Crucible XVI 14/03/2014

Wow have I been drained this week. I'll be fresh and ready to work after I get back from my holiday next week. Saying that, I have done a fair amount of work. Currently I'm trying to pin down the UI art direction. The game should have a dark Fantasy/Sci-Fi feel to it, so I'm experimenting with various textured interfaces etc. The screenshots in this post may or may not be representative of the direction I will end up going in! I'd love to hear feedback on how it looks and how it fits in with the rest of the game. Oh, I did a video to demonstrate what I have done this week (music is 'Frozen Star' by Sam Windell, link at bottom of page). Anyway...

State of the Game (Build 0.88):

• YouTube video to go with this blog:

• So I finally implemented diplomacy properly. This is fairly complex, and not quite the same as I had originally envisioned it (explanation follows). There are 3 diplomatic states- War, Peace, and Cold War. Committing positive actions such as trading will improve your relations with the receiving player, and move you towards a more peaceful state. Negative actions such as invading have the opposite effect. Relations are on a continuous scale (rather than discrete like the diplomatic states). Your front line systems (systems adjacent to other players systems) have their resource output and defensive/offensive abilities modified by your relation with adjacent players. Resource output increases and ownership growth are greatest when relations are good, while offensive/defensive abilities are greatest when relations are poor. (I get that this is a lot to take in- hopefully I can demonstrate it in the near future).
• Cold War is the 'Default' state, if you like, with no real pros or cons. 
• War allows you to call for Cease Fires, will cause your systems to automatically attack orbiting heroes, and reduce benefits received by other players. 
• Peace allows you to move freely in enemy territory, and greatly increases the benefits received by other players.
• Made 3 status effects- Chill, Poison, and Virus. Chill slows resource production. Poison decreases ownership at an exponential rate. Virus decreases resource production at an exponential rate and can spread to other planets/systems. Currently only Poison is implemented (caused by Fission bombs).
• Randomised ambient stars. 3D collection of stars is generated at runtime. This is purely for aesthetic purposes, but helps to prevent the game from looking as flat as it did. Once again I'll say that the graphics are not representative of the final game.

Lots of randomised stars. Stars near owned systems glow with the owners racial colour.

• Systems and Planets will cause damage to invading heroes. Damage caused and received by heroes is based on unlocked technology and hero specialisation. Damage caused and received by Planets/Systems is based on the total ownership of the system, system improvements, orbiting allied heroes and empire improvements.
• Fixed camera movement- camera now moves smoothly. Update the UI (yay!).

Showing off the changes made to the UI, amongst other things.

Back in two weeks time!

https://soundcloud.com/samwindell