First of all, apologies for the super long period in the dark without any updates. There are multiple reasons for this, though the main one is that I realized development was far off from where I thought it was. So I decided to go quiet(except for the discord) until I got enough done to at least be more confident the release is near and have the ability to update and market the game more easily. Between the second closed alpha release two years ago and this update, there has been a massive amount of work completed which you should be able to tell from the official Steam page trailer above.
Anyway, this is not a dev log(which will come shortly) it is rather a quick news post to let everyone know the game is absolutely alive and kicking. Also to coincide with the new trailer and all round refurbishment of the other website pages for the game.
I did have a personal tragedy happen midway through last year which delayed development but there is no need to get into that here. What matters is that I have not given up even in the slightest, I am now more motivated than I have ever been and willing to do whatever it takes to see this game released as intended. I will also be uploading a roadmap for the early access along with the dev log which is a few days away.
Thank you to those who stuck with me all this time. I appreciate it greatly.
If you want more details and want to see more frequent small updates please join the discord here: https://discord.gg/cgSAV277wM
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
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.
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.
Star Zeal 4x is still alive! The reason I have not updated for so long was to help myself focus on some stubborn and heavy coding that remained. Development has had its ups and downs but has luckily gone well enough in the last 6 months for me to able to post this.
A great amount of work has been done since the last time I uploaded anything, so much so that I have forgotten some of it. As such, I cannot fit everything I can talk about into this post, so I will be quickly summarizing what has been done and subsequently making some dev logs.
These are the main areas I have worked on, in preparation for the early access release:
-Game physics, EG: ship movement and combat. All of these now use physics simulation more so than they used to. This made the tactical part of the game feel smoother and more sensible. You will be able to see what I am talking about in action in the upcoming combat/tactical video.
-Weapons have received some more code and refining. There are now 3 main types of weapons, beams, plasma and ballistic. More are planned for a later stage.
-AI: Much more of the AI code has been completed, especially with regards to relations and the character AI which controls leaders independently to their factions. So now the interactions between you and the AI should get a bit more spicy.
-Great deal of bug fixing and troubleshooting, along with the never ending work on the UI.
-Large amount of art including vfx and new ship models like the sloop class seen as the center piece in the header image. The sloop class is the first official “proper” sized ship in the game.
Simply put, I managed to get an important chunk of development in the bag and I will get into the real meaty details in the upcoming logs. It will be a sort of final run before early access and there is a lot to go through. See you soon. __________________________________________________
