Distant Worlds 2 News

Welcome to our fifth Distant Worlds 2 Developer Diary.
This diary will discuss exploration in more detail, including how it has changed since Distant Worlds: Universe.



Exploration and discovery have always been something Distant Worlds does well. The procedurally generated “living galaxy” means that no two galaxies are the same and outside of any story events, there are plenty of unique locations and surprises awaiting you, which can make each game feel different from the last. Some discoveries are relatively mundane, others are quite exciting while still others can be downright galaxy-changing and the same holds true in Distant Worlds 2.



In Distant Worlds: Universe, we had a wide variety of different ruins and ancient ships, ancient battlefields and such scattered around the galaxy from ages past. That’s all still there in Distant Worlds 2, but we’ve added more and made finding everything a bit more interesting. First, just because you’re in a system doesn’t mean you automatically see everything. What you see, even within a system, now depends on the sensors on the ships and stations you have in that system, so even within the same system you won’t know everything just by jumping in and taking a quick look. In addition, everything now has more layers of information than the binary system we had in Distant Worlds: Universe, where you either knew it was there or you didn’t.

We now provide the player with exploration cues on both the system badges and a separate exploration map overlay to let you easily see which systems have been fully explored and which still require further exploration.



Wiith regards to planets, asteroids and such, which are what you are mostly exploring, they now come with a range of exploration levels which look like this:

1. You know some kind of planet is there at a particular distance from the star (it’s within your sensor range)
   
2. You know what general type of planet it is (Exploration Level 1, normally achievable by having a ship with sensors enter the system for the first time)
   
3. You know its quality, basic resources, basic ruins and bonuses (Exploration Level 10+)
   
4. You start finding the better hidden bonuses, ruins and resource (Exploration Level 20+)
   

Exploration levels in the initial release go up to about 100. There’s clearly a lot of room for things to hide between 20 and 100 and as a result, some exploration will continue, even in already known areas, well into the game.

How do you raise the exploration level? Well, in Distant Worlds 2 there are a few ways to do this:

1. An exploration ship with a planetary scanner (the most advanced types go up to around Exploration Level 50). Planetary scanners are the quickest way to explore a planet.
   
2. An exploration ship with a planetary survey module (these can go up to the maximum exploration level). Surveys take longer to explore a planet, but can explore it more thoroughly.
   
3. A mining station at the planet. Over time, a mining station can raise the exploration level up to around 30.
   
4. A colony at the planet. Depending on population, a colony will increase the exploration level over time, eventually up to the maximum possible level.
   

Note that better scanners and survey modules become available through research (and sometimes discovery).



In terms of exploration, not including special story locations and events, what else can you discover? Everything that you could in Distant Worlds: Universe, and more.

First, we’ve added new descriptive planetary bonuses which distinguish even planets of the same type from each other and can make a given location unique. Some planets are independent worlds, which even have their own populations and can engage in trade and diplomacy.



Ruins from ancient times can include a variety of discoveries and can also have multiple bonuses which could apply just to that location or even to your entire empire, if you control them. Ruins can also contain many surprises, some not very positive.



Rare construction and luxury resources can provide access to advanced technologies and ship hulls or boost the development and happiness of your worlds.



Ancient ships and stations can be repaired and put back into service for your fleets, salvaged for unique technologies, or left alone (some are more dangerous than you may think).



Finally there are also artifacts, which represent special relics from past ages which when moved to one of your worlds can provide a variety of benefits.

All exploration also comes with some risk though and space creatures, such as the dreaded stealthy Vordikar, are among the dangers any intrepid explorer must face. Pirates also know many secrets, if you can convince them to talk.



The new nebulas are also often worth exploring, though traveling through their ion, gravitic and radiation storms without sufficient shielding and repair can lead to the complete loss of your exploration ship.

We hope these additional layers of exploration and rewarding discoveries, along with the procedurally generated galaxies, will give you plenty to discover (or conquer)!

[h2]Galactic Terrain in Distant Worlds 2[/h2]

Welcome to a new Distant Worlds 2 Dev Diary.
Before we start, check out PCGamesN's interview with the developers.

This article focuses on a problem common to all space strategy games: how do you get terrain or ‘geography’ into a galactic map?

We explore how other games have approached this problem, how Distant Worlds 1 handled things, and how Distant Worlds 2 has a ‘best of both worlds’ solution to allow free movement while having natural barriers to movement.



