This week I spent most of my time tightening up the Captain experience in Stellar Fortune. This involved a lot of tweaking of Traders so that there is a good choice of jobs available to the player. I also whipped up a simple starting screen for next week's public test. I added the concept of Star Systems to the game, read on for more details.
As Douglas Adams said, space is big. Originally, I had planned just to have one big open map to represent space. While neat, it just wasn't practical. The game engine can only handle a finite coordinate system. I'm nowhere near the limit, but I didn't want to hamstring myself from the start. As a result, there are now discrete Star Systems (minus the stars).
I also changed the way zooming works. Once you zoom out far enough it will switch to an overhead view. Eventually I will add a map button which takes you to the farthest zoom.
The area between systems is pretty much a barrier. Your ship will expend twice the amount of fuel while outside the boundary. The only way to travel between systems is using a Warp Drive, which not every ship has. The AI has been improved so it can travel between systems as well.
Next week (Wednesday) I will be releasing the first Alpha version for PC/Mac/Browser. It's more of a tech test than something playable.
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