Stars and nebulae in Open Realm of Stars using is now available in OpenGameArt:

http://opengameart.org/content/starfield-and-nebulae

Thanks.

I haven't todo list or dev roadmap.

For art I have tried to find good alien pictures for diplomacy screen here from OGA, but I haven't decided what to use. 

I was thinking to use these two:

http://opengameart.org/content/modular-reticulan-portraits 

http://opengameart.org/content/race-or-die

But those are quite small and artisticly different quite much from the current content. Any idea for better alien face graphics?

Yup, Surt's cc0 scraps contains amazing art. There are couple of monsters which could be also alien race. Thanks for the idea!

Currently I have been working with AI now. AI can now handle planet's building, research, space exploration and new planet colonization. There is still some issues with space exploration since it keeps exploring the same system over and over.

Today I played first longer play against AI. AI now redesigns battleships explores the space and colonizes new planets.

 Couple of new screenshots:

Screenshot above is AI's defense fleet. Notice that there have been couple of different versions of Destroyers.

Screenshot above is taken from human player's starting system. In this game I got pretty lucky since all planets in starting system were habitable.

Yup, all the stars and planets are on same map. But before star is placed it distance from other stars can be bigger than solar system width.

There three different attributes for engines: FTL speed, normal speed and tactic speed.

FTL speed is used when travelling longer distances but Fleet's scanner only function when FTL is being stopped between turns. So if something blocks you travelling FTL you need to go investigate with normal speed. Normal speed is also used when exploring the star systems. Third tactic speed is then used only in combat.

For the moment I will stick with only one FTL travel since I want game to be more playable first.

This is made with Java so executable is going to be Jar. I'll try to get very very simple game saving to be done then I could be make a runnable jar file.

Danimal, there is now binary version available:

https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/releases/tag/open-realm...

Couple of keys which are important on Star Map view:

When fleet is selected, arrow keys make fleet to move as a standard move.

When fleet is selected R key allows setting fleet a route which then travels using FTL speed.

Space bar focus message and pressing second time space bar moves to next message.

Press any time F10 to take screenshots.

For debugging purposes P can be pressed and it switch player to AI player. For AI players can be controller same way as human player. Main purpose for this key is just view what AI has done so I can tweak the AI.

Thanks for the feedback.

So sorting ship design in order would help ship designing. One thing I miss for ship design is something to filter ship components, for example only show engines or weapons.

Double clicking planet and opening planet view should be easy to do.

Also moving ships with mouse is something which is must to do.

Clicking the battle button is for debugging purposes. I will remove this when battle debugging is no longer needed.

There are only couple of ship images ready. The default ship image if correct one is missing is the scout which is the smallest image. Or was the really a bigger ship looking smaller than actually smaller ship?

Slider bars would be better, but that is slightly more difficult to do since sliders need to affect each others. I'll try to do it in future versions.

New worlds should be colonizeable. Did you have population in colonization ships? Colonization is done from the fleet view. You need to move ship to new world and view the fleet. Maybe colonization should be done also from planet view if there is your own colony ship orbiting the fleet...

I have made most of the changes you asked Danimal. Sliders for research are still missing. Right clicking when fleet is selected makes the ship to take a move. Double clicking planet or fleet shows it. I made bottom panel slightly bigger. Buttons still need resizing. There is now possibility to filter ship components in ship design. Ship designs are now ordered in alphabetical order. First showing active ship design and then obsolete ship designs. Obsolete ship designs now have grey color.

New feature is planet bombing. Now human player can go to enemy planet and bombing or start attacking troops. Planet can only shoot back turrets if they have or fight against invading troops with planet's troops.

Couple of new screenshots:

Above I am making an attack on AI's colonized planet.

Before ground troop attack...

And after attack.

While playing that test game, I found out that reading the saved game did not read correctly techs, but I noticed that after saving game on top of previous save. So I did not manage to research bombs on that particular game.