[h3]Terrain in Strategy games[/h3]

Most strategy games have a map. Many strategy games have a historical setting and thus their map has natural terrain like hills, mountains and oceans. These natural geographic features form barriers that define the shape of the map and how a player can travel across the map. So mountains and oceans can block travel or at least slow it down.

Space strategy games do not have such obvious natural terrain. Usually all of the game action occurs inside star systems, where planets are found. Space ships must travel between star systems, usually via some kind of hyperdrive or jumpdrive.



To provide natural terrain in a space game, developers often employ arbitrary restrictions on travel. The classic example of this is the idea of ‘star-lanes’ where each star system has a limited number of paths to other nearby star systems. To reach a distant system the player usually has to traverse multiple intermediate systems. These ‘star-lanes’ thus form the geography of the map or galaxy, often entirely preventing any other route to a destination.

Star-lanes definitely add shape and terrain to the map. But many players dislike them because they are very artificial and contrived.

[h3]Inter-system travel in Distant Worlds 1[/h3]

Distant Worlds 1 took a different approach to inter-system travel. In DW1 you could jump to any point on the map that was within fuel range of your ship. You could even travel into deep space, far outside any star system. Many players liked this flexible approach. However there were some problems with this.



This free-movement approach, without star-lanes, meant that there wasn’t as much ‘geography’ to the galaxy. Star systems were less likely to appear in nebula clouds, so nebulae formed natural gaps between star systems. But really the only geographical constraint for movement was the varying distances between each star system.

[h3]Distant Worlds 2: Galactic Terrain without star-lanes[/h3]

In Distant Worlds 2 we wanted to preserve the open travel mode of DW1. But we also wanted to add better galactic terrain: natural barriers that added interest and function to different parts of the galaxy.

The answer to this was to use nebula clouds as the natural barriers to travel. In DW2 nebula clouds dramatically slow hyperspace travel. The impact on travel time is so significant that it is usually faster to travel around the nebulae rather than through it. Thus nebulae effectively become the ‘mountain range’ analog of a terrestrial map.

In addition hyperdrive components work slightly differently in DW2. All hyperdrives have a defined jump range. This jump range limits how far a ship can travel in a single jump. Ships can still travel as far as their fuel allows them, but usually their fuel range exceeds their jump range.

The effect of these 2 new features (nebulae that slow hyperspace travel, limited jump ranges) is that ships often have to plot a path of multiple jumps between star systems to reach a destination. The precise path they choose is not fixed. It depends on their current location, their chosen destination, and their jump range.



Some star systems may thus be in naturally strategic locations, e.g. in a gap between nebulae that many ships will pass through. These locations may be good choke-points, or at least good monitoring points to keep an eye on traffic passing through the area.

[h3]Nebulae Effects[/h3]
Nebula clouds can also have other effects on ships and bases. As in DW1, some nebula clouds are the locations of galactic storms that can cause damage to ships with inadequate defenses. However we have broadened the range of effects to include different types of damage to various ship components. Galactic storms can also have other effects like interfering with sensors or draining shield strength.



Some star systems can be found inside nebula clouds. You can still travel to these systems. But due to the impermeable nature of nebulae, these star systems can be some of the most remote parts of the galaxy.

Nebulae also affect long range scanners. Ships and bases are very difficult to detect when they are inside nebulae. In addition scanners cannot ‘see’ through nebulae. So you cannot scan objects on the other side of a nebula cloud. This can lead to ‘blind spots’ in scanner coverage.

[h3]Summary[/h3]

Distant Worlds 2 preserves the free movement of Distant Worlds 1. You can travel to any part of the galaxy, even locations in deep space.

However you must now navigate around nebula clouds and perilous galactic storms, often jumping through multiple systems to reach your destination.

This new approach to galactic terrain and travel provides even more options for fun and strategy.



We hope you enjoyed this look at the galactic terrain of Distant Worlds.
We’ll be back later with more information about other features in Distant Worlds 2.

[h2]Procedural Rendering in Distant Worlds 2 [/h2]

Hello to all. My name is Elliot Gibbs, and I am the developer for Distant Worlds 2. This article has a slightly different focus. It will give you a behind-the-scenes look at a small slice of the game with an important on-screen role: the natural environment of the Distant Worlds galaxy.

