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Thursday, December 26, 2019 - 15:12

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.

 

Diplomacy with Pirates

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

 

Friday, November 1, 2019 - 10:45

Hi, I needed modified version of Space Captain, so I did it:

 

Legs are not that good as original potrait but it should work fine in my game. I also learned new trick with GIMP. That carbon fibre look was done with masking layers which was new to me.

https://opengameart.org/content/space-captain-with-legs

Thursday, October 24, 2019 - 14:24

Thanks, Danimal.

Monday, October 21, 2019 - 00:04

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:

Random event

 

Combat

Mechion bridge

 

Starmap view

 

Release is available here:

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

Friday, September 20, 2019 - 00:03

I use these in my 4x space strategy game. These are shown if deadly virus random event occurs. I noticed that common cold virus had gradient background as others were black. Was this intensional? 

Thursday, September 19, 2019 - 16:04

This is so awesome picture. When I first saw I knew that I want this to my game and finally I manage to place it there.

 

Saturday, August 17, 2019 - 09:42

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?

Monday, August 5, 2019 - 15:24

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.

Galactic Olympics

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...

Wednesday, February 6, 2019 - 16:19

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.

 

 

Friday, January 18, 2019 - 13:34

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

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