Another interesting bug was I had a scout ship on otherside of galaxy exploring the solar system. Then I decided that I would go a bit faster with FTL. While fleets are travelling with FTL there are no messages about them. After while I started wondering where the fleet was gone. Somehow it just disappeared. I do not have glue what happened. But I was thinking maybe I should do some rare event that something bad could happen on FTL travel. Maybe make the ship disappear for a while and then reappear somewhere after couple of turns. Maybe ship could be turn to rogue or full of space monster or something like that.

Latest changes are now when selecting new game. You can choose how big galaxy is, how many players and how close solar systems are. Then you can select all players what race they haven and name for their empires.

Alien pictures are from Surt's CC scrap and Space captain is made by Justin Nichol

Then there is a new built version available for testing purposes:

https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/releases

I was actually thinking something like this.

One time I encountered a bug where ship disappered during FTL so there I got that idea. Unfortunately I haven't been able to reproduce or have any clue why it disappeared. All those four ideas sounds interesting and very doable.

Hmm, it has been while since I have posted info here about Open Realm of Stars. Game now has menu clicking sounds, combat sounds. Also each alien race has their unique spaceship arts. There are couple of new screens too: Stats screen which tells about player planets, population, military power and so on. There is also planet invasion screen where attacker can bomb the planet or use ground troops to occupy it. Defender automatically shoots with planetary turrets if there are any. There have been quite much bug fixing and improving the AI.

Then couple of new screen shots:

Combat on planet square:

Stats screen:

There is now release available for Open Realm of Stars:

https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/releases/tag/open-realm-of-stars-0-0-6Alpha

Biggest change to previous release is now game has diplomacy between both AI and human players. AI players now also have attiribute called attitude which is used to make decision in diplomacy and what is AI is going to build next. For example AI with aggressive attitude starts war more easily than for example peaceful. Scientific attitude on other hand tries to trade or buy technology from other players.

Since there is diplomacy possible in game, there is separate relation view where one can look all the relations:

Idea for this relation screen is from old game called Warlords 2. So relation status between players can be unknow, peace, war, trade alliance and alliance. First three are quite obvious. Trade alliance means that non military ships can travel other players sectors and alliance is where all ships can travel on those sectors. 

OROS now has two new space races: Mothoids and Teuthidaes.

Mothoids are Moth looking(Image by Surt) creatures which grow very rapidly.

Teuthidaes are squide like mosters(Again, thanks to Surt) which have built in cloaking devices in all ships. So yes this version also has working cloaking devices and scanners. AI is still missing "mission" that it would do espionage towards other players.

Screenshot about all Space races:

And finally screenshot about the diplomacy screen itself:

There is now new release of OROS: 0.2.0alpha. There was also previous release after last post to OGA. So following has been changed since the last post:

Game features News Corporation which tells about big events happen in galaxy, for example some one makes war against some one else or two realms make peace and so on. Second biggest change is that players can build Star bases. Star bases can be built on special tiles called Deep Space Anchors. Reason for these Deep Space anchors is that I want to limit how many star bases can be in the game and thus create more conflicts into game. AI is also more tense about ships border crossing if ship's owner does not have alliance with AI.

OROS now features music player. It contains two combat music and two musics which are being played in every other screens. Music assests are taken from here OGA. Thanks goes to  Observing The Star by YD, A million light years between us by Alexandr Zhelanov, Neon Transit by Alexandr Zhelanov, Thrust Sequence by Matthew Pablo.

New release available:

https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/releases

Also I opened two hacktoberfest issue, so If you are participating hacktoberfest check these out:

https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q...

Screenshot about News Corporation:

AI deployed Starbase:

There is now new version available:

https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/releases/tag/open-realm...

Biggest changes are Trade ships which allow generating more credits while they travel between players, Improved AI attack and added new music and sound effects to game. Sounds and music are from OGA.

Music:

* Nautilus by poinl,

* Brave Space Explorers by Alexandr Zhelanov

* Lost Signal by PetterTheSturgeon.

Sounds effects:

* Starbase deploy sound Adaptation by Tuomo Untinen original sounds by Lee Barkovich and Michel Baradari

* Ship repair sound Adaptation by Tuomo Untinen, original sounds by Lee Barkovich

* Laser_07 as EMP explosion by Little Robot Sound Factory,

* Teleport sound by Michel Baradari

* Wormhole sound Adaptation by Tuomo Untinen, original sounds by Écrivain

  Here is screenshot where trade ships are near Upsilon Pevo I.

