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Couple of days late!
We're back with another Dev Blog to give you an update on how we're tracking. There's been some great releases thus far, and I for one can say I've very much been enjoying all the new Display Module updates.
However as much as logic updates are great, one of the most exciting additions recently is Fog of War. Not necessarily because of that feature alone, but because of what that feature is leading us into.
Now let's say this up front, the main reason for this Dev Blog is to inform you that our release cycle is changing for a bit. Up until now it has been a steady two week release cycle, and has worked great overall. Moving into larger development projects for the game though has seen these two week turnarounds become more difficult, and resulted in slower progress on these larger projects. To rectify this we are now going to be operating with a four week release cycle, at least for the time being. With more similar scale projects ahead in the development timeline you will find us choosing to swap to four week release cycles a bit more frequently.
Let’s talk about the development project that has spurred on this change.
NPC Faction Generation
At the moment StarMade’s default faction stations would randomly spawn on the start of a new universe and populate the galaxies. Additionally you would occasionally encounter pirate ships and a battle would wage. This has been the most basic NPC faction generation, but we have much larger plans for NPC Factions, so in revisiting the system everything has been built from the ground up.
There’s a number of aspects to NPC faction generation. Thinking about the playtime of games gives a rough look at how complex their NPCs need to be. A simple game like Counter-Strike, in terms of round time, means that any NPC bots just need a rudimentary understanding of how to play, rather than complex strategic calculations. Progressing to most real-time strategy (RTS) games and the logic and calculations and strategies that NPCs employ during gameplay is far more complex, as those games are often a lot more drawn out.
Now think about StarMade and consider a server that you could return to play on over days, weeks, months. All that time there’s additional NPC factions that will exist in the universe, doing their thing with their goals that they wish to work towards. It’s just scratching the surface to the breadth we wish to give NPC factions, resulting in a constantly evolving landscape of gameplay as time progresses. This is especially significant for singleplayer gameplay, and something that StarMade has been lacking thus far.
This is just the starting phase of all we wish to do with engaging content that evolves over time through gameplay. Setting a solid foundation for NPC faction generation is paramount to the stability of everything else planned. Hence the move to extend the release cycle periods.
If we picture NPC factions like a jigsaw puzzle, there's a lot of elements coming together…
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