Tag: devlog

DEV LOG 11:

Posted on by Thilaksha Ekanayake

I will try and keep it short and concise as possible, though a lot has happened since the last dev log. However before that a quick note for those who haven’t been here in a while and haven’t noticed the new trailer on the Steam store page. It contains most of the end result of the work mentioned in this log, so check it out here. Star Zeal 4x on Steam

Also an apology for the delay in posting on the website compared to other places, it comes with the territory of being a solo dev. Anyway lets get started with the log.

Colonies & planets:

-Colonies are ~90% ready for early access release.
-Planets now have separate sectors which are procedurally generated even on premade planets. These sectors can change over time and will have effects on whatever is on said sector. They are also part of my setup for introducing ground forces in a post release update.
-Refined the planet and colony UI, and adjusted it to accommodate the new additions/functionality.

Characters, Crews & RPG:

-Character and crew experience gain ready for testing and likely 95% of the way for there for release.
-Character and crew traits and their effects are ready for testing.
-Characters and crew are effected by the environment. They can even be fearful or terrified by it. As an example, crew can be unnerved by being far from home colony.
-Characters and crew now have equipment to boost their effectiveness. Equipment is a manufactured resource but not mandatory/required for crew to function as normal. This is also part of the build up to ground forces(which is planned for a major post release update).
-Diplomacy and character dialogue additions and further refinement.

Ships & Fleets:

-Ship combat and general physics have been even more refined and now ready for testing. About ~90% ready for early access release. Only ECM and point defense are left to finish up in this regard.
-Ships can now take critical damage and even internal components can be destroyed, disabling or reducing their function. For example ships can be stranded if engines or reactor are destroyed. Observable in footage of the new trailer.
-Also added a small targeting UI window and component targeting. This was not a planned one and very recently added. Tactical combat needed more options, not much else of a reason really. Added post video so it won’t be visible there.
-Ships are now affected by environment more obviously, example: Dust level effects the sensor strength and in effect also help with concealment.

(Note that tactical combat is only available for the fleet under the command of your main leader aka you the player).

Design, tech and research:

Exploration & environments:
-Design window and functionality ready for testing. The window itself has had a big do over. I made it feel more unique and suitable for the game.
-Tech generation and research window ready for testing. I set it up for future expansions post release though as it should be.
-Many additional, fixes and refinement of the techs and tech generation itself. They are too numerous to mention here.
-Planet and area scanning/surveying ready for testing.
-Anomaly generation is mostly ready for testing(needs a tiny bit more work). Anomalies are special objects/effects that can sometimes be extremely dangerous. Observable in the video.
-Improved some of the fuel and distance calculations, it is now closer to real scale than in previous iterations. Even solar systems are daunting in scale, averaging about 2-3 light years across.

Subspace Relays:
-A new critical tech called the sub space relay has been added. Distances like those between star systems and above will now have a severe effect on communication and detection. I will reveal more about it as development continues.

Other:
-Culture generation has been added. This functions using colonies and other details to generate cultures within a faction, which effect aspects like character generation and faction traits. It is designed to be fleshed out much more during early access.
-Cinematic camera added. This will be useable by the player but it is mostly for short procedural in game cut scenes.
-Many UI improvements have been made. Including to the main map.
-Many improvements and additions to sound effects and ship chatter.

From now on updates should be more frequent as the core is mostly complete. It did take a lot longer than I assumed, but that does seem to be par for the course in game development, especially for a complicated title such as this game.

The next step which is already underway is to get AI ready for the 3rd closed alpha build, which will be the first proper test of the game with combat and resource management. Then the final test build and versions with fixes before release.

Smaller and more frequent updates and info are available in the discord here: https://discord.gg/cgSAV277wM
Steam store page link: Star Zeal 4x on Steam
New Bluesky account: Akuu Digital Entertainment (@akuude.bsky.social) — Bluesky

Thank you for reading.

Closed Alpha, Phase 1 v1.0 Officially Released.

Posted on by Thilaksha Ekanayake

The first build of the closed alpha has been finally released and testing well underway. It was technically active since the start of March, but I waited until some initial private feedback came through from the first of the testers. I intended it to be a stealth release of sorts, which is why I had not made any updates for the last couple months.

About the first ever released build of Star Zeal 4x:
The initial feedback was quite short since most of the game was blocked off, however it was better than I expected and all the basics are seemingly in order. Essentially, what I wanted to test in this first build was whether or not the game runs as intended and I was not merely dreaming it after all these years working on it.

