Well it may be a new year but that doesn’t mean a change of schedule and so after a little over a month's time I’m back with the next update for Stellar Odyssey: Galaxy At War which in this case is version 0.40.0.

What’s New?

So as always the first question I’m sure you have is what’s new in this update? Well as has been the case for sometime now the first thing of note in this update is a new unit model, specifically for the Human Carrier unit. Unlike the previous model this new one isn’t as tall and also looks more akin to the rest of the units in the Human factions fleet, something which could not be said about the model it is replacing. Not to mention that the new model also brings with it space for two large laser turrets which the carrier class unit didn’t have before. Though as a result of this the four missile turrets which could be found on the old unit model have also been removed in hopes of trying to keep it somewhat balanced against a battleship class unit.

In addition to the now expected new unit model this update also brings with it a rather large overhaul to both unit and building shields. For one the visual look of the shields has once again been updated to which I hope should be close to their final look. A new look that was achieved as a result of now making use of both a texture and a normal map to give the shield a more sci-fi feel. Beyond just the looks, shields now also have two additional functions to them, for one they are now able to be auto generated after being added to a unit or building. This means not only do I no longer need to manually make a new shield mesh for each new unit or building. Thereby cutting down on the amount of dev time needed when implementing a new unit or building. But I can now also have the shield change dynamically as a building is upgraded, ensuring the entire building is always covered.

Perhaps of more interest though is the fact that shields now actually block incoming shots before they even hit the owning unit or building, as opposed to the unit or building being the one to do the blocking which was the case before this change. This new function can also be directly seen in game thanks to the use of a new shader effect which will create a small but noticeable expanding wave on the shield, starting from the point of impact. To go alongside this effect the shield shader also gained support for dissolving the shield itself. In practice this means that as the shield drops below 25% the shield will now appear to have holes open up as more and more of the shield is dissipated away.

Other than the model and shield work this update also marked the start of work on what I’m calling the paid version of Stellar Odyssey: Galaxy At War which in this case meant the inclusion of 4 new campaign maps, one for each of the existing factions. Maps where the yet to be implemented story campaigns will take place. To go along with the new maps I also took some time to work on a basic campaign map selection screen where each of the four maps can be loaded. While the maps are very much just placeholders at the moment, they still marked the first step towards the creation and completion of the story campaigns I have aspired to implement for some time now.

Last but not least I’ll also just quickly mention some of the wide variety of bug fixes you can expect to see in the update. These include a whole slew of fixes to unit meshes which were set to the incorrect scale (thanks to my limited knowledge of Blender at the time of making them), leading to the new shield mesh calculation creating a mesh of the incorrect scale. A fix for shields not being displayed at all on the mining outpost or defence point and a fix for the placement of the objectives UI which prior to said fix resulted in the menu being placed at the center of the screen thanks to the recently implemented notifications centre UI button.

Update 0.41.0

Now then with what you can expect to see in this update out of the way, I’ll just quickly go over some of the things you can expect to see in the next one. As is now almost always the case the first new thing to be added to 0.41.0 will be an updated model by way of a new look for the Human repair ship. Additionally as this the unit model will be based on the existing corvette model I’ll probably also have time to work on a second model update, which I’m planning to be an updated look for the Human transport. The completion of which would also result in the overall completion of the remade looks for all of the space based units belonging to the Human faction.

But enough about new unit models, you’re probably wondering what the main aim of the update will be. For that I can tell you that there will be two main aims, the first of which is the implementation of a new events system for the campaign map. Before I even begin thinking about implementing the story campaigns I am going to need a way of triggering story moments to happen and so that’s where this new events system will come into play. The idea being that when you do something on the campaign map, be it capturing a location, recruiting a unit or completing a piece of research a check will be made against a list of possible events. Should the requirements for one of these events be met, then the event will be triggered. This could mean something as simple as displaying a dialogue box or could be sometime more complex like playing an animated cutscene.

To go hand in hand with this new events system I’m also going to be making some changes to and developing a proper implementation for an objectives system. Currently there are some objectives already in the game which can be found in the tutorials for both the campaign map and space battles. However this current implementation is very bare bones and truthley is almost entirely hard coded in such a way as the objectives are limited to those specific maps. Thus for 0.41.0 I would like to take the time to implement a more dedicated system for objectives which would not only allow different objectives to be reused across different maps. But which would also allow me to extend the number and type of objectives, something I will no doubt need as I begin implementing the story modes for each of the different factions.

Finally for 0.41.0 I’d also like to see if I can’t make some additional shader changes now that I’ve grown even more confident with them thanks to my work with the unit and building shields. In particular I’d like to make some changes to the warp in animation and shader effect to make it look as though the unit actually appears at the designated point, along with maybe seeing if I can’t go about adding a warp out shader effect at the same time. Of course these are just my current plans and by the end 0.41.0 will no doubt include a whole bunch of changes and additions I didn’t even mention previously.

Closing Thoughts

Well with that we’ve come to the end of the first devlog for this year. One which I hope has not only given you an idea of what to expect in this update itself, but one which has also showcased the kind of trend I’m hoping to keep going for the rest of the year. Which if you hadn’t already worked out based on some of the things in this update, is working to get the paid version into a state where it can be released. A goal I think you’ll start to see some more significant progress in during the 0.42.0 update after many of the systems I need to start building the story campaigns are put into place.

