Jul 6, 2021

Lemnis Gate - FRONTIER

Welcome, Operatives!

The Quantum Highway has opened once again and a new signal has come through.

The second Lemnis Gate Developer Diary is now available for viewing on YouTube. Game Director James Anderson and 3D Artist Corey Kasperski from Ratloop Games Canada, and Community Manager Jens Erik Vaaler from Frontier break down the game's Modes and Match Types.

If you're unable to watch the Dev Diary, we've gathered the core information about Lemnis Gate's Game Modes and Match Types below.

Game Modes:
Players will be able to enjoy 4 separate Game Modes in Lemnis Gate: Retrieve XM, Domination, Seek & Destroy, and Deathmatch. Each puts a unique spin on FPS staples thanks to the 25 second time loop mechanic at the center of Lemnis Gate's gameplay:

Retrieve XM
- In this mode you need to collect Exotic Matter (XM) and return it to your base in order to power the Lemnis Gate, while preventing your enemies from doing the same. The team holding the most XM Pods by the end of the fifth round is declared victorious. Anything can happen when timelines and actions start stacking on top of each other, and nothing is set until the very end.
Domination
- Domination is all about map control. You'll need to work smart to capture and control Particle Accelerators spread across the map. Whoever controls the most by the end of the fifth round is declared the winner. Accelerators are activated on impact and can be quickly triggered by shooting at them. Set up traps to funnel your enemy into a disadvantageous position, and use whatever opportunities you can do seize the Accelerators.
Seek & Destroy
- Seek and Destroy puts you in the role of either attacker or defender. The attacking team has five rounds to destroy Resistors, while the defending team tries to prevent the assault. If any resistors are destroyed by the end of the fifth round, the defending team loses. Once the first half of the match is over, the teams swap roles and the second half begins.
Deathmatch
- As the name suggestions, this mode lets you face off against your opponent(s) in a straight up deathmatch, but with a time loop twist.

Which Game Mode sounds the most exciting to you? Will you challenge your friends in Retrieve XM, or take them to task in Deathmatch? Let's hear what your favourite is!

Match Types:
In Lemnis Gate, there are multiple ways to play the game, depending on your preference. These can be mixed and matched by number of players and how you want the turn-based time loop mechanic to play out.

1v1
- Do you enjoy playing solo? Then 1v1 is the Match Type for you. Here you face off against a single opponent over the course of a match to determine who controls the greatest team of operatives
2v2
- If you prefer the company of others you can dive into a 2v2 Match Type, where you and a friend face off against two other players as you battle over the objectives.
Turn-based
- Turn-based combat is the core Lemnis Gate experience. In each match you will play five 25 second rounds, and your actions will loop and repeat in subsequent rounds. You and your opponent take turns adding your operatives to the time loop, but you won't know who's won until the final round.
Simultaneous
- Simultaneous is the Match Type for players looking for a different type of challenge. Players add their operatives into the loop at the same time, but time still loops and repeats!

Online play is the fundamental experience of Lemnis Gate, where you'll be matched against opponents of a similar skill level through our matchmaking system in the different Match Types. However, due to the turn-based nature of Lemnis Gate, one of the great additional features of the game is that you can play offline by passing the controller back and forth between players in the same room.

Cross-matchmaking is also available! This is an optional feature that enables you to play against Operatives from any platform, however if you’d prefer to only play against Operatives on the same platform this can be changed in the settings. In addition, those who are looking to challenge their friends can do so in private matches as long as you’re on the same platform. Private matches may not reward XP, but you will be able to determine who has the ultimate bragging rights between you and your friends!

There are a lot of different ways you can play Lemnis Gate and we hope you now have a better grasp of the Game Modes and Match Types you have available in the game. Don't forget to follow us on all our social channels: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. You should also join the official Lemnis Gate Discord server to talk everything Lemnis Gate with the rest of the community and the developers from Ratloop Games Canada.

Jul 6, 2021

Medieval Dynasty - Major Roadmap Update #5!

Medieval Dynasty - SwordsOfTheSouth

Welcome Village Leaders,

Our 5th Medieval Dynasty Roadmap Update is ready for you to download! But before you return to your village, have a read on the latest additions that just came to the game.

First new addition - relationships. There is nothing better in life than a happy and strong marriage. Unfortunately, to get there, there is a winding and bumpy road to cross called flirting. From now on, you have more verbal opportunities at your disposal to win the heart of your chosen one. A compliment, a joke, a fun fact, a gossip, or the good old power of poetry - use them all to attract the attention of your lady. To strengthen your chances a little, you can also give your chosen one something special, a gift that will steal her heart you might say. As you gain experience, more options will be available to you in the art of flirting. So don’t wait, go out and meet some people! There’s someone out there for everyone.

If you are looking for that special gift, the exotic goods Vendors are the people with those unique and precious items which you can use as presents. Stay alert, as they will appear in random taverns at different seasons.

Next up are Shops and Vendors. You can now set up your own Market Stall and sell goods of your choice. And if you are in need to be somewhere else, don’t worry, all you have to do is assign a villager, he or she will take care of your place, and the business keeps going.

Set up a Market Stall and earn that extra money.

Also with this update we’ve added a new animal which lives in the forest - the lynx. Watch out though as this isn't a nice kitty that you want to hang out with. He is wild and dangerous. But don’t worry, we’ve got your back. With a brand-new wooden crossbow at your disposal, you don’t have to be worried too much about it.

Lynx - a little kitten that can cause a lot of trouble.

Wooden crossbow - a new weapon for your arsenal.

We don't want to keep you away from your settlement, so go and enjoy the new additions! We, on the other hand, will be watching the comments to see what your thoughts are.

If you want to find out all the details about this update, read the changelog below. And don’t forget to share your thoughts!

Until next time,

Your Toplitz Productions and Render Cube Teams

Short notice:

For players who continue to play saves from test versions of the game - we recommend playing saves from before the first test version - 0.6.0.0, because in one of these versions there was a duplicate NPC bug with the same names and was fixed only in 0.6.0.5, but that won't fix NPCs that already broke this way.

Changelog:

New building - Market Stall.
New profession - Shopkeeper.
New wild animal - Lynx.
New Flirting system.
New greeting dialogues.
New dialogues for NPCs with different ages.
New cutscene for the wedding.
20 new items - Gifts.
New weapon - Wooden Crossbow.
A new type of traveling merchant that sells exotic items - Gifts (Appears every season in one of the villages with a tavern).
New feature in dialogues - Giving gifts. (One per season)
New feature in dialogues - Wife's reactions to the state of the player's character.
New feature in dialogues - The wife can give information to Herold on collecting enough resources to complete the challenge.
New feature in dialogues - The wife can pass on taxes and debts.
New feature in dialogues - The chance of a player's child finding and gifting a random item.
New feature in dialogues - NPCs can point to the location of different vendors.
New feature in dialogues - NPCs can point to the location of different farm animals (to buy).
New feature in dialogues - Rumours. (Wife's additional dialogue lines)
New feature in dialogues - NPCs do not want to talk if the character is dirty.
New sounds for the forest rain.
New feature - naming Fields, Orchards and Buildings.
26 new generatable places on the map.
Hover effects on clickable UI elements.
New label in building details that allows player to check what is stored in this building.
Acceptation pop up when increasing skill level.
Boar warning animation.
Wolf warning animation.
Wolf warning sounds.
Warning animation for Lynx and Fox.
Warning animation for Wisent and Bear.
Boar warning sounds.
Bear warning sounds.
Fox warning sounds.
Giving gifts now also adds diplomacy skill points.
Skill progression bars in NPC details.
Warning animation to Wisent.
Wisent warning sounds.

If the player has only orchards, loading the game does not assign orchards to the Barn.
Collecting Hops by NPCs.
Family relationships if an NPC died or was banished from the village.
Family relationships when changing to an Heir.
If an NPC wants to leave the village while talking to the player, the NPC will leave, and the player will stay in dialogue.
Sometimes the NPC after getting up from the bench would stay and wait in a spot by the bench.
NPCs (AI) are working if there are no right tools in the building.
Setting the player's wife's affection after marriage.
Some texts in the buttons have the wrong colour.
The aquatic vegetation does not change colour according to the season.
Wrong colouring of condition in workplace/house slot.
Double clicks in some cases do not update visible inputs.
In assignment menus some slots are partially cropped if list is too long.
Incorrect labels for professions in assignment menus.
Some of the soups do not satisfy thirst.
Some of the statuses of buildings, people and animals are not displayed.
Removing player's wife from the village makes children not present in the management.
If last NPC on the management list is removed then all NPCs are highlighted.
In UI there is a little invisible element that prevents clicking around the centre of the screen.
Inputs do not refresh when in building details tabs are changed with a mouse click.
"Open details" input instead of "show/hide list" when management organiser is selected.
"Remove" input is not visible when closing NPC details.
Sometimes scroll bar in building details is visible even if there is still place for adding worker to the building.
The change house button does not disappear once the player already owns the house.
Returning to previous selection in NPC assignment when selecting NPC for work results in unhighlighting preferred skill.
If skill is at max level the input for increase level is still visible.
Building status does not update on increase/decrease work intensity.
Marrying an NPC from player's village has a pop up about new villager.
Radial menus updating constantly instead of on change. (Warning: This can result in significant fps drop e.g., during seed selection)
Unassigning animal or NPC from building does not refresh building status.
Background for acceptation and slider pop ups are not filling the whole screen.
Button for transferring to mount is visible even if there is no item to transfer.
Input for transferring stack is visible even if there is no item to transfer.
Selection blinking when the player is selecting dialogue option with a mouse.
Pressing "tab" during skill acceptation or removing/relocating NPC family results in closing the whole UI instead of accepting pop up.
Cursor in the radial menus jumps around when going from main section to sub sections of the menu.
NPC icons on map in Management window are slimmer.
When the production of an item is greater than 180 pieces per hour then the workers receive less skill points.
When the production of an item is greater than 180 pieces per hour, the less resources are collected from the stores.
Rabbit is changing behaviour to the incorrect when scared by the nearby player.
Rabbit is setting its speed incorrectly when fleeing.
Wolf and Boar flee too quickly when chasing the Player.
Bear is not hitting the player when he should during standing attack animation.
The Rooster is too loud and crowed too often.
Minor description changes and fixes.
Some of the animal spawners cannot be activated.
Names of some farm animals.
No snow on the mountains in the map background.
In the caves the models load too late resulting in visible holes in the terrain.
Going to bed at the end of the season triggers a double change of season.
Fall damage is miscalculated.
Toddlers sometimes walk away from the player during the conversation.
Pressing quickslot inputs in game menu results in changing weapon when leaving game menu.
Animals should now be properly slowed in water.
Sewing Hut and Workshop gave few technology points every time on load.
Issue causing wrong textures appearing on hands when taking off gloves.
Loop for innkeeper montages.
NPCs sometimes block when crossing a field or when walking close to buildings.
Animation of some workbenches when there is no NPC around.
If player has no autosave or quicksave there is no "continue" button in main menu.