While this article is more technical, it will help you see “under-the-hood.” It will give you insight into how we solved some of the unique problems faced in a game as vast as Distant Worlds 2.



[h3]Procedural Rendering versus Hand-made Art [/h3]

What is procedural rendering? This refers to drawing various parts of the game without using hand-made art assets. In other words, an item is rendered on the screen without using any artist-created models or images. Instead the item is drawn using only software instructions – the item is rendered in code.

That might not sound very useful. Why would you bother writing a lot of software to draw something in code instead of just having an artist make a 3D model, or draw a 2D image?

That depends on what you are drawing and the number of different items that need to be drawn.



[h3]The old way: the Galactic Environment in DW1 [/h3]

As you probably appreciate, in Distant Worlds there is a vast galactic environment, filled with many items to explore and discover: stars, planets, moons, black holes, nebula clouds, and many others.

In Distant Worlds 1 (Universe and earlier) these items were mostly hand-drawn 2D images: there were a set of images for desert planets, another set of images for ocean planets, a set of images for nebula clouds, etc. In total there were about 250 images for planets alone. So there was a lot of hand-drawn art!



The advantage with static, hand-drawn art is that you can have very specific details in the art. For example you could have an image of the planet Earth in the game, complete with the continents, islands and oceans we know so well.

However there are some big drawbacks with static art:

• 2D images and textured models have a resolution limit that is constrained by memory, thus when zoomed in their appearance can become blurry or pixelated
  
• you typically need to draw each image or texture by hand, limiting how many variations you can realistically have. Although tools can help automate the generation of some images, you still have to store them and load them in game, which can take a lot of memory and storage
  

Procedural rendering is an alternative to making a lot of hand-drawn art. It means writing software that knows how to draw a particular item. We can then draw as many variations of this item as needed, tweaking parameters to make changes to its appearance.



[h3]The new, better way in DW2 [/h3]

In Distant Worlds 2 nearly all of the galactic environment is procedurally rendered. That means that we use minimal hand-made art to draw the stars, planets, moons, black holes or nebula clouds in the game.

Instead there are a set of custom shader programs that know how to draw each of these items:

• a star shader that can draw brightly glowing coronas of semi-transparent gas and plasma
  
• several shaders that draw planets with solid surfaces: some with a lot of mountains, others with deep oceans, others with glowing lava lakes
  
• a shader that draws planets with gaseous surfaces with colored bands and swirling storms
  
• another shader draws black holes
  
• other shaders draw nebula clouds
  

[h3]How does it work? [/h3]

At the core of these shaders is a concept called fractal noise. Fractal noise refers to a set of special random values that are tuned for drawing a natural environment in a realistic manner.

Fractal noise is a huge subject, which I won’t go into detail about here. But if you want to learn more you should look it up. You’ll see terms like Perlin noise and Simplex noise, which are good starting points.

But how do these procedural shaders work? What process do they follow, and what do they allow us to do?

• Firstly they use fractal noise to make a unique height map for each planet, allowing us to generate mountains, valleys, plains, coastlines and sub-oceanic terrain
  
• applies shadowing from sun light on the mountains and hills to provide subtle realism to the terrain
  
• if the planet is populated , adds city night lights that follow the natural geography of the planet, preferring low-lying and coastal areas (including underwater cities in shallow coastal regions)
  
• provides light-emitting features like lava lakes and oceans
  
• adds cloud layers with animated storm systems and shadows on the planet below
  
• allows latitude-specific features: polar ice caps, equatorial jungle belts, deserts
  
• allows altitude-specific terrain: snowy mountain tops, forested valleys, grassy plains and coastal areas, shallow underwater continental shelves, deep ocean basins
  

Thus procedural shaders provide a vast improvement when rendering the natural environment in Distant Worlds, giving us an incredible level of detail and variety. The advantages of procedural rendering directly address the weaknesses of static art that we had in DW1:

• because the shader programs operate on each pixel on the screen, there is no resolution limit. You can keep zooming in closely to an item without blurriness or loss of quality
  
• by varying the input parameters for each shader you can obtain nearly infinite variety for an item, thus every planet in DW2 is unique
  
• because no static images or textures are needed, there is a dramatic reduction in memory and storage requirements
  

[h3]A Living, Animated Galaxy [/h3]

