Fixed a crash for loading of fractal galaxies, oops!

Well, hello again folks!

After a bit of a break (that's life for you) I think we can confidently say that 5.0 is not getting any better - in fact I think it's pretty good! So I'm pushing it to production and declaring that it is fully released!

The main change is that the simulation should simply be faster. Notably the UI is decoupled from the simulation logic, meaning that even if your galaxy is so big it's causing your CPU to tank - you should still be able to navigate around in it relatively smoothly (that is to say smoothlyer than before).

This is a pretty dang big overhaul of the simulation engine, I don't know what I was thinking with that several years after the game release. It started out exciting but ended up in a giant mess of multi-threading and reentrancy issues. But, I think I came out alive on here the other side.

Still, please let me know if you find any crashes, I'll try to fix them.

I can now start to work on new features, maybe some fun things like new monsters and chaotic finance attractors.

Dear community!

I am still around, and still doing work on the game! The past year or so has been dedicated to a huge rewrite of the game, transforming it to a nice and cozy mostly single threaded puppy, to an inherently multi-threaded hydra.

As you can perhaps imagine, this was a bit of a challenge, and soooo many bugs where found and fixed - this was a grand old time.

After quite a lot of time in testing it now seems to be at least as stable as the earlier versions for most people, yay! Thanks a whole heap to the community on the Discord server for helping me out, I couldn't have done it without you!

So it's time to share this with a wider audience, hence this beta announcement.

Now what's actually the end result you may ask? Well, the most obvious change for most users should be that navigating around in the game will no longer be bottlenecked by the size of the simulation. Meaning that even if you have really big galaxies, you are still able to navigate and scroll around in it smoothly - even though the simulation itself may still be trudging along a 1 tick / second. The simulation itself is *also* faster, though the most dramatic difference is definitely in the way you experience the game.

There's also a small trickle of new tweaks and minor features, maybe you can find one or two of them - but it wasn't the main focus of this update.

So if you want to help out and see if I can get this thing out the door to production, give it a spin by choosing the open beta track through Steam, and drop me a comment in this thread if it runs, or post about bugs you find, just pick your favourite bug and post that if there are too many to fit in the forum.

Have fun :)

Hellooo galaxy lovers out there, we have workshop support!

After a slew of late updates to the beta patch, including some obscure additions like 3 (not so difficult) Steam Achievements, I think it's time to release this puppy to the public - so here you go - 4.10 is officially released! It's blatantly not bug free, so as usual if you find any issues with it - ping me on Discord or by email and I'll take a look.

So again the big news is: Workshop support added! You are now able to share maps and ships with the rest of the world. Making them is quite straightforward, check out the beta announcement for information about how to do it:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/808100/view/4991679131374272342

Here's some more changes:

• Steam Workshop support added
  
• Natives added to certain systems, will allow empires to constructs their ships
  
• A lot of cool new maps added
  
• Vassalization of empires
  
• Highlighting of ship paths when selecting ships
  
• Blacklist empire specials
  
• New galaxy types: Solar system and Spaghetti
  
• Sped up pathfinding a lot, so (especially bigger) galaxies should lag less when there are lots of ships
  
• Railgun weapon added
  
• Steam Achievements added (well there's 3 of them but they are technically there!)
  
• Lots of bugs fixed and added

So have fun everybody, and we'll see what happens in 4.11 :)

Dear Steam!

I am just pushing a 4.10 version of Galimulator to open beta testing. The biggest news in this release is Steam Workshop support - this allows you to share your own maps and ships with the rest of the community, and of course download the work of others.

You can read more about making maps for Galimulator here:
http://blog.galimulator.com/8-modding/4-galimulator-map-making-in-4-9-and-onward
http://blog.galimulator.com/8-modding/2-maps

And a bit about ships here:
http://blog.galimulator.com/8-modding/3-modding-ships-in-galimulator

The workshop can be viewed here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/808100/workshop/
(or through the Steam client)

If you visit the workshop page and subscribe to something there, it will be automatically downloaded and made available as soon as you start up the Galimulator beta. Disabling them is a bit more tricky though, you will have to unsubscribe and manually delete the files, it’s a beta after all …

Once you’ve made the ship or map that you would like to share with the community, use the “Share a mod” button on the main screen - and you should be able to see your mod listed there. As a thumbnail, the game will use the latest screenshot taken - so make sure to grab one with the F12 key before submitting.

Then you will go through a couple of steps submitting it.

Once submitted, you can go into the workshop and change a bunch of stuff. It’s not possible to change the thumbnail though, so be careful to upload the right one …

There’s a bunch of other stuff too, like:

• Natives added to certain systems, will allow empires to constructs their ships
  
• A lot of cool new maps added
  
• Vassalization of empires (WIP)
  
• Highlighting of ship paths when selecting ships
  
• Blacklist empire specials
  
• New galaxy types: Solar system and Spaghetti
  
• Optional pathfinding improvements (fast during play but takes a long time to generate)
  
• Railgun weapon added
  
• Lots of bugs fixed and added

So dear community, try this stuff out and let me know either here or on Discord or by email or whatever if it works - and have fun!

Hello out there,

So finally I'm pretty confident that the 4.9 build that has been hanging out in beta for quite a while is ready for prime time - and so I'm officially releasing it! As usual, if you find any more bugs, ping me here, on email or jump on the discord and let me know.

