Author: Thilaksha Ekanayake

This week I have been working on the procedural part of the galaxy IE: The play area of the game.

At the highest level is the galaxy view, then below that are the sectors within a quadrant, then clusters within a sector, then solar systems within the cluster. I had to be quite careful while working on the procedural galaxy. In order to depict massive distances there had to be a lot of trickery and illusion, while taking a lot of care to keep memory usage in check. Efficiency is very important while working on procedural generation, as it can especially become an issue in the late game in space 4xs.

As of now the core system is complete for generation and saving/loading of clusters of stars, sectors and what is inside them along with colonies, fleets and so on. There are also procedural factions based off some of the pre-made ones like the many pirate factions based off the Solarians.

In Star Zeal 4x, exploration is important and the feeling of massive scale and mystery is conveyed through this procedural system with huge distances for fleets to cover, get lost in etc. Who knows what you will find out there, or who/what you will meet. This also allows for escaping enemies even if all your colonies are lost.

Essentially there was a lot of toiling with the code and bug fixing this past week.

This is the first official dev log for Star Zeal!

After about one year worth of progress, and not giving up I was satisfied enough to create a website for the game.

Solarian Heavy Corvettes and new Milky Way background wip.

A military transport inside a gas cloud of the Orion Nebula.

New planet surface graphics style wip, much smoother for fps and gameplay too.

Some toony explosion fx wip and more work done on ship death.

The AI finally shows up to fight 😛

So, for the first dev log, there are some major changes and many minor ones to mention.

1: New cartoon style shaders for ships and other 3d objects. Also more art progress in ship details, backgrounds etc…

2: Replacement of the 3d planet surface with a 2d one. This was done because the 3d one was much too clunky and sapped the FPS a bit too much. Also the new one has more character and fits better with the rest of the art.

3: On the coding side there has been heavy work on the AI! Now the AI factions auto generate themselves with the procedural tech/research. The ships warping in here are from a generated pirate faction using the human designs of ships.

Don’t forget to check the Media(older builds) in order see much more of the progress so far.
–Media(Older builds)