And if you are interested the release can be found from here:

https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/releases/tag/open-realm...

Yes, I am will add random events at some point. Main focus at the moment is get base game working and getting more features there. I also keep Github's issue tracker as road map and there are the at least next versions issues open.

https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/issues

I have thinking to add at least some kind of space anomalies floating in map while exploring it. Those could contain new techs, ships, credits or space monsters for example. Also when colonizating new planet there could happen sometimes some random events. But in I think random events should fit just fine game like this since there is no multiplayer and game does not need to be fair.

There is version 0.4.0Alpha available.

Biggest changes are new musics, new playable race and privateer ships.

Idea is to have each space race own diplomatic music when having diplomacy with them. Currently there are:

• Humans ( https://opengameart.org/content/walking-with-poseidon )
• Sporks ( https://opengameart.org/content/conquerors )
• Centaurs ( https://opengameart.org/content/ove-melaa-diplomacy )
• Teuthidaes ( https://opengameart.org/content/pressure )
• Mothoids ( https://opengameart.org/content/fantasy-choir-3-orchestral-pieces )

New playable race is called Scaurians (https://opengameart.org/content/big-space-dude) is merchant race. It gains one extra credit from trading buildings and 50% credits when doing trade with other player.  Then there are the privateer ships. These can be use to steal cargo of merchant ships. Since these ships cannot be recognized from other player's privateer ships they can be used also for attacking against player whom you have peace or even alliance. So essential they more like space pirate ships.  New version is available in Github:https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/releases

Thanks! Don't worry I won't stop. Making of this game is interesting and fun!

There are two ways to play. First you need Java to be installed on your machine. Either OpenJDK or Oracle's Java will work fine. Second thing is the get binary. You can use official release from here: https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/releases and direct link for the latest one: https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/releases/download/open-.... Then unzip and goto folder you just unzip. Then run it from terminal with command: "java -jar Open-Realm-of-Stars-0.4.3Alpha.jar" or double click file Open-Realm-of-Stars-0.4.3Alpha.jar.

Second option is to get the source code from Github page: https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars and compile it. Easiest way to compile it is using Maven. Just type "mvn install" Then you will get same zip file as release version into folder target. Other option is to use Eclipse but then you have to manually fetch jorbis library for playing the background music.

Please if you try it give some feedback.

New version of Open Realm of Stars(OROS) is available( https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/releases ).

There are now two quite big chances in game. First you can actually win the game by gaining the biggest score in certain amount of turns. Amount of turns to play is selected in Galaxy Creation.

Second big thing is espionage. Espionage is done by adding espionage modules in your ships. Then this ship is moved to enemy's sector. Players can have espionage on another player from 0 to 10. More espionage you have you get to know enemy's military force power and location of their fleet. Each player can also pay for Galatic Broadcastin News Company(GBNC) to lie their military size. AI players use GBNC and espionage information when determing if it's worth to start war with another player.

Above is screen shot from espionage view. As you can see each of the realm requires their own espionage fleets. So in this particular game I had 5 probes with Espionage Module Mk2. Two of them were in Greyan Demoracy sectors and three of them were Alliance of Mechions sectors. Espionage view also show how other players like about you and what releation you have at the moment.

Espionage still needs more works. AI could use location of enemy fleets when it's is planning they moves. Espionage trading is in current version. Busting espionage ship should cause more reputation loss than just simple border crossing. AI should plan espionage ships more carefully how to do this. One reason why it's not done in this version is that I do not know yet which is the good way to do it. Should espionage modules be placed only in privateers? Or should those place in traders which would do trading and spying at the same time.

There is also a new Space Race called Homarians (Image from Surt CC0 scraps):

They are first race which have food production 200%, 150% for production and mining. Cons are that science and cultural production are 50%.

There are also random events when colonization new planets. Planets can contain ancient buildins, more food or have rich metal surface which make planets more valuable.

