Welp I’m back again and as promised I bring update 0.12.0 with me, a rather important one if I do say so myself.

What’s New?

So as ever when I write out these devlogs the first question is, what’s new? As stated before, the main aim for this update was to include the first public release of the campaign map and I’m pleased to say that I have been able to meet this goal. Not only are you as the player able to build fleets and armies to take over planets held by other factions, but you can then use those aforementioned fleets to fight the battle out on the battle map in real time. With victory giving you control over the planet and a loss resulting in you losing your entire fleet. (Providing you don’t choose to retreat of course)

But as with all my updates there wasn’t just a single area which received development time. As I've also made a couple of changes on the battle map. One of which was an update to the information panel which now also shows the capture progress of any capturable buildings when you hover the mouse over them. As well as this I also managed to include some optimisations regarding lighting and shadows, both of which are now included in the settings menu. Additionally I also fixed some major issues around the use of object pooling which were resulting in some pretty major crashes and I finally took the time to fix a whole bunch of memory leaks which happened whenever you closed the game in an array of different scenarios.

Finally I should also mention the fact that I have at long last gotten around to updating the games page on itch. Where a more detailed overview of how both the space battles and the campaign map work can now be found. Along with an updated set of images which better reflect the state of the game. A pretty stark update considering the images on display before were from all the way back in update 0.5.1

Update 0.13.0

So then now that you have a good idea of what was included in this update the next question is what can you expect from the next one? Well for starters I already have a fix in mind for the big lag spikes you get on the campaign map when either you or the AI are building a space station. I also finally have some fixes in mind for the lag on the battlemap which has been a long term issue and one I hope to finally resolve in update 0.13.0.

Beyond the long awaited performance improvements I’m also planning to make some updates to the maps used in space battles as well as to increase their number. I have some ideas for both new map features and visual changes, though you’ll have to wait until 0.13.0 is out to see them.

Lastly, as this update finally made the campaign map public I plan to begin devoting more development time to it. The first feature of which will be a more complex economic system with fleets and armies having expenses, while planets will be able to have a range of buildings built to help boost their own income.

Closing Thoughts

And so once again it is time for me to say goodbye for another month while I work to implement the above features and improvements. As with all my updates I’ll say that if you have any questions or queries then don’t hesitate to ask. Equally if you have any ideas or improvements that you would like to see implemented then please do let me know.

As always I hope you enjoy the new features and improvements brought in with the 0.12.0 update and I’ll be back in around a month's time with update 0.13.0.

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 a turret count to the unit information panel when in a space battle
• Added a current health, shield and armour bar to the unit information panel when in a space battle
• Added a capture progress bar to the unit information panel for when the player is in a space battle and has the mouse over a capturable building
• Added a building income label to the unit information panel for when a building with income is selected or is under the mouse
• Added a remaining unit count for carrier class ships to the unit information panel when in a space battle
• Added a check to the unit tilt function to ensure it is only run when needed, helping improve performance
• Added a option in the settings menu to either change the quality of shadows or disable them which is now the default (as they don't make much of a visual difference in space anyway), helping improve performance
• Added a option in the settings menu to either change the particle count or turn them off completely, currently this setting is only applied to the particles emitted by engines
• Added a option in the settings menu to set the visibility of shields on the battle map
• Added a option to hold down the shift key to speed up camera movement
• Added a background to the colour picker on the guide page to improve its visibility
• Added support for calling in squad based units as reinforcements
• Added support for panning the camera with the middle mouse button
• Updated the multi move markers to be centred on the mouse when moving more than one unit at a time
• Updated the turrets on units and buildings to return to their original rotation if they no longer have a target
• Updated the targeting code to account for units that were taken from the unit pool
• Updated the quit button on the pause menu to return to the previous screen instead of the main menu
• Updated the shield mesh of the mining outpost to also include the crane once it has been built
• Updated the mesh of the small, medium and large laser turrets to prevent the turret barrels from disconnecting from the rest of the mesh
• Updated the particle trail of the kinetic ammo type to fade on impact
• Updated the small, medium and large laser beam turret to support firing at the mouse position
• Updated the settings menu with horizontal dividers to make the section titles more prominent
• Updated the battle setup screen to have titles for the different button columns
• Updated highlighted subsystems to also highlight their owner when the mouse is placed over them
• Fixed a bug which could have caused memory issues as a result of objects not being cleared when the scene was switched or the game closed
• Fixed a bug where units and upgrades in the build queue were not cleared from memory when quitting the game
• Fixed a bug where GUI buttons were not cleared from memory when quitting the game
• Fixed a bug where the units held by carrier class ships were not cleared from memory when quitting the game
• Fixed a bug where the game would crash if you tried to close it while on a loading screen
• Fixed a bug where the game would leak memory if it was closed while on a loading screen
• Fixed a bug where the AI would attempt to check the attack power of a building despite no attack power being set, resulting in a game crash
• Fixed a bug where units spawned from the unit pool were not properly reset after being removed from the map, resulting in them having no health or subsystems when they were spawned in again
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to draw a box to select units while calling in a new reinforcement unit, resulting in the new unit being instantly selected
• Fixed a bug where the row count for a multi move could exceed the number of selected units, resulting in the markers being offset from the centre
• Fixed a bug where fire and smoke particles belonging to pooled units would still be emitted at the same location as where the unit was previously destroyed
• Fixed a bug where the laser beam ammo type would trigger a destroyed subsystem to explode more than once after it had been destroyed
• Fixed a bug where squad based units would block other units and buildings from being selected when they were above them
• Fixed a bug where the defence point wouldn't respawn with its armour
• Fixed a bug where the repair station wouldn't be properly reset when respawning