Universal Conquest News
Slight delay - haven't gotten a build done just yet.
[h3] It's been hectic for the development team (me)...[/h3]
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...There was a really lengthy post here, but someone basically told me to not discuss it as it's "TMI" on my end. Essentially there's still some bad stuff happening for personal reasons. But essentially, all you need to know is that something is occurring in my personal life and because of this, the game build isn't done yet. It's coming.
[h3] Meanwhile, I'm redoing the user interface.[/h3]
Remember, this is just a mockup, this isn't what it's going to look like when it's finished.
One of the things that we... er I mean that I am doing, nobody else is working on this now... is going and redoing the user interface for the game. In fact, I even drew up a mockup and I've been busy implementing this into the game right now. For example, one of the things we're doing is getting rid of the two side panels, and keeping a new bottom panel ala the game about ages and empires or perhaps the one about war in total, and because players are more familiar with those kinds of games it only makes sense that the UI that I'm redoing should be more like that. Other things include because everyone hates walls of text so much and spends tons of time reading them, I am actually hiding an entire textbook regarding ayy lmaos in the game files during the next update and putting an ancient 2014 copy of the game hidden in the game files that someone will have to find from when it was called wars of liberation, fully playable. And yes, I hid that in a wall of text. The new user interface is going to split all the current view screens into several different new panels that those buttons on the bottom will open up. For example, you will be able to open up a "diplomacy" window that will give you a list of all contacted civilizations in the game, so that you don't have to go the galaxy view and then open up specifically that civilization's insignia to insult them or threaten to nuke their planets. All the current side panel views are going away and being replaced with smaller more compact versions. For example, the unrest and the religion views seen in the game will be moved to a "population/civilization view" - name pending - and there it will stay until you open it there. Additonally, if you open up said view for the space and galaxy views it will end up showing different panels for those also - for example done in the solar view it will show unrest and population for the entire solar system, and in the galaxy view for your entire empire.
"Wait, what?" But yeah, I said I'd put keybindings and other fun things and I meant that. Not sure I mentioned but things like this are already in.
But because of these minor setbacks, I've been slightly delayed in putting out a new test build. One thing I didn't think I mentioned in an earlier update is we added like 20 something new hand drawn portraits to the game, to add to a total of 100 possible alien appearances that you can pick. 8-10 of these are humanoid, and if we get time we may add female portraits to the rest of the alien races also - something that the humanoid ones now have. We are adding some pre-built civilizations into the game also, such that these can be spawned in potentially with players, and because you can save your respective civilization in generation, you can generate as many other civilizations as you want, save them, and then spawn them into your generation to combat also.
It's a shame that this game is not about UFO's any longer because we had a bunch of really cool fluff stuff that we were going to do. But I didn't want to put 1000 more colors on this. Oh well. It's going to be wonderful regardless. All the bad stuff comes not from the UFO stuff to be honest, but from the other things I shouldn't have been involved in. Like Occupy Wall Street.
Anyway, that's all for now. More to come as soon as I'm able to.
t. Dev.
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...There was a really lengthy post here, but someone basically told me to not discuss it as it's "TMI" on my end. Essentially there's still some bad stuff happening for personal reasons. But essentially, all you need to know is that something is occurring in my personal life and because of this, the game build isn't done yet. It's coming.
[h3] Meanwhile, I'm redoing the user interface.[/h3]
Remember, this is just a mockup, this isn't what it's going to look like when it's finished.
