Population Transport and new helper!

I've coded in creating a group of transports, the UI for doing so, and the code for handling transport ships in a fleet. I'm happy with the results, and I think you'll agree that the controls are simple. This is what it looks like when you start to set up the population transfer:



This is what the fleet look like, with transports listed first, before normal ships. Yes, each race will have their own transport group, so you can manage each race individually.



Next thing to do: Implement Colonization and Ground Combat using those transport ships. Then it'll be back to work on technology overhaul.

Now, I have some good news! A friend of mine from college agreed to help work on this game. He've fixed a bug already. He's hearing, so he will be the one who's responsible for adding sounds eventually. Please welcome Spencer to the team! He will be mainly responsible for fixing bugs and polishing stuff, while I add the new features. Things should be done a lot quicker with him on board.

Multiracial Population implemented!

Yes, you read that correctly. Multi-racial population is now implemented! It was a lot simplier than I expected. I just had to change a variable into a List of races, and update the code that uses this variable to use the new data type. I then rearranged the system UI that you see in galaxy view to accomodate for the display of different races, as well as "Transfer Population" button.

It will list up to four races and their population, from largest to smallest. If there's more than four races on a planet, then it will list the largest three, then clump the rest together under "Others", since they're probably insignificant.

I also ripped out the migration code as a result of this change. Transfer Population isn't implemented yet (the button's there, but it does nothing now). It will be some time before this feature is fully implemented. But I'm liking the changes so far, it feels more immersive already! And I have control over where people go to where.

There are several things that I'd like to share. First, when you transfer people, it will create a transport ship for each unit of population, so if you're transferring 50 units, you will have 50 transport ships. Each transport ship will have a very high upkeep fee (maybe 10 BC or so per turn), so you don't want them to idle and eat up your income. This will reduce the ability of having one planet at 50% population and sending people off, since it'll be expensive to move people.

When you create transport ships, it don't automatically ask you the destination planet, rather, it shows up similar to fleets, and can travel with your fleet for protection. You issue travel commands to transports, similar to how you do with fleets.

To land your population on a planet, you must have the transport ships adjacent to a system, and it will ask you which planet to land on. If it's an already occupied planet, then ground combat will ensue.

However, if that system is guarded by fleets, then space combat will ensue, and you will see your transport ships in space combat. They're very massive, about 1.5 times bigger than your largest combat ship, and have no weapons. They do have some armor and shields, but they're sitting ducks. If they retreat during combat, they won't be able to land on planet that turn. So they have to stick around during the combat. There will be technologies that reduces the upkeep, and adds defenses to transport ships.

Anyway, enough talking, time for the screenshot!

Design Changes

I've been discussing with people about adding multi-racial population, and I realized that the main reason why I didn't want it in the first place was the fact that I'm lazy :)

I wanted to keep things simple, so I can actually finish the game, but I realized that adding multi-racial population isn't as difficult as I've feared, after looking at my code. So yes, there will be multi-racial population, and as a result, there will be a basic ground combat that's similar to MoO 1 where you send your population to duke it out with a planet's population.

But since migration will prove to be a bit complex with multi-racial population, I will remove it, and in its place, add "Transport" option to send your people off to another world. There's still no colony ships, but you can settle new planets by transporting your existing population to a new world. However, transporting isn't free, there will be a fee associated for each unit of population that you transport. This is to keep things simple code-wise yet balanced. When transporting, you can select which races to include, and how many of each race individually to send. So if you want to invade a planet with a superior fighting race, you don't want to send your wimpy nerds, you want to send the jocks in, and you can do so.

Also, I feel that using a "SitRep" screen to list events feels impersonal, so I will have a screen for each event. So for example, if you colonize a planet with transported population, it will show a "colonized screen" along with the ability to rename the planet. If you steal a technology, it will show a portrait from your race in spy gear. If you researched a new technology, it will show a scientist. The SitRep will still be there, as a way to review changes that occured this turn.

I've asked my artist about adding the "ground unit" art for ground combat for each race, as well as the three portraits (spy, military, and scientist) for research screens (stole, captured, or researched tech), and he said the price will be higher. So $70 won't cut it anymore, it'd be $100 per race now. Again, this isn't required, if you just want to support the game, and want to donate, you can donate whatever amount you want.

There's also one more thing, each race may have a technology data file that adds race-specific technologies for that race. They will also have the generic technology data. However, the default game mode won't have any race specific technologies, but I will include a mod that shows how.

