For me game idea sounds very interesting. It reminds a bit like Elite. I think I have started similar game in late 90s but it never got finished.
My current project is open source and in the start it did not have CI system at all. Then I got help from one guy who made the CI base stuff and added checkstyle checks. These checkstyle checks could not be run in CI since it got so many warnings. It took me and him to fix all the warning month or two. But ever since that checkstyles are being run and build fails if code is not in correct style. So converting "non-human" code to human is not going take 5 months, I am quite sure.
You can always invent history for factions. Faction names could be also fixed so they do not need to be random words. Also if you save all the faction history while game is being played, then you will get history for factions.
But sounds like human player needs more things to do. More mission type obviosly. Have thought about just exploring the galaxy, I personal find that quite interesting for example in Ur-Quan Master.
Sounds quite interesting game. There was only Windows binary so I cannot try it out. One thing I noticed from screenshots that does factions have names or are they just named after colors? I think if faction would have name like "Freelancers from Sul" it would sound cooler than just "Red".
Since I couldn't play it I assume that this is somewhat turn based but is flying real time? Does player need to control all his ship or do they have somekind of AI? If they have, have you thought about giving commands to other ships in your fleet than direct control?
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.
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.
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:
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.
For me game idea sounds very interesting. It reminds a bit like Elite. I think I have started similar game in late 90s but it never got finished.
My current project is open source and in the start it did not have CI system at all. Then I got help from one guy who made the CI base stuff and added checkstyle checks. These checkstyle checks could not be run in CI since it got so many warnings. It took me and him to fix all the warning month or two. But ever since that checkstyles are being run and build fails if code is not in correct style. So converting "non-human" code to human is not going take 5 months, I am quite sure.
You can always invent history for factions. Faction names could be also fixed so they do not need to be random words. Also if you save all the faction history while game is being played, then you will get history for factions.
But sounds like human player needs more things to do. More mission type obviosly. Have thought about just exploring the galaxy, I personal find that quite interesting for example in Ur-Quan Master.
Sounds quite interesting game. There was only Windows binary so I cannot try it out. One thing I noticed from screenshots that does factions have names or are they just named after colors? I think if faction would have name like "Freelancers from Sul" it would sound cooler than just "Red".
Since I couldn't play it I assume that this is somewhat turn based but is flying real time? Does player need to control all his ship or do they have somekind of AI? If they have, have you thought about giving commands to other ships in your fleet than direct control?
Thanks!
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
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.
I am using this in my Open Realm of Stars. It is in image which is shown if player discovers old probe containing piece of galaxy map.
Sorry to bother but any luck removing the space background from spaceship image?
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:
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.
Great track! I am using this as a diplomacy music in my 4X space strategy game for alien race called Homarians. They are strong crab like creatures.
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