I have added some new debug flags to make debugging easier with the build.
I have also made a few more minor improvements and bug fixes to guis and player interaction, etc.
I have improved the legibility of text in bright lighting conditions, and fixed a minor lighting bug in the build.
I have also made some other minor cosmetic changes.
I have some more testing to go, but I am hoping that the introducton to the game should be done this month.
I have completed the run of tests that I was working on, and I didn’t discover any major bugs.
I have fixed a few minor bugs, and made some very small improvements. These were mostly cosmetic, but it is only now that I have had the time to really look at them.
I have also made some improvements to the story generator system, to optimise object placement within the world, etc.
I have also been working on some improvements to the guis and in-game console, etc, but these are also minor.
I am in the process of testing the project with the build and the remote server, and so far there are very few issues.
I uncovered a few minor bugs, but nothing major.
I have added a few improvements to make debugging with the build easier, and I have done some testing on the sqllite database. Eventually, I will be using it to allow the player to create player servers, in addition to using the master server.
There does seem to be a memory leak somewhere in the build though, I will need to investigate this further later.
I have made extensive improvements to the object placement system in the world.
The system is now capable of searching for the flattest terrain within a given radius of the player in order to place objects.
This makes it much less likely that the objects will be obscured by the terrain, or that they will be hanging off of the edge of steep terrain.
I have also made some improvements to AI spawning, and discovered some additional bugs with adding AI characters as crew members.
I believe I have fixed all of these issues, but I will need to do some more testing to be absolutely sure.
The next goal is to test the project more with the remote server and executable.
I did discover some issues with the networked AI system, but these thankfully turned out to be minor.
The AI for the creatures and NPC’s/enemies, etc, is quite a lot more performant and robust now, but I still need to continue testing its functionality in multiplayer.
I have also completed some more extensive stress-testing of the system, and I didn’t discover any issues. I believe there may still be a memory leak somewhere in the system, but I haven’t been able to discover it, everything seems to load and unload into and out of memory fine.
I have also made some improvements to procedural object spawning, etc, in the world.
I have completed another full retest of the story system, and made several more improvements and bug fixes to it.
There were some issues preventing some NPC’s and characters from spawning properly in some conditions, these were fixed.
There are also some issues with adding Characters to the ships crew. When these characters spawn in the world and are then recruiting onto the ship within the same run (Without saving and quitting first) there can be issues.
I have made several improvements here that should fix most of these issues.
The next goal is to test and improve the networked AI system.
I am working on another complete retest of the project, and I have managed to identify and fix two intermittent bugs.
Both of these were caused by the story system not properly setting the control object of the player when the player entered a ship.
The next goal is to finish the retest and test the space-based and client side AI more.
I believe I have fixed the issues with the AI on changing zones.
The issue was that the AI wasn’t paging to the client when the player left a zone and then returned.
This required some rewrites to the server-side code, but it seems ok now.
The server AI is a lot more solid already, the next step is to run more tests to see if I can spot any additional bugs.
I have made improvements to the Combat system in the game, which means it is now easier for the player to detect and intercept enemy missiles, etc.
I have also further tested and improved the spawning system to fix some issues with AI spawning when they shouldn’t.
I also added the ability for AI to be created and destroyed on the client only, without being added to the server. This is very useful for the story missions.
The issue with changing zones is more serious though, this is related to the “custom interest management” system that I added during a recent server overhaul. This could take some time to fix.
I have started extenstively testing the the Space-Based AI system.
This system has not been tested as much as the other systems, so there are quite a few bugs and improvements to make here.
The first issues that I had to solve were with the spawning of the AI. There was a bug which meant that in some cases too many AI enemies would spawn per system.
There are also issues with the player changing zones, and with the AI not being able to properly track the player in some cases.