You got a typo there, besides the turn display: "No reserach goal!"

Oups

Just finished the shortage handling..

23 hours left until Pre-Alpha / Alpha-1.

And I just realised 12 of those hours can be moved to the Alpha-2 version. It's mainly an anti-cheat and optimizing task, but to cheat one would have to decompile the client and rewrite pretty much of it (would allow you to see the entire map, + data about other players).

So that means I just have to complete the ship to ship combat, and then it's go time =)

With 11 hours left, I've sent out mail to those on the pre-alpha list.. If anyone else wants to help with the pre-alpha, just send me an email

I got the email, i skimmed through (forgot it already) but ill have a read through when i get some time as im a little busy for next few days with my gardening.

But. So lookin forward to trying it and testing it for you.

+1 this game is a great idea

If it can be played SP (for testing), I can give it a go. MP should be a bit harder to synch with others.

Not a problem, just send me an email, and say you just want to do the limited SP part.

After June 1st I will have enough time to help you with the MP testing, is that too late for you?

The 1st thing I'd do would be to get rid of the FoW overlay.

No, it will be after June 1st. Just drop me an email or PM me your email address


For cheating? =) Or don't you like the image?

I don't like the image, really. It's way too "colorful".

Oh, and I never really understood the meaning of FoW in space There's no cheating in knowing star positions. Look at Supremacy And most other space games really, except maybe GalCiv, but that's really not a standard for inspired design.

Yeah, I know it's a bit bright.. But not hard to change with another high resolution image. Or I'll maybe try and tune the coloring to match the rest of the game better.

FoW might not make much sense, you can see pretty long in space
Making Fog Of War an option for each game/server won't be a problem.

Personally I think I would prefer it on, so that users get a chance to explore a bit

Doesn't both BOTF and Supremacy use Fog Of War?

Do you need some assistance with the graphics?

Yes, but I'm holding off on getting more people on board until alpha testing is finished.

There should be new images for all the technologies (currently using images directly from the show, which I'm pretty sure Paramount/CBS would not like).
Also images of structures (both on planet, and the "structure details image"), should be redone.
All the ship components images should be redone (some, like phasers/cargo containers) are literally hand drawn with a mouse in 30 seconds (and it shows)
The nebula/asteroid fields, as well as stars, icons and planets + planet surfaces were also done by me, and could probably be improved as I'm not a graphics designer

After Alpha, I'll public some of the photoshop files as well as the game graphics files, so that people can play around with them.
People who get the alpha will be able to change any picture in the game, and see the results in their own game, if they are so inclined

Ok man, I'll be happy to help in any way when you are ready to work on it, it seems that my schedule has opened up a bit because of recent events.

Just added a new devblog post: http://www.trekwar.org/Wiki.jsp?page=Devblog-30052011

Mainly just shows the invade starsystem dialog.

Only 8 hours of work left until Alpha testing, still room for 2-3 more on the pre-alpha testing list, so if you're feeling the call, contact me: http://www.trekwar.org/Wiki.jsp?page=Contact

Just space combat left, expecting it to take 7 hours, got the framework done already just need to implement the actual math formulas for calculating damage.

Maybe I'll be done for E3 ;D

Did not manage to finish the space combat this weekend. But going to try and have it done by next weekend (also have Monday off).

Fixed a bug with sounds (now possible to have more than 32 sounds in the game), and extended the sound system while at it, recorded some new sounds (mainly fleets responding to orders).

Also made the trekwar server ready for pre-alpha testing, so that it can run 10 servers in parallel with different games, on different port numbers.

And due to the fact that people will be playing different amounts, and at irregular hours. I modifier the server (each player gets their own server in SP pre-alpha) for the single player so that it will be on pause when you are not logged in. (but you can still leave the client open, if waiting for something that takes a long while (like research)).

The list of known bugs will automatically be updated each hour on the website now: http://www.trekwar.org/Wiki.jsp?page=Bugs
Which could come in handy during the pre-alpha test.

Also I watched a lot of Doctor Who, but not sure how that is relevant to anything..

Just did lots of cleaning up and move lots code from the base (shared by both client and server) to the server.

Found a pretty nasty bug that I have to fix before pre-alpha (If user A colonizes a planet and is 50% done, then used B can also start colonizing the same system. So user A gets control of it for a few turns, then user B gets the system).

Going to stat on space combat later today or tomorrow

*phew*
Finally those stupid ships that have been moving around the map for months, started blowing each other up with phasers (gets bonus against shields) and torpedoes (bonus against armor and hitpoints)



In the image above, the fleet "exploration" with just 1 scoutship destroyed a klingon fleet with 1 identical scoutship with great ease (my tech levels were much higher, so my ships therefore got a big bonus to structural integrity, weapons efficiency, armor, etc..)

