The Spatials V3 devblog 2016-05-16
Internal development notes, very slightly cleaned up and commented a week later.
TL;DR: docks for officer ship shuttles, the home system is now always centered, better level progression for galaxy systems, the object build tool now has an info panel, better firefighting, fix rotting and re-enable miasma, initial recruitment concept and recruitment centers, reputation screen and embassies.
The initial work for important game systems was started this week, along with fixes for some systems that were implemented in a prototype way.
- dock assign for officer docks
specific info panel
show fleet picker and allow to select any ship
gives soft reference in ship to preferred dock
if destroyed the ref just becomes invalid
can be changed anytime
use for cargo unload and for officer spawn
- test dock parking in station
animation: 5s, shuttle starts in some upper area and docks on top of dock object
can use an entity with biased screen Y and some extra Z bias to stay on top
then dock changes pose to action
use procs for movement and destroy
leaving: same in reverse
use visitor dock as test
- shuttle parking for officer docks
monitor linked ship state and position, spawn/launch shuttle when required
robust against ship changes, assumes link is ephemereal
- put shuttles in sprite sheet
- fix possible shuttle position errors
After the revamp to galaxy travel it was time to add the station counterpart. Officer docks are not placeholders anymore. You can assign any of your ships to dock their shuttles on them. When they park in the home asteroid, officers and cargo will be unloaded around the dock. If a dock is not assigned it will still use the central teleporter room. This will be very useful to separate your crews from the rest of the station, and to unload their cargo near your production areas.
- tweak galaxy gen
home always in center
system level is proportional to distance from center
systems are generated in corona waves, to make sure certain amount of certain level
center always tries to have at least some connections to low level systems
do before other link gen
- move some civs to spawn in a bit higher levels, not all at level 1
To make the galaxy more playable the level progression of star systems has been made more predictable. The home system will now always be centered and its connections will always link to low level systems, making the very early game more predictable. This will be important for new playes and for future guides and tutorials.
- right panel for build tool, with current selected floor/obj info
The build required display more information about the selected blueprint, so it was required to start work on a info panel.
- find a solution for fire and firefighting
introduce concept of on-hit pivots
now the pivot testing for jobs can happen on a first hit of the boundary, not just at the center
Firefighting was done months ago, but it still was in a semi broken state, with firefighters being damaged by the fire and running away because they cannot fight it back with their weapons (extinguishing it doesn’t count as an attack). This has now been fixed by allowing jobs to be performed as soon as the worker enters the boundary, instead of waiting for it to arrive to the center. Fires where then switched to this new feature and their job radius was made wider that the range of the damage.
- proper rotting system
use an accumulating over time strength value
more nearby rotting entities accelerate it
- re-enable miasma
add rare disease chance
add negative feeling
Another system which required fixes. Rotting entities now accumulate a rotting-over-time value, which also takes into account other nearby rotting entities. A discarded paper cup won’t produce miasma until a long time passes, but a dozen of them will get there much quicker. A pile of corpses will go bad very fast.
The miasma clouds now produce negative feelings and also have a rare chance to give disease.
- recruitment concept
bring back staff screen, minimal impl for regular staff
separate listing for candidates in staffview
Staff object keeps listing of candidates
basic game gives few recruits
- recruitment center concept
building a center in planets gives higher chances of recruits applying from that planet
no real meaning to this for now
staff candidate list size depends on amount of recruitment centers
- add body of origin to officers
The first pieces of the officer recruitment system have been implemented. It’s now possible to build recruitment centers on planets, which will send, from time to time, a recruit to your recruit queue in the staff screen. From there you can check their stats and decide on hiring on them.
- add reputation view (in place of contracts view)
- embassy concept
slowly adds reputation for the civ in the planet
one for each planet
there is a cap per planet
add embassy count in reputation view
Similar to recruitment centers, it’s now also possible to build embassies on planets. These embassies slowly add positive reputation to your relationship with the local civilization colonizing that planet, up to a certain per-planet limit. A new screen for tracking your reputation with the civilizations of the galaxy was also added.