After the pretest release of 3.6 a lot of issues were found, so most of late May and early June were devoted to finding and fixing them. One particular very obscure crasher delayed the start of 3.7, but it has finally been squashed and I was able to move on and start the new version (3.6.7 contains the fix and it is the current published default build, but saved games started with earlier 3.6.x versions may still be corrupted, keep it in mind!) The main new content theme for 3.7 is events. Galactology has contained some test events for months now, the familiar invasions, sneakers and impostors. Events are meant to keep station gameplay more varied than a pure min-maxed machine. They will cover a variety of systems so it's not all pew-pew and explosions, but, since the current events are the basis for the new work, I started implementing new invasion-like events for the past three weeks. There's still more than twenty event ideas to explore and implement!

New art for civs screen

Max has prepared new header art for the civs screen, and a small redesign was also done to better fit and prepare the screen for future UI work:



All civs have now unique background art and their full detail, full sized logos and advisors are prominently displayed. The new layout will also enable us to fit the future diplomacy UI in the lower area with a much nicer look and feel.

Top bar redesign and new alert features

The alert system will become more important since it will be the UI mechanism to report and track ongoing events, so more space was required to display alert icons:
The right side of the top bar is now more compact. The guide access will be moved to the tutorial system (when the guide is ready), and the report screen will be moved somewhere else (in 3.x that screen was half-working and mostly useless). Many events have an "ongoing" mechanic that defines a start and an ending condition. The alert system is now prepared to show this information, and to express some alerts as persisting. A persisting alert is displayed with an "ongoing" progress, meaning its duration or progress is not fully known (yet). Persisting alerts are always displayed to the left of all alerts:
A persisting alert displays the progress of an event (in this case the % of pirate invaders dead, it was captured just after the last one died). Both the alert icon in the bar and the alert popup display the completion %:
When an event is done its alert is turned into a plain alert and can be deleted normally:
Persisting alerts have an additional visual cue to make them stand out:

Event: Space worm

A huge worm from space is annoyed enough with your advanced technology to come pay a visit. Why? Nobody knows, but it's here and it's pissed off:
The worm has a devastating, fast melee attack with extra long range, but it's rooted in place. It will burrow and surface again every 30s.

Event: Space octopus

Space megabeasts keep attacking you, sigh. It's just the reality of space-ing I guess. The space octopus has a similar melee attack to his pal the worm, but it can move (slowly). It can also pull closer any station defender into its melee range.

Event: The pest

Dozens of fluffy animals are spawning around your station. They look cute but are crowding everything. They only attack when attacked, but in any case they have to go. Kill enough of them to force their queen out of hiding and end the pest for good.

Event: Xenomorphs

Short of Augustus showing up to make some omelette, you better hurry up and deal with those ominous looking eggs before it's too late...
This event also introduces a combined system of progress and countdown timer.

[ 2017-06-20 17:41:34 CET ] [ Original post ]