The game's design elements are now final. There won't be any more major design changes. To sum it all up: Colonizing and moving population are as described above. Technologies are described two posts ago. Diplomacy will be updated to reflect those changes - ability to trade, gift, or demand technologies or planets. Ship design will be updated to use the new technology data. Space combat will be turn-based and allow for more than two empires to be involved at once. Ground combat will be handled automatically and only involve two empires, but may involve more than two races. Planets may have more than one race on them. AI will compile and execute either C# or Visual Basic languages. To create a mod for the game, you create a folder in the "Game Mode" folder, and put in race data, technology data, artwork, sounds, and AI scripts in there, then when the game launches, there will be a drop-down that allows you to select which folder to use (Default, or your mod). Your save games will be stored in the mod folder to reduce data corruption.

The first thing I will work on will be overhauling the technology structure in the game. I hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew!

Donate Button Added!

I've added a donate button to this blog, it will be there temporarily until I've got the website up and running. The money donated will be used to fund artwork and sound effects for the game, in that order.

Since I will pay the artist with what I've received from donations, I won't be able to refund any donations. If you want to support this project, then feel free to do so! Just be aware that any and all donations will be non-refundable.

Here's some perks that I can provide for those who've donated:
If you've donated $75 or higher, you can create a race for the game, and the artist will create the artwork for that race, and it will be included in the game's official races!
If you've donated $35 or higher, you can create a technology to be included in the official technology tree. If you've donated $70 but don't want to create a race, but rather technologies, then you may do so!
If you've donated $10 or higher, you will be included in list of credits as those who've contributed to the development of the game.

One rule about creating races/technologies, they must not be copyrighted materials. So no races from any other 4x games, movies, etc. Technologies is a bit iffy, I will tell you if I can use the idea or not.

All people who've donated will have access to every major build of the game, and will have full version of the game when it's released.

If I've received enough funds to pay for the artwork/sound effects, then I will remove the donate button.

Combat Screen Progress and Plans

I've finished the UI for space combat screen. There's a couple of things before the screen is done, and they're ship movement and firing weapons. Retreat, next ship, prev ship, and ship selection by mouse all works correctly. It also shows information about the selected ship on bottom left, and which empire's turn it is on bottom right. Here's a screenshot:



The button's artwork is mine, so they're ugly. Same for ship selection box, but this should give you an idea on how the battle screen will look like in-game.

One person wanted special equipment into game, and as I contemplated that, I realized that it's half the fun of designing ships. The current system is basically "Laser Cannon", "A better laser cannon, but with different name", etc, with no special stuff to spice things up. So I've decided to try and give special equipment a shot.

I discussed this idea with a friend, and I've decided on the final design concept for technology.

One of the first things I will do is to redefine the technology genres. So instead of Beam, Projectile, etc, it will be Electronics, Metallurgy, Physics, Energy, Chemistry, and Biology. Different technologies will fall under different categories.

I will then make it so that each technology is researched once. But to compensate for this, you can mix and match different parts to make a custom weapon. For example, if you've researched "Laser", and you've researched "Light Cannon", you can make a "Laser Light Cannon". If you've researched "Statis", and you've researched "Heavy Torpedo", as well as "Explosion Amplifier" that increases the radius of the torpedo's explosion, then you can make "Statis Heavy Torpedo" with "Explosion Amplifier" modifier.

To clarify, you will select an type of damage (Laser, Statis, Plasma, Rail, etc), then the type of weapon (Beam, Projectile, Missile, Torpedo, or Bomb), then size of mount, as well as any other modifications, to create your custom weapon. There will be restrictions on what kind of damage can be matched to what type of weapon. For example, it don't make sense to have "Laser Bomb" nor "Rail Torpedo", but it does with Plasma Cannon or Anti-Matter Torpedo.

Non-weapon items can be modified as well. For example, adding "AccuraMax" to your computer will improve its accuracy.

The ships themselves will be modified so that they have "Shield Points", "Armor Points" and "Structure Points", to allow for different effects of weapons.

As a result of the technology and ship overhaul, the combat screen will be put on hold until this is done. But this should make the game better and more flexible in different types of technology.

The screens that I will have to redesign will be the Research Screen and Ship Design Screen. Diplomacy may need to be tweaked to allow trading of technologies, and spying may be changed in how it works. When those are done, then I will go back to combat screen and add firing/moving.

As usual, feedbacks are welcome!

Progress Report and Preview

This past week I've been working on the design and ship placement for the combat screen. I've finally finalized all the details for it, just need to implement them.