Procedural rendering also enables another feature: animation. The fractal noise used in the shaders can be multi-dimensional, so you can use one of the dimensions to represent change over time. This allows you to smoothly animate things that you draw. For example, we have the following in Distant Worlds 2:

• cloud layers on planets that move and change
  
• star coronas with prominences that rise and fall
  
• gas giant planets with animated cloud surfaces
  
• nebula clouds that smoothly change over time
  
• black holes with swirling vortexes of light and energy
  

Thus procedural rendering helps to bring the galaxy of Distant Worlds to life, with motion and activity even in the natural environment. It gives infinite variety and depth of appearance to all of the planets and stars.



[h3]Modding [/h3]

You might be thinking: how does this affect modding? Can you easily mod new planet and star types into DW2? Or does this require special coding or shader skills?

The good news is that modders also have access to these same shaders to make their own unique planets and stars – no special skills are required. By simply adding a few values to a file you can have a completely new type of planet available in the game. Your planet will have all the same features as the built-in planet types: hyper-detailed height maps with shadowing, animated cloud layers, city night lights when populated, planetary rings, etc.



[h3]Summary [/h3]

So how does procedural rendering improve the galactic environment in Distant Worlds?

• provides infinite variety – no two planets in the galaxy are the same. They all have their own unique geographical features and coastlines
  
• eliminates blurriness or pixelation. Everything remains sharp and clear even when zoomed in close
  
• allows animation of features like star coronas, planetary clouds and nebula clouds
  
• uses a lot less memory, thus freeing up resources for other rendering
  

I hope you enjoyed this look at the galactic environment of Distant Worlds. I’ll be back later with more behind-the-scenes information about other features in Distant Worlds 2.

Welcome to our second Developer Diary and thank you for your interest in Distant Worlds 2.

We want to introduce this one with our brand new video about Mortalens.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

This diary will discuss some of the “story” behind the galaxy of Distant Worlds 2, an interesting place for you to explore.

One of the best parts of Distant Worlds is that the galaxy is present in full detail and “alive”. There are always things going on almost everywhere you look. Much less is abstracted away than in many other 4x games, where you may only see the ships in your military fleets, or a system may be represented just by a star and a few major planets, or where the galaxy really is just star systems, points if you will, connected by lines that determine where you can go. In Distant Worlds 2, you have all of space, both the systems themselves and every bit of space within them, every planet, moon and asteroid, but also the space between systems, including nebulae, ion, radiation and gravitic storms. Exploration, travel, battles and everything else can happen anywhere within that space.



We’ll get into some more of what exploration is like in a future diary, but in terms of story, this allows us a lot of room to work with to place all kinds of remnants of the “ancient galaxy” as well as unique characteristics and bonuses which separate one planet, moon, star or asteroid from another. You may find ancient ruins, fragments of data revealing previously unknown locations, abandoned or partially destroyed ships, the remains of ancient fleet battles, a unique planetary feature, and so on and so forth. All of this is present at the generation of the galaxy, but some things are much easier to find than others, some can only be found by the best explorers and some are much easier to find once you have the right clues to point you in the right direction. Each generated Distant Worlds 2 galaxy is a truly huge playground with a great many hidden discoveries waiting to be found.



However, it’s not just these more static discoveries that await you in space. First of all, you have what we call “Pirates”, though their full story is much more complex than that brief description or what first impressions will likely suggest. They’ll challenge you initially, as they are used to having a monopoly on space. You’ll likely have to repel their raids and decide whether to focus on destroying them or accepting their terms to some degree in order to negotiate a peace. They do know more than you about the galaxy, if you’re willing to pay their price.



There are also creatures of unusual size and origin that exist in space and travel between the stars. Their origins are for you to discover, but you will find them a significant obstacle to expansion in some systems and a navigational hazard in others.

Here we can make out a Gravillex in the distance which has just missed slicing open a fleeing Human Frigate with its energy beam weapon. These are remarkably aggressive creatures that did not exist in the “Ancient” galaxy, but are now found in significant numbers, often feeding on stars for their energy. The type of star they’ve been feeding on also has a significant effect on how dangerous a given Gravillex may be.



Here’s an Ardilus, normally a much more passive denizen of space that is usually found around gas giants. Beware though, as it is quite territorial if you come too close as this Mortalen Escort just discovered.



