Anarkis Gaming

Another development update, with screenshots. A lot has been done this week, a map editor, a very basic system where factions battle each other, a (better) sector map and a hell lot of bug fixes.

Enjoy ! 🙂

So, factions are battling each other now when they can’t expand anymore. That’s currently very basic (send available fleet to targeted sector until it’s conquered) and it will, of course, be heavily improved in the next weeks. It was one of the major hurdles I wasn’t exactly sure how to deal with and it’s now done. Related to this warfare stuff, I improved and tweaked several ship orders (patrol, attack, flee). Stations can equip shields and weapons (but don’t know how to use weapons yet), they can be targeted and destroyed by the player or by AI ships.

As explained in my previous post, I am also working on the seamless transition between the normal screen and the sector map:

I am not yet finished with it, but on a display level, it’s working. As you can see in this screenshot, ships, stations and asteroids are displayed using small icons. The player keeps full control of his main ship while using this map. There’s no RTS like controls yet, but that will come soon enough.

In the miscellaneous category, I added the basics of a BBS / News system (a la Pirate News Networks in Pirate Guild). It’s not yet visible in game, but it should be working. I fixed a major memory leak (and apparently the only one), as a result the game tend to stabilize at 400-500Mb of RAM used on the current map after a dozen hours of play. But, of course, this number is likely to go higher as more features are added. It’s still lower than I thought it would take. I also tweaked the Faction AI so it’s more likely to build military bases in sectors that are near another faction’s border.

And last but not least, I am more or less done in writing a map editor for the game.

It’s not 100% feature complete yet and need to be extensively tested, but it’s relatively user friendly. As for all modding tools, I am not sure if / how they will be distributed yet.

This week I will work on improving the diplomacy and war mechanics (again, and it is going to be the same for quite a while, it’s quite a big chunk) while also working on the sector map.