Thanks!

Before starting to code I planned this game about half-year to year in my head and I always thought that I cannot start this since it is way too big project, but I just keep planning it and I finally started to do the actual game. No good tip how you keep going on your project is that you should do something at least once a week. Once you start skipping weeks it is pretty easy just start skipping more and more. If you are using Gitlab or Github they both have different activity charts check yourself that you have done something for the project. In Gitlab you can private repositories for free, so I think you can share you project from there to limited number of people.

And even if you are doing the project yourself I highly recommend using version control like Git. There you can follow up your chances and try out something high risk changes without fear to mess up your project. Plus both Github and Gitlab have issues which I use for road mapping and planning the project. They also have wiki pages where you can write documentation for your project.

Good luck with your project and if you want to talk more just send me private email via OGA.

Project turned two year during this week and there is new release 0.6.0Alpha available:

https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/releases

Biggest change is how game behaves after game ends. Previous version it just showed the final News screen and got back to main menu. Now it shows the same news screen and after that it moves to history view. In history view one can review all the important events happened in the galaxy. It is basically a new starmap screen with automatically moving cursor and show relevant player images on same screen.

Second biggest change is for espionage. Now espionage ships can be recognized with good scanners. Also espionage spys are considered as spies even you have trade alliance or defensive pact. So if one recognized spy fleet it can ask it to move away. Also espionage information is possible to trade with each others. Here is screen shot were espionage fleet is recognized. One can see that from red goggles log next to the fleet:

Third big change is Defensive Pacts. I have replaced old alliance choice with Defensive Pact. AI now considers whole defensive pact military power before making war with one of the member.

Smaller changes are new ship components: Fighter bays and Combat thrusters. Fighter bays allows smaller ships have higher combat speed and slower FTL since bigger ships are carrying them in FTL. Combat thruster then boost combat speed. I also found article about rogue planet ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_planet ), so I had to implement those in the game too. Basically rogue planets are planets outside of any solar system. Now it makes sense to explore space outside of solar system.

There were couple of bugs also in diplomatic bonuses. Diplomatic bonuses' lasting did not decrease after turn. That was one bug. Second bug was that if lasting was bigger than 127 it was read as zero when save game was loaded. Reason for this was that I used DataOutputStream's writeByte() and I assume that reading byte to int would work with DataInputStream's readByte(). Instead it reads byte as byte and in Java byte is always signed. I had check if lasting was below zero it was set to zero. Fix was to use DataInputStream read() instead. This caused also another bug if lasting was zero then diplomacy bonus was also zero. So some race diplmacy bonus after loading save game were set to zero.

Also AI's did not care about border crossing bonuses either which was also a bug. I also fixed building which lower the planet's radiation.

There is now release of Open Realm of Stars available:

https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/releases

Biggest change is support for higher screen resolution and it really makes the difference. Game is much more nicer to play from big resolutin than tiny 1024x768. I also added larger fonts used for higher resolution. I did try this on TV and I was able play it and read the texts while setting couple of meter away from TV.

Then there are two new victory conditions: Cultural victory and domination victory. Cultural victory is won when you reach the limit of cultural score which depends on game length, galaxy size and multiplier set by game configuration. Domination victory means that one realm conquers all other realm's home worlds.

Final big game change is true alliance between two realms. In alliance two realms are counted as a one when checking the victory conditions. So Realms in alliance can win the game together. This works for all scoring victory, cultural or domination victory. In alliance realms also see other's fleet and automatically share espionage information.

I have also tried to improve AI. It should now update buildings on planet. It should have also more aggressive exploration and colonization missions. I have also added limit how many colonization/attack/deploy starbase missions there can be. Previously there was no limitation and if there was war declaration when about whole map was explored AI created attack mission against all enemy planets. It was actually trying to build all the attack fleets at once, which makes no sense.

