After a lovely summer break, I'm back and have a cool new feature to show! This time it's the territory control system. Players can build inside their controlled territory but not outside or in someone else's. Players must now be strategic about expanding and managing resources on planets.
The two buildings ( as of now ) that will allow you to expand your territory are the Colonyhub and the Territorialhub. When two players build too close to each other, the player with the strongest territory control in that area will remain, But weaker players will lose their territory to the other player.
Luckily with this almost done, we are one step closer to the first release! But wait, there is more!
The second new and helpful feature is a strict top-down camera for planets! Players can build more precisely and have a holistic overview of the planet.
I hope you all had a great summer, and remember to join the Discord HERE.
Devlog 9th of july
Hello Directors!
Summer time is finally here and that means I am going for a much needed vacation. I have been doing some background updates which are not visual. The most visual update now is floating 3d icons above structures which are not functioning ( Missing road, resources or power etc )
With that said, I have decided to keep this devlog short for the reason that there is a cool thing in the works but it is not ready just yet so I made the choice to postpone the info about it until after the summer. However, it is a cool thing that helps you in the planetary view!
Have a great summer!
Devlog 24th April
Hello directors!
This time around, I have been refining the design system and wrapping up some of the loose threads on the component design system. Mainly the UI have been improved but also how the design works and how it interacts in the game.
Components
In a nutshell, you as a player design a new component from a specific blueprint. For instance, lets pick ship hulls. There are different types of hulls for different purposes. There is for example a Cargo hull and a Combat hull (more to come). Both can be used for ships but give certain bonuses to different areas. The cargo hull will naturally give bonuses to hull and logistics. While the combat hull improves defense etc. Each design also consists of "blocks". These are blocks to represent different parts of the design, for instance the cargo hull has an extra "Cargo compartment" where the combat hull will have an "Extended armor" block. Both get advantage of being built by different materials. Aluminum might come handy when being used in cargo compartments but will not perform well in combat due to its softness and low melting point.
There are many options for each player to make designs that fit their purpose. However, since each design is global and later controlled by each player it is an and advantage to be the first to create a design. But research is expensive so piggy riding on someone else’s design can be favorable too.
Overview
To give the players some overview on what is required for each component to be built, there is a hierarchical view from where you can select to design specific parts or start with the target design.
Extra bonus
With the system that is currently being used by the game, allows for one thing I did not expect to be possible easily. But it is the possibilities of modding. Currently, there are only JSON files telling the game how different designs and items are supposed to be represented in the game. But that also makes it possible to load different JSON files depending on a command line parameter. However, I am not sure I will include this in the early access release since it is pretty tech heavy to maintain when bug reports are coming in. But it will be there in the future. I guess I am confirming modding support. Yay! (Probably will regret this someday ːsteamhappyː)
And as always, Join the discord and follow the development and chat with other people about epic sci-fi! Join the discord HERE
Devlog 6th March
Hello Directors!
Updates
After a break from devblogs I'm back with more energy and some nice updates for the Translunar! First off I'm going to change the devblog posting to once a month for more intressting and substansial updates plus it gives me more time to produce some good screenshots of Translunar to showcase the updates.
Trading
In the previous months I have been working with the trading system, which is currently beeing tested. The overall idea is to make it as easy as possible but yet give the players the option to customize their traderoutes as well as possible. For now there are sliders saying how much you can load and unload on each stop, if one comoditiy is taking more space all other cargo will be capped so you can't possibly "Overload" one comodity and not know about it.
The cargo sliders amount will dependent on the largest cargo capacity of all this ships assigned to this route. When a smaller ship tries to load the same configuration it will instead try to keep a precise percentage reflection of routes comodities. In the future this will be avalible to be altered by the player how smaller cargo ships will fill themselves. But for the Early access build the percentedge configurations will be the only option.
Radar zone
A more visual cool new thing is the fog of war for ships. Previously there was just an distance calculation done based on the radar range of the ships compoenents. Now there is a scan range and objects in the universe will block the radar.
As can be seen in the screenshot, players will now be able to hide behind planets/stations/asteroid belts etc to hide or lie in ambush on an unsuspecting prey. There are also a few different customization settings for this - Settings for choosing if you want to see the overlapping radar zones for individual ships or just see one whole combined radar zone.
You will also be able to set a transparency setting if you want to have the radar zone very dim or highlighted.
Other than theese two major things my time have been used to deal with bugs to make everything run smoothly.
Hello Directors! Christmas is around the corner and it's a busy time for all! This time around Translunar HQ we are about to take a holiday break and get back with fresh batteries after new years eve.
After the last devblog there have been major improvements with the performance during load times. No one wants to play a game that is loading forever, and Translunar is not going to do that! For those who loves the numbers, we went from 20 seconds to about 4 seconds with our worst load time!
