Build your first starbase with Alpha Release 2

Thursday, September 02, 2010

Here we are 8 days after Alpha Release 1 happily announcing Alpha Release 2 titled, "Build Your First Starbase". This release is a huge step up from the first release and starts to breath life into your home world.

This release features the first edition of the the new dashboard where you will be able to see all your planets, ships, starbases and messages. It also has almost complete functionality for controlling your planets including the ability to build a new starbase on your home world.

To create your first starbase you will need to create a new training game (all existing training games from alpha release 1 have been erased). Once you create your new training game click "Play" to travel to the Echo cluster. You will be presented with your dashboard. On the dashboard you should see that you have 1 Planets. Click on the planets menu item to see your home world. You can now navigate directly to your home world by clicking on it in the list.

Once on your homeworld you can try out the build, change friendly, tax rates and build starbase screens. When you exit the game any changes you have made should be saved. Set your planet to build a starbase and exit. Then "run host" on your training game. When you return to the game you should see that you now have a starbase. You can view your starbase and try out the raise defenses, primary orders, raise tech levels and build torpedos screens.

One major feature addition in Nu over WinPlan is the ability to "undo" everything. You will see small (+2), (+10) numbers next to everything you touch. This represents the amount you have added during this turn. At any time you can "undo" or sell up to this amount during your turn. Once host runs those things can not be undone.

We are estimating that there are 3-4 more major alpha releases required before we will be able to set up the first multi player games. We are aiming for the middle of October (around 6 weeks from now).

Help with testing

You could help us tremendously by testing the following to see that they are working/calculating correctly:

Colonist growth
Colonist happiness calculations
Proper events when there is a civil war
Proper events when there are riots
Correct calculations for planet combat ability
Correct mining rates
Correct trans-uranium isotope mineral creation
No way to buy/sell anything so that you end up with more or less than you started with

If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry! You don't need to know all these things to play the game. :)

Complete release notes for the release can be found here: Release Notes

Comments

There are 6 comments - add your comment

action - Friday, September 03, 2010 3:34 AM

Joshua and all team
These are great news!! Congratulations for the work so far, and very good luck for the next weeks. I am eagger to play it!

pobs - Friday, September 03, 2010 9:55 AM

My Games Page.
Would still like to see some indicator on the My games pages as to whether a turn is untouched, in progress or complete and sent. This will allow you to immediately see where each game is at.

Dashboard
Looks very good
Starmap shortcut should also be over on left hand side.

Starmap
Right click should be for dragging the map, left click reserved for other things such as quering places and calculating distances

Planets
I built a load more factories, but the Supplies and Funds values did not update on the main planets display.
After I quit and restarted they had not taken effect.

I don’t like the Open close arrow. It looks like when you press the expand arrow that the build window would open, but it dowsnt, it just expands that section. I would suggest a down arrow to expand, or even a down arrow to expand, and a right arrow to open the build window. Same goes for all items on page.

Colony arrows resized to the left slightly when I clicked on the first +10, means that I had to move ot click further. Windo should be fixed size to prevent you having to chase the arrows.

I would place the arrows the other way around. +1 nearest centre, + 10 on outer edge. Makes more sense that way.
Nice looking window btw.

Colony has no expand icon,

Colony tax rate window good.

General
Pressing back on the mouse or browser button takes you right back out of the game and no savings had occur of the work done. Very annoying. Is it possible that back can drop you back a page or pback to your dashboard.

Turn 2.
Starbase build. But was annoyed to see that it had dissappered from the main planet window where it had said Starbase before. Found it in the picture at top, but really needs to stay in that main text section also.

Arrows in build menus, same comment as before. + high, + low, 0, -low, - high etc.

Starbase defence arrows on negative side do not show as negative.

Show supplies and funds on the starbase menu. Try to keep each menu lay out as standard as the others with supplies and funds visible at all times.

Thats all for now.

tyrion - Friday, September 03, 2010 2:08 PM

I play on a 1920x1080 resolution, so have seen none of the visual display problems others have seen. I suspect my screen is most like your development systems.

I would like the mouse scrool wheel to control the "move in out" function. seems natural for windows

I like it that I am in 1st place. Make sure that continues.

While I am dreaming, can I have more money to play with? It will be needed when we can build ships.

This implementation has done a great job of displaying information hidden in the original game. (like what is the effect of adding a defense pose or fighter, etc.) There is much information like that, while not secret was hidden from the general public. All of us who played a lot knew how to find that kind of stuff, but its nice to see it displayed in the open. In that vain, Is there any way to show the damage effects of torp builds. The "build torp" screen could show the data somehow.

Would it be useful for you to have a forum thread, or table? listing what kinds of systems, video, operating systems we are testing/playing on?

I have two systems to use for test:
1 AMD Quad core 945, 24" display at 1920x1080, Windows 7 Pro
2. AMD dual core 4600+, 22" display at 1680x1050, Windows 7 Home

I also have a wired and wireless network for the two systems, so will be able to generate the old style "local network" games used before that thing called the Internet.

My wife also has an old Dell laptop piece of junk (not Dell's fault. Its just old) with Windows XP Home

I also have a really old laptop which I have to use corded to make it run Windows XP.

Is is useful testing on these last two systems? Are they really like what much of the world has available?

chank55 - Saturday, September 04, 2010 4:24 PM

I absolutely love it, everything seemed to work. Really looking forward to playing the game.

Mike - Saturday, September 04, 2010 4:48 PM

Everything seems to work as it should, Factory/mine/defence buildings all work, taxing the hell out of the colonists leads to rioting at around the right time. Colonists growth seems bang on, Can't check the trans-uranium isotope mineral creation because i've never fully understood it! I've just ignored it and been happy with my ignorance.

Now, back to my old Ashes of the Evil Empire game :D

buddybu - Tuesday, September 07, 2010 3:38 PM

Well, I would love to try it, but using WinXP SP3, and Google Chrome, when I try to create my training game, I get the following error message:

[IMG]http://i54.tinypic.com/33wljza.jpg[/IMG]

I thought I followed all of the directions, but...

:)

Your Comment

Your Name

Post Comment