Development Update: 17 March 2017

We come in peace. Mostly.

Today's update includes a few bug fixes, and some preparatory work for our next big feature, which is the technology tree view. As always, work continues to improve the game, so your feedback and suggestions are important to us. Keep them coming!



Changes and Additions

• The \Mods\ subdirectory can now be used to install and manage user-created mods. For instructions, please read the MakingMods.txt file in the \Mods\ directory.
  
• Unlocking 'Dreadnoughts' no longer requires 'Duranium Construction'.
  
• Removed the redundant 'Small Craft' prerequisite for 'Light Carrier'.
  
• Removed the redundant 'Graviton Physics' prerequisite for 'Star Gates'.
  
• Removed the redundant 'Fusion' prerequisite for 'Plasma Focusing'.
  
• Bombardment notifications now contain more information.
  
• Added on-hover tooltips for terraforming projects.
  
  

Fixes

• Fighters and bombers should now automatically upgrade to use the latest available munitions/weapons, without requiring that the mothership be refitted.
  
• Strike fighters should now correctly switch between attacking with energy weapons or missiles, depending on their target.
• Fix for a rare bug that could cause a crash when closing the ship designer pane.
  
• Applying an autodesign template to a planet defense design should no longer cause an exception.
  
• Fix for a rare bug that could cause fleets to disappear after issuing a movement command.
  
• Rejecting the results of a galactic council vote should no longer cause an error.
  
• Fix for a gunport animation glitch affecting several heavier Orthin hulls.
  
• The 'Ancient Guardians' faction should no longer appear in the faction list.
  
• Fix for a bug that could prevent raider units from embarking from low-population planets.
  
• Disabling 'advisor suggestions' should now suppress special resource notifications.
  
• You should now receive at most 1 special resource notification per resource per game.
  

(Click here to view the complete development changelogs, and here to view the development roadmap post.)



Probably the most requested feature (and the most bemoaned missing feature) is a tree view for the Research Screen, and it has been at the top of our list as well. Because our tech tree has a complex set of prerequisite inheritances, and because the tree is different for each faction, figuring out a consistent way to display it took some work. But we think we've got it figured out.

This view will be in addition to the current list view; the player will be able to toggle between the two views at will. The tree view will contain most of the functionality of the list view, including the same technology information pane in a pop-up form. It will also allow the player to queue research items in any order.

Here is a mockup of the new screen's graphical elements:



Here is a test layout of the logical tree structure (Yoral version):



The tree is dynamic in the sense that each faction can have a different tree layout, and nodes can be added to a tree during a game, which will allow the potential for a faction to unlock technologies through gameplay that would not normally be available for research to that faction.

That's all for now. Until next time.