I'm excited to present the latest BoTC release (0.4.0) which represents a significant effort to both add needed features as well as improve the core of the game.
You can download it here to get playing! I will also be running Public Weekly Playtests! Just download the latest build and hop onto the official dedicated server every Wednesday at 9pm EST starting tonight! This is your chance to play the game with other real people (as opposed to just bots) as well as contribute to the games success by finding bugs and interacting with the game's developer (me)! See you there!
New Features/Fixes
- New resource model!
- Sectors now have a resource rating: Poor, Moderate, or Rich with corresponding amount of asteroids.
- Special sector types are now limited to normal, dust cloud, and gravity well (always a poor sector).
- Collectors now pick up/deposit 1, 2, or 3 resources depending on the quality of the sector and players who target them can see how much they are carrying.
- Reloading has been added so if you have (for example) one guided missile left you can reload instead of being forced to fire it to have two loaded.
- Tracking mines have been sped up so frigates should no longer be able to outrun them.
- Repair structure no longer resets your Repairbots ability and will only heal ships that haven't just taken damage.
- Unspecified bugfixes!
New Infrastructure
- BoTC now has it's own Master Server/Facilitator. This allows players to connect to each other by giving servers a place to register and players a place to search for active games. This includes facilitating connections through NAT/routers to make getting into games easy! Previously, the game had been relying on the Unity development Master Server (generously provided by them) which I have no control over (nor should I) and could not guarantee its reliability.
- I am now running a 24/7 dedicated server! Players shouldn't be forced to run their own servers to play and that's not how the game is intended. Having this server should give players a common place to play that is reliable with consistent performance and free up their local resources. All that said, this is the first step and I'll still be trying to gauge how an always on server performs. It will likely need tweaks over time and it may require restarts. If you do notice issues feel free to tweet me (@CodestarDev) and I'll get to it as soon as I can.
Netcode Overhaul
Once I set up my remote server, it became very clear to me that the current network performance wasn't holding up. With a lot of research and experimentation I went ahead and began to gut how the game works in an effort to make the game work and feel the way I know it needs to. I'm happy to say that, after literally breaking everything in the game internally, I was able to piece it back together but much improved. Piloting is now smoother than ever and while it's not going to be perfect right away it's already a massive step forward and will only be getting better!
