I know, it's not anything new, just a re-worked screen. But it makes the game feel more polished and done. Here's the screenshot:
Next up is re-doing the in-game galaxy screen. I plan on replacing the movement indicator with lines instead of "boxes", re-do the planet and fleet sub screens, and add turn indicator and empire finances summary. Also implement the reserves idea.
Looks nice! Almost as if it's alive :)
ReplyDeleteOn the completely unrelated note, what is your design decision about when space combat happens. Is it at the end of the turn (before construction and research) or at the beginning of the other turn (after updating colonies, research and stuff like that)?
When all players are done with their turn, it will process everything (updating colony growth/starvation, fleet movement, etc), except for transports landing. That will occur after space combat phase is done. Then after space combat and transports are done, it starts the next turn.
ReplyDeleteCurious, why do you ask?
In near future I'm going to implement space combat in Zvjezdojedac but before that I have to do some changes in turn processing.
ReplyDeleteThere are two principles I've decided about. First, during his turn player can't change state of game in anyway. All the player does during his turn is applied "between turns". Landing a colony ship in Master of Orion II is example of violation of this principle. Or even better example, moving units and combat in every Civilization sequel.
Second, based on data at one turn, player should be able to predict state of his empire in next turn. Obviously combat makes it impossible to fully comply with this principle. Anyway this principle should be complied as much as possible. This a tricky one. For instance if buildings are constructed before research is performed, amount of applied research points my be different than value shown before ending the turn. In MoO 2, I find it unfair that research is performed before space combat.
So I was wondering what is your opinion about that. Consider this situation in MoO like setting: before ending turn player 1 is one turn away from researching zortium armor (superior armor) and colony that is about to be attacked by player 2 is one turn away from finishing missile base. What happens? During space combat, is colony protected with zortium armor and missile base, missile base and titanium armor (inferior armor), protected only with zortium or unprotected? What would happen in Beyond Beyaan?
Since there's no missile bases, researching a new missile won't automatically give you the best missile for defenses. You build system ships instead, and they are based on existing designs. So there's no problem with new technology just in time.
ReplyDeleteHowever, if a system ship has 1 turn left to build, and there's enemy arriving in 1 turn, the ship will be built (like in MoO 1) before the combat occurs.
For ground combat, my plan is to make sure that a technology don't automatically win the battle. Each technology will be in small increments (instead of +10 bonus per level, it'll be more like +1 or +2). So if you research a technology at the same time an enemy invades, it gives you a slight boost, but not by much, unless your older technology is very very old, and it's a big jump.