Crucible VII 10/01/2014

State of the Game (Build 0.4):

• Vaguely playable- no win conditions, but I guess it's fun to rack up a high score (and also exploit the hideously unbalanced heroes).
• Implemented diplomacy mechanic to some degree. Soldiers encourage War, Diplomats encourage Peace, whilst Infiltrators encourage Stalemate/Cold War. Mechanics of how diplomatic states are attained is proving complicated. I would like it so that War/Peace is achieved passively (I.E the user does not declare War etc.), but my algorithms and graphs aren't doing what I thought they would.
• Lots of changes to heroes- Implemented hero specialisation tree as mentioned in previous post. Heroes can now be moved around to different systems, at the moment they can move only to systems owned by the player. In future they will be able to move to any system, and there will be a distance cap per turn for heroes (this can be improved by researching engine technology). Merchants work nicely, but it took ages to make them send and receive SIM from other systems. I am thinking that Merchants should simply be paired with any hero (rather than other Merchants) but I am unsure. Presidents provide adjacency bonuses to other systems (this DOES stack and is intended to stack- meaning you can have huge bonuses to SIM production). Yes, heroes are supposed to be extremely powerful.

 Screenshot showing the hero levelling up screen. Shows off various specialisations.

Shows off the ability to select which planet to colonise first in a system.

 

Better view of merchant connection line (whilst hero is moving) that was seen in previous screenshot.

• Minor improvements to UI and to how SIM is earned throughout the game. Major change to how system information is stored has resulted in a fair amount of the UI not actually working (for example, improvements built on systems no longer show up). Performance constantly varying as I improve old code and write new code. Runs well on my computer (not too encouraging for laptop users!).

I should be updating this blog every Friday from now on. I also have a LOT more time to work on this thanks to my hours at work being changed. As always, feel free to comment!