Alpha 18 Update - More Ship Types, Blackholes and Code Cleanup


For the most part I forgot to actually keep a list of changes for this update, had to make this after I got everything ready to actually update the game.

  • Redid planet production calculations so that no productions is wasted, and instead is transferred over to the future (impacted cloning and industries, slight impact on tech)
  • Redid the way that the game determines what stars are within range
    • Now shows how far a planet is if it is unexplored.
    • The new method is actually a lot similar to how the game used to do the calculation, but now it caches the calculations which saves a lot of processing which was an issue in the past
  • Added a new ship called the Troop Transport. It comes prepacked with 5 Military units, allowing it to assault planets.
  • Redid a lot of the code to split the logic of plant/stars into 2 separate entities. Up until recently planets were stars. Now planets are separate entities that exist in the star.
    • This allows for stars to have more than one planet in theory. In practice this does not actually occur, as All UI is designed for a single planet per star
  • Added in a Map Designer/Editor
    • Custom Maps can be loaded if they exist, home planets can override some of these stars/planets
    • Mostly a byproduct of me needing an in-game menu for changing star/planet variables for testing stuff. I already made the menu for editing planets, and that is like 90% of the work needed for a custom map editor
    • Will allow for scenarios and a scenario Editor to be added later
  • Added black holes
    • Still need to add in some extra custom planets for black holes
    • Intend to add wormholes next for a custom map Idea I had
  • Made Many improvements to multiple other sections of the code
  • Also added a few other minor features
  • Improved the code to some of the mini games (also did some work on new ones but yet to finish)
  • Also had a few failed additions that had to be removed as they added way to much complexity to the systems
    • Example: Wanted to allow planets to have more than one population, with some conquered pops staying on the planet
    • This did actually work, but caused a massive headache trying to figure out what the pop cap on the planet should be
    • This might be useful for a future game, as a game more similar to orion 2 is possible now with fewer changes to the code needed
  • Made some minor improvements to the way the game gathers data, which could have a positive impact on late game performance
    • I don't think the game has many performance issues in general. In performance mode the game can run on an ancient macbook without issue (does need a special mac build with opengl enabled, too much of a pain to do regularly right now)
  • Fixed issues with ships being shown when they should not be
  • Fixed issues where a invisible ship can be clicked on and viewed
  • Fixed some issues with bombing planets
  • Bombing planets now damages Military population as well as civilian population
  • AI can now bomb planets again
  • Made some other improvements to the AI
  • Fixed a lot of other bugs in the game code

Files

Zirka Dominium A18.apk 154 MB
11 hours ago
Zirka Dominium public Alpha 18.exe 183 MB
11 hours ago
Zirka Dominium public Alpha 18 Mac.zip 160 MB
11 hours ago
Zirka Dominium Public Alpha 18.x86_64 187 MB
11 hours ago

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