There was also cool event while I was testing the domination victory. The last realm which home world I did not have was Teuhtidaes race which all ships have cloaking device. I had accidentally bumpped into one his/her armed exploration fleet with my unarmed probe. Teuhtidaes obviously destroyed my probe and war was declarated. After conquering all the other realm's home world Teuhtidaes was last one. I still had the same war against it. I haven't met them afterwards. Teuthidaes had not trade maps with any other realm either. So no knew where they were. I started to built massive amount of fleets to search whole galaxy. Finally I find them and move biggest attack fleet next to their home world. I ask them to give me their home world for peace and amazingly they agree for this.

Reason why this was so interesting was that I was already thinking to remove trading of planets/ships. Now I verified it works if one has big enough military power. In next version I am going to change tradeable planets/fleets so that only those which another realm has seen are available for trading.

Let's add one more picture which uses higher resolution than 1024x768:

There is new release available in:

https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/releases

This release has been quite big changes. There are government types for realms. So called board player which now controls space pirates. Space contains now space anomalies which wait for explorers to claim the riches or faces the dangers.

Governments are related to planet new value called happiness. Happy planets produce more and unhappy planet produce less or in very extremes even buildings or population is being destroyed. There totally 17 different governments, but only 8 different ones. Reason for so many names is that each Realm name must be unique and it is created from government + space race and I wanted the possibility that there can 8 same space races in one game. Government can also give advantages like production or trade bonus but also disadvantage like negative happiness, weak war fatigue. War fatigue also causes unhappiness to planets if war continues long or Realm has multiple wars at same time. There are also special goverments which are AI for Mechion, Hive-Mind for Mothoids and Nest of Homarians. These government totally ignore the happiness system. These work like the "governments" in the older version of the game.

Second big changes was the "board" player. I got the idea from board games where board plays against the players. This board player controls Space Pirates which start on Starbases. Every now and then they will get tech upgrade and new ships + starbases improvements to their old bases. Pirate ships try to hunt other ships in the galaxy and pirate lairs(aka space pirate stations) generate more ships. 

Third big changes was the space anomalies. These look like nebulae on map. When exploring ship enters the same sector anomaly is revealed. It can contain some good stuff like credits, maps, tech or ships. It may also contain dangerous stuff(if selected when galaxy is being configured) like wormholes, more space pirates.

Following screenshot contains starmap where is visible Wormhole, space pirate lair and unexplored space anomaly:

Second screenshot contains new popup display used when space anomalies are being explored:

All of the pictures used in space anomalies are available here in OGA.

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

Thanks!

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.

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...

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 0.12.0Beta available. Biggest changes are that there are bad and good random events in the galaxy. By default good events happens to realms which are at the last and bad events happens to realms who are leading. Of course this can be changed if wanted. Second thing is that culture victory now requires building a structure with broadcasting ability. Third biggest change is that fleets are no longer free. There is a limit based on government type, buildings and starbase. If fleet capacity is bigger than this limit then realm must be credits for its fleets.

There was also a cool bug related to this feature. I usually play my game so that each realm has unique space race. This makes identifying ships more easier. I was scouting the space with my old scout ship and I noticed Centaurian ships. I was that I'll be fine we have defensive pact. I end my turn and those ships attack against my scout. I managed to escape from combat and I am assuming that war is going to declared. But no, no war declaration. I was thinking was there a bug, so that AI attacked and did not declare war? I'll end next turn and same thing happens. Those Centaurian ships attack against my scout and no war declaration.

I take another look for those ships and notice that they are Space Pirates. How come Space Pirates have Centaurian ships? Is there a bug in space pirates ship generation? Turns out that Centaurian realm had too many ships and it sold obsolete ships to space pirates. Bug is that AI realms can now trade with space pirates but human realm cannot. But that felt quite good bug that I would like to keep in game, which would mean that there needs to be somekind of diplomacy with Space Pirates.

There are couple of new improvements in UI. Pressing focus second time show cursor in map screen. There is minimap in starmap view. Added icons in buttons in starmap view. Hit chance is also visible in combat.

Couple of screen shots:

Release is available here:

https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/releases

Thanks, Danimal.

