As promised, here is the latest alpha version of Unending Galaxy. It’s far more complete and stable than the previous 0.5.5 build. This is as feature complete as you’ll get before the beta release planned for September.
As usual, the full article will explain the changes into more details, but here’s the main points:
- Load and Save your game
- Ability to play music
- Nearly completed user interface
- Mission system and ship to ship communications
- Many AI related improvements
Download the Alpha – Updated Documentation – Full Changelog
Game Saving and Loading
This is the latest feature that hasn’t been listed in the previous devlogs. It’s not 100% complete yet and some minor things aren’t saved / restored properly yet. It has support for multiple save slots but it’s not yet implemented. Saving and Loading is fast but need plenty of disk space during the operation. For a standard game after a few hours, it’s around 200Mb needed for the save operation. That said, the save-file itself, once the operation is finished is only a few megabytes large.
As with all new features, don’t expect it to be perfect, and in this case it means that saves made with this version will not be compatible with the beta or the final release of Unending Galaxy.
Music Playing
Unending Galaxy has now the ability to play music (mp3, wma, and wav). There’s only one track in this version, from our professional composer, Alexander Jordan, who is kind enough to contribute to the project for free. More tracks will of course be present in the next releases. Meanwhile, you can copy your own in the “music” folder, and they should be automatically detected.
Mission System
As explained in the recent devlogs, the mission system is now in place. Right now, however there’s only supply missions (available at trading stations and factories) and combat missions that you can find by talking to ships that are under attack. Of course, much more missions will be added to the game.
User Interface
Most menus have been improved / completed. Some have been added, like the new menu to setup your factories. Most of these changes have already been covered in the recent devlogs, but here’s a summary:
- New menu to setup player’s factory
- Completed Empire Manger with list of assets, ability to set invasion target and log options
- Popup menu to give orders to individual ships (alt+click once a ship is selected)
- Improved trading and ship setup menus
- Hangar tab consistent (and working) in all relevant menus
- Ability to change turret and friendly fire settings
Combat and Individual Ship AI
Carriers can now resupply their fighter count when it gets too low. Ships are also a bit more clever during combat and will try to flee when their shield or energy is low. I also fixed some issues with the AI of bounty hunters and pirate raiders that would cause them not to do anything.
Gameplay
As the game is slowly getting out of its test phase, I am removing some of the “cheats” that were useful for debugging. From now on, you need to be close to a station to trade with it, same goes with jump gates, and buying ships at a shipyard isn’t for free anymore. Ejecting cargo will drop a loot package that can be picked up instead of disappearing. You can also talk to other ships that are attacking you or your assets and pay them to stop. This is only working against pirates right now. Oh, and mining lasers are now working when you are using them.
Game Engine and Fixes
The game should handle better as many issues were fixed. I also rewritten how the multi-threading is handled, it should work more smoothly and handle more ship in general. I may have fixed rendering issues on Windows XP / DirectX 9 computers, but I haven’t checked if it actually works.
And, of course, there’s a few dozens of bug fixes ranging to minor to critical ones. I think I handled all crash related ones, and many behavior issues too.
Final Words
This is only a glimpse of the changes, the detailed changelog is on the forum.
This version doesn’t qualify as a demo anymore. It’s in many ways how the game will feel like, minus the sound effects. What’s actually missing is content: more missions, interactions, factories, proper balance, better map and more options in the user interface. And that’s what we are going to focus on once the beta is out in September.
Cheers,
SK.