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ATTENTION: Galacticus has it's very own website. The Galacticus website
has some of the latest information on the game/genre as well as being the place to bookmark for the public Alpha test application.
I am converting this page to a general development blog type thing to track development of the game. For the initial entry check
out the General Background below.
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Overall integration is still progressing very nicely. I had that sinking feeling the other day, that feeling you get when you suddenly realize you are
dooooooomed. Well, it turned out not too bad. I was working on some of the production code and letting the tech level run out through the end,
checking the results at each new level for several races. About a quarter of the way through the tech tree there was suddenly this disasterous
skew that could be exploited to give the empire vast powers that would unbalance the game. After some exploration it turns out one of the
production formula for allocating research spending was a little off and with a quick fix the tech progression worked great.
Other integration items are going much more smoothly though I am anticipating some issues with the economic model. I am betting that will require
considerable tweaking to get it right.
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Wow! So I am at that special part in the project where pretty much everything that can be done on separate modules has been done! This
means of course that the closed Alpha Test of Galacticus is right around the corner as I am now working on integrating all the various
components into a larger whole! It's a pretty exciting time in the project for me, for awhile it had been hard to see the so called
light at the end of the tunnel (or in space strategy terms the nova blast at the end of a campaign to destroy a star system). But. Finally.
Wow I realized this morning that I was suddenly integrating all the ship control + planet control + production + economy + diplomacy + the
multitude of other components into a single playable game! I am happy-happy-happy!
I have a solid 90-100 coding hours ahead on the integration work. So, since this is a hobby project and all, I think I will probably
be opening up the alpha test early to mid-October! Whoooooo! Keep checking back here and over on the Galacticus homepage for information
on an alpha tester application!
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It's been pointed out that I am now 3 months late getting the Battle Simulator published. Of course that announcement that may have
been an early April Fools joke. :)
Rest assured that progress is coming along great on several things, I have primarily been spending my energy on other aspects of
the game such as diplomacy and racial configurations rather than the battle code so. Expect some more updates real soon on core
parts of the game!
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Progress has been going along very nicely recently. I have finished adding a complete faction/guild system to Galacticus! Factions are
traditionally something you would see in a fantasy themed game, I decided to use some of the design concepts I had in notes from way back
and implement a full faction/guild system for Galacticus - in the game factions share enemies, allies, trade bonuses, some technology and a
common fund to develop their fleets and armies. Faction members may take part in any other member fleet as if their units were of the member
empire (there are no reductions in strength/effectiveness).
Guilds. Well, I think I am going to keep those secret for awhile. :) Think back to D & D with assassins and thieves guilds... or perhaps to
the movie DUNE with the spacing guild. Those ideas will give some hint as to the power and flexibility a guild will bring into the game mechanics!
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As some of you know I was really, really excited about making mobile games a priority for Warped Studios. Well, I am fairly fed up with working
with other people now, at least other people I am not paying and are not accountable for progress. Game development is this thing that people
think is so much fun when they start getting into it, then the reality of the amount of actual work hits them and they loose interest. My policy
after the first failure of Warped was to only work on games as a hobby and really not take on anything I could not complete 100% myself. I may have
mistakenly altered this policy with the focus on mobile games, yeah, I can do those myself, there was no aspect of any of the proposed projects that I could not excel at,
but unfortunately the other people had taken on things that were their specific areas of expertise and have since bogged down. I don't find mobile games
enough fun and would rather spend my time on something more fun, though perhaps less financially lucrative.
This may sound like a bad rant, but actually it's great for Galacticus!
You see, the other people can go off and make progress or fail on the other projects and when the time is right I will be there to help out, but
as far as game development goes I am only focusing on Galacticus and a couple of directly related games. These are games that I work on because they
are relaxing and fun, 'cuz, hey, if I wanted to be miserable I'd just work for someone else. ;) I can go off and work on coding or graphics or user community
support applications, tracking my progress against the master plan. And I have fun doing it and forget about other companies I may be affiliated with.