Here's the changelog, just the same as the beta so nothing new for those on the beta track:

* Moving stars! Some galaxy types now have stars moving around in them.
* Cultures added to the game, pervading the galaxy like empires or religions
* Easy to make custom maps using just a single image file - check out http://blog.galimulator.com/2-uncategorised/4-galimulator-map-making-in-4-9-and-onward
* Added an option to disable empires spawning from Neutral
* Made it possible to designate any person anywhere you want in your empire in emperor mode
* Dreadnaught ship added (it's pretty big)
* Option to add separate density image during custom map creation
* Improve galaxy selection screen, including preview window
* Empires can now create multiple artifacts, with a configurable artifact cooldown
* Added an option to log bulletins to text file
* More empire achievements
* More options in drawing the galaxy, like removing empire borders, simple stars
* Supernovas and other AOE effects now also damage ships
* Countryball fixes
* Performance improvements
* Fixed a whole lot of bugs (like the gradually slanting text ... don't ask)

Next release would be 4.10! I have a half-implemented vassals system that I hope I'll wrap up, I have a lot of historical maps that'll be included thanks to the awesome support of a community member, and lots of nice to haves like blacklisting of empire specials, highlighting ship paths etc. And there'll be more.

So stay tuned :)

Hey everybody, hope you are having a nice spring! I've been coding a bit of Galimulator stuff and after some positive feedback from my alpha testers it's time to do a first public beta release with some new stuff. As with every beta release, there are likely to be many bumps ahead - but I do hope that there will be some brave people out there who give it a go and let me know what you think.

Here's some of the most major fixes:

* Moving stars! Some galaxy types now have stars moving around in them.
* Cultures added to the game, pervading the galaxy like empires or religions
* Easy to make custom maps using just a single image file - check out http://blog.galimulator.com/2-uncategorised/4-galimulator-map-making-in-4-9-and-onward
* Added an option to disable empires spawning from Neutral
* Made it possible to designate any person anywhere you want in your empire in emperor mode
* Dreadnaught ship added (it's pretty big)
* Option to add separate density image during custom map creation
* Improve galaxy selection screen, including preview window
* Empires can now create multiple artifacts, with a configurable artifact cooldown
* Added an option to log bulletins to text file
* More empire achievements
* More options in drawing the galaxy, like removing empire borders, simple stars
* Supernovas and other AOE effects now also damage ships
* Countryball fixes
* Performance improvements
* Fixed a whole lot of bugs (like the gradually slanting text ... don't ask)

And very importantly with this one. This version *should be compatible with your old saves*! If it is not, if old save files break, then I'd super much appreciate if you send me your broken saves so I can try to make them loadable again the next beta update.

To join the beta track, just right click on Galimulator in your Steam client, and find the "Betas" tab.

As always, let me know down below in the comments if the new features work and if you like them. Or drop by on the Discord, reach me on Twitter, email, whatever. Input from the community is absolutely essential for the game!

Hi everybody,

The fabled 4.8 update which has been in beta for a while has not made it into the production track - which means that it's coming your way too, yay!

Now sadly, this will not be able to load saves from your 4.7 based games :( BUT - the good news is that all galaxies in 4.8 (and onward) should be loadable in all future versions of the game! Unless I go totally crazy and turn it into a Pokemon-themed anime FPS game, you never know.

Here's the changelog yet again, you may have seen it before:

* Added a couple more ships
* Sleeper Service to bring back long gone empires
* Retro arcade style monsters / empires
* Added blacklist to forbid or allow certain ships and artifacts
* Tilted empire names option
* A bunch of bugs fixed

I am certainly already working on 4.9, which promises to include things like a Culture system, the ability to create custom maps from a single image file (those NASA images turn into gorgeous galaxies), a big ol' Dreadnaught, more ways that Morons can screw up - e.g. by getting their artifacts to malfunction in creative ways, an option to block empires spawning from neutral, and many more. Even some performance improvements! Join the Discord to get more updates.

https://discord.gg/XVumtY7

Hi everyone!

Work on Galimulator continues, believe it or not! I am now publishing a small update to the Galimulator beta - it fixes just one small bug but also does some major changes to how the game is saved.

Good news: Saves from the new release should be forward compatible with all future versions ːsteamhappyː ! And this should be true for all future versions, or at least it should be quite possible.

Bad news: This build will break your old saves ːsteamsadː ... But! This should be the last time that happens, as mentioned above.

Future updates with more meaty stuff is coming up, check out the #dev-log status on the Discord server for some sneak peaks of that.

Have fun everybody!

Happy New Year everybody! The Galimulator dev team (that's me) has not been totally idle in the past few months - in fact I'm just pushing a new version to beta. Give it a spin if you're brave!

Quick changelog:

* Added a couple more ships
* Sleeper Service to bring back long gone empires
* Retro arcade style monsters / empires
* Added blacklist to forbid or allow certain ships and artifacts
* Tilted empire names option


To join the beta track, just right click on Galimulator in your Steam client, and find the "Betas" tab.

NOTE: This update breaks backwards compatibility, your old galaxies will not be loadable after this update.

Let me know down below in the comments if the new features work and if you like them. Or drop by on the Discord, reach me on Twitter, whatever. Your input is pretty darn crucial to keep developing this game!