There will either be one or two more versions in phase one and then I will move on to phase two. Public release into early access will come at the end of phase four. The next build in Phase 1(build 2.0) will unlock and refine much more to play with, especially related to exploration and fix a few UI indicators plus add some important options like key rebinding. I will also open up the initial bits of the logistics system, which is the most volatile part of the code, so its best to carefully ease it in throughout the closed alpha. New closed alpha builds are planned to come out less than a week at a time, so it should not take long until going public.

So there it is folks, Star Zeal 4x is officially out of the house, finally, better late than never. On to the next build!

Check out the discord link here, there are some more details about the closed alpha there: https://discord.gg/bm6wRYcZER

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1791630/Star_Zeal_4x/

Dev Log 10, Part 2: Finalizing Research and UI for closed alpha.

Posted on by Thilaksha Ekanayake

This log should really be the eleventh one since its a couple months after the previous update. However, I will stick to my rule this time and finish off the final dev log before closed alpha release, thus it is part two of dev log ten. There are other reasons for my choice, but that is irrelevant, no need to waffle on about in the intro. Lets get on with it.

1: Finalizing the core of procedural research:
A quick primer for those who don’t know: The research system is procedural and partially physicalized. This means techs are generate not predefined and the logistics system is involved with research projects, which exist within the game world. It also means you can lose research projects, even to enemy action.

Please note that empty/open spaces and blocks in the UI are there on purpose. It is for features temporarily disabled for closed alpha and for fancier functionality which will be added during early access. An example is the character/leader assign options and lead scientists for research. They will be enabled after a bit of initial testing and some more refining in closed alpha

There are multiple types of research points to spend which will be earned via different ways of course. An example would be doing scans/surveys on planets for “natural science” points or “military science” points via military action. However I will implement unconventional ways to attain the same points. In order to balance it for different play styles like pacifists. Previous versions had an additional research points cap but that was removed, due to it being much too annoying and redundant for the player to deal with and for me to code.

Research power(“sci” or “science” in the UI), involves lab capacity, scientists(population and lead scientist characters) plus other bonuses from the location the projects are based. On ships the scientists are in the crew, which are separated by type, so you don’t have worry about manually filling ships with scientists, it will deal with that via the supply/logistics system.

There are two research windows, main one(first screenshot) and a small(above). The main window is where the research “tree” or rather paths are and where you select what to research. The second smaller window is to view and control each project being researched at the location they are being researched in. Each path as you progress will generate related techs which you can apply to for example your ships. Base techs are those which apply globally to certain abilities throughout your civilization like colony sensors and bonus/RNG for other useful tech like miniaturization.

Bottom line in regard to research, the hard part of the code is completed. Research is now officially functional within the main gameplay loop, and fun(I hope). Believe me, it took some hefty elbow geese to get it to this point. As with everything in development it seems, it was tougher to deal with than it looked.

2: Finalizing the core of design:

This is where you apply much of the end results of your research. Currently it is only used for ships, but that limitation will only for the initial early access. Other types of designs especially for ground forces and special buildings are in the works. Ships have multiple parts that will contain bonuses and slots for weapons and add capacity to the ship for other components and cargo space. This even though ships have limited weapons slots by design its its more customizable than it looks. Other components do not require slots and only require open capacity. Also, research projects can be done on colonies and ships in space, if they have labs to do it. One project per lab. Labs are also a tech themselves which can be improved upon.

I made the design window in a way that should allow rapid setup of ships for production, with simple clicks instead of dragging buttons around especially for common equipment. Also, only weapons require slots, you only have to worry about space for other types of components. I will publish proper videos of this entire game loop after a bit more refining in closed alpha, it would have been a waste of time for this log. Overall the design window was a pain to deal with, even worse than the research window, but compared to the trouble with my previous coding endeavors in early development it was a cake walk.

3: General UI:
As you can tell by comparing older screenshots of the UI, it has been changing over time. Though not yet final, it is becoming easier to look at(for me at least). Much of this improvement is due to standardizing some UI art assets and windows especially the smaller ones. There is a certain style I am attempting to achieve of course, one based mostly on NOT looking like a user interface for a fancy online shop. I often feel like many modern game UI feel like you are browsing for kitchen appliances or something to that effect. There is still much room for improvement in the UI, and I guess it will never truly be finished, but I am finally happy enough with it to release.