Progress may seem to have slowed recently, but in fact it has been progressing at a respectable rate. Here are the current stats:
| Core Engine coding | 85% complete |
| Enhanced Engine features | 50% complete |
| Web front end | 75% complete |
| Graphical front end | 20% complete |
There are other elements that are not tracked on this like the community code/forums, final graphics, sound effects, etc. Those elements are progressing quite nicely too, especially when I am not in the office and
I have time to relax and create.
Anyway, that's my update for now...
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Galacticus is picking up a little speed. Warped Studios is mired
in administrivia (incorporation, biz plans, etc) so I have been preserving my sanity by working a bit more on my hobby project! The game engine is in
great shape and right now I am working on some wizard-ish game setup stuff that will allow testers to create their own random games for 2-8 players (2d4 ;) ).
I'm concerned that the game design will not be a great experience with so few players, in fact I am pretty sure it will be really imbalanced as the minimum
number of players I had in mind while designing galacticus was 100 per game.
On other news I picked up an upgrade to TrueSpace 6.6 (I had been using 4.3). Not only does this version have some limited renderfarm capabilities but it
also has vastly improved modelling and rendering tools!
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Plenty happening with Warped Studios, not so much happening with Galacticus. :(
I am currently focusing on getting the administrivia of the company taken care of and working on a couple of game projects to pay the bills. Galacticus is
still progressing though - I am managing about an hour a day to work on the coolest, biggest Grand Strategy Space Empire game of all time!
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Progress is picking up again on the Galacticus project! I've seen the last of the 50 hour weeks at the ol' day job
for the forseeable future and after spending a day reading The Silent War I'm reenergized for some Warped Speed development. :-)
The next thing to expect on the Warped site will be a battle simulator. The Battle Sim will allow
you to configure 2-4 fleets and set them fighting against one another. There will be a subset of ships available and interesting modifiers like the crew experience
and technology packages to test out. I have designed the sim to only present results in text format at this time and plan to
have the server log all configurations and results so I can analyze the early design for problems of balance.
The way things look I would say to expect to see the B.S. on April 1st. ;)
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As I expected the progress on the game has slowed somewhat. At work I have 4 major .NET project
rollouts in the January/February 2005 timeframe and as the Senior C# coder/architect with
the company that means a lot of hours of QA and application performance testing for me.
I plan to be back on track in early March as the day job will be winding down to a sane pace.
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Galacticus is a multiplayer grand strategy game that I am currently
designing and building. Inspiration has come from many past games such as
Master of Orion (DOS), Conquest and Destiny (text/email based game) and
Galactic Civilizations (OS/2). Depending on galaxy size 10-3000+ players
will be able to compete in a particular galaxy. Leading their race to victory
through strategy, economic planning, diplomacy and out right deception. As many
of you know this game has been a pet project for a long time, heck parts of the
galaxy generation code and event system came from development work that I did
10 years ago (C++ on OS/2).
Speaking from a technology standpoint the game is being written in C#/.NET and
the initial testing interface is a web browser based client with image
generation happening in real time on the server. I do not intend to
release Galacticus as a web-based game, the current browser based version is
being developed to help finalize the client design and it will ultimately
become the admin tools when the game is complete. Once public testing of the game
engine is underway the client interface will move to either an installable .EXE
or a Flash 7 application (that can run standalone or in a browser).
Currently the design is complete and development underway. Closed Alpha testing is currently
underway on the game processing and core UI systems. I plan on having a more open Alpha
soon, this is a hobby project for me so I am not entirely sure when, sometime early 2005. Check
for the Alpha tester application on my studio's website.
Here are some *early* screen captures of the game, please note that they are
only development graphics and it's doubtful the final interface will
resemble LCARS at all (though y'never know, I'm starting to like the
UI ;) ). Enjoy!
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| Star Map |
System View |
Planet View |
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Copyright 2001-2005, Andrew S. Rielly all rights reserved.
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