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.
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.
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.
I have never thought leaving out trivial contribution could lead to CC0...
Well, the book could be CC0 it is so simple. Cobwebs are draw with slight opactity, so the background the contains pixels from Sharm's cabinet. Is background pixels still strong enough to keep CC-BY-SA? I do not know.
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.
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.
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.
This now contains new table lamp made by me. Updated zip and preview image.
New lamp post in previews and zip file and credits has been updated.
I also noticed that this one has that lamp derivate:
https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-house-interior-and-decorations
I'll fix that one too.
I'll change the lamp but I need to add animation for that, so it might take a while. Ah, the issue is with just the lamp and not the pole.
I have never thought leaving out trivial contribution could lead to CC0...
Well, the book could be CC0 it is so simple. Cobwebs are draw with slight opactity, so the background the contains pixels from Sharm's cabinet. Is background pixels still strong enough to keep CC-BY-SA? I do not know.
Pages