One of the things that we... er I mean that I am doing, nobody else is working on this now... is going and redoing the user interface for the game. In fact, I even drew up a mockup and I've been busy implementing this into the game right now. For example, one of the things we're doing is getting rid of the two side panels, and keeping a new bottom panel ala the game about ages and empires or perhaps the one about war in total, and because players are more familiar with those kinds of games it only makes sense that the UI that I'm redoing should be more like that. Other things include because everyone hates walls of text so much and spends tons of time reading them, I am actually hiding an entire textbook regarding ayy lmaos in the game files during the next update and putting an ancient 2014 copy of the game hidden in the game files that someone will have to find from when it was called wars of liberation, fully playable. And yes, I hid that in a wall of text. The new user interface is going to split all the current view screens into several different new panels that those buttons on the bottom will open up. For example, you will be able to open up a "diplomacy" window that will give you a list of all contacted civilizations in the game, so that you don't have to go the galaxy view and then open up specifically that civilization's insignia to insult them or threaten to nuke their planets. All the current side panel views are going away and being replaced with smaller more compact versions. For example, the unrest and the religion views seen in the game will be moved to a "population/civilization view" - name pending - and there it will stay until you open it there. Additonally, if you open up said view for the space and galaxy views it will end up showing different panels for those also - for example done in the solar view it will show unrest and population for the entire solar system, and in the galaxy view for your entire empire.
"Wait, what?" But yeah, I said I'd put keybindings and other fun things and I meant that. Not sure I mentioned but things like this are already in.
But because of these minor setbacks, I've been slightly delayed in putting out a new test build. One thing I didn't think I mentioned in an earlier update is we added like 20 something new hand drawn portraits to the game, to add to a total of 100 possible alien appearances that you can pick. 8-10 of these are humanoid, and if we get time we may add female portraits to the rest of the alien races also - something that the humanoid ones now have. We are adding some pre-built civilizations into the game also, such that these can be spawned in potentially with players, and because you can save your respective civilization in generation, you can generate as many other civilizations as you want, save them, and then spawn them into your generation to combat also.
It's a shame that this game is not about UFO's any longer because we had a bunch of really cool fluff stuff that we were going to do. But I didn't want to put 1000 more colors on this. Oh well. It's going to be wonderful regardless. All the bad stuff comes not from the UFO stuff to be honest, but from the other things I shouldn't have been involved in. Like Occupy Wall Street.
Anyway, that's all for now. More to come as soon as I'm able to.
t. Dev.
A Progress Report
[h3]To make a long story short,[/h3]
I'm not dead and to quote an actual clown "You can't rely on anybody these days, you gotta do everything yourself, don't we?" I'm not going into more detail about this. I'm not clowning around anymore. I'm the only one working on this now, and time is subjective/limited.
[h3]Galaxies have become really really huge[/h3]
There are now upwards of 50,000 systems generating per galaxy - and it doesn't even lag. Because of this, the galaxy view, and the solar view has been redone - completely. The AI will mostly use systems that are classified as "Charted" vs "Uncharted" systems. What now happens is that charted systems are drawn in upwards of 10 regions per galaxy, and these are pre-generated. AI will STRONGLY prefer systems that are already "Charted" versus "Uncharted". The latter are generated whenever used - this saves tons of memory. The more systems you chart, the more memory that gets used up, so be aware. Uncharted systems are not considered "major" systems and are thus only explored by the AI sparingly. They generate with less planets and less star systems to boot. To compensate for this, I ended up redoing the camera and the graphics for not just the solar view, but the galaxy view as well, and they are much smoother as a result. Additionally, grids now show and generate depending on the height of the camera relative to that of the respective solar system or galaxy. Borders and the insignia of other civilizations has been completely redone, so no more cluttering 50 names for a primitive civ, the primitive civs are labeled as such now. Even better, I added scales so that you can change the camera view speed according to however you wish as you see fit. But this was done without substantial performance issues.
Your old saves will still work, this is just a generation change.
We added like another 20 different types of artifact pickups that do various things from giving you a full stack of units, detonating a nuclear weapon on the army, to releasing 3 full stacks of hostile bioforms. Eventually this is going to lead to temporary bases like in the game about heroes being mighty and magic where you have houses you can recruit armies from, or trade with neutral powers. Planet view was also redone, along with things like the tags no longer being nearly as annoying when zooming in and out or mousing over items. Terrain on planets will now damage units depending on the type - for example Jungle terrain damages infantry, and Mountains damage everything, etc. You'll figure this out through trial and error for sure. Or common sense. Now there is a new unit (WIP) called a "Terraformer" which can take a few turns to modify the terrain of any planet. The catch of things like this is if you plant a forest on a planet it WILL end up doing things like spreading the forest across the entire planet, with runaway growth turning every tile on the barren planet into Forest or Jungle. For planets with different atmospheres, you can construct 5 "Atmospheric Terraformers" for a huge price that will convert the atmosphere into the atmosphere of the species of the workers that constructed the last one on the planet. If there is an existing biosphere, it will annihilate it completely -leading to starvation for anything that depended on that planet to eat.