Animals will now try to warn the player before the attack, giving a chance to escape unless the player attacks them or gets too close.
If the player escapes into the building while being chased, the animal will disengage and return to its starting location.
If the player attacks an animal during disengagement the animal will attack again and follow the player into the building this time.
Animals will no longer attack the player in building unless provoked.
Changed how hit detection is handled for animals when attacking.
Wolf fleeing behaviour when scared by a torch.
Improved shader for hair.
Improved 3D model of a Woodshed.
"Numerous changes in the vegetation and shape of the shorelines of lakes and streams. "
Some of the generated places on the map have been moved to another location.
Some of the generated places on the map have new items.
Each village can have a maximum of 3 NPCs to recruit.
Improved avoidance of NPCs sitting, talking, and working at workbenches by other NPCs.
Player can talk with a Wife at night.
Player can talk with toddlers.
Improved NPC rotation when sitting and working at workbenches.
NPCs can change activities in the morning.
NPCs can use the sickle to cut crops in the field.
Farmers need tools to work in the field.
NPCs use tools (hold in their hands) exactly as the building took from storage.
NPCs in neighbouring villages die of old age.
In neighbouring villages, new families appear over time.
Reset NPCs dialogue parameters after switching to the Heir.
If the player's wife's affection drops to 0, the Wife (and no adult children) will leave the village.
Workbenches now lit automatically when player starts interaction with them (Stove, Forge, Grates).
The possibility to build outside the area of the available map has been blocked.
Villagers require food and wood only during working hours (8:00-18:00). (10 hours instead of 24 hours)
The display range of Wood values has been changed from 0 - 1 to 0 - 100.
Thrown Fishing Spear will now only stick into fish.
Projectile damage equation - damage should now be more consistent.
People in recruitment no longer require Approval. They only require the appropriate level of Dynasty Reputation.
Removed "Loyalty to the crown" challenge.
The name of the field and orchard visible in the interaction.
Improved readability of building selection in the technology list.
The number of objects shown on the lists in the village management window has been increased.
The width of the window with details of the selected object in the village management menu has been increased.
Production and consumption rate parameters show values per day instead of per hour.
The production tab in the building details now shows a summary of production and demand.
The display of inhabitant skills in the details window has been improved.
Inhabitants in the management window have the currently developed skill highlighted.
Display of more statuses in the village management window.
In field/orchard management the basic card now displays the actual field/orchard state and there is another tab for setting what NPCs should plant on the field.
Fields too far from the Barn have an additional warning.
When selecting a profession for an NPC, the required skill is shown.
The player icon on the map in the village management window has an additional flashing animation.
Visual improvements to the list of skills.
Visual improvements to the item list.
Animation of the poison level bar in the HUD and inventory.
Titles of some management windows have been changed.
Changed colouring in trading/transferring for selected item to match look of inventory tab.
Reordered parameters on map -> temp, hour, season, year.
Now production power is changed per 1% instead of 5%.
Holding mouse clicked on the "increase/decrease" button in building's production tab will result in constant increasing/decreasing of production power.
Displaying correct storage place and price for the selected item in inventory in item's details.
Displaying item's capacity for the selected item in inventory in item's details.
Better technology schemes click ability.
Showing count of quests on the lists in journal.
In dialogue UI the arrows are now indicating whether the NPC's affection has decreased after season change and the rate of decrease.
During assignment if player clicks the slot from previous selection, it now returns to focus on that selection.
Added notifications for cases when player wants to increase skill level that is not unlocked or when the player does not have required skill point.
If building has no worker/inhabitant slots then the number is hidden in radial menu.
"No items" text is visible if there are no items in inventory or during transferring/trading.
Some items stats balance.
Item description is now blank if there is no item instead of being hidden.
Updated dialogue icons.
Changes in technology requirements.
Removing NPCs from village or changing house for people now displays list with details of those NPCs.
Double click on button on talent tree now increases selected skill level.
Precision to one number after comma for HP, Food and Water in player's stats UI.
Wood demand depends on the season. In summer, the wood demand is 50% less and in winter 50% more.
Scroll for tutorial messages.
Items with no food value (such as flour, seeds etc.) will now be stored in resource storage instead of food storage.
Every NPC lose affection over time when the player does not speak with them.
Changed skill Likeable to Inspiring Speech in Diplomacy Tree.
Tax Optimalization skill name changed into Creative Accounting.
The way "Empathy" skill works.
The process of trying for a baby has been improved.
IK behaviour with low FPS.
IK updates for various animals and NPCs.
Movement speed and animations for rabbits, wolves and deer.
Russian language.
German language.
Hungarian language.
Japanese language.
Spanish language.
Portuguese language.
Polish language.
Production system optimizations.
Save file size optimizations.
Increased building limits.
Knowledge tab updated.
Minor changes in map key descriptions.
Minor changes in some crafting wheels descriptions.
Numerous optimizations.
NPCs don't work when production is not set.
NPCs are cutting with sickle animation.
Ukrainian language.
Turkish language.
French language.
The field management window also shows the number of scheduled crops.
Hiding HUD also hides crafting progress count and all notifications.
Wolves now howl from time to time during idle state instead when start attacking the player.
Chinese language.
Brazilian language.
Swedish language.
Dutch language.
Polish language.
Exotic Goods vendor icon.
Bronze items are now more durable and cost a bit more.
Removed ability for teenagers to give "just like papa" quest.
Italian language.
Czech language.
Changed Cyrillic font.
New Cyrillic font is now used also for non-Cyrillic characters.
Hanzi font is now used also for non-Hanzi characters.
Some input buttons automatically scale up to fit other than default input.

