Hey friends, Brian Rubin/Space Game Junkie here, and welcome to our first monthly development update! This is something I figured we should do to keep y'all in the loop as to how development is progressing toward 2.0, so I'll whip this up on the last Friday of every month. I just thought of this a few days ago, so this entry will be a bit sketchy, but future entries should be...better. ;) With that said let's dive in. Keep in mind this is all for the current 1.6 branch:
- Release 4 (1/3/21) - This corrected starliner routes, fixed tables for space foces, properly denoted which planet you've entered orbit of, fixed exiting fleet command and added some bombardment features for escorts. It also added more fluid escort movement to make them seem more realistic as they move through space.
- Release 5 (1/11/21) - This added the hold fire all command, which is a very useful way for commanders at higher ranks (prefect and above) to stop firing on an enemy in case you need to get the kill shot or disable it. This also fixed memory problems.
- Release 6 (1/17/21) - This added laptop-friendly keys, added more functionality to the hold fire all command in the space forces table, and big news, added more layers to capturing an enemy starbase. Now a starbase needs its shields, torpedoes and phasers all knocked out before it's marked as disabled and ready for boarding.
- Release 7 (1/24/21) - This fixed the never-ending space marines problem when trying to board a starbase. This also fixed memory problems, improved the notepad, and my favorite, added an indicator to the star systems table to denote which systems have enemy activity detected by your fleet.
- Release 8 (Tentatively 1/30/21) - We're testing this one right now (I got over an hour with it today), and it fixes some bugs we discovered with release 7, like some planets not being able to be scanned or not being able to set default speed. In my hour I spent making bases and killing UGA ships, I only had one issue which should hopefully be fixed soon (engine sounds cutting out).
So as you can see development is proceeding fairly rapidly. The hope is that release 8 of 1.6 is stable enough that Trevor can then move on and focus on adding new features for 1.7, which should hopefully drop in February. We'll keep you posted. Thanks for reading, and hail Zagar!