P-0

I have made some improvements to the character creator, and I have done some basic multiplayer testing.

I will need to do a lot more multiplayer testing later, this is an area of the project that has not been tested extensively enough.

I am also working on more retests of the project, and with each run I am fixing more bugs, and making more balancing and design improvements.

I am hopeful that I should be able to start a beta test at some point relatively soon.

I have successfully uploaded my first test build to steam!

It is now possible for me to begin the beta testing phase, invite beta players, etc, etc.

I am not quite ready to do this yet, but the project is now technically ready for this step.

The steam API is also working properly too.

There are still quite a few things to do before I can consider releasing the project, even into beta, but I am definitely making good progress.

I have done more testing, including some testing on an older, much less powerful, system, and everything has gone fine.

It seems that even on an older system the framerate is still quite good, even at higher graphics settings.

I have made further balancing changes to the game, and I have made various improvements to the guis and game over screens, etc.

The next goal is to integrate the steamworks API into the project, so that I can add achievements, etc, and also upload my first test build to steam itself!

I have fixed more of the minor bugs that I have found in the project.

I haven’t found any more major ones.

There are some design issues that may not be fixed for a while, such the weather changing too suddenly when the player changes zones, but these issues are minor enough that they shouldn’t be too noticeable.

I have also made several improvements to the project to make it easier and faster to produce dev and release builds for testing purposes.

I have also spent quite a lot of time balancing the various variables, etc, within the project.

I have spent some time debugging and improving the weather system in the game.

There were some issues with the weather system being called before the game had properly loaded, which resulted in the wrong weather seed being used.

There was also some issues with the snow weather effect, which meant that it was appearing suddenly, without fading in and out, these issues have both been fixed.

I have also solved a complex issue with the time of day system.

Previously, the player would simply be told what the server and/or local time was, but in a space game this is useless, since the day and night cycle will vary depending on the orbital period of the planet, it’s radius, distance from the sun, etc.

I created a relatively simple system to display a scaled, 0-24 hour time of day with text support, (Early Morning, Late morning, etc), that shows the same time segments regardless of the planet that the user is actually on.

This needs further testing, but so far, it works well.

I have fixed even more bugs with the story for the project.

These were mostly minor and intermittent bugs that I never noticed or had time to fix before now.

Some of them were a little tricky to track down, but I had no major issues with them.

Overall, the project is now very stable.

I have also added improvements to the startup screen to add more error checking and better user feedback.

Previously, it was possible for the user to start a new game without fully creating a character, which would cause errors. This is now fixed.

I have created a concept test of the player server.

This will allow players to create a local server using SQLite and use it either for offline play, local network play, or peer to peer play, so that players don’t need to use the master server if they want to.

It will also serve as a backup if the master server is ever unavailable for any reson.

I have also fixed a large number of minor bugs, and added additional balancing changes, etc.

I have also made improvements to the guis, etc, to make them more user friendly and intuitive.

I am now focusing on finding the last few bugs and making balancing changes.

I have also added some additional variables to the menus, and improved the gui layout slightly.

I have also fixed some issues with assets not loading properly in the build, and some variables that should have been persistent between runs weren’t.

I have made some extensive improvements and quality of life changes to the project to make it more enjoyable and playable.

Changes like adding more items to the maps and radars to help the player get around easier, etc.

I also modified the environment variables to improve balancing, and added improved survival abilities on earthlike worlds.

There are still some minor issues left, which I will try to fix as soon as I can.

My testing sessions are continuing to get longer and more involved.

I am still finding bugs, but most of them are minor, and some are exclusive to the build, such as shaders not being included, etc.

Most of the issues that are left are either balancing issues or design issues that need to be reworked.

I made some changes and fixed some bugs with the inventory system as well, and uncovered some remaining issues with AI creatures spawning out when they shouldn’t, which I will have to look at in the future.

I am about to start another full retest, which will hopefully be one of the lastbefore I can move on to adding more content.

Testing is still going well.

I have made some more minor cosmetic improvements, but nothing serious.

I have also started working on some game balancing changes.

This could take a long time, and I don’t want to spend too long on it now, but I did need to make some adjustments to the main timers, probabilities, and base stats that the game uses.

I have also fixed some minor issues with the crafting system, etc.