Couple of days ago I got an exciting new idea for my game. There could optional choice when creating new realms which would mark realm as Ancient Realm. This would cause 1/4 the game length to be simulated by AI and then non ancient realms would join into game. This would be interesting since these ancient realms could make trade agreements/alliance or even war between each others. These would have also search galaxy more than regular realms. Plus every game start would be totally unique because of the simulation.
Also human player realm should be able to be Ancient Realm. Then human player might be in war or in alliance when the game begins which at least sounds interesting. Any comments for this idea?
There is now available version 0.11.0Beta. Biggest change is adding diplomatic victory condition into game. Diplomatic victory is done so that there is configurable amount of votes from 2 to 6 votes. Last two votes are always voting for second candidate wether this is chosen by military or number of United towers. And final voting is for Ruler of Galaxy. First candidate is the one who built required number of United towers(Bigger galaxy requieres more towers) and second candidate is either the realm which has biggest military or second amount of United towers.
Votes before these two votes are randomized and they are: Vote for Galactic peace, Ban for privateer ships, Band for nukes and Taxation of richest realm. We I plan to make this diplomatic votes this sounded a bit easy to do but it turn out to be quite challenging. There are quite many things that affect who AI votes. These include what is being voted, is it beneficial for AI itself, is it beneficial to allies of AI, is it negative for enemies of AI, is AI promised to vote certain way for other realm and finally attitude of the AI itself. For example militaristic attitude might not want to ban nukes where peaceful attitude might want to ban them.
Second big change in 0.11.0Beta is Galactic Olympics. Galactic olympics give diplomatic bonus for those realms which participate to games and negative bonus for those whom does not participate. But those whom did not participate get bonus in their own group. So it is possible that aggressive Realm does not get any other realm to participate and thus get negative bonus towards other realms. All other realms on the other hand get bonus towards each others. Also winner of the games and organizer get cultural bonus.
Then there were bunch of bugs fixed where biggest issue was that JFrame had wrong boundary on Windows 10 machines. This caused that bottom buttons were not visible in screen. There have been smaller bug fixes also for AI, for example AI will now built new scout ships if old ones are destroyed.
There is now 0.10.Beta available. This release main focus was adding more graphics including planets, shield effects, different colors for beams and icon of the game itself:
There was also new ship bridge interior for Centaurs:
Second big update was adding scientific victory condition. Original plan was also add diplomatic victory condition, but victory conditions require such a long testing since one needs to play multiple games with that new condition. Scientic victory works so that there is new game setting for defining how many scientific achivements Realms must build to win into single planet. Default is 2 but it can be set from 1 to 5. So building one scientific achievement on two different planet is not enough to win. These scientific achievements are buildings which give some extra ordinary boost and cost lost of minerals and production. Typical building time is from 15 to 25 turns. One of these achievements is Artificial planet which is very costly star base but after deployement it will create a new planet for that position.
I was also able to improve AI quite much. Originally in game there wasn't option for destroying bad buildings from planet, so I created scoring system for AI that building to build must have more scores than requirement. This requirement kept growing while free slots from planet were gone. So the last slot was exceptional high score requirement. This mean that AI almost never built the last buildings on planet. In previous version I have added code that destroyed worst building if planet was already full. But because of that high score requirement it was almost ever built. So in this version I drop this scoring since it is no longer needed because buildings can be destroyed if wanted. Fixing this caused AI to handle planet way more efficiently and there fore it can improve research and how fast it can access to big space fleets.
But there is still that I think middle and end game is a bit boring since it is mostly just waiting things to happen. This seems to be very common in 4X games, but If any of you guys have great idea how tackle this I would be willing to hear. Last test game I played on other hand turned quite interesting.
My closest AI was space race called Greyan, and their focus is high science research. It had much higher technology than I had. Everything was quite fine, until it got research the big Privateer ships. These privateers can attack against another realm without causing the war since they are privateers. So this Greyan attacked with these privateers against my trade ships, starbases and even military ships. Even my strongest ships could not beat them. After while Greyan decides to make war against me. This time I had slightly better battleships and I could win these privateers if I had more ships in fleet.
I was able to destroy couple of these privateers but Greyans kept destroying my star bases and trade ships. Closest planet Greyans had was orbiting just two smaller ships so I was able to conquer that planet from Greyans, but even still it does not want to make peace with me. It kept bugging me with those privateers till end of the game. It just destroyed single ships without no effort, but when I got my fleet there to fight, Privateer was already gone.
I was finally able to win the game by building the second scientific achievement to one of my distant planets. But anyway I felt that this was quite interesting end game, since that AI made feeling that it was more clever than it really is.