Conclusion:
The past two to three months of development involved an arduous amount of work put into the research system and particularly the related user interface, the latter of which also happens to be my weakest element as a developer. It did however expose quite a numerous amount of tiny, but non negligible mistakes and issues, which have now been mostly dealt with. Sometimes one does not notice what is broken, until the numbers are on the screen in game.

Well that is that for part two of the final dev log before the initial release into closed alpha. I was considering doing a part three for the next bit of work but there is no need. I have placed a link below to the Star Zeal 4x discord channel. That is where the closed alpha development will be updated regularly.

Links:
Discord: https://discord.gg/pTekFg3h
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1791630/Star_Zeal_4x/
If you wish to support development you can do so via paypal here: https://starzeal.wordpress.com/funding/ or use the paypal link to the right of this page.

You can also follow Star Zeal 4x on:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKCFIhlv7VuJpNfMKxeE7qw
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Akuu_D_E
IndieDB: https://www.indiedb.com/games/star-zeal-4x

Dev Log 10 Part 1. Finalizing For Closed Alpha.

Posted on by Thilaksha Ekanayake

Overview.

Its been more than a year since the last official dev log. So this is a big and important one, and the final one before closed alpha release. This will be a multi part log so you don’t have to read an essay.

I have decided to release in closed alpha first before the early access, for obvious reasons. The game is too complicated for public release right away even in its limited early access. Also, since this phase of coding was the last remaining major section that needed a lot of work, it should mean there will be no more long delays between updates/logs.

So I will begin with what took so long in part 1, the logistics system:

Logistics in action, salvaging, miners leaving area to mine a asteroid field, supplying new ships and of constructions in progress including a ship being built in stations shipyard. Please note the seeing lag at certain times in the gif is due the time skip in game (you can see me clicking on it) its not actual lag.

Due to hubris, I decided to add a logistics earlier on in development, and not a regular type of abstracted system you find in most 4x games but a physicalized one. IE: The ships and colonies transport and or hold the resources in a specific amount to do stuff with. What could go wrong, its only a bunch of numbers in some lists, no big deal right? Wrong! Even the tiniest of mistakes can cause massive problems for efficiency up to the point of completely freezing the computer if its not coded well. As another developer I talked to on discord recently said, logistics is like glitter, once you implement it, it gets on and in everything. Thus no sloppy code could be tolerated.

The area of the game that took most effort regarding the logistics is the full 3d level. This is the part which resembles the game Homeworld to many who see screenshots of it. Even more specific was the combination of the full 3d and the highly procedural nature of the base code which the logistics system has to be able to use correctly. As an example one cannot simply instantiate a freighter or ship to hold some goods to represent freight, it has to use the full ship system. IE: The freighters transporting things and doing the logistics have to be fully realized essentially the same way the regular ships are but with an added layer of independence and automation. Also one must not forget the saving and loading of the whole system, which was another pain in the neck. However this whole troublesome phase in development was eventually dealt with, or rather beaten into submission after a grueling fight.

Mining action which uses the logistics system, moves the metals and gases in the asteroid into the cargo holds. This is happening in an asteroid belt in the outskirts of a system, hence ambient light is low.

Summary of the current logistics system and its basic functionality for the player. (These are mostly complete, though there are some minor issues and missing bits here and there)
-Moving stuff around between ships and colonies. This can be manually done for specific resources as you wish.
-Mining asteroids and other natural objects.
-Salvaging artificial objects which will retrieve manufactured resources unlike ore mining.
-Construction of stations and ships will have the freight automatically moved there via freighters from nearby colonies or other fleets.
-Characters that are assigned to fleets and colonies will move to the location. They exist in the game within ships and colonies just like any other item would. (Needs a little more work to function correctly).
-Ships themselves can also be stored on colonies.(Hangars for holding ships within ships are in development too).

I will get into more details and the rest of what happened in the last year in next parts of the log, since it will take too long here and I need to finalize and sort out some more of the UI and related code.

Conclusion:

The method I used to do the logistics is supposed to be more efficient by avoid certain things and doing some behind the scenes trickery. It should avoid some of the usual performance problems 4x games have at late game. As a whole it was much more difficult to deal with than expected. It needed a lot of trickery and unconventional code to deal with. However, it did eventually get done, and its working for the most part. To be frank its a bit hard to believe even for me. Any how, see you in the next part of dev log 10 and then onto the closed alpha.