Right now I'll just make this clear - when we do go back live we will be releasing it as 2.0. No less.
Armies now work a little differently. Whenever you take a hostile city, it uses up the all the movement points for the army, which means that taking a planet is going to take a lot longer. Some AI changes were made to how AI constructs buildings, and so forth. Graphics have been massively updated also. Additional settlements are being added such as "Wonders", which will massively reduce the unrest on the planet, and things like "Army Bases" and "Airbases" which will construct only land or air units respectively for a smaller construction price. There IS now an Earth Start however I'm still working out the kinks of that because it tends to not generate properly. Once that is fixed then I'm going to go and push another update for everyone who has the game currently. This should be in a few days.
Combat has not changed too much but there are going to be some additional units, some UI changes, and weather and other visual effects have been updated, such as the addition of clouds to the map. Since I couldn't get a solid answer from a single person I'm going to go ahead and redo the UI according to something I prefer, because the UI as it stands right now works for me mostly. Once UI and the Combat map are fixed up I will release a testing update, and if that works, start selling the game again in hopefully by the end of the month. If I get time I will add additional dimensions and underground caverns that will generate several levels deep for planets.
[h3]Bottom Line[/h3]
If you don't like XYZ, not my problem.
I'm redoing everything, and we're probably going to reduce price substantially on re-release.
I have no time but the World War Three hasn't started so I've got some leeway now.
Aliens are not real, and this game isn't about UFO's any longer.
I'm taking multiple people's advice and doing what I feel like doing here instead of trying to please individuals who don't like XYZ feature of the game.
I'm a man of my word.
You're welcome.
-t. Dev.
I'm not dead and to quote an actual clown "You can't rely on anybody these days, you gotta do everything yourself, don't we?" I'm not going into more detail about this. I'm not clowning around anymore. I'm the only one working on this now, and time is subjective/limited.
[h3]Galaxies have become really really huge[/h3]
There are now upwards of 50,000 systems generating per galaxy - and it doesn't even lag. Because of this, the galaxy view, and the solar view has been redone - completely. The AI will mostly use systems that are classified as "Charted" vs "Uncharted" systems. What now happens is that charted systems are drawn in upwards of 10 regions per galaxy, and these are pre-generated. AI will STRONGLY prefer systems that are already "Charted" versus "Uncharted". The latter are generated whenever used - this saves tons of memory. The more systems you chart, the more memory that gets used up, so be aware. Uncharted systems are not considered "major" systems and are thus only explored by the AI sparingly. They generate with less planets and less star systems to boot. To compensate for this, I ended up redoing the camera and the graphics for not just the solar view, but the galaxy view as well, and they are much smoother as a result. Additionally, grids now show and generate depending on the height of the camera relative to that of the respective solar system or galaxy. Borders and the insignia of other civilizations has been completely redone, so no more cluttering 50 names for a primitive civ, the primitive civs are labeled as such now. Even better, I added scales so that you can change the camera view speed according to however you wish as you see fit. But this was done without substantial performance issues.
Your old saves will still work, this is just a generation change.We added like another 20 different types of artifact pickups that do various things from giving you a full stack of units, detonating a nuclear weapon on the army, to releasing 3 full stacks of hostile bioforms. Eventually this is going to lead to temporary bases like in the game about heroes being mighty and magic where you have houses you can recruit armies from, or trade with neutral powers. Planet view was also redone, along with things like the tags no longer being nearly as annoying when zooming in and out or mousing over items. Terrain on planets will now damage units depending on the type - for example Jungle terrain damages infantry, and Mountains damage everything, etc. You'll figure this out through trial and error for sure. Or common sense. Now there is a new unit (WIP) called a "Terraformer" which can take a few turns to modify the terrain of any planet. The catch of things like this is if you plant a forest on a planet it WILL end up doing things like spreading the forest across the entire planet, with runaway growth turning every tile on the barren planet into Forest or Jungle. For planets with different atmospheres, you can construct 5 "Atmospheric Terraformers" for a huge price that will convert the atmosphere into the atmosphere of the species of the workers that constructed the last one on the planet. If there is an existing biosphere, it will annihilate it completely -leading to starvation for anything that depended on that planet to eat.