There is new version of Open Realm of Stars available. Biggest change in this version was Ancient Realms. Ancient Realms get from 40 - 120 turns head start compared to other realms. Beating the 40 turns of head start might not be difficult if one gets good start but beating 120 turns is more of challenge and will definetly need diplomatic agreements from other Realms maybe even with Ancient Realms.

First test game with three ancient realms went really well. I was about to win with diplomatic victory but then one of the Ancient won game with cultural victory. But this was quite challenging game since I started between two ancient realms so I was in alliance with another one. One of the ancient were destroyed during the game play. This realm was Centaur and if they get bad starting winning with them is quite difficult. They can only colonize about 30% of planets.

Second test game I played in medium galaxy with Centaurs with two Ancient Realms. This game I managed to win by Domination. I got awesome start with Centaurs and I was able to wipe out one of the Ancient and then conquering two regular Realms was quite easy. Another Ancient was just opposite of the galaxy. That was also playing agains three regular realms. Those three realms were able to wipe that ancient realm too when they all attacked against it. 

Third test game I started so that all realms are ancient. This also works and forces galaxy to have history when game starts. There can be wars, alliance and so one already in progress when game starts.

Game also now has very simple tutorial which shows very basic like moving with fleets, colonizing the planets and so on. Tutorial works so that when game detects certain event happening while playing it will show tutorial text for it. There is also possible to see all the tutorial texts when ever wanted and tutorial can be turned off.

There is also possible to have diplomacy with pirates. Previous release I noticed that AI was having diplomacy with pirates which was cool idea. So I allowed that also for human players. Now realms can sell obsolete fleets for pirates, bought tech or maps from them.

New release is available from here:

https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/releases

New release 0.14.0Beta is available. Biggest feature is the leaders. These leaders can be as governor, fleet commander and realm ruler. Governor and fleet commanders are freely assignable, but realm ruler is chosen automatically depending on government type and perks that leader has. For example Clans prefer strong militaric leaders, where Democracy prefers peaceful leaders. Kingdoms and Empires rulers will have heirs which heritage the rulership.

These leaders grant direct bonuses for planets, fleets or realm which they are leading. These bonuses depends on perks leader has. Some of these bonuses can be negative, for example micro manager gives one production less if leader is acting as a governor. Life of these leaders are followed also in galactic news. For example if some King/Queen gets heir that gets in to news headlines. Also when leader dies that also gets in to headlines.

There are also new random event images, two new space ship bridges. Also starting values for Galaxy creation are more suiteable for first time players. Previously these values were quite random and almost always required changing.

New release is available from here:

https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/releases

I was finally able to finish up the next version of Open Realm of Stars. 0.15.0Beta biggest change is that fleet commanders can do espionage missions against other realm's planets. These espionage missions include stealing credits, technology, sabotage, assasination of governor and terrorist attacks.

If you manage to do big espionage things your espionage mission might also end up into galactic news.

I have also added new random events and most of these are now somehow related to leaders. Leaders can get into accidents and die or ruler can get stressed. In space anomalies there can be found ancient Mechion leader or mysterious timewarp.

There are new perks for leaders but two of them are quite interesting: Wealthy and Power Hungry. Power hungry was also in previous version but in this version I made a bit chance for it. In governments where reign time is for ruler's life time other leaders with Power Hungry can made assassination of current leader.

In one of my test games, I had leader which got three heirs. First heir had perk incompetence which means that he got negative bonus no matter what he did. So when ruler died second heir became the ruler. In some time this incompetence prince got new level up where he gained power hungry perk. Just in couple of turns he assassinate his brother and became ruler by himself.

While playing these test games, I noticed that this kind of power struggle happened with other realms too. In one game Sporks Empire had quite many internal assassinations during the whole game.

Wealthy perk is also quite interesting since it can save once the leader from death. For example if leader is about to die old age he or she can be saved by the wealthy perk. Perk is then gone when it saves the leader's life. Wealthy perk can also save against assassinations.

I feel that these events which happen to the leaders are now the building blocks the story elements in Open Realm of Stars. For example duels in space battle gets into galactic news and all these events make the galaxy feel a bit more life like.

New release is available from here:

https://github.com/tuomount/Open-Realms-of-Stars/releases