Jul 6, 2021

PATCH 4.0

Crossroads Inn Anniversary Edition - Błażej_Klabater

Dear Innkeepers of Delcrys,

It is with great pleasure that I bring you the news of Patch 4.0! This has been a long time coming. The kingdom, and I, are grateful for your patience and for sticking it out with us! All joking aside, Klabater heard you loud and clear and brought a person onboard to specifically work on correcting and improving things.

A lot of time and effort went into not only the coding and compiling of the massive list of bug fixes and improvements seen below, but there were also considerable hours of play testing done prior to release. Not only by ‘the kingdom,’ but also by me, your faithful Court Herald! I have said that things would get better and, dear Innkeepers, we have crawled through the moat together and are now standing on the other side. And it. Is. Better!

All that being said, there are always improvements to be made and fun things to be added once the dust has settled. I have said it for months now and I say again, Delcrys is alive and well!

Let’s get to it!

Patch Notes

Added pathfinding visualization to help players with issues related to pathfinding. You can activate it by using a new button located next to the ‘God Hand’ button. There are 3 colour-coded areas:
green - outside
blue - inside available for everyone
yellow - inside available only for worker
Fixed anti-aliasing.
Fixed workers continue to try performing an action even if there is no path available.
NPCs don’t walk into walls anymore.
Fixed the issue regarding more than one person using the bathtub. (Also confirmed!)
NPCs now respond properly to deleting bathtubs while they are going to use it.
Adventurers won’t be taking baths anymore.
NPCs now are properly removed from the user tab after taking a bath.
Fixed issues related to the game assigning wrong user to baths.
NPCs won’t stay at the counter for no apparent reason no more. Now only NPCs waiting for their baths will stay at the counter to wait for their service to be prepared.
Fixed bath actions not working properly after reloading the game.
Fixed an issue regarding removing particular wooden planks.
Decluttered the screen by only showing icons for selected levels instead of all.
Updated physics check for object placement on the map.
Fixed Chinese translation.
Added option to choose a prefered counter to be used by guests depending on set priority.
Fixed animation whilst performing going to bed action.
Fixed animation whilst performing taking a bath action.
Fixed crashes caused by Vedetas actions.
Icons responding for city influence level where lighting before the level was achieved. This is also fixed now.
Fixed posh benches not fitting posh tables.
Tweaked finance system.
Removed unused shortcuts from Tips’n’Tricks.
Fixed issues regarding putting down and deleting tiles.
Translated “Allow All Objects in All Rooms” to all supported languages.
Fixed paying back debt system.
Fixed issues related to different tasks.
Shortened error messages so they fit the UI properly.
Added missing pop-ups with descriptions for objects.
Added missing counter name.
Limited the amount of wood that can be stored in a wood holder.
Fighting rings now earn money properly.
Fixed multiple bugs related to UI.
Watched resources are now sorted alphabetically. (along the bottom of the screen)
Fixed crashes occurring when buying pets in pause mode and inspecting them.
Changed the direction of the green arrow showing the alignment of benches and stools.
Fixed issue regarding multiple staff performing a single task.
Fixed income animation for renting a bed not showing up.
Fixed waitress's headdress clipping.
Corrected mouse accuracy when building on higher floors.
Fixed issues regarding sending employees to obtain a piece of furniture while they’re asleep.
Fixed bard’s music speeding up when setting time to ‘Fast’.
Fixed already known recipes showing as available for purchase. (It’s true! Duplicates are removed overnight! Furniture, too)
Updated employee levelling and their salary raise.
Fixed the rotating cats bug.
Fixed lag when switching to Build mode.
Fixed lag when deleting certain objects.
Fixed different crashes triggered by animations.
Fixed issues with translations for several asset names and UI elements.
Fixed map clipping issues.
Fixed Crude Candelabra not working properly.
Fixed Horse Armor.
Fixed Paint.
Fixed Carpet.
Fixed Classical Rug. (I am so in love with how it looks now!)
Fixed Pillar.
Fixed Billboard, so horses don’t get blocked anymore.
Fixed Bushes.
Fixed Peeping Thom location not showing or/and having the ability to interact with.
Doors and windows now give money when deleted.
Fixed room index.