Right now I'll just make this clear - when we do go back live we will be releasing it as 2.0. No less.
Armies now work a little differently. Whenever you take a hostile city, it uses up the all the movement points for the army, which means that taking a planet is going to take a lot longer. Some AI changes were made to how AI constructs buildings, and so forth. Graphics have been massively updated also. Additional settlements are being added such as "Wonders", which will massively reduce the unrest on the planet, and things like "Army Bases" and "Airbases" which will construct only land or air units respectively for a smaller construction price. There IS now an Earth Start however I'm still working out the kinks of that because it tends to not generate properly. Once that is fixed then I'm going to go and push another update for everyone who has the game currently. This should be in a few days.
Combat has not changed too much but there are going to be some additional units, some UI changes, and weather and other visual effects have been updated, such as the addition of clouds to the map. Since I couldn't get a solid answer from a single person I'm going to go ahead and redo the UI according to something I prefer, because the UI as it stands right now works for me mostly. Once UI and the Combat map are fixed up I will release a testing update, and if that works, start selling the game again in hopefully by the end of the month. If I get time I will add additional dimensions and underground caverns that will generate several levels deep for planets.
[h3]Bottom Line[/h3]
If you don't like XYZ, not my problem.
I'm redoing everything, and we're probably going to reduce price substantially on re-release.
I have no time but the World War Three hasn't started so I've got some leeway now.
Aliens are not real, and this game isn't about UFO's any longer.
I'm taking multiple people's advice and doing what I feel like doing here instead of trying to please individuals who don't like XYZ feature of the game.
I'm a man of my word.
You're welcome.
-t. Dev.
Work is Resuming
TL;DR - We're working on the game again.
For the small mind who called me a liar...
There's the bomb threat...
...And there's a screenshot of the git logs dating back to 2015.
We're all fine. It's all been reported and the authorities are handling it.
[h2]Anyway...[/h2]
Going from here on out, I'm only going to put in whatever I feel is right to put into this game. Most of the alien stuff is and was just marketing. It isn't real. So we removed it from all marketing materials. But what I did see on the PC Gamer article was that someone said that they wanted to play "War-Axe 1000,0000 AD War of Totality" - which we can do something like that.
..So I made a game start that allows you to pick that that will generate a Galactic Empire in 50,000 A.D. centered on Earth. I also added a 2224 A.D. start here.
...That allows you to play as any nation on Earth then, complete with a Milky Way Galaxy we will update in the future.
We're no longer hiring.
Cheers,
The Developer
For the small mind who called me a liar...
There's the bomb threat...
...And there's a screenshot of the git logs dating back to 2015.
We're all fine. It's all been reported and the authorities are handling it.
[h2]Anyway...[/h2]
Going from here on out, I'm only going to put in whatever I feel is right to put into this game. Most of the alien stuff is and was just marketing. It isn't real. So we removed it from all marketing materials. But what I did see on the PC Gamer article was that someone said that they wanted to play "War-Axe 1000,0000 AD War of Totality" - which we can do something like that.
..So I made a game start that allows you to pick that that will generate a Galactic Empire in 50,000 A.D. centered on Earth. I also added a 2224 A.D. start here.
...That allows you to play as any nation on Earth then, complete with a Milky Way Galaxy we will update in the future.
We're no longer hiring.
Cheers,
The Developer
Some developments.
After some discussion... an announcement will be made in the near future. I will let everyone know what exactly is occurring when I get this information, but I cannot comment at this time at what is going to be done here in the new future.
When you know, you'll know.
Sincerely,
The Dev
When you know, you'll know.
Sincerely,
The Dev