Don’t forget to follow and wishlist on the steam page here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1791630/Star_Zeal_4x/

If you want to support Star Zeal, check out the support page here https://starzeal.wordpress.com/funding/ or use the paypal link to the right of this page.

You can also follow Star Zeal 4x on:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKCFIhlv7VuJpNfMKxeE7qw

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Akuu_D_E

IndieDB: https://www.indiedb.com/games/star-zeal-4x

Dev log 9: tactical Control

Posted on by Thilaksha Ekanayake

Overview:

The tactical level is the “lowest” level of the game, ie: the hands on control of your main characters fleet, where your empire building and role playing comes to a head. Tactical is technically the first part of the game I got functioning about 3 years ago, in a sense I have come full circle in development.

This dev log has been a long time coming. Now on to the actual development update:

The first major change is that Star Zeal now uses Unity’s physics engine almost entirely to control ships in space, other than certain rotations(aiming). Previously it was done exclusively via code and ignored physics which was more precise but didn’t feel so good. Now however, the moments are more realistic and allows for more emergent results, especially during combat. The only draw back was that it required a lot of time to refine the ship control code to reach a playable state.

Ship Movement:

Ships use two types of researchable/upgradeable components for movement, thrusters(main engines) and vectoring(eg: inertia dampeners and vectoring engines).

Main engines dictate the forward speed, acceleration and top speed. This is calculated by multiplying the engine count and things like the mass and even weapon fire speed limits. I also added an uncapped speed for positioning at long distances, which can reach very high speed. It can take a while for ships to accelerate to the top speed, especially for ships with high mass to thrust ratio, same applies to slowing down.

The vectoring stat dictates ship maneuverability, IE: turning, aiming and avoiding speeds. Similar to main engines being modified by engine count, ship designs come with their own vectoring factor modifiers depending on the base ship design. Larger ships are generally more sluggish due to the mass calculation. However they can technically be as maneuverable as smaller ship classes depending on the tech used. Vectoring is also used for avoiding collisions which doesn’t always work out as intended for the captain.

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Weapons:

I have now added most of the major types of weapons, beams, missiles(includes torpedoes) and plasma based. Also weapons now use “free” power/energy left on the ship and or ammo that will require resupply when expended. There are more planned to be added but that will be during early access. Another added weapon feature is the aiming and missing system based on spread. Its not an random number roll for hitting but a roll for the spread when shooting.

Missiles have been around for a while, but now they have better movement and targeting code along with the ammo mechanic mentioned above. Missiles are also able to be launched in salvoes depending on the ship and or ship part used to contain them. Beam weapons on the other hand are a completely new addition. They do constant damage until needing to recharge or energy runs out. Beams can also hit anything that passes between the beam even if its not the intended target, ie: beams are actual beams. I made the base damage output of beams an order of magnitude lower than for other weapons because of the rate of damage, but with enough research investment they can be extremely potent.

Some more additions to ship functionality:
-Turrets and independent vs normal forward firing weapons. Now ships can fire independently at targets that cross the range of weapons.
-Implemented crew injuries and death during combat.
-Ship parts and components are able to be destroyed.
-Stance and attack modes have been added and improved. This needed a lot of refining due to the change to use mostly physics based movement.
-Added engagement range control. Min and max depends on weapons.
-Speed indicator, this works for non ships also. It is technically a velocity indicator.
-Ship and fleet ui improvements including real time info on specific components of ships in action.

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Tactical Map:

The tactical map and tactical orders control are now mostly complete. There should not be any more major changes to it from now on. Most of what I did was make it easier to control everything from the tactical map view. It was mostly UI related stuff, annoying to work on but very necessary. If you want to you can stay on the tactical map and give all necessary orders to your ships without ever having to go down to the full 3d view.

Important note: You are only able to give direct orders in the tactical level to ships in fleets that under your main character/leaders command, whomever that may be. There is an auto battle system in progress to deal with the other fleets outside of this level.

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So thats it for dev log 9. The steam page is coming up next along with finalizing, adding and refining everything needed for the early access release. Thanks for reading my latest log and don’t forget to leave a comment if you so wish. See you next time.

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If you want to support Star Zeal, check out the support page here https://starzeal.wordpress.com/funding/ or use the paypal link to the right of this page.

You can also follow Star Zeal 4x on:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKCFIhlv7VuJpNfMKxeE7qw

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Akuu_D_E

IndieDB: https://www.indiedb.com/games/star-zeal-4x

Dev Log 5 Part 1

Posted on by Thilaksha Ekanayake

HeaderDevLog5-1

Finally! The next development log.

