in-game early screenshot (plenty will change still I'm sure) the render window. I also plan to be able leave it open (resize it if you wish) to show current combat and weapons as selected ship takes hits during combat if you want.

Once I get the internal combat damage showing and working I might release another public test release if anyone wants to test it out. I have plenty of graphic improvements I know how to do and will do sometime soon, like shadows, lightning, normal mapping, glow, HDR, real ship internals, real module models, etc 

I would be glad to hear any suggestions\feedback?

FYI, I'm off to Hong Kong for 2 weeks for holidays so don't expect to see any updates here but I will have a few days after to play with this before I'm back to work :)

I've been working a bit on the GUI preview details, this will show details about the grid your mouse is hovering over while you have a ship selected. It will show details such as the default order if you right click, how much cap you should have once you arrive if moving, what damage you can deal and chance to hit percent of each weapon, this takes into account cap once you arrive and stats of your ships and the hostile ones as shown in the early GUI below:

The other current progress has been on ship design, I've decided to go full module layout\design with an internal grid. Below is the start of it which mainly has been getting preview windows working that render available hulls and rotate when mouse over. Grid positioning has been setup too which is loaded from an image to represent available grids. I will add background textures to make it a little more like a control window but it isn't going to take up fullscreen because I really want all GUI screens to still allow access to the main window (albeit a smaller space on the side or something) incase you want to check something in game when you're deciding on ship design options.

The grid will be rendered with a textured model of the ship internals, plus sides to tie it in better (looks like the ingame ship with the roof off). Probably won't render green but this is just for testing at the moment, I'll also have fixed grid positions for certain ship types to represent specialized ships that need to be designed around their specialization. For example colony ships need a colony ship hull because much of the systems are integrated into the hull. From a gameplay point of view this is mainly so I don't have to penalize or add some other stats to stop players using colony ships for combat because they have more internal space (easier to balance from my point of view).

This is just the current plans for modular design and specialized equipment and will be optional for user created mods if desired.

As always would be glad to hear any feedback or questions you have.

Thanks,

I've got a basic tech demo\pre-alpha release I'm making available for anyone who wants to see current development progress. I hasn't been thoroughly tested or polished even as a tech demo so be warned! Let me know if you have any issues running it or any initial feedback you might have.

There is a massive list of changes\fixes and polish I already have in my head but unless I'm getting overwhelmed with feedback I would be happy to hear what stood out the most (a bug, polish or best feature so far)

Here are the most standout issues I know:
- No Sound
- GUI Clarity not even close to finalized
- Turn optimization (sometimes will lock during turn processing)
- Everything AI related
- Balancing in any way
- No ship designing
- Etc...

I decided just to go completely public for now because I don't expect too much interest immediately and I couldn't be bother working out who will test and provide useful feedback

Download (Includes Patch now, only need the patch if you downloaded the "Project.zip")


Edit:
Patch is up for anyone who noticed they couldn't change resolution or the market tabs didn't select:
GUI Patch (Extract into the same directory)

Here is a first pass of the new freighter mesh I've been working on. It has a texture mapped but I still need to make the texture. I was doing the freighter mesh now so ingame you can visually see if a freighter is empty, under half full or full according to how many containers it has, this will be scalable so larger freighters carry more containers and it will only have containers for the percent of how full it is.

I also thought I will do this now so I can release it as a tech demo when I want. Before it was a mesh from EVE Online and I don't know if anyone would care but technically might get in trouble for that and I needed the mesh eventually anyway.


This is a render from my graphics test program (includes basic effects as they would work in-game and shaders currently implemented)

Here's it with basic cargo containers shown in 3dsMax:

Its only first past mesh and haven't started on the texture yet but happy to hear any initial feedback if you have any?

Thanks,

Work's been a little slow lately but still going, also been distracted a bit with the new Civ V expansion.. just for researching ideas of course... lol. I did find a simple code statistic generator that I ran on my code to see how much I've done and for anyone else who might be interested:

Files: 26
Code lines: 25456
Comment lines: 4839

Classes: 217 (0 or 0.00% commented)
Class fields: 1250 (5.76 per class, 0 or 0.00% commented)
Class methods / functions: 1446 (6.66 per class, 14 or 0.96% commented)

Global functions: 93 (0 or 0.00% commented)
Global variables: 337 (0 or 0.00% commented)
Constants: 17 (0 or 0.00% commented)

Total items: 3360 (14 or 0.41% commented)

It doesn't count commented functions\method the way I comment them so I have more then the 0% - 0.96% commented code. This is just my code and doesn't include any code for Irrlicht the renderer or the BlitzMax wrapper.

I also did some work trying to get multi-threading working though it seems with BlitzMax that the built-in garbage collector isn't very fast for multi threaded programs and basically causes the programs to freeze for a second ever 2-3 seconds which isn't worth it. I might do some more research into it later when the multithreading is more obviously needed, maybe manage memory more carefully or do some manual clearing if possible. It might make it usable but at the moment the AI code is faster single threaded anyway. Probably because the GC freezes, total turn time went from 9 seconds ST to 19 seconds when MT for the same turn processing)  I'm sure this will change once it's doing more of what I'll add to it.

I've added the ability for the AI to determine when to declare war on another empire. At the moment it takes into account quite a few variables such as how many wars it currently has, the history and outlook of each war and to military strength for each war and estimated strength for them all together. So it shouldn't be declaring war on a really strong empire especially when its already got other wars that aren't looking so good... etc.

I'm still going on the AI to determine when to end wars and make peace, I was working on that then realize I really need to be able to get the AI to say what it will want if another empire wants to make peace with it. Then from this you can get and AI that is at war but wants peace to get the cost (Cash, ships, planets, etc) it will be for each war it currently has then determine which empire(s) it should make\pay for peace with.

So while I was working on that part of the AI I've gone back to the working on the diplomacy screen so I can initiate trades\offers with the AI and more easily debug\see how the AI will value each\trade offer. Once the player diplomacy screen is done. I'll get the AI response working correctly so then i can get back to the relationship work and hopefully get the 2 integrated with each other properly.