Spiritus Astrum

I have spent some time adding more art objects to the project, such as weapons and other items.

It should soon be possible to find items in the world, and when found, store and manufacture them back on board the players main ship.

I also intend to add more story elements shortly.

I have added an atmospheric reentry effect to the project, which I think looks very good. It activates during reentry to planets with atmospheres.

In addition to looking good, it also helps to cover the transition from space to surface, such as the lighting and other effects.

I have also finished most of the current tests, and added some last minute improvements to the project.

The next goal is to work on some artwork and new story elements.

I have made additional improvements to the AI.

It is now possible to permanently save the AI state to the database.

This means that the state of the AI can be restored after a server crash, or planned maintenance, etc. It also makes testing and debugging easier.

I have also made several improvements to the AI system, and fixed additional bugs.

The persistent AI tests were difficult. I had to refactor and improve my code slightly, but they were ultimately successful.

It is now possible for the player to deploy their AI characters to any location or planet in the system, and then return later to retrieve them. This is also stored persistently on the server, between runs.

In future, I intend to use this to allow the player to hire and fire AI from cities and bases, for example, and to allow the AI to perform complex actions while away from the ship.

I will need to add some more functionality to this system first though.

I have completed more testing of the planetside features. I was focusing mainly on persistent objects and the floating origin system, and I found, and fixed, some bugs related to these systems.

I also ran some complex play tests which resulted in some minor bugs, but nothing major.

The next goal is to test the persistent AI support, which could be quite complex.

I have completed another round of testing for the Space Sim part of the project.

In addition to testing, I have added some improvements to the GUI’s and user input.

This worked very well, the system seems quite solid, and and issues that were found have been fixed.

Most of the testing and improvements for the space sim part of the project are now done.

I have run into a final issue where enemy AI ships can sometimes “overshoot” the player when attempting to intercept at very high speeds.

I am currently in the process of fixing this, hopefully it won’t be too difficult.

I still have some additional tests and improvements that I want to make next week.

The next set of improvements that I have added is the ability for enemy ships to spawn, and travel, in formation, instead of in single groups, and the ability for the player to control their “detectability” to enemy ships.

It is possible for the player to reduce their detectability by powering down weapons and reducing speed, but if the player is detected, this will of course reduce their ability to defend themselves, so this is a tradeoff.

I have also added in colour coding, etc, for enemy ships to make it easier to tell enemy, friendly, and neutral ships apart, and to warn the player of ships getting too close.

I have made extensive changes to the AI system.

Hostile and Neutral AI ships of all types will now spawn into the world and travel between stations.

Enemy ships will only attack the player if the player is actually detected, and AI ships can now spawn anywhere in the system, not just close to the player.

I have also added some improvements to the GUI system that displays information on detected vessels to the user.

There is quite a lot more to add with this, but it is going well.

The next phase of the project is to extensively test and improve the Combat system, and the AI starships.

This system deals with extremely long distances and high velocities, so it is quite complex.

It seems to work more or less ok at the moment, but the AI is quite simplistic, and only chases and attacks the player.

I want to improve the navigational ability of the AI, and add more realistic behaviour, including the ability for the AI and player to track and avoid/evade each other.

I have uncovered an issue where the AI’s approach speed is too fast, and doesn’t allow the player enough time to respond to their approach.

I may need to limit player and AI speeds to a specific value. This isn’t realistic, since in space the only limitation is the speed of light, but I may need to do something like this for gameplay purposes.