Open Realm of Stars 0.24.0Beta

There is now new version available for Open Realm of Stars 0.24.0Beta.

Originally my plan was add new game ending, but I got quite many good quality of live improvement suggestions, so I focused on those. I also saw AI discussion in Reddit and based on that I also modified the most difficult AI.

First obvious new UI improvement is that there are two selectable UI schemes: classic and new space grey. Spacegrey is a bit more calmer hopefully clearer. Then there are improvements for fleet movements. There is small icon indicate if fleet has moves left, or has been routed or already moved. There is also a button for regular movements in starmap view. User can also switch planets/fleets by pressing tab and tab+shift keys. Esc key also moves one view back if that is possible.

There is also improvements for leader view. In same view there is a list of recruit able leaders, so no more getting random leader when user clicks recruit button. Also if two realms are in trade alliance it is possible to recruit leader from another, as long as your realm does not have xenophobia.

There is also improvement in planet view. There is secondary tab which shows uncolonized planets in a list. Best found planetary is on top of the list and it even tries to get new planet close to your old ones.

There is also background story for each realm. This is show for human player in the beginning of the game. It depends on your space race, government, starting planet and based on randomization. At end of the game you are able to see you full story depending on what events happened during the game. You can also view story for each realm.

Then about the AI. Previously all AI in Open Realm of Stars was giving a score for each building project. Then on dice roll was done, bigger the score bigger the chance for getting that project to be picked. But in Reddit discussion, it turn out it would be better to always pick the highest score. This required quite many changes for the scoring since, now there should not be equal score for projects. For example building factory and mine got same score. Now it depends how many production or metal planet is producing and that affects for scoring.

For this AI change I also modified JUnits which actually run whole games by the AI. Previously each test had different output based on what was the purpose of that test. Now I changed that each test prints out everything. This actually helped a lot for debugging the AI and getting the improvements done.

There are also quite many bugs being fixed and added smaller new features like space anomaly which contains destroyed planet, or precious gems planetary event.

There is also new trailer for this release: