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.