Saturday 23 August 2014

Research

The research system in Galaxial has undergone many redesigns over the summer and has turned out quite different to what I originally had planned. The user interface still needs some work but is now mostly finished.


Once you have enough research data it can be spent on projects to instantly 'unlock' them. Rather than choosing what to research and then having to wait for it to be completed. The reason I choose to do it this way is because the research data already takes a long time to accumulate and will also be required for building really advanced ships and modules.

The technologies shown in brown are unique to the faction you are playing and will generally provide strong bonuses. The same basic technologies, ships and modules will be available to all factions but there will be a lot of faction unique stuff that is more specialized and will allow different play styles and strategies.

I am still undecided on how many levels to have for each research project. I would like for there to be no limit (unlimited research) possibly with diminishing returns the more you research a technology, but this could potentially lead to a lot of balancing issues.

Maybe its not a problem? For example if the player becomes too powerful then all other empires could become afraid and form a coalition against you.

Resources

A resources bar has been added along the top of the screen to show your empires total resource stockpile.


The resources are (from left to right): Credits, Research Data, Crew, Troops, Common Metals, Rare Metals and Precious Metals.

Crew and Troops are a recent addition and I will explain how they work in a future development log as they are not quite finished yet.

Ore mined from asteroids require transporting to colonies that have refinery facilities and after being processed into metals they are then added to the resource stockpile.

Colony Graphics

Graphics for the colony populations have been improved slightly again to match the same style used for the ships. Facilities such as shipyards, refineries, hydroponics will be constructed at the empty inner circles. New graphics for those haven't been created yet.


Minimap

Added a button to lock the minimap viewing position so you can keep an eye on two locations at once. You wont have to rely on just this as there will eventually be some kind of message/alert system for when important events happen.


Most of the user interface windows/widgets in the game look much cleaner now after removing a lot of the inner white outlines and added some subtle gradients.


Galaxial is proving to be an enormous game to develop solo!
Thanks again for your patience and I hope you will really enjoy it when you finally get to play.

12 comments:

  1. The colony graphics looks absolutely gorgeous. Well done, if it plays half as good as it looks, you have a winner.

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  2. Love everything about the new update! Keep it up!

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  3. Wonderful! Keep going !

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  4. Keep up the good work pls !!!

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  5. Oh... That was long time since last update :) Well... Understandable if one will see it was a summer time :)


    I really like the idea that transporting research and generating it takes much time, so we will be using it more as a currency to simply buy research. I also like how we will get faction specific research and normal, common knowledge research. If I could suggest anything - I think it would be also nice to get few mutually exclusive research options. While lore-wise it does not makes any sens, gameplay wise it is always interesting to see this kind of choises where I must choose one or another, and live with this decision from now on (see Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty, ZERG and PROTOS research decisions).


    Also, as for limiting research - I strongly believe that no research level limit is best option here. To balance it out, maybe afther one faction will become too advanced (for example first most advanced have research on level 6 while second mostly advanced will have research on level 2) than her advanced technology is being "smuggled" to neighbooring factions and speed up their research development? Maybe research cost should go extra high when faction is much more advanced than galaxy averange? Or maybe there could be some technology branch which would be dedicated to deal with highly advanced technology (in real life - EMP for example. Would be useless against tribals in Amazonia, but deadly against Europ or USA or other advanced countries)? Also possibilities of coalitions being formed is great balance.


    Anyway it was great to see that You do so well :) I am absolutly sure that You will blow Sins Of Solar Empire from the face of Earth with Galaxial :)

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  6. Not sure what kind of projects I could add which makes sense them being mutually exclusive?

    You will most likely need to specialize your research, but I don't want to prevent the player from deciding to pick other paths.

    The research levels will get more expensive (research cost) and provide less of a bonus the higher you go.

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  7. not sure if asked but will this have multiplayer? possibly co-op?

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  8. No, it wont have multiplayer or co-op. I would like to concentrate on just singleplayer for now.

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  9. OMFG! Finally a new entry :'S I was so worried because of this loooong
    time without a word from you Stuart... We deserve a little beta for all
    this months in pain :P

    Seriously Im glad to see that you still
    going forward with the project and with every new entry it looks better
    and better, I still don't know what means that metal geometric lines in
    the colonies but everything is great and that tech tree looks awesome
    with many techs to discover.

    And a last thing, Stuart please ¡TAKE MY MONEY AND DON'T MAKE ME WAIT MORE! xD

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  10. I'm really looking Forward to release and absolutely love your idea and design of the game. :)

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  11. About research, don't make the error of only giving numeric bonuses. People find that boring. We need new toys and gizzmos from time to time.

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  12. Yes, a new update! Looking nice, Stuart!

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