New Features as of 0.1.1

Unfortunately 0.1.1 is having a delay due to personal reasons. Lotta things happening in life throwing me off recently.

This means I'll have to reschedule the release plan.

But: that doesn't mean development halted. I managed to add quite a few neat features in the meantime!

Let me know what you think about these! Feedback is encouraged and appreciated.

Backgrounds

One of these features is colored backgrounds with better stars, including decorative galaxies in the background. Loving the sense of depth this has! These backgrounds will be provided once vast nebulae are added, planned for version 0.2.

Traits as Tech Tree

More good news: I managed to add planet traits as tech tree early! This is a rather huge and powerful feature.

The game can handle generation based on tree charts such as the following. It shows how discoverable traits should be generated for continental planets. Note how two or more traits for advanced life needs to be present in order for it to generate at all.  Note the chart is not completely implemented in the game yet.

The best part: the same trait system is being used for debris, stations and wrecks! (see below)

Here's a live screenshot of a planet that generated some life on it. The chart above illustrates a dependency of Maritime Plants to Microbial Life, and below is the implementation. This dependency was not possible in prior versions (it was merely simulated with inaccuracy, but not actually there).

Ship Wrecks

Another feature that got added to my dev version are ship wrecks, debris and space stations. Here is a wreck orbiting a habitable planet. It took quite some changes to the codebase to implement this, but it was worth it.  Objects that can now be added to the game range from satellites, space stations of different types (outposts, mining, research...), space telescopes, and other extraterrestrial or player-made objects.

There are also better name generators per game object type. These will be configurable by the player in the future, so you can use a set of custom generated names for your planets.

Radiation Mechanics

What I also sneakily added are prototype radiation mechanics. Once you go close to a planet that emits radiation (e.g. neutron stars, reactor remains), your Geiger Counter goes off and you will lose some health proportional to radiation intensity. This is a sneak peek to future survival mechanics I planned for versions 0.3 and later. It makes the current gameplay rather interesting, so I'm keeping it! Just note there is no real player death state yet.

Planned for the Exploration Update (Version 0.2)

I will likely skip the official release of 0.1.1 altogether and keep working on 0.2 instead. There are many amazing features to be added! I want to drive this game into depth even more, adding more gameplay and richness to planets and human(oid)-made satellites or stations. Here's a rough outlook for it:

• Add interactive functionality to traits, e.g.
  • Trait Spaceport -> Let the player dock their ship
  • Trait Resource -> Enable resource collection for a certain resource
  • and much more!
• Individual features for traits, e.g.
  • Trait Volcanic activity -> multiple individual volcanoes to discover
  • Trait Mountain Ridges -> multiple individual mountain ridges and mountains to discover
  • Trait Intelligent Life -> multiple civilizations to discover
  • Trait Maritime Plants -> multiple specimens of maritime plants to discover
  • Trait Fossil Site -> multiple fossils to discover and collect as item
• Inventory System
• Experiment-Based Trait Scanners (You need a atmosphere scanner to scan for atmospheric traits)
• Jump Drive Nebulae/Sector Backgrounds
• First concepts for Research Trees

Last Words

Originally, 0.1.1 was meant to have saving of star systems implemented. While preparing requirements I realized this feature is not suited for an exploration game. Saving only player-made objects, such as spaceships (later stations and telescopes) will be provided instead and much sooner. I am still indecisive whether to add this to 0.2 or 0.3.

While I didn't quite add what I originally planned to add, still am very happy about the progress, still working to increase the accuracy of my planning. I'm treading onward continuously expanding this game's features and potential.

Feel free to check out AstraX 0.1 in the meantime! Thanks for reading & playing!