Hey all,
So I wanted to update everyone on the release of the .225 alpha. The good news it that it will end up being more feature-filled than I had first planned due to some elements being easier to do than I had planned. The less-good news is that it’s not *quite* ready for initial release.
The challenge has been this week in adding and testing the system-level edicts and integrating them into the edict UI. That has pretty much been done. All that is really left to do is to hook up the early ‘win/lose’ statuses (basically, if you survive 60 years, you ‘win’, and if your popular support drops below 30%, you have a chance each turn you remain below 30% to trigger a coup, ending your game; dropping below 10% ends the game automatically) and to finish up adding the last few edicts. The resolutions scaling is done except for the planet screen, and I am working on that as well. In addition (and I had forgotten about this until I was writing out the last things I wanted in this first public build) I need to write an instruction guide for how to play – oops!
While I’m talking about the alpha, I want to make clear what is and is not in this build.
WHAT IS IN: You can create planet level and system level edicts, explore systems and planets, colonize planets and set up outposts, conduct planet-level espionage, create and maintain your trade networks, interact extensively with your viceroys and governors, terraform planets, abandon planets and sectors, and most of the information-level UI and music is now in, including empire-level alerts that will popup as a list on the right-hand side of the quadrant-level view.
WHAT IS NOT (YET) IN: You can not access the science, war, finance, diplomacy and emperor info screens, the sector level screen is not yet functional in system view (though the system view is updated as shown above), the scaling functions will be functional (but I STRONGLY recommend that you play with at least a 1400 width monitor), and the ‘secondary selection’ UI for creating edicts needs some major work (currently the only way to assign a system to a sector is to click it from a list, and with no visual frame of reference if you don’t remember which sector you wanted to attach the system to you’ll have to go back to the quadrant screen and get the name). Also, the game is probably not balanced in any fantastic way – the economy works pretty well but I would like a lot of feedback on how the game ‘feels’ as far as how your empire evolves.
What this all means is while I can certainly release ‘a’ build of Imperia today, and it would run just fine (for the most part), the fact that I don’t have the planet screen scaling done yet means that only 1080p monitors would be able to play the game fully at this point. Plus, you’d have no idea how to play beyond maybe reading some of these posts, and I don’t want to release an undocumented game! Even though it’s just an early alpha, I still want it to make a good impression, especially given the number of people that are checking this blog *gulp* 😉 so while I hate to ‘let you down’ today, I hope to have the alpha released ‘very very soon’ as in no more than a few days at most. I work a regular job and I have a family, so I don’t always have a lot of time to devote, but I hope you’ll agree that .225 will be the start of an amazing journey into what I hope will someday become the most innovative space 4X game ever made.
Thank you for your support, and check back very soon!
Steve