Here's the details. If you've played X-Com Ufo Defense, you will be familiar with this approach. On your turn, you can select any ship, in any order, then you can select a weapon to fire (it would default to first weapon). Once that weapon is fired, that weapon's "turn" is over. You can fire other weapons on that ship, or change to another ship and fire with its weapons.

There will be four buttons for selecting ships (you can also left-click on one of your ships to select it). They will be "Next Ship", "Prev Ship", "Done, Next Ship", and "Done, Prev Ship". "Done" means that this ship is done for this turn, so when you click on next ship, that ship won't be selected. You can select it by left-clicking the ship on screen, if you hit the done by accident.

There are also two other buttons: Retreat and Auto-Resolve. Retreat will tell your current ship to flee, and auto-resolve will let AI take over the battle if you don't want to handle it.

Finally, when you're done with your turn, you press "End Turn", then the next empire in list will have their turn, and so forth until it's your turn again.

I realized that if I include all the planets in a star system in one combat, it's not fair for the defenders (which it is IRL, if you've read Ender's Shadow, you'll understand why), as well as complicate the ship placement code. So I've modified my design idea to allow the attackers to pick a planet to attack, then the defenders will defend that planet. If two fleets encounter each other in empty space, then there won't be any planets. However, there's some random chance for asteroids to be present in the battle field.

There are five weapon types in Beyond Beyaan. They are: Beam, Projectile, Missile, Torpedo, and Bomb.

Beam have infinite ammo, can fire every turn, and is generally more accurate than Particle weapons. They will have similar weapon effect as MoO 1, as shown in my test code that I've posted previously:


Projectiles have finite ammo, but is generally more powerful than beam weapons. They're good for up and close combat. They can fire every turn.

Missiles have finite ammo, have "smart" pathfinding that will avoid obstacles in its path to its target, and are the most powerful weapon genre for ship to ship combat. They can be destroyed by other weapons.

Torpedoes have infinite ammo, can fire every other turn, and is generally weaker than missiles. They also have "dumb" pathfinding that moves directly to their targets, regardless if obstacles are in its way. It can hit other obstacles, such as asteroids or other ships (even your own ships if you're not careful!)

Now, before I talk about bombs, one thing that bothered me in MoO 1 and 2 is how fast the bombs get obsolete compared to other weapons. You can use torpedoes or missiles to destroy bases and population, without using bombs. While this may be theoretically realistic, it removes bombs as a weapon to be desired on your ships. So in order to effectively bomb planets, you need bombs, not other weapons. All weapons that are not bombs will have its damage divided by 100. For each 100 damage on planet, you kill a population unit. So in order to kill 1 population unit with a non-bomb weapon, it'd have to do 10,000 damage (10,000 / 100 = 100 damage that reaches the planet, and 100 = 1 population unit). If you do less than 100 damage, you still inflict damage (if you do 50 damage, you kill off 0.5 population unit).

Now, when you use a bomb, its damage isn't divided when it's used against planets. So bombs can kill a lot of people (if you have 10 bomb mounts with 20 damage each, you kill 2 population per volley per ship) for example. But when bombs hit other ships, its damage is reduced. So it's not good for ship to ship combat.

Now the description of bombs: They have limited ammo, can fire every turn, and can be fired from anywhere to anywhere (you can try and bomb other ships as a last resort). However, they travel slow compared to torpedoes and missiles, and if they miss their target, they will keep on going. They don't have any propulsion to steer them. They can be destroyed by weapons, or blocked by sacrifical ships. On the other hand, they're more armored than missiles, so it's harder to destroy them.

There are two parts to a bomb, the "Population" damage, and the "Ecology" damage. For example, a biological bomb targeted toward their population will be high in "Population" damage, but low in "Ecology" damage. On the other hand, a nuclear bomb deals half to population, and half to ecology. There are some bombs that's focused on destroying the ecology. You can turn a planet into a toxic or radiated during the course of space combat.

The combat ends when the only fleets (including the planet) left are those that's either allied or non-aggression towards everyone else. For example, four fleets meet for combat. One is allied with two others. The last empire have non-aggression pacts with two empires. The other two are non-aggression toward each other. This is a tough situation because only two empires can directly fire on each other, the other two will have to either pick sides, or retreat. When one of the two empires are defeated, the battle ends. If the two bystanders decides to pick sides, it will damage the relation with the empire they attacked, and improves the relation of the empire they supported.