There’s also the dreaded Vordikar, but it’s quite stealthy and the last three exploration ships we sent into the asteroids to find one for you never returned. I promise we’ll show you one in a future diary.

Beyond all this though, we have an expanded “Main Story” as well as a “Faction Story” for each of our playable factions (Humans, Ackdarians, Mortalen, Haakonish, Zenox, Boskara and Teekan). This is a major effort above and beyond anything that Distant Worlds: Universe had, involving the creation of a new story and event system which allows us to do much more than we could in the past, including event and story choices (and this is all also open to players and modders who wish to tinker and use the system for their own stories).

Each Faction in Distant Worlds 2 by default represents a certain playstyle. For example, the Mortalen are “Disciplined Warriors” which means that their faction story and faction victory conditions will tend to reinforce that playstyle and reward playing them in that way. While the Main Story will reveal some information about the Ancient galaxy and what happened in the past, each Faction Story will reveal more about the specific background and events that involved that faction, as well as giving the player a great chance to be the first to find some truly unique and rewarding locations. By playing through all the faction stories, the most complete account of the Ancient galaxy can be pieced together.

As an example, here’s a shot taken in “cheat mode” showing a small selection of some placed main and faction story events across a section of a generated galaxy, on top of the normal hidden bonuses, ruins and discoveries. Each of those little labels indicates either a single even or the initial trigger for an event chain. Of course, you won’t have this cheat view to guide you in your own galaxy, but if you explore well and boldly, you should have plenty of good stories to tell!



As always, we want to let you play the game your way, so in the galaxy setup you can choose to enable or disable pirates, space creatures and the main and faction stories, as well as tailoring the amount and strength of pirates and space creatures. You can also disable faction victory conditions and change the government and play your chosen faction in a different way. We look at the galaxy as your sandbox and want to give you the tools to make sure it’s setup the way you would like it to be.

I hope this shed some light on the Distant Worlds 2 galaxy and what your own Distant Worlds story might be like. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with a new Developer Diary for you all!

Welcome dear reader and thank you for your interest in Distant Worlds 2. This is the first of several Developer Diaries that we’ll be releasing roughly every two weeks from now until release to cover different parts of Distant Worlds 2 in some additional detail.

First, let me introduce who we are. As you may be aware, Distant Worlds 2 has a fairly small development team, though it has grown since Distant Worlds: Universe. The two core team members are Elliot Gibbs who is the one and only programmer and designer and Erik Rutins (that’s me) who is the producer and co-designer. There are many additional and crucial team members who we work with every week: a “Supertester” and expert XML data wrangler and tools developer, several incredibly creative and dedicated 3D, 2D and UI artists who provide us with our models, characters, animations, effects, illustrations, interface elements and concept art, and a very talented music composer. We have also been blessed to have the assistance of many dedicated and remarkably talented Distant Worlds volunteer testers and fans who have helped us in very important ways throughout Alpha and Beta testing with their feedback and suggestions. Any acclaim should deservedly go to the whole team as Distant Worlds 2 has been a real team effort.

This initial diary will discuss a few of our key goals when we finished support on Distant Worlds: Universe and decided that making a new Distant Worlds game was what we wanted to do.

The pre-cursor to Distant Worlds 2, Distant Worlds: Universe is a very successful Sci-Fi 4x game, which while strongly influenced by many 4x and strategy games that came before it, also added some new innovations to the genre. Some of the main innovations were the seamless “living galaxy” feel of the game, the very flexible automation and advisor settings that allowed you to tailor the game to your preferred playstyle, and the remarkable depth which allowed you to dive into your preferred gameplay areas with significantly less abstraction that many games allow. The end result was a great deal of positive acclaim from players that focused on these innovations and the overall gameplay, while most of the negative feedback was related to the limitations of the underlying engine, including memory usage, performance, graphical quality and interface scaling.

Distant Worlds: Universe was unfortunately built on a 32-bit Windows engine with some very real limitations in what could be done in many of these problem areas while maintaining adequate performance within the scope of an always active “living galaxy”. We were bumping up against these limits ourselves from the initial release and they became increasingly more difficult to deal with over time.



