Tag: Unending Galaxy

Devlog: The Swarm

EsKa

Hey,

title02I toyed around with the giant space beasts called The Swarm. But before that, I need to explain first another improvement I made this week: ownership of a sector depends on who has the most buildings there, except if there’s a military base or shipyard, in that case it’s whoever own the building. Works for every faction (except the pirates), so you can now have sectors controlled by hey, the swarm or other ‘minor’ factions.

I made it so factions now do try to expand and claim solar systems. When two factions have common borders they may plant buildings in each other territory. Also, factions need to build a dock to claim a new sector, the territorial expansion is slower and makes more sense as there’s no claimed but empty systems. It’s possible to peacefully take over sectors, you can even use pirates to help remove a foreign military base in a sector you want. It has other implications I will explain further down.

Let’s get back to the Swarm for now.

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Devlog and Design: Trading !

EsKa

Snap1394Hi there !

Sorry for the small delay, I made the mistake of launching Crusader Kings II, and well, restoring the roman empire took a bit longer than expected (freaking HRE who decided to be a stable and powerful blob for once). And many thanks to those who bought the game on itch.io or donated. Beta 2.1 seems to works okay for most if not all of you, which is good 🙂

Anyway, it is time to deal with the trading part of things, and there’s a lot of ground to cover. This post will discuss what I am doing now and what are the goals for the beta 3. Hopefully it should be released before the end of the month.

edit: I removed the discus comment system on the website and put back the old one. Discus was getting out of hand and calling scripts from dodgy and privacy invasive websites. Also replaced and improved some other features of the website, and added an option to subscribe by email. The mobile version should be easier to read and navigate too.

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Beta 2.1, donations and itch.io store

EsKa

Hi,

This is a content packed post 🙂

First, UG is now popular enough that I get sufficient information to fix the most glaring issues right away, and given that the download size is only 100mb or so, posting more frequent updates isn’t really an issue here. So, I fixed a few bugs found in the initial Beta 2, including various menu related bugs, an issue with cargo missions, a few possible crashes, and more importantly it should fix performance and graphical bugs a small percentage of users were experiencing. Incidentally this version should be the first to fully support bloom shaders and other hardware accelerated effects (at least on most computers that are able to run those). An option in the video settings has been added to switch between the full hardware acceleration and the old display mode just in case, it require the game to be restarted if you’re not changing this option from the launcher. As usual it’s available on the download page.

People who donated (for any version) will receive a download link shortly by email.

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Unending Galaxy [Beta 2] Released !

EsKa

Snap1373Unending Galaxy [Beta 2] is available for download. This is a combat focused release with an improved pirate faction, multiple new combat missions, ranks to climb, a new flight model and new ships and weaponry. The starting scenarios and maps have been reworked too.

The full changelog is available on our forums, but here are the main points:

  • New pirate guild and missions
  • Bounty hunting board at shipyards
  • Improved and stronger police patrols
  • Better pilot-to-pilot communications (traits, pay fine to cops)
  • Movement system using acceleration, deceleration and rotation
  • Nicer graphics, new nebulae and clouds
  • New ships, weapons, wares, stations and a new faction
  • Active pause, improved menus.

(to the people on forum who tried the test build on the forum, this one has been slightly updated, with a few UI bug fixes and a much faster loading speed)

It is important to note that due to the nature of the simulation, pirate base don’t start with “preloaded” missions for the player to take. It can takes a few minutes for the first missions to appear. This is true for most “mission generators”. There’s also a lot of cargo ships (even loads in the default ‘trader’ scenario), going everywhere, it balances itself out relatively quickly.

Also, the (thankfully, only) loading screen is “a bit” long. It will likely be shorter in the final release. And, yes, you still need Windows’ themes service enabled for the game to use DirectX.

Download the Game – Documentation  – Full Changelog
The wiki doc will, as usual, be updated soon.

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Devlog: Beta 2 release is in sight

EsKa

Snap1348Hi there !

So, the issue with the hard drive wasn’t too bad after all. The only loss is a part of my source control (git). This barbaric term describes a program that keep track of all the changes I make in the source code and which usually come with the ability to compare files with their older versions, track changelog, restore previous versions and so on. Loosing part of it isn’t really a problem except that it makes writing this article a bit more difficult. While I do keep the changelog file up to date separately, changes are written in no particular order, so I may be a bit fuzzy on the things I added between the last devlog and the last 3 days.

Anyway, there’s still plenty to discuss so let’s get to it, shall we 🙂

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Devlog: Pirate bosses, pilot traits and nebulae

EsKa

Snap1324Hi and happy new year !

This is going to be a difficult article to write as I am watching the Awesome Games Done Quick event (a week long speed running live feed against cancer) too, and I am much worst at multitasking than the programs I write. Anyway, there’s quite a lot of ground to cover despite having taken a week off.

Let’s start with what the screenshots are showing : the new nebulae (and background). As I quickly explained in the previous quick post, I am using a procedural generation algorithm commonly known as Perlin Noise to produce the clouds. Basically, you enter a few numbers, and it produces an unique cloud and that can be tiled easily. It has other uses that I will explain further down.

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