You can see the Armor (blue bar) not being full, this is because the klingon hit with a few shots. Ships in space will automatically regenerate shields pretty fast, and armor up to 25% and hitpoints up to 20%.. Shields can be fully replenished of course.. Armor and Hitpoints will be repaired when in a friendly starsystem (much faster if that system has a spacedock).

---------------------------------------------------------------

So, Trekwar is now almost ready for testing. (There is one bug, if unarmed ships of opposing factions meet, the server will go into an infinite loop and essentially die).

This can't happen in the single-player test of pre-alpha, but either way it's just a small 30 minute fix.

What's left now before the pre-alpha singler player test, is for me to create the Single Player scenario, and play more or less trough it myself once.

Then I just have to set up the game servers and email everyone their username/password, and testing can commence.

-Tired klogd who just wants to watch more Game of thrones.

Cool, nice to see it coming along. One point though, most people would see this and assume the blue bar was your shields, the red bar was hull, and the yellow bar was a power meter or something. You might want to think about changing the colours, or qualifying it with small images, such as a shield icon for the shields.

...But that's something that can be sorted later. Playtesting will likely come up with the important things to mention.

Good idea, so far you can only see what the bar represents by holding the mouse over the bar and wait for a tooltip (shows the name, and numbers).

The shield bar (for ships that have shields) are light green, the colors can be easily changed. I've added a task to add icons for each bar (for the next version)

Well, here I was ready to pounce on Matress for using the ever-presumptuous "most people would [...]" claim, but it turns out I actually agree with him. My first guess at the meaning of the color bars was identical to his. If armor is a separate concept from hit points (hull integrity), then maybe use green for armor?

Having armor and hull be seperate things is kind of odd. Especially because they essencially come down to the same thing - both heavily affected by torpedoes, both have limited repair capability in space, etc.
Not really sure of the value of having them be treated as distinct stats. Besides having one other component for ship design that is (armor)

Yeah, I tend to agree. I can see how it might be desirable to have armor as a configurable "component" of a ship design, but that could be done without adding a second "level" of hit points. Simplicity is your friend.

Armor and hull could have been the same, but decided to make them very different in the game. You can ignore structure points (hit points) while doing shipdesign, as these are not easily influenced. Instead you add armor and/or shields.

Armor:
Very hard material protecting the ship systems, HIGH protection from phasers, MEDIUM from torpedoes. Can be researched to get better armor components, and you can choose how much armor (if any) you want to put on a ship. And you can get special high-tech versions (Ablative armor, regenerative armor, etc..)

Hull:
Is just the structure of the ship, and has LOW protection from torpedoes (torpedoes do 3x damage against hull). The hitpoints/structure/hull is pretty much set by the Hull Class (Obert, Miranda, Constitution, etc..) and only changes a tiny bit by adding components, and by researching construction technology.

I did add a second "level" of hit points (but I called it armor)

It seems kind of logical to me to separate structural integrity and armor... I mean, if a race doesn't have shield capabilities (like humanity doesn't now), it could just add a thick armor layer to provide more protection than what the nuts and bolts of the ship already provide to make it stay in one piece...

I don't know how this will affect the gameplay however...

A ship's susceptibility to damage could depend on its armor type: the armor could govern the thermal and kinetic energy absorption potentials. In other words, the effective drop in hit points resulting from each weapon hit could depend on the type of armor (and the weapon used), while the total number of hit points could be determined by the hull design.

Armor can still play a very important role without introducing a second value/meter in addition to hull integrity. It's a lot easier for the player to figure out how "strong" his ship is relative to its maximum strength if there is only one value/meter to keep track of. With two values/meters, things get more confusing. If a ship has 0/100 armor and 100/100 hit points, what is its relative strength? 50%? That would be the case if 1 point of armor is equivalent to 1 point of hull integrity. If that's not the case, and I'm guessing it isn't, then the player has no idea what the relative strength of a ship is without breaking out an Excel spreadsheet.

From the player's perspective, armor exists to make a ship more resilient to damage. There is no reason why the implementation should require changing the total number of hit points (or adding another "level" of hit points); merely adjusting the damage rate is sufficient.

Hmm, maybe you're right. Having armor behave different than hull (be stronger than structure) might not be worth the added complexity to the user..

I'll look at it for the next version 0.4.5 which will be the official Alpha version. Maybe just have armor add it's value to hitpoints directly (remove armor as own variable). And maybe provide with a Damage Reduction variable instead, that will remove some damage from each hit.

Thanks for the input everyone

Nice post

Damage Reduction sounds a lot better, as having torpedoes deal 3x damage would be kind of odd - why would they do more damage than their damage potential?!
You can have this damage reduction apply to all kinds of damage - shields have low DR vs beams and high DR vs torps; armor, more or less the opposite.