Though it took longer than I hoped, update 0.9.0 has now been released.

What’s New?

So the main question I’m sure you’re asking yourself is what’s new in this update? Firstly, this was not the big rewrite of the AI that I hoped it would be. While I have made some improvements to the AI, they mainly revolve around performance and preparation for the future. While writing a simple AI is not all that difficult. Making one for an RTS game that is competent enough to win while not also being so perfect that it cannot be beaten is a challenge I was unprepared for.

Despite this small setback however there were some other changes and additions which proved to be more successful in their implementation. In particular each faction now has a new ship belonging to the carrier class. No space fairing military would be complete without a way to transport their fighters and bombers and this new class of ship aims to fill that role. By making use of the spawn unit ability while you have the ship selected you can spawn up to three squads of fighters.

In addition to the carrier class ship there is now an explicit dev mode which can be enabled in the settings menu. Doing so will not only unlock the debug menu (F3 key in game), but it will also unlock a new test map option from the battle setup screen. This new map has a single space station from which you can spawn any unit currently in the game at no cost. In the future this map will be expanded to add a way of testing different types of turrets as well as an option to pit ships against one another to see the outcome of a battle in a more controlled environment.

Update 0.10.0

So with those changes behind me the question now is what’s next?

Unlike the updates before it version 0.10.0 will likely be a smaller update in terms of content. Meaning a smaller list of changes and the possibility of little to no new gameplay. This however does not mean that the update will be any less important.

For those who don’t know Stelestial Contact: Solar Storm runs on the Godot Game engine. An engine which recently released the first alpha of version 4.0. It is my hope that when the full version of 4.0 is released then I’ll be able to port Stelestial Contact: Solar Storm over to the new version where I can benefit from the improvements to performance and rendering alongside some of the new features like decals and volumetric fog.

To make this as easy a transition as possible however, I am going to need to take some time to clean up both the code and the project. This is the aim of version 0.10.0 and the reason there may not be many, if any gameplay changes.

Closing Thoughts

With all that said if you have any question or queries either about this update or the next one then feel free to ask them. Additionally, if you have any ideas about what kind of things you would like to see me implement then please do let me know. For now though I hope you can enjoy the changes made in 0.9.0 and I should be back in a little over a month's time with version 0.10.0.

As with all of my updates a full list of the changes made can be found in game, with the changes and additions pertaining to this update listed below:

• Added an increased particle count to the main menu visual effect
• Added a dev mode to the settings menu which needs to be active if the player wants to use the in game debug menu
• Added a ammo count to the space battle GUI for help with debugging when in dev mode
• Added a new type of ship, the carrier
• Added a carrier class ship to the Human faction
• Added a carrier class ship to the Alien faction
• Added a carrier class ship to the Kessoni faction
• Added a unique death animation to the Human carrier
• Added a unique death animation to the Alien carrier
• Added a unique death animation to the Kessoni carrier
• Added a new ability for ships to spawn units of their own. Such as carrier class ships.
• Added a set of unique icons for the spawn unit ability
• Added a space battle test map for help with debugging performance and the implementation of new units. Only available in dev mode
• Added a map preview for the new space battle test map
• Added a scroll bar for when there is not enough room in the GUI to display all available/selected units
• Added a option to keep spawning the same reinforcement ship if the shift key is held down and there is a ship of the same type left in the reinforcements list
• Updated the GUI info container to only display relevant information (No longer shows capture progress for units or already captured buildings)
• Updated the aim weapon button to now support aiming at turrets and subsystems
• Updated the changelog screen to support more versions and provide more reading space for the changes made
• Updated the reinforcement GUI to only display a single button for each ship
• Updated the camera to only change the zoom level when the GUI is not being interacted with
• Updated the freecam view to allow the current camera move speed to be altered with the scroll wheel
• Updated the guide page to split faction units and buildings into their own groups
• Updated the guide page camera zoom to locally move the camera instead of updating the camera fov to prevent objects from becoming warped
• Updated the guide page to only allow the building tier to be set for buildings with more than one tier
• Updated the Battle AI to make use of unit abilities when they are available
• Updated the battle GUI to allow double clicking a units button to centre the camera on that unit
• Removed the enemy UC count from the space battle GUI
• Fixed a bug where the camera origin point could become offset if the camera was moved while switching to a different view
• Fixed a bug where GUI elements could become stuck on screen when switching view
• Fixed a bug where resuming the game from the pause menu would unpause the game even if it was paused before entering the pause menu
• Fixed a bug where the game would stutter when drawing a box to select multiple units
• Fixed a bug where it was possible for ships to collide with a mining outpost if it was owned by an enemy team
• Fixed a bug where ships couldn't detect enemy units as a result of their vision area being disabled, meaning they would never attack on their own
• Fixed a bug where the GUI wouldn't update when a space station went up a tier while it was selected, meaning no new units would be visible
• Fixed a bug where the guide page wouldn't keep the set colour when switching between units and buildings
• Fixed a bug where the game would crash when trying to load a space map that didn't have an environment set