Hello everyone and welcome to this, the latest, progress update for Space Crusade. A lot of stuff has been going on so let's get into it.
A few weeks ago version 0.5A was official completed with the release of Build 5. I have since begun work on 0.6A and I will have a whole section on that later. First though I wanted to talk about Build 5. I added in a few new things into the station/player info menus. First is an option in the station menu that will, eventually, allow you to install weapons and other equipment onto your ship. Currently it is set up to only allow installation of basic mining lasers into frigate-class ships (no more save editing!...at least for frigates). This will eventually be expanded to include all weapons, all ship classes, and equipment once it is added. A second one is in the player information menu off of the game menu. This one allows you to see what stations you have stuff stored on; kind of like Eve's Assets window. It still needs some work though in terms of how it looks.
In that same menu the Detailed Ship Information option has also been updated to include anything that may be stored in your ship's cargohold. The movement system has also been updated. I have fixed a long standing problem where the Y and Z axis movements were switched with each other and I also included x+/x- type indicators on each option so that you know which direction your movement will take you instead of having to guess. Ship battle has also been updated. Now when you enter battle the intial "Choose a target" screen has been changed so that the "No" option will now act as a retreat attempt. If you fail to retreat then you are entered into battle and must use option 6 to attempt retreat.
Last I did a lot of work on the casino but I have not yet enabled it in-game. I will be doing more work to complete it in 0.6A and then heavy testing.
While I was planning on adding a lot of new content in Build 5 things kind of spiraled out of control after I got sick and was laid up for a week. As it is only a few new things have been added. These include two new ore types and the purchasing of mining barges and lasers in-game. The ores are called Methyx and Carboid. Methyx will produce into Lithium while Carboid produces into Draconic.
Here is a list of the bugs that have been dealt with in Build 5:
And now for the coup de grace, the section on 0.6A. I have been doing a lot of work, as I mentioned, to get the modding system up and running and that is just what I have achieved. I could not figure out for a while how I was going to implement the idea but I finally found Boost, an open source C++ library set. One of the libraries in Boost, program options, is an ini importer. I got it set up in the code and tested it out and it works perfectly. I am currently trawling the code and looking for areas where the values need to be placed in the ini file.
I also did a lot of structural work on the database as well to prepare it for the modding system. I am in the process of creating ranges of empty records where new things can be added into the game at without having to move things around yourself. I am also working on an application that will allow you to easily create new stuff without having to even know SQL or have an SQL editor. However for balancing your mods or if you want to check to see if things are working as they should knowledge of SQL queries will still be required.
Not to fear on that end as I am currently in the process of making the modding guide which will include a primer on SQL. I am making two versions, a text based one and a video based one. The video guide will have more information than the text guide both on the subject of modding and on other, but related, information.
I do not have any audio this time as I did not really do too much on that front though I did some work on the trailer audio. I am going to try and have a few new game tracks for the next update.
Finally here is the first part of our tenth developer's vlog. The entire edition series is 13 (I think) parts long and I will be uploading the rest of the videos throughout the week.
That is everything for this update. Thanks for following the project!
I might be speaking for myself, but despite enjoying programming, i find it simply incredibly boring to watch someone else do it.
It can be. Lots of dead air and technobable and nothing really that interesting going on (maybe they should make a coding commentator thing to make it more interesting ["Oh, look he has just finished coding that class!" *in John Madden voice*]); especially over long periods in a non-tutorial fashion.
Then you have stuff like what will happen in these where some of the code I was using was wrong and I did not catch that until well after these videos were recorded. While I was watching them after rendering em out I found myself yelling at my screen after a while lol.