Lord of Rigel - Roundup #20
Greetings Lords of Rigel,
Another week and more bug fixes and quality of life enhancements:
This Patch:
• Autocombat report: We’ve added a post-combat breakdown for autoresolve and tactical showing the outcome balance of power bar and status of individual ships.
• Simple mouse input: As some users have reported not having middle mouse buttons or mouse wheels another quality of life feature will be an alternative control scheme that can be toggled. Players can currently change these bindings in settings but this will provide another accessibility option.
We’ve also finished the build queue refactor, which has optimized construction displays and rounding displays for various items in the build queue.
In terms of quality of life features coming next:
• Auto ship design generator: With the optimizations done on ship designer we’ll be adding in an “auto” button to have the AI generate a design of your selected size class.
• Loading and saving build queues: You’ll be able to select various buildings and items to set up a build queue order. Unavailable items will be filtered out. These queues will be tied to your user settings and should be able to be shared between games. Along with the existing auto construction tool this should provide a lot of control for automation for players
As for another deep dive this week: Planet scenes.
We’ll likely do a few on some specific ones that had their own challenges or some interesting pieces. But for this week the often-overlooked swamp planet.
Having planetary scenes was a decision we made very early on in development, as it adds a personal touch to each of your worlds. Over development we had some different versions including 2D backgrounds with 2D images, and a version with 3d buildings over 2D images. When we began the work for the current version of LoR in late 2019, we transitioned to full 3D planet scenes for colony view and ground combat. Each planet needed to keep to a color palette that would match what is seen in orbital view.
Each planet has a 2km x 2km terrain to allow for a horizon. More habitable planets use foliage and instanced meshes to allow for vegetation. These were kept lower detail than you’d see in say a first person shooter since they’re for adding scale in the background for planet buildings. The skyboxes also use a mix of textures and volumetric particles to create fog and clouds. So why pick a swamp as an example? It shows off foliage and the moving mist is also tied to the particle system effects using noise. These effects combined with the ambient sounds on the planet surfaces should all help add little bits of immersion to LoR.
Image 1. Post Combat Summary Display
Image 2. Simplified Mouse Support Option
Image 3. Swamp Planet Matte Image
Image 4. Overview of a swamp planet scene
Image 5. Ground level view of a swamp showing foliage meshes
Image 6. Swamp planet in game
Let us know what further changes you would like to see or if you have encountered any technical issues. Please post on the forums, reach out to us via Discord or send an email: [email protected] Saved games and clear steps to reproduce the bug are critical. It helps us more quickly track down the bug and get it fixed. Additional information on bug reporting tips can be found here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/437440/discussions/.
As always, we appreciate the feedback, conversations, and support from all of you!
Another week and more bug fixes and quality of life enhancements:
This Patch:
• Autocombat report: We’ve added a post-combat breakdown for autoresolve and tactical showing the outcome balance of power bar and status of individual ships.
• Simple mouse input: As some users have reported not having middle mouse buttons or mouse wheels another quality of life feature will be an alternative control scheme that can be toggled. Players can currently change these bindings in settings but this will provide another accessibility option.
We’ve also finished the build queue refactor, which has optimized construction displays and rounding displays for various items in the build queue.
In terms of quality of life features coming next:
• Auto ship design generator: With the optimizations done on ship designer we’ll be adding in an “auto” button to have the AI generate a design of your selected size class.
• Loading and saving build queues: You’ll be able to select various buildings and items to set up a build queue order. Unavailable items will be filtered out. These queues will be tied to your user settings and should be able to be shared between games. Along with the existing auto construction tool this should provide a lot of control for automation for players
As for another deep dive this week: Planet scenes.
We’ll likely do a few on some specific ones that had their own challenges or some interesting pieces. But for this week the often-overlooked swamp planet.
Having planetary scenes was a decision we made very early on in development, as it adds a personal touch to each of your worlds. Over development we had some different versions including 2D backgrounds with 2D images, and a version with 3d buildings over 2D images. When we began the work for the current version of LoR in late 2019, we transitioned to full 3D planet scenes for colony view and ground combat. Each planet needed to keep to a color palette that would match what is seen in orbital view.
Each planet has a 2km x 2km terrain to allow for a horizon. More habitable planets use foliage and instanced meshes to allow for vegetation. These were kept lower detail than you’d see in say a first person shooter since they’re for adding scale in the background for planet buildings. The skyboxes also use a mix of textures and volumetric particles to create fog and clouds. So why pick a swamp as an example? It shows off foliage and the moving mist is also tied to the particle system effects using noise. These effects combined with the ambient sounds on the planet surfaces should all help add little bits of immersion to LoR.
Image 1. Post Combat Summary Display
Image 2. Simplified Mouse Support Option
Image 3. Swamp Planet Matte Image
Image 4. Overview of a swamp planet scene
Image 5. Ground level view of a swamp showing foliage meshes
Image 6. Swamp planet in gameLet us know what further changes you would like to see or if you have encountered any technical issues. Please post on the forums, reach out to us via Discord or send an email: [email protected] Saved games and clear steps to reproduce the bug are critical. It helps us more quickly track down the bug and get it fixed. Additional information on bug reporting tips can be found here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/437440/discussions/.
As always, we appreciate the feedback, conversations, and support from all of you!