Crucible XIV 28/02/2014

Lots of new features. Specifically I have built a basic main menu that allows easy race selection, and allows you to choose between 1 and 2 AI opponents, as well as map size. Also did a video blog that I have linked below. Actually pretty pleased at my progress this week, if I can keep this up I reckon it will be playable within a few months. After that I've got to get the multiplayer working, but I'll work a bit on AI to be able to release a playable Alpha for whoever wants it.

State of the Game (Build 0.77):

• Very basic main menu. Allows selection of map sizes between 30 and 180 in increments of 30 systems. Made racial symbols for Nereides and Selkies (but not humans yet). This has forced me to change a great deal of code and I'm still not completely sure that all the bugs are ironed out from the change.

Selkies symbol is a feather. Nereides symbol is uplifting, the arc represents a planetrise.

• Merchants now support Trade Routes. Trade Routes are built between neighbouring, peaceful systems of different species (i.e. not Human-Human systems). Trade Routes are automatically built by the computer, this is so that routes that are the most beneficial to you are built. Basic Merchants can support 1 trade route, but research can be done to increase the cap to 4. Routes provide 50% of the neighbouring system's resources to be added to your system's production. Eg. An enemy system producing 10 Science would cause you to have a bonus of 10/2 = 5 bonus Science production.

Showing off trade routes. Each hero(cube) is supporting 2 routes (highlighted with arrow).

• Heroes will now take advantage of tech upgrades. These can increase offensive power, invasion power, movement speed, armour, stealth and more. Not all systems (such as bombs) are implemented, so some of these upgrades cannot be taken advantage of just yet (bombs are pretty cool so I will probably work on that next week).

Updated tech tree, showing off unlock system, and a tooltip.

• Although it is probably of little interest to most of you, these changes have resulted in me being forced to streamline and improve my code. This has the knock-on effect of it being easier for me to implement a lot of mechanics, huzzah!
• More music from Sam Windell- you can hear it in the background on the youtube video, but I will link his page here as well: https://soundcloud.com/samwindell.

That's it for this week. Thanks for reading!