Well despite losing almost half my dev time to a mixture of being sick and having no internet. The 0.25.0 update was somehow still completed in time and ready for testing.

What’s New?

As I stated above this update ended up having only around half the dev time of a normal update and as a result, it’s a little on the smaller side. Despite this though the update still brings some much needed changes and alterations with it. The first of which, and what was the main feature of this update; is a whole range of new and improved sound effects. As is often the case most if not all the new sound effects are still very much placeholders which I hope to replace with something higher quality at a later date. For now though the new sound effects will serve their intended purpose.

Beyond just adding new sound effects this update also brought a couple of changes and updates to the various UI’s. In particular each of the icons used for unit abilities, building upgrades and campaign map buttons have been updated to match the new black and white theme for the rest of the GUI. While the info container on the left side of the screen gained some new information in the form of what abilities the current unit may or may not have, as well as a consolidation of the units contained within a buildings garrison. A garrison which will now also change based on the current level of said building.

Last but not least I also added a small amount of polish to the functions of unit abilities themselves. For abilities that require some kind of player input, such as the fire weapon or deploy cloud ability, you are now able to give a target position outside of the maximum range which will then lead to the unit automatically moving into range and deploying the ability. Keeping on the topic of unit abilities, health bars above units will now display any currently active unit abilities, allowing you to see at a glance which abilities are currently in use and by which unit.

Update 0.26.0

In a similar vein to the 0.25.0 update 0.26.0 will continue my quest to add more polish to the existing systems and gameplay mechanics before I get back to adding any new features. To this end the first area the 0.26.0 update will focus on is the AI. I had planned to get the changes and improvements done for this update but thanks to the reasons I pointed out before that didn’t end up happening and so, 0.26.0 will instead aim to have these included. When it comes to the specific improvements I have planned I will as a starting point update the campaign AI to be able to make use of some of the previously newly added features, such as interfaction diplomacy and the expanded research options.

While I’m adding more feature support to the AI as a starting point, I’m also hoping to improve the overall reactivity of the AI on both the campaign and battle maps. In essence I’m hoping to update the AI to understand its possible targets better and be able to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses as well as whether or not it is a good idea to either go for the attack or take on a more defensive stance. In the case of the battle map I’d also like to add support for some amount of coordination between units owned by the same AI. Meaning units would attack in groups rather than as single entities, like they do currently.

Other than AI improvements 0.26.0 will also include some fundamental campaign map changes. For one, how the battle map is loaded when a battle is triggered will be changed so the campaign map is fully unloaded rather than it continuing to be kept in memory. Something I should have done a while ago and something which is likely to result in more problems the longer I leave it. Secondly all the GUI’s on the campaign map will be changed to update in real time rather than only when they are opened or closed. Now that the research tree has been expanded it has become clear that only having the GUI update at certain times feels odd from a gameplay standpoint and so each of the GUI’s will be changed to update as background changes happen.

Last but not least 0.26.0 will also include a small amount of visual polish which didn’t make it into the 0.25.0 update. That being the previously promised shaders. I said before that shaders can add a lot to a game's visuals and provided I can put the time into getting more familiar with them then I can think of a number of areas which could benefit from them. Including but not limited to; units warping into the map, the prefire mode of laser beam turrets, shields and their reactions to being hit and the tactical view on the campaign map to divide areas based on which factions own which location.

Closing Thoughts

So in the end it turned out to be a bit less substantial than my normal updates but as is often the case 0.25.0 is no less important.

In conclusion then, while this update was on the smaller side it allowed for a lot of visual and audible polish. Something which I’d needed to do for a while and something which will allow the next update to hopefully begin the process of working on some much needed polish on the gameplay side of things. Depending on how the next update turns out 0.27.0 is also likely to continue the trend of polishing existing features and graphics. Leaving the game in a ready enough state for 0.28.0 to return to adding more content and expanding on different gameplay features.

With all that said I’ll end this devlog here and get to work on the aforementioned 0.26.0 update which should everything go to plan, will release in around a month's time.

As always if you have any questions or queries then don’t hesitate to ask and similarly if you have any feedback for existing systems. Or indeed if you have any ideas, features or changes you would like to see implemented then also don’t hesitate to let me know.

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 new ambient sound effect for engines
• Added a new ambient sound effect for squad based units
• Added a new mouse hover sound effect for animated buttons
• Added a new mouse unhover sound effect for animated buttons
• Added a new button pressed sound effect for animated buttons
• Added a new sound effect for when a unit has been completed on the battle map
• Added a new sound effect for when a upgrade has been completed on the battle map
• Added a new sound effect for when a campaign map location has been selected
• Added a new sound effect for when a battle has been triggered on the campaign map
• Added a new sound effect for when a fleet or army has been given a new destination on the campaign map
• Added a new sound effect for when a kinetic turret fires
• Added a new setting called edge turning which when enabled allows you to turn the camera by moving the mouse to the edge of the screen
• Added a set of particle effects which are emitted when a kinetic turret fires
• Added a set of particle effects which are emitted when a missile turret fires
• Updated the unit selection box to be white instead of green and for the internal area to be shaded
• Updated the ambient engine and squad based unit sound effects to increase their pitch while the unit they are attached to is moving
• Updated the animated button hover and unhover sound effects to take into account the amount of time remaining on the box slide animation
• Updated the images used for the campaign map research options to all have a black outline so they are easier to see when the mouse is hovered over them
• Updated the icons used for the campaign map buttons to match the black and white theme of existing buttons
• Updated the icons used for the battle map buttons to match the black and white theme of existing buttons
• Updated the icons used for unit abilities to match the black and white theme of existing buttons
• Updated the icons used for subsystems on units and buildings to match the black and white theme of existing buttons
• Updated the icons used for upgrades in the build queue to match the black and white theme of existing buttons
• Updated the icons used for location modifiers on the campaign map to match the black and white theme of existing buttons
• Updated the info container to support being locked on the screen
• Updated the info container to group garrison units of the same type together
• Updated the info container to display a list of unit abilities for the currently selected or mouse hovered unit
• Updated the garrison units for space stations to change based on the space stations current tier
• Updated the deploy cloud unit ability to have a maximum range
• Updated the ranged unit abilities to have the unit move into range when an ability is used outside of its maximum range
• Updated the unit healthbar to also display any active unit abilities
• Updated the test space target subsystem to use a 3D label node instead of a viewport for displaying the damage over time value
• Fixed a bug where the game would stutter after a mining outpost had been destroyed
• Fixed a bug where the aim unit weapons button would also aim the manually fired laser beam turret on the Astel battleship
• Fixed a bug where the fire weapon unit ability was marked as active before the weapon had actually been fired
• Fixed a bug where the build list on both the battle GUI and the campaign GUI would block mouse input despite there being nothing in the build list
• Fixed a bug where the Shin Battleship animated incorrectly during its destroyed animation
• Fixed a bug where the settings GUI would play sounds using the incorrect audio bus when setting the volume using the sliders
• Fixed a bug where some sound effects were linked to the master volume slider instead of the sound effects volume slider