So far my options to make middle and end game more interesting is keep updating the AI itself and adding the new victory conditions. So next version should have the diplomatic victory condition where Realms vote who shall be the ruler of the galaxy. But if someone has idea what should have done in 4X space strategy games to make middle and end game more interesting I really eager to hear.
Feel free to try the and get the newest release from here:
I have done RPG with LPC assets. Whole adventure takes about 12 hours of game play. It is quite typical RPG where you create one character and you pick 3 more characters to your party. Where it differs from other RPG is that one can get roleplaying bonus from playing the character in the sameway. There are three different ways to roles to play: Goody good paladin, Mercenary for wanting more and more money, Brute that just wants to pick a fight.
For me game idea sounds very interesting. It reminds a bit like Elite. I think I have started similar game in late 90s but it never got finished.
My current project is open source and in the start it did not have CI system at all. Then I got help from one guy who made the CI base stuff and added checkstyle checks. These checkstyle checks could not be run in CI since it got so many warnings. It took me and him to fix all the warning month or two. But ever since that checkstyles are being run and build fails if code is not in correct style. So converting "non-human" code to human is not going take 5 months, I am quite sure.
You can always invent history for factions. Faction names could be also fixed so they do not need to be random words. Also if you save all the faction history while game is being played, then you will get history for factions.
But sounds like human player needs more things to do. More mission type obviosly. Have thought about just exploring the galaxy, I personal find that quite interesting for example in Ur-Quan Master.
Sounds quite interesting game. There was only Windows binary so I cannot try it out. One thing I noticed from screenshots that does factions have names or are they just named after colors? I think if faction would have name like "Freelancers from Sul" it would sound cooler than just "Red".
Since I couldn't play it I assume that this is somewhat turn based but is flying real time? Does player need to control all his ship or do they have somekind of AI? If they have, have you thought about giving commands to other ships in your fleet than direct control?
Couple of days ago I got an exciting new idea for my game. There could optional choice when creating new realms which would mark realm as Ancient Realm. This would cause 1/4 the game length to be simulated by AI and then non ancient realms would join into game. This would be interesting since these ancient realms could make trade agreements/alliance or even war between each others. These would have also search galaxy more than regular realms. Plus every game start would be totally unique because of the simulation.
Also human player realm should be able to be Ancient Realm. Then human player might be in war or in alliance when the game begins which at least sounds interesting. Any comments for this idea?
Here is the screenshot from Open Realm of Stars using this in game.
There is now available version 0.11.0Beta. Biggest change is adding diplomatic victory condition into game. Diplomatic victory is done so that there is configurable amount of votes from 2 to 6 votes. Last two votes are always voting for second candidate wether this is chosen by military or number of United towers. And final voting is for Ruler of Galaxy. First candidate is the one who built required number of United towers(Bigger galaxy requieres more towers) and second candidate is either the realm which has biggest military or second amount of United towers.
Votes before these two votes are randomized and they are: Vote for Galactic peace, Ban for privateer ships, Band for nukes and Taxation of richest realm. We I plan to make this diplomatic votes this sounded a bit easy to do but it turn out to be quite challenging. There are quite many things that affect who AI votes. These include what is being voted, is it beneficial for AI itself, is it beneficial to allies of AI, is it negative for enemies of AI, is AI promised to vote certain way for other realm and finally attitude of the AI itself. For example militaristic attitude might not want to ban nukes where peaceful attitude might want to ban them.
Second big change in 0.11.0Beta is Galactic Olympics. Galactic olympics give diplomatic bonus for those realms which participate to games and negative bonus for those whom does not participate. But those whom did not participate get bonus in their own group. So it is possible that aggressive Realm does not get any other realm to participate and thus get negative bonus towards other realms. All other realms on the other hand get bonus towards each others. Also winner of the games and organizer get cultural bonus.
Then there were bunch of bugs fixed where biggest issue was that JFrame had wrong boundary on Windows 10 machines. This caused that bottom buttons were not visible in screen. There have been smaller bug fixes also for AI, for example AI will now built new scout ships if old ones are destroyed.
New version is available from here:
https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/releases
Direct link for zip file: https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/releases/download/rel-0...
Here is also image from the Open Realm of Stars which is using the bridge.