If you're attacking a planet, its population must reach 0 before the battle is done, or if you retreat. However, if you've destroyed all the defending ships, it will ask you if you want to completely bomb the planet, or retreat. So you don't have to do the tedious task of bombing it each turn. If you think you can't fight off the defending fleet, you can send bombers on a suicidal mission to destroy as much as possible before they die.

TL;DR - Space combat will be awesome!

I've finished the ship placement algorithm for now. It looks to be working correctly, so I'll start work on other areas. I've added a display for which empire's turn it is (it also lists all empires involved). I'm now working on selecting ships as described earlier. When that's done, as well as the end turn, I will then start work on actually firing weapons, and damage handling/display. If all goes well, I might have the combat working within a month!

Also, I've got new artwork for the title screen, here's a preview:

Data File Structures and Thoughts on Spying

I haven't had much chance to work on the game the past week due to personal/family events. However, I had some chances to think over how the saving/loading games should work. It should be readable by players, so they can edit it themselves if they want, without resorting to a third-party editor. It should be well-organized so I can verify the file integrity easily. Due to those two big reasons, I've decided on the XML file format for saving/loading.

I'm sure many of you are familiar with XML data structure. For those who aren't, it's a fairly simple structure that you can grasp within minutes. It'd probably look like this for example (After posting, it broke the stuff with > and <, so I'll replace them with () ):

(STAR_SYSTEMS)
(STAR_SYSTEM name="Beyaan" color="red" size="3")
(PLANET name="Beyaan I" type="TERRAN" maxPop="100" pop="78" owner="2" ... /)
...
(/STAR_SYSTEM)
...
(/STAR_SYSTEMS)
(EMPIRES)
(EMPIRE name="Roman" id="1" race="Humans" ...)
(TECHNOLOGIES)
(TECHNOLOGY type="particle" id="1" level="3" currentPoints="142" ... /)
(/TECHNOLOGIES)
(CONTACTS)
(CONTACT id="2" relation="43" spyEffort="24" spyDefense="10" ... /)
(/CONTACTS)
...
(/EMPIRE)
(EMPIRE name="Null and Void" id="2" race="Zero People" ... /)
...
(/EMPIRES)
(RACES)
(RACE name="Humans" beamResearch="1.0" particleResearch="1.2" ... /)
...
(/RACES)

As you can see, it's easy to read and modify. I also plan on changing all the current data files so it use XML. My goal is to make this game moddable so if I for some reason stop maintaining it, the users can modify it to suit their taste. So far, those fields are/will be moddable:

AI scripts
Technologies
Races (the types of perks are hard-coded however)
Artwork (I won't compile them into the exe, you will be able to see the artwork and replace them easily)
Starting Ships (this will be stored in technology file, since it relies on technologies from the same file)
Space Monsters/Sentinels/Other neutral ships that either is at a system, or roaming.

However, the gameplay mechanics won't be able to be modded. For example, you can't change how colonization works (you colonize by migration). I think the above fields should be sufficient to give the game high replayability.

Now on the subject of spies. I've been trying to think of a good system for this. I've finalized how spies will work, but not how to fund/finance them. How the spies will work is that they will be involved in espionage only. The game's elements is pretty simple, there's no infrastructure, so no sabotage. There's no unrest code, so spies can't incite revolts. Theoretically spies could plant bombs on ships and destroy them, but since there's no multi-racial population, the standard prodecure would be to bar any aliens from entering the military ships. So it'd be pretty impossible to do that. The only option left is stealing technologies. But that's not insignificant! You could be lacking in beam weapons, and you are in contact with a race that's proficient with beam weapons, they'd make an excellent target for your spy efforts.

Stealing technologies won't work like in other games, where if you're successful, you grab a new technology. If a spy is successful, he will grab "research points" and pass it onto you.

For example, if Plasma Cannon requires 1,000 research points, and Plasma Cannon II requires 2,500 research points, and a race you're spying on have both researched, your spy can grab up to 3,500 points (1,000 from first level, 2,500 from second level). It does not hurt their research, the spy merely copies research notes and passes it to you. However, more points requires more luck, so you'll be getting maybe 100 or so points on average. So you can steal technology, but not everything at once.

However, if you have 500 points in Plasma Cannon, and the race have 350, your spy won't be able to grab anything since you're ahead of the other race.

Another thing that spies can do is enable you to research new fields. If you're not at stage for plasma cannon, but your spies grab at least one point in this field, you now can start research on this weapon. So if a race recovers an artifact from Beyaan, or some other artifacts planet (they will be normally unresearchable), you can grab some notes on it, then start research on it.