By the time we released Distant Worlds: Universe, we knew that any future game would need a new engine that would not only allow us to make Distant Worlds look better, but would also allow it to perform better and expand what we could do in terms of gameplay choices. Elliot spent a good deal of time researching this and in fact one year into the project we even went through the pain of switching engines, just to make sure we would be able to achieve all of our engine-related goals. Distant Worlds 2 is now based on the Stride engine, is fully 64-bit and 3D and with a full dynamic scaling for all elements, including the interface. I can’t overstate how much work and time it required of the entire team to make this leap, but we strongly feel the end result will be worthwhile and will allow us to continue to develop for Distant Worlds 2 for many years to come.

The second main goal relates to the interface. In making the big jump to a new and modern engine, we knew we could address dynamic scalability, but there were also many comments from Distant Worlds: Universe players about the original interface being difficult to learn. While it was quite functional once you learned it, the initial learning curve was harder than it should have been and partly because it evolved over multiple releases, the organization of information in some cases made things quite difficult for players to find.

A significant effort was put into a re-design of the interface, focused on providing players with easy top-level access to the most significant information both for better awareness and quicker decision-making. The bottom-left area remains focused on information about whatever the player has selected, but the selection menus and buttons themselves have been reorganized as well as additional information added where it previously required diving into other menus or dialogs. The bottom-middle now has a dynamic summary when in the system level of all significant “objects’ within the player’s current location or view.



The top-left now has a series of major “headings” (in order from left to right, Empire Summary, Diplomacy, Colonies, Exploration, Resources, Construction, Research, Military and Civilian). When the player hovers the mouse over any of these, a summary of key metric in that area is shown. Moving the mouse down to the summary expands the menu further, allowing any of a series of sub-menus to be chosen that provide more information or detail. Moving the mouse off this area, collapses them back to the top, but clicking anywhere in these menus “locks” them open for ongoing interaction. Another click on the top “unlocks” them.

The top-right has a few basic piece of summary information – your current research projects, number of colonies and population, surplus income and cashflow and game date and speed. Clicking any of these also jumps to the relevant dialog to manage them in more detail. Below the speed controls are the victory conditions, game options and the message log.



The Message Log has had fillters added and can be opened at any time to review old messages. Current messages appear on the right hand side below the log. When they first appear, they are briefly expanded at first to allow the player at a glance to get a sense of what they are about, then they collapse back to a smaller color-coded message category icon. Depending on the player’s chosen options, these many include advisor messages as well as other notifications or warnings. If ignored, the vast majority “auto-expire” after a delay (a small line under the message icon shrinks as the message expires) and go to the message log. Hovering the mouse over a message allows a quick glance at its expanded form. A single left-click on the message will open and lock it so that any actions related to it may be decided on. A double left-click will go to the message location. A single right-click will immediately dismiss the message.



A third goal was to make it easier for the player to gain information at a glance from the map. Part of this involved connecting up the User Interface to the map more directly. For example, when you have a dialog open on the top left and are reviewing your colonies, or exploration ships, or fleets, or even a filtered list of freighters currently transporting Hexodorium, the relevant items will also be highlighted on the map and will “ping” as you mouse over them so that you can more quickly and easily see where everything is. It also means that we added planetary and system “badges” which provide a summary of key assets, resources and capabilities at a given location. These have a planetary system version and a galacitc version depending on how zoomed in you are. There’s also additional information available when you mouse-over locations or objects.

In the view above, you can see that for the planet and moon on the right side of the system, I have found two ruins that are not yet fully explored. I also know of two available resources that could be mined and the exploration indicator in yellow is tellng me the current exploration level and that exploration there is not yet completed. The middle planetary group just has four resources. The middle left has a star showing that it’s our capitol planet, what its population is, what its happiness is, that it has the capability for construction (both due to the planet and the spaceport) and that it is a location that can refuel ships. Under that, it shows an explored ruin, the various explored resources and that we have 120 Troop Strength there.



Finally, in order to allow you to play the game your way, we’ve added a lot of policy, automation and advisor settings and grouped them all together in one convenient location to allow you to automate the parts you don’t want to deal with, turn on two different levels of advisors for areas you’d like to supervise, or set areas to full manual control when you really want to dive in. This level of automation extends down from this top level to being able to automate or manually control planets, fleets and even individual state ships.

I hope this review of our goals in improving the engine and the user interface helped you see how far we’ve come from Distant Worlds: Universe. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with a new Developer Diary for you all!