Hello and welcome to our latest devlog. We’ve been working hard on enhancing our game systems and making the experience smoother. We’re excited to share some of the updates we’ve been implementing since our last post. Let’s jump right in!

Enhanced Pathfinding On the Starmap

We’ve made significant enhancements to our pathfinding script. We tackled an issue causing infinite loops in our CreateSecondaryPath function. To resolve it, we introduced a new data structure to track the connections between cells. This helps prevent loops by preventing a cell from being connected to itself.

We also discovered a challenge with systems having more than two connections, sometimes even redundant ones. To address this, we added a method to limit the number of connections a system can have. A system can now only establish a connection with another if it has fewer than the maximum allowed connections, enhancing the algorithm’s efficiency and consistency.

Solar System Discovery State Management

We’ve put a substantial amount of work into managing state changes for our solar systems. They can now transition between various states, such as ‘identified’ and ‘explored’. This feature adds depth and progression to our game, enhancing the overall experience for our players.

This scale implies that players have visibility over different aspects of a given solar system on the starmap. An explored system will reveal all the data (celestial bodies, stations, natural resources, colonies, planet types etc, etc.), an identified system will only reveal a subset of data, such as how many celestial bodies, star type (which players can use to “guess” what planet types might exist), available resource types (like metals: 60%, gases: 3%, crystals, 37%), and more. The idea is to offer some information that, at times, allows players to make informed traveling decisions. 

These states can be triggered through normal gameplay. When a player enters a new system and performs a scan, it automatically becomes “identified”. After a player thoroughly investigates it or performs advanced scans, it becomes “explored”. 

However…

…This can also happen without the players visiting. It is possible to encounter map data fragments while exploring the cosmos (on abandoned colonies, wrecked ships, stations, etc.) When found, they add data to the player’s damaged starmap drive and can make, for example, an identified system explored or an unknown system into an identified system. Some map fragments can reveal entire systems at once.

To manage these transitions smoothly, we implemented events that trigger whenever a state change occurs. This robust structure will enable us to add more states in the future and control how each transition should be handled.

Wrapping Up

We’ve made significant strides since our last update, from pathfinding enhancements to solar system discovery state management. We’re incredibly excited about the improvements these changes are bringing to our game.

Stay tuned for more updates. We’re continually refining and adding features to improve your experience in our game world. As always, we’re eager to hear your thoughts and feedback. Until next time, happy gaming!