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?
There are quite interesting changes. One new space race called Chiraloids. These have special ability to gain food from planet's radioation level. So more planet has radioation better for Chiraloids. Due this they tend to use more nuclear bombs when conquering planets.
This screen above is also new screen which tells information about Realm's space race and government. While I was doing test plays I always forgot what different bonus space race or governments had. Now this can be checked while playing.
Second new screen is planet list, which contains all the planets realm owns in single screen. It shows the basic information about planets and quick way to change next building project.
In diplomatic screen there is command bridge of as background, plus stars and possible planet. Stars and planet have light parallax scrolling effect to give a bit more mood for diplomatic screens. There is also new diplomatic option: Trade Embargo. That means that two realms can put third realm into trade embargo. For example two AI realms are in trade alliance and third one makes war against one of them. These two could put the attacker on trade embargo.
I have also improved the AI. I discovered quite fatal bug from fleet handling of AI. If fleet was blocked it pretty much stayed there for end of the game. This cause AI colonization, attacks and so on to be really bad. After fixing it and improving the planet handling AI is much better challenge now. Actually the first test game with this version I honestly lost against AI, which was a bit surprise.
I also made a video about two turns of the game. Main content of this video is about me attacking against AI's planet. Video last about 8 minutes and most of it just the combat. And yes music in the video is actual game music.
Nice song. I would say this song could be played in somekind of space game, for example FTL. It feels like soothing electronic ambient. I like this one.
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.
I made remixing of this music. I removed the last part and mixed the second part instead of the last part.
If someone else wants to use here is link for it:
https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/raw/master/src/main/res...
Original licenses and attribution instructions still apply. No need to mention me as remixer if you use the remixed version.
Thanks!
There is now release 0.9.0Beta available.
There are quite interesting changes. One new space race called Chiraloids. These have special ability to gain food from planet's radioation level. So more planet has radioation better for Chiraloids. Due this they tend to use more nuclear bombs when conquering planets.
This screen above is also new screen which tells information about Realm's space race and government. While I was doing test plays I always forgot what different bonus space race or governments had. Now this can be checked while playing.
Second new screen is planet list, which contains all the planets realm owns in single screen. It shows the basic information about planets and quick way to change next building project.
In diplomatic screen there is command bridge of as background, plus stars and possible planet. Stars and planet have light parallax scrolling effect to give a bit more mood for diplomatic screens. There is also new diplomatic option: Trade Embargo. That means that two realms can put third realm into trade embargo. For example two AI realms are in trade alliance and third one makes war against one of them. These two could put the attacker on trade embargo.
I have also improved the AI. I discovered quite fatal bug from fleet handling of AI. If fleet was blocked it pretty much stayed there for end of the game. This cause AI colonization, attacks and so on to be really bad. After fixing it and improving the planet handling AI is much better challenge now. Actually the first test game with this version I honestly lost against AI, which was a bit surprise.
I also made a video about two turns of the game. Main content of this video is about me attacking against AI's planet. Video last about 8 minutes and most of it just the combat. And yes music in the video is actual game music.
https://tuomount.kapsi.fi/Open-Realm-of-Stars/planetconquered.mp4
The new release is available here:
https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/releases
Nice song. I would say this song could be played in somekind of space game, for example FTL. It feels like soothing electronic ambient. I like this one.
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