Now, here's the hard part. I'm beginning to see why MoO 2 and 3 used spies as persons that you have to train first before sending them to spy. In MoO 1, if you slide the slider to full, it'd use up 10% of your total income per race, and 20% for defense, so the max you could spend on spy/defense would be 70% (5 races x 10% + 20% defense). However in Beyond Beyaan, a game may have more than 5 races. So what should the sliders represent? It can go from 0 to 100%, but 100% of what? Should it be based off of your income? Or the amount of population in your empire? Or their population? Or some random value? If I have 100% spy effort on Zero People, does that mean 100% chance of success, or 100% of possible funding for that empire? How much should "possible funding" be? 10 BC? 1000 BC? Etc etc. If you have any ideas for this problem, please post a comment!

In-Game Menu and Diplomacy Done, Preview of Combat

I've finished up the core functionality of diplomacy screen, finally. You can now receive messages, and decide whether or not to accept (if available) the offer. It also shows outgoing/incoming message icons on top of avatars.

With that out of the way, I decided to do a quick implementation of the in-game menu where you can go to set up game options, save, etc. It now can start a new game from there, or go back to main menu. Saving/loading still haven't been implemented. I hope to do that soon though!

With most major screens done, I have two major screens left to do: Space Combat or Manage Ship Designs. Hmm... which sounds more exciting? Since I'm a bit sick of doing UI stuff for different screens, I decided to actually start implementing space combat!

I modified the space combat screen (shown in a post a long time ago) to use the new ship design code, and to allow for more than two fleets to fight at once. I had to change how ships are placed, and modify some other code, to allow for this change. I hacked together a simple combat scenario (all empire's starting fleets start at 0,0, with each fleet having three different ships) so it'll bring up combat screen at end of turn processing. This is what it looks like when you have five empires involved in a combat:



Each fleet is put at a point that's equidistant from other points, and each fleet have its ships positioned on a tangent line at that point. So you can see the five fleets with their ships facing the center of the circle. The more ships/fleets there are in a combat, the bigger the combat area will be.

This is a closeup of one of the fleet in the combat screen:


This is just a quick hack to get the combat screen to work. There's a lot of work to be done! I need to improve ship placement (they get overlapped), then do the check for possible conflicts in a correct way (I hacked it so it'd always conflict with all fleets), then rest of the combat stuff.

Diplomacy 90% Done, and First two of Meet the Races

Most everything for diplomacy has been implemented, except for relations improving due to trade/research over time, and icons for "Outbox/Inbox" messages that you can click on to see the messages that has been sent from other empires.

Let me explain how certain features will work (Note, subject to gameplay balancing and tweaking):
Trade will start at -5% and increase up to 15%. The percentage is based on gross income of your empire and the empire you're trading with.

Shared Research is that, when you and an empire have this agreement, you share what you're researching. So if you research 10 points into Laser Cannon, both the other empire and you gain 10 points (or 5 each, subject to balance) in Laser Cannon. So this way, you can research items that you're advantaged in (for example, if your race is good with beam weapons, then you gain bonus with that field, and it will affect the points that the other empire get)

Non-Aggression allows you to pass next to their fleets, and not fight at unclaimed systems. However, they can attack you if you're next to their inhabitated system.

Alliance allows you to be adjacent to their inhabitated systems.

Harass Selected Empire, if accepted, will hurt the relation with the selected empire and both you and the empire you've asked, as well as your relation with the empire you're asking. Reconcile does the opposite, but hurts your relation slightly with the empire you're asking still. The reason is that when you beg the other empire to do something, it degrades you in their view. Think of begging your big sister to stop a bully from picking on you.

Now here's the screenshot of the semi-final diplomacy screen!


The artist has completed two race portraits, so I think this would be a good time for me to introduce two of the races that will be in the game.

First up is the Humans. You can see his portrait from the screenshot above. They love war, they create businesses around it. They specialize in ballistic weaponry, missiles, infrastructure, and agriculture. They're definitely not your "Star Trek" happy peace mongering humans.

Next is the Zero People. They're sentinent computers, devoted to making the universe a series of ones and zeroes. Their creaters was easily overpowered by the Zero People because they relied on computers for nearly everything, and when Zero People gained sentience, it was a simple matter of taking over everything. They specialize in infrastructure, pop growth, computers, and production. This is their portrait:



Humans and Zero People races hate each other. It will be difficult to maintain a stable relation between those two.