It's been 9 months since my last update and that's because the development has been on hold from April to November. Things are back to normal now and I worked hard all December to bring you plenty of news and updates in this new dev log.

Getting ready for the closed alpha

The most important news is that I am going to release a first alpha build on the 13th of January. Most of the work during December has been focused on completing all the features planned for this first release and I am happy to say that all the basic features are already implemented and the release date is confirmed. If you want to be one of the first gamers to try Virtueror join the Discord server of the game as that's where I will share the links to download all the early Linux and Windows builds.

New mission screen

I implemented a brand new screen to select the mission to play, but it brings much more than that. This screen is far from finished, but it's already fully usable to select a mission to play and for some other gameplay actions. This is how it looks for now:
As you can see, a planet is divided into 12 territories and you need to control the majority of them to control the planet. Once your troops can reach a territory it's possible to interact with it in different ways:

• EXPLORE: will send a squad of scouts to find out more about the territory
• CONQUER: will start a playable mission
• SEND AI: will delegate the conquest to your AI generals

There's still a lot of work left to do for this screen as I am planning to add more panels and more actions. It will be a key screen for several grand strategy and RPG elements of the game, but I will show you more about it in the future.

The AI is alive!

It took a good amount of work, but at last the game has a basic AI and I have to admit that it's very rewarding to see it doing things on its own! At the moment the AI can do the following things:

• Create a new unit
• Conquer a resource generator
• Connect a resource generator to its base to extract resources

You can see all these actions in the following GIF:
I am planning to add more actions soon, but it's hard to predict how things will work when everything is in place. For sure the AI will take a lot of work and balancing, so expect to see many updates about it for a long time.

Wall building based on waypoints

Until now the game didn't offer much control when designing walls. Basically you could only select a starting and an end point and an algorithm was deciding the layout of your wall. That was okay for something small, but it was making design quite frustrating and tedious most of the times. Now it's possible to set waypoints with a single action click and start the construction with a double click.
This allows to define any kind of turns and corners and it's way more flexible and intuitive. In the future I will improve the feature showing the waypoints during the design stage, but for now this works well enough.

Cell conquest based on waypoints

The same design limits that were affecting wall design were also affecting the design of areas to conquer with your units. As for the walls, it's now possible to set waypoints to better define the cells your units have to conquer.
This feature reflects the one implemented for wall building, hence I will work on the same improvements in the future.

New settings screen

I started to implement the settings screen even if for now the only settings available are the video ones:
I will probably start to work on the audio settings next, especially if I add audio support to the game before the second alpha build as planned.

Minor updates

- Now game uses data packages for all images - Now units do not move along the conquest path while conquering cells. This is for consistency with wall construction. - Fixes and improvements in game code - Fixes and improvements in the GUI library - Updated code of the open source repository on GitHub to the latest changes

What's next

For the next 2 weeks I will keep focusing on the first alpha build. In particular I have to prepare the packages for Linux and Windows and make sure they work on other computers too. I will also try to implement a couple of new features before the release, but I can't be sure of anything at the moment. Then I will prepare a new roadmap for the second build that I will release in February. Obviously much depends on the feedback I will get from the early testers of the first build, but you'll find out more in the next update.

Support this game, wishlist and follow!

If you enjoyed this update and if you want to support Virtueror make sure to wishlist and to follow it. Thanks and see you in a month with a new update! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1607580/Virtueror_The_Virtual_Conqueror/