Open Realm of Stars 0.27.0

It has been almost a year since the previous version. There have been some major changes in the game. The biggest change is definitely that players can now create their own species and government types. You can now create some really interesting species, like a robot species that eats metal or a robot civilization that lives on photosynthesis. Or how about a species that derives its life force from money/energy and only lives in orbit?

Since the game is single-player, I didn’t even prevent the possibility of making an overwhelmingly strong species or government type. The AI can also use these custom species/governments.

The game now reads these from the user’s home folder, so in theory, it's possible to create mods that introduce new species/governments, etc. You can also change their graphics if you're up for it.

The AI has been improved; it can now manage planets a bit better, especially on artificial planets, where it used to make stupid mistakes, like building mines on them. The AI can now explore space a bit better and attack space stations from the side instead of directly from the front. It’s still pretty dumb and can’t compete with a human, but I just don’t know how to make it smarter.

Most of the improvements have been focused on the fact that, thanks to custom species, the game can now have combinations that were not possible before, which caused bugs. For example, species that live solely on energy couldn’t reproduce at all unless the option to have them build new ones was selected.

Additionally, if you're in an alliance with another player and you’re both at war with a third party, when peace is made, both allies make peace at the same time. Furthermore, you can ask your allies, if you’re both at war with the same opponent, where their planets are. This way, you don’t have to search for the planets first, but can start planning the attack right away.

I also added a completely new feature to the game, which might not have been in any previous 4X games, called the 'snowman mode.' When a human player leads in some victory category and the game has been played for at least 100 turns, you can activate the so-called snowman mode and let the AI finish the game. Afterward, you can see what happens. If you didn’t win, you can reload your game and continue. This can be useful if you’re tired of the endgame and don’t enjoy it. The name comes from the idea that a 4X player conquers other players like gathering snow to make a bigger snowball. Well, you can turn that snowball into a snowman, hence the name.