Though I have some plans and timelines in mind for when I want the paid version to be completed and ready for release as with everything in life I can’t guarantee when things will be finished. Having said that though thanks to taking a small amount of time off over the holiday period I did manage to focus a bit more on drawing up plans and so I’m hoping that for the next few updates at least the changelog looks closer to this updates one compared to the past couple. That is to say on the longer side of things.

Regardless of my plans though they won’t work on themselves, as nice as it would be for them to do so. As such I’ll be ending this devlog here and getting to work on them straight away. This means that as always should everything go to plan I’ll be back in around a month's time with the next update, that being 0.41.0.

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 faction selection page to the story campaign option on the campaign setup page
• Added a campaign map for use by the Human faction story campaign
• Added a campaign map for use by the Astel faction story campaign
• Added a campaign map for use by the Kessoni faction story campaign
• Added a campaign map for use by the Shin faction story campaign
• Updated the campaign setup page to support loading story campaign maps
• Updated the save system to work with the new story campaign maps
• Fixed a bug where the intel system didn't set the correct intel level when there were just two locations
• Added a check to see if the paid content should be enabled depending on what version of Stellar Odyssey: Galaxy At War is being played or if it is being run from within the editor
• Added a tooltip to the credits button on the main menu
• Added a tooltip to the quit button on the main menu
• Added a tooltip to the start button on the campaign setup page
• Added a tooltip to the run AI button on the campaign setup page
• Added a tooltip to the difficulty button on the campaign setup page
• Added a tooltip to the return button on the campaign setup page
• Added a tooltip to the return button on the custom battle page
• Added a tooltip to the return button on the credits page
• Added a tooltip to the return button on the changelog page
• Removed the code and options for manually setting the shield mesh as the shield mesh is now automatically generated in the editor
• Removed the missile turrets from the Human Carrier as they no longer fit with the new unit model
• Updated the model used by the Human Carrier
• Updated the image used by the Human Carrier to match the look of the new unit model
• Updated the Human Frigate to have 4 engine subsystems instead of 2
• Updated the Human Frigate to have 2 missile turrets instead of 1
• Updated the image used by the Human Frigate to include the newly added missile turret and engines
• Updated the changelog to be split between changes only found in the paid edition and changes found in both the paid and the free edition
• Updated the campaign map location information loader to support working with a different campaign map
• Updated the campaign map faction information loader to support working with a different campaign map
• Updated the campaign map faction information to be stored separately for the individual campaign maps
• Updated the campaign map tutorial information to work with the new campaign map information loader
• Updated the save system to work with the new faction information format
• Updated the look of the shader used for the unit and building shields
• Updated the look of the shader used for the unit and building shields when they are overcharged
• Updated the unit and building shield to generate in a sphere for every unit and building instead of each one having a custom made mesh
• Updated the unit and building shield to generate a collision shape along with the shield mesh to allow for blocking incoming shots
• Updated the unit and building shield to support displaying a dissolve shader effect
• Updated the unit and building shield to support displaying a impact shader effect
• Updated the unit and building shield to dissolve based on the unit or buildings current shield value
• Updated the unit and building shield to block incoming shots provided they are not a missile or a torpedo
• Updated the building shield to be regenerated when a building tier is changed
• Updated the code used for setting the building tier to work using the buildings ID instead of the buildings name
• Updated the ammo impact animation to only be played when a ammo impacts something that is not a shield
• Fixed a bug where the overcharge shield ability didn't correctly apply the shield overcharge
• Fixed a bug where the objectives container in the campaign GUI was moved to the centre of the screen as a result of the notification centre button
• Fixed a bug where the shield mesh calculation didn't take the mesh transform into account when generating the new shield mesh
• Fixed a bug where the shield shader didn't keep changes made to the shader across all shield node instances
• Fixed a bug where the space based buildings would start with a shield value of 0 despite having a higher value set initially
• Fixed a bug where the mining outpost didn't display its shield correctly
• Fixed a bug where the space based defence point didn't display its shield correctly
• Fixed a bug where the squad based units would sometimes stop moving after capturing a building
• Fixed a bug where the ignore team restrictions debug option didn't apply to the box select for units
• Fixed a bug where the ignore team restrictions debug option didn't apply to the multi select for units when double clicking a unit type
• Fixed a bug where the debug option for setting a unit or buildings team wouldn't also update that unit or buildings shield collision mask
• Fixed a bug where the mesh for the Astel Carrier was set to the incorrect scale, resulting in the new shield mesh being the incorrect size
• Fixed a bug where the mesh for the Astel Corvette was set to the incorrect scale, resulting in the new shield mesh being the incorrect size
• Fixed a bug where the mesh for the Astel Frigate was set to the incorrect scale, resulting in the new shield mesh being the incorrect size
• Fixed a bug where the mesh for the Human Carrier was set to the incorrect scale, resulting in the new shield mesh being the incorrect size
• Fixed a bug where the mesh for the Kessoni Battleship was set to the incorrect scale, resulting in the new shield mesh being the incorrect size
• Fixed a bug where the mesh for the Kessoni Carrier was set to the incorrect scale, resulting in the new shield mesh being the incorrect size
• Fixed a bug where the mesh for the Kessoni Corvette was set to the incorrect scale, resulting in the new shield mesh being the incorrect size
• Fixed a bug where the mesh for the Shin Corvette was set to the incorrect scale, resulting in the new shield mesh being the incorrect size
• Fixed a bug where the mesh for the Shin Transport was set to the incorrect scale, resulting in the new shield mesh being the incorrect size