As I mentioned in my previous update/news article, this dev log is quite large compared to  previous ones. Its so big that I decided to split it into multiple parts, so as not to drop a massive wall on text on everyone. Doing it this way also helps me organize everything for my own benefit and allows me to finish each part off for early access more smoothly.

The main reason I couldn’t post logs as quickly as before was that it was more useful to work on everything at once instead of completing one smaller thing at a time and updating. I could get away with that earlier in development when the code was simpler and not as connected together.

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The first part of this dev log will deal specifically with colonies, resources and the freight/cargo system. All three parts are linked heavily together and depend on one another.

Surface1Update5ThilakshaEkanayake

(Do note that I will add more detail into surface views, but first I want to complete more of the game and see how it performs along with everything else. That way I won’t have to down scale.)

Colony progress:

First thing to mention about colonies is mostly visual. The surface view has been returned to the semi 3d view I had used earlier from the purely 2d view. It turned out the semi 3d fixed camera for surfaces was the best option. Its much easier and faster to work on than the pure 2d method. Counter intuitive I know, but that’s just how it worked out in this specific case. Also, I already had 3d assets ready for it and they only needed a little sprucing up. Its a good thing I had them backed up, you never know when you might need them.

Other than that the surface view is also linked to the outside of the planet now. For example other planets that you are near can show up in the horizon, if the atmosphere or lack there of allows it.

2020MoonBaseTestThilakshaEkanayake

(Please note the above image is from a slightly older build, hence the different UI text. These UI elements have since been made more clear as visible in the other screen shots below).

As for the colonies themselves, I made outposts possible to be built on planets while differentiating them from normal colonies. These outposts essentially use the colony functionality but are too small to be counted as one. For example, they do not grow in population naturally. Outposts can serve as mining, military or science bases, or simply to store your stuff.

Other smaller changes/additions to colonies:

-Populations are now split per species, each with its own population down to the last person.
-Crew for ships are “made” via the academy. Each academy gives a max of certain amount of crew at a time. This also depends on population.

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Resources:

Resources come in multiple forms, even population IE people, are considered a resource . Even ships are technically the same and can be stored on planets or in the cargo holds of other ships so long as you have space. The other important feature is that certain resources can be combined, aka manufactured into other resources. These are typically minerals found on planets.

Manufacturing on colonies:

Manufacturing is an important aspect of resource management, though its automated and mostly controlled by the ai of the colony. Resources on planets are refined/turned into manufactured products that are then required to build your ships and other important things.

Manufactured resources depend on the minerals available on the colony. Multiple minerals are required for certain manufacture goods. However common manufactured resources like alloys require very easy to come by resources like metals and gases which are found on most planets. Manufactured commodities are automatically transferred gradually with a freight link when you begin construction. At the moment, manufactured resources are only produced based on demand. (Specified storage of certain amount to be produced is planned to be implemented).

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Freight/cargo:

FreightUpdate5_1_ThilakshaEkanayake

The basic functionality that is used for transferring cargo, IE the resources mentioned above to and from ships and colonies has been completed. The same functionality will later be used for trade, aka freight lanes.

As an example using freight, when colonizing, the fleet fills up with colonists from the source planet before heading off to colonize a target planet. You can pick how many colonists you want before the transfer begins. It also takes a certain amount of time depending on the tech of the freighters or shuttles at the colonies and or fleets disposal.

Essentially you can move around whatever ever you want between ships and planets if they fit in the cargo.

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Some minor but related UI updates and the conclusion:

-Reorganized and completed more of the UI related to colonies.
-Split the colony/planet UI window as can be seen in most of the colony screen shots.
-Freight window to go with the freight functionality, mostly complete.

I’ll be honest, the UI is one of the most troublesome and annoying parts to work on. Good thing I left most of it until later when more of the other elements of the game were completed, otherwise a lot of time would have been wasted.

Overall, a lot of progress has been achieved even though it was a bit of struggle as the code became more complicated as I completed more of game. However its more complicated in a good way, more options for the player, more meat for the procedural generators.

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Part 2 up next and it will deal with my personal favorite section of the game, ships and the rpg element.

One last thing, if you want to support development please check the funding page here: https://atomic-temporary-150259190.wpcomstaging.com/funding/ or you can use the paypal widget on the upper right hand side of this page. Any support will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.