There is now 0.10.Beta available. This release main focus was adding more graphics including planets, shield effects, different colors for beams and icon of the game itself:
There was also new ship bridge interior for Centaurs:
Second big update was adding scientific victory condition. Original plan was also add diplomatic victory condition, but victory conditions require such a long testing since one needs to play multiple games with that new condition. Scientic victory works so that there is new game setting for defining how many scientific achivements Realms must build to win into single planet. Default is 2 but it can be set from 1 to 5. So building one scientific achievement on two different planet is not enough to win. These scientific achievements are buildings which give some extra ordinary boost and cost lost of minerals and production. Typical building time is from 15 to 25 turns. One of these achievements is Artificial planet which is very costly star base but after deployement it will create a new planet for that position.
I was also able to improve AI quite much. Originally in game there wasn't option for destroying bad buildings from planet, so I created scoring system for AI that building to build must have more scores than requirement. This requirement kept growing while free slots from planet were gone. So the last slot was exceptional high score requirement. This mean that AI almost never built the last buildings on planet. In previous version I have added code that destroyed worst building if planet was already full. But because of that high score requirement it was almost ever built. So in this version I drop this scoring since it is no longer needed because buildings can be destroyed if wanted. Fixing this caused AI to handle planet way more efficiently and there fore it can improve research and how fast it can access to big space fleets.
But there is still that I think middle and end game is a bit boring since it is mostly just waiting things to happen. This seems to be very common in 4X games, but If any of you guys have great idea how tackle this I would be willing to hear. Last test game I played on other hand turned quite interesting.
My closest AI was space race called Greyan, and their focus is high science research. It had much higher technology than I had. Everything was quite fine, until it got research the big Privateer ships. These privateers can attack against another realm without causing the war since they are privateers. So this Greyan attacked with these privateers against my trade ships, starbases and even military ships. Even my strongest ships could not beat them. After while Greyan decides to make war against me. This time I had slightly better battleships and I could win these privateers if I had more ships in fleet.
I was able to destroy couple of these privateers but Greyans kept destroying my star bases and trade ships. Closest planet Greyans had was orbiting just two smaller ships so I was able to conquer that planet from Greyans, but even still it does not want to make peace with me. It kept bugging me with those privateers till end of the game. It just destroyed single ships without no effort, but when I got my fleet there to fight, Privateer was already gone.
I was finally able to win the game by building the second scientific achievement to one of my distant planets. But anyway I felt that this was quite interesting end game, since that AI made feeling that it was more clever than it really is.
So far my options to make middle and end game more interesting is keep updating the AI itself and adding the new victory conditions. So next version should have the diplomatic victory condition where Realms vote who shall be the ruler of the galaxy. But if someone has idea what should have done in 4X space strategy games to make middle and end game more interesting I really eager to hear.
Feel free to try the and get the newest release from here:
https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/releases
Direct link for zip file.
I have done RPG with LPC assets. Whole adventure takes about 12 hours of game play. It is quite typical RPG where you create one character and you pick 3 more characters to your party. Where it differs from other RPG is that one can get roleplaying bonus from playing the character in the sameway. There are three different ways to roles to play: Goody good paladin, Mercenary for wanting more and more money, Brute that just wants to pick a fight.
Here is the link for Heroes of Hawks Haven: https://tuomount.kapsi.fi/
Whole game is also opensourced available in github: https://github.com/tuomount/JHeroes
My game has also treants which are compatible with LPC: https://opengameart.org/content/treant-monster
These are awesome effect and I finally figured out where to use one of these in my 4X strategy game.
I am using the shield effect from this set in my game. Attached screenshot from the combat where I use the shield effect.
For me game idea sounds very interesting. It reminds a bit like Elite. I think I have started similar game in late 90s but it never got finished.
My current project is open source and in the start it did not have CI system at all. Then I got help from one guy who made the CI base stuff and added checkstyle checks. These checkstyle checks could not be run in CI since it got so many warnings. It took me and him to fix all the warning month or two. But ever since that checkstyles are being run and build fails if code is not in correct style. So converting "non-human" code to human is not going take 5 months, I am quite sure.
You can always invent history for factions. Faction names could be also fixed so they do not need to be random words. Also if you save all the faction history while game is being played, then you will get history for factions.
But sounds like human player needs more things to do. More mission type obviosly. Have thought about just exploring the galaxy, I personal find that quite interesting for example in Ur-Quan Master.
Sounds quite interesting game. There was only Windows binary so I cannot try it out. One thing I noticed from screenshots that does factions have names or are they just named after colors? I think if faction would have name like "Freelancers from Sul" it would sound cooler than just "Red".
Since I couldn't play it I assume that this is somewhat turn based but is flying real time? Does player need to control all his ship or do they have somekind of AI? If they have, have you thought about giving commands to other ships in your fleet than direct control?
Finally I got tested this new bridge in game. See attached picture.
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