_________

I have also received an Official Decree regarding other platforms. Now that many of the bugs have been fixed, focus will now turn to Mac and Linux to get 4.0 for them as well. This patch is the last one for Mac, Linux, and Windows 7/8 users and support for those platforms is being discontinued.

A few more notes:

You do not need to uninstall/reinstall the game for this patch to work.
This patch does not require starting anything over. Therefore, you should have no problems playing previously saved games that were updated to 3.0.8.
Did you know? You can skip the prologue (Act I) of the game! Check under Options>Game and check the “Skip Prologue” box. Not recommended for first-time players. Act I is important for learning how to play.

Whew! As with any large patch, there will be quirks. We welcome your feedback and will work quickly to resolve anything that comes up.

Your Faithful Court Herald,
>LeaPi<

Jul 6, 2021

Distant Worlds 2 - Dev Diary #1

Distant Worlds 2 - Mantuvec_47

Welcome dear reader and thank you for your interest in Distant Worlds 2. This is the first of several Developer Diaries that we’ll be releasing roughly every two weeks from now until release to cover different parts of Distant Worlds 2 in some additional detail.

First, let me introduce who we are. As you may be aware, Distant Worlds 2 has a fairly small development team, though it has grown since Distant Worlds: Universe. The two core team members are Elliot Gibbs who is the one and only programmer and designer and Erik Rutins (that’s me) who is the producer and co-designer. There are many additional and crucial team members who we work with every week: a “Supertester” and expert XML data wrangler and tools developer, several incredibly creative and dedicated 3D, 2D and UI artists who provide us with our models, characters, animations, effects, illustrations, interface elements and concept art, and a very talented music composer. We have also been blessed to have the assistance of many dedicated and remarkably talented Distant Worlds volunteer testers and fans who have helped us in very important ways throughout Alpha and Beta testing with their feedback and suggestions. Any acclaim should deservedly go to the whole team as Distant Worlds 2 has been a real team effort.

This initial diary will discuss a few of our key goals when we finished support on Distant Worlds: Universe and decided that making a new Distant Worlds game was what we wanted to do.

The pre-cursor to Distant Worlds 2, Distant Worlds: Universe is a very successful Sci-Fi 4x game, which while strongly influenced by many 4x and strategy games that came before it, also added some new innovations to the genre. Some of the main innovations were the seamless “living galaxy” feel of the game, the very flexible automation and advisor settings that allowed you to tailor the game to your preferred playstyle, and the remarkable depth which allowed you to dive into your preferred gameplay areas with significantly less abstraction that many games allow. The end result was a great deal of positive acclaim from players that focused on these innovations and the overall gameplay, while most of the negative feedback was related to the limitations of the underlying engine, including memory usage, performance, graphical quality and interface scaling.

Distant Worlds: Universe was unfortunately built on a 32-bit Windows engine with some very real limitations in what could be done in many of these problem areas while maintaining adequate performance within the scope of an always active “living galaxy”. We were bumping up against these limits ourselves from the initial release and they became increasingly more difficult to deal with over time.

By the time we released Distant Worlds: Universe, we knew that any future game would need a new engine that would not only allow us to make Distant Worlds look better, but would also allow it to perform better and expand what we could do in terms of gameplay choices. Elliot spent a good deal of time researching this and in fact one year into the project we even went through the pain of switching engines, just to make sure we would be able to achieve all of our engine-related goals. Distant Worlds 2 is now based on the Stride engine, is fully 64-bit and 3D and with a full dynamic scaling for all elements, including the interface. I can’t overstate how much work and time it required of the entire team to make this leap, but we strongly feel the end result will be worthwhile and will allow us to continue to develop for Distant Worlds 2 for many years to come.

