First of all, still sick.
As I was finishing up that previously mentioned bit of planet formation, I ran into a little issue of... the planets weren't forming at all as I expected they would. The idea was, for a sun-like star, there should be a few small inner planets and then a few gas giants... what I got was one or two small planets (usually one) followed by a massive super-jupiter planet, followed by a bunch of dwarf planets.
While thinking on this problem, I had a moment's distraction that made me realize that I was missing an important consideration with my coordinate validation system; I was missing a piece required to support both 'relative stationary' and 'geo-stationary' orbit positions. So, I had to go back and look at it again to add this little detail. I realized then that I could improve the code in several ways, while also incorporating the new little extra... so I did. It's done now. Not only did I fill in the gaps, but the total validator code size was reduced by about 1/2, and that half is also purely a more efficient and capable; that will make a big difference on a busy server.
I still need to do a bit of final testing, but it's pretty much finished; I have faith in my work! Then I can go back to fixing planet formation, which I don't expect will take long. I have an idea how to fix the planet formation; once that is out of the way then I'll add on moons and asteroid fields.
Revealed : Fleets will be able to choose whether they hold a relatve orbit around a planet, or keep geo-synchronous orbit over a point of the planet.
Tell me, will there be 3D ships too?
ReplyDeleteThere will not be 3D ship models, not for a long time at least; the actual combat is automated and not micro-managed by players, so having a ship model would be pointless (aside from the aesthetic value, which would be nice). The player customizes ships by their many design attributes, affecting their battle performance.
DeleteWhat do the orbits do exactly?
ReplyDeleteThey affect the actual/exact position of a fleet around a planet. Here's a couple examples of how they might be useful:
Delete1) you might want to keep a fleet in a 'geosynchrinous orbit' above your settlement on a planet, to make sure that particular planet location gets the best protection from your fleet
2) you might see your enemy coming in from a certain direction to attack a planet with several major settlements; rather than station the fleet above one city or spread thin across all of them, you can keep your fleet positioned so that the incoming enemy meets your fleet before its intended target
Hey, if I ever get my Youtube channel online, would you be happy I send people to this blog, then game?
ReplyDeleteAlso, In the long term will you be making more games?
I want the game to be at least 'partially complete' before publicizing it... at least finished with combat working well.
ReplyDeleteIn the long term, I am hoping that I will focus on this game; always evolving and improving it in any way I can, expanding it to do greater things. For example, ground battles will be carried out between infantry and armour units with air support from player-designed aircraft, and major ship battles will be in space.... but in the long run I want to add orbital bombardment/defense, and custom-design heavy mech war machines to add in ground battles... ideas that I think will be cool but not necessary to 'finish' the game.