The second main goal relates to the interface. In making the big jump to a new and modern engine, we knew we could address dynamic scalability, but there were also many comments from Distant Worlds: Universe players about the original interface being difficult to learn. While it was quite functional once you learned it, the initial learning curve was harder than it should have been and partly because it evolved over multiple releases, the organization of information in some cases made things quite difficult for players to find.

A significant effort was put into a re-design of the interface, focused on providing players with easy top-level access to the most significant information both for better awareness and quicker decision-making. The bottom-left area remains focused on information about whatever the player has selected, but the selection menus and buttons themselves have been reorganized as well as additional information added where it previously required diving into other menus or dialogs. The bottom-middle now has a dynamic summary when in the system level of all significant “objects’ within the player’s current location or view.

The top-left now has a series of major “headings” (in order from left to right, Empire Summary, Diplomacy, Colonies, Exploration, Resources, Construction, Research, Military and Civilian). When the player hovers the mouse over any of these, a summary of key metric in that area is shown. Moving the mouse down to the summary expands the menu further, allowing any of a series of sub-menus to be chosen that provide more information or detail. Moving the mouse off this area, collapses them back to the top, but clicking anywhere in these menus “locks” them open for ongoing interaction. Another click on the top “unlocks” them.

The top-right has a few basic piece of summary information – your current research projects, number of colonies and population, surplus income and cashflow and game date and speed. Clicking any of these also jumps to the relevant dialog to manage them in more detail. Below the speed controls are the victory conditions, game options and the message log.

The Message Log has had fillters added and can be opened at any time to review old messages. Current messages appear on the right hand side below the log. When they first appear, they are briefly expanded at first to allow the player at a glance to get a sense of what they are about, then they collapse back to a smaller color-coded message category icon. Depending on the player’s chosen options, these many include advisor messages as well as other notifications or warnings. If ignored, the vast majority “auto-expire” after a delay (a small line under the message icon shrinks as the message expires) and go to the message log. Hovering the mouse over a message allows a quick glance at its expanded form. A single left-click on the message will open and lock it so that any actions related to it may be decided on. A double left-click will go to the message location. A single right-click will immediately dismiss the message.

A third goal was to make it easier for the player to gain information at a glance from the map. Part of this involved connecting up the User Interface to the map more directly. For example, when you have a dialog open on the top left and are reviewing your colonies, or exploration ships, or fleets, or even a filtered list of freighters currently transporting Hexodorium, the relevant items will also be highlighted on the map and will “ping” as you mouse over them so that you can more quickly and easily see where everything is. It also means that we added planetary and system “badges” which provide a summary of key assets, resources and capabilities at a given location. These have a planetary system version and a galacitc version depending on how zoomed in you are. There’s also additional information available when you mouse-over locations or objects.

In the view above, you can see that for the planet and moon on the right side of the system, I have found two ruins that are not yet fully explored. I also know of two available resources that could be mined and the exploration indicator in yellow is tellng me the current exploration level and that exploration there is not yet completed. The middle planetary group just has four resources. The middle left has a star showing that it’s our capitol planet, what its population is, what its happiness is, that it has the capability for construction (both due to the planet and the spaceport) and that it is a location that can refuel ships. Under that, it shows an explored ruin, the various explored resources and that we have 120 Troop Strength there.

Finally, in order to allow you to play the game your way, we’ve added a lot of policy, automation and advisor settings and grouped them all together in one convenient location to allow you to automate the parts you don’t want to deal with, turn on two different levels of advisors for areas you’d like to supervise, or set areas to full manual control when you really want to dive in. This level of automation extends down from this top level to being able to automate or manually control planets, fleets and even individual state ships.

I hope this review of our goals in improving the engine and the user interface helped you see how far we’ve come from Distant Worlds: Universe. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with a new Developer Diary for you all!