End-of-summer Update

21/09/2020

Hello everyone !

It's been a longtime since the last news, no ? Yeah, 4 months ago, I was publishing the public version first anniversary news !

Summer work

The game developement has slowed down to a "maintenance mode" during summer, I wanted to take time outside the project. But I did multiple minor updates since the anniversary news:

06-11-2020:

Fix:
- Fix clientside cache

Improvements:
- Reducing game music from 26MB to 4MB

06-13-2020:

Fix:
- #876: Minor fuel distribution problem
- #874: Fix empty fleets cleaning
- #892: Fix a bug with tutorials validation
- #893: Impossible to rename a planet

Improvements:
- removeColonyShip() is now upgrading unit counts
- #871: All players in a battle now recieve the battle report (and not only main attacker and planet owner)
- #873: Planet is updated before a battle

On dev side:
- More automated tests

07-11-2020:

Changing server hardware to improve performances

08-02-2020:

Fix:
- #894: Resources.CalcNewResource() is now counting fleet available storage
- Fix privacy of socket.io events because of async contexts

Improvements:
- Removing duplicated research dependancies
- Added new research dependancies
- #907 - Visual improvements in ranks, added Darolean Consulate player
- Improved english translations

On dev side:
- Some refactoring from callback to async/await

08-23-2020:

Add:
- Ennemies alliances

Fix:
- The current system cannot be opened
- #930 - Fix disconnection detection in stats and on administration console

Improvements:
- Show planet habitability (ability to conquest/colonize a planet or not)
- Improved english translations
- Influences zones on the map now show ennemies

On Dev Side:
- Translation compatibility with "crowdin" software
- We're now at version 0.6.8

2020-09-20:

Add:
N/A

Fix:
- #944 - User points should be synced with planetList update on conquest end
- Fix planet habitability indicator with non-earth planets
- #952 - Clientside error
- #612 - Fix french notifications plural
- #681 - Fix usage of accents in planet names
- #897 - TypeError: Cannot read property 'parentNode' of null
- #895 - Failed to construct 'Notification': Illegal constructor. Use ServiceWorkerRegistration.showNotification() instead.
- #862 - Can't click on some solar system on bottom of the screen
- #678 - Announces: normalized chars are broken

Improvements:
- #900 - Planets types balancing

On Dev Side:
- Do not cache cypress specs
- New versionning system, we're now at 0.10.7
- Full usage of async/await when calling database
- NodeJS 14 usage
- Upgrade node-postgres from 7.18.2 to 8.3.3
- Updated discord.js from 11.5.1 to 12.3.1
- Updated mocha from 7.1.0 to 8.1.3
- Updated discord.js from 15.0.0 to 15.1.0

New versionning system

People following Twitter account (https://twitter.com/GalactaeSAD) or bien sur Discord (https://discord.gg/c8aARey) may have known about this information: I reworked the version list of the game.

The goal was to make versions look lighter, because versions having a duration of 6 months, or worse, 1 year; and having 150 issues are not really attractive.

I decided to create versions around major features or a specific field. And next to that, I created a global backlog in order to have a list of bugs, minor improvements, and minor features. This backlog can be used at any time.

This system works better than the previous one, my productivity has already came back to better level.

Here's the new version list, after the rework. We now have 9 versions from 2019 instead of 5:

New version list

Extortion

Another reason behind my slowdown when developing Galactae is my second game project named Extortion.

I will not make a big presentation of it here, it's not the right place, but here's a small description:

You're a computer engineer with a terrible secret. Someone is blackmailing you and now, you have to hack some servers and get secret files for him. Would you succeed to achieve his missions or would you find him and revenge ?

Conclusion

Thanks to all players that are helping me to improve and stabilize game everyday ! And congratulations to the top 1 player that reached 25,000 points, and 18 planets.

I hope seeing each one of you in game soon,

Have fun !

Elanis

Public version first birthday

01/06/2020

Hello !

Today, is the first anniversary of public version ! This birthday is also the 4th of the first line code (which could be somwhere in the chat :D ). I will not make an update today as I would, but I thnk that could be fun to give you some statistics on game & developement.

NB: Some stats have been added during the last year, so it won't have the whole data set.

Player statistics

Player count

Player ratio

Today, there's 233 registered players, 144 that have played at least once, and 35 that have enough played to "know" the game. I personnaly thik that that a little small but the evolution of register/new players and the intertionnalization (this news is a proof of) is encouraging !

Visit count

Visit count per hour

Blue: website
Green: game client

The colonization update on May 9th made stats better :)

Player count on server

Green: Number of currently connected player
Yellow: Number of active player in the last 24 hours (connection, build, daily bonus, etc.)

This stats are update each 30 seconds.

Developement statistics

Heatmap

This is the evolution of my productivity on all my projects. This isn't only on Galactae developement but I found it usefull.

Commit count on projects

This is really dependant on each developer, but we like stats (no ?) :D

Since July 27th 2017 (Begin of git usage):

Website: 526 commits
CDN (1 commit ~= 1 public version): 138 commits
Game client: 1886 commits
Game server: 1256 commits

Bug tracker issues

Issues by tracker

Issues by version

You can see there's a big work behind us, but many things are predicted ! (At least for 2 years !)

Conclusion

And this news is already finished ! Don't hesistate to join us in game !

Elanis

Conquest & Colonization Update

09/05/2020

Hello !

Here's come our May newsletter ! I'll talk about the 0.6.7 update: the colonization and military conquest update !

0.6.7 ? But where 0.6.6's gone ?

Yep ! You saw it ! 0.6.6 isn't public, it was developement-only version.

Let's talk about version naming in Galactae ... We can split it in 3 parts:

Major: It gives the major version of the game (amazing isn't it ?). 0.1 to 0.5 were Alpha; 0.6 to 0.9 are Beta; 1.0+ will be Release.
Minor: It's the minor version. It refers to the proportion of the next major update already done. E. G., x.y.6 is the minor version when the next major version is between 55% and 64% completed (You can have this percentage on the bug tracker, it depends on done tasks, estimated work time and effective work time).
Revision: Real unique version number, because major/minor version can represent multiple updates. It's built on YYYMMDDr where YYYMMDD is the date and r is the count (as letters) of signigicative tasks of the current day.

So, we have a version number like: [Alpha/Beta/Release]-Major1.Major2.Minor-rev.YYMMDDr

And the current version is: Beta-0.6.7-rev.200509a

That's why we are updating public server from 0.6.5 to 0.6.7.

NB: Galactae is my only project using this nameing convention, it has avantages and drawbacks.

Conquest and colonization

The conquest system is very simple: make your colonization ship survive in low orbit (attack mode) of a planet after destroying all its defenses, and you got the planet. If you fleet is destroyed, the planet stay to its owner.

During this 24h period, all is stopped: buildings, shipyard, research. Both players can know what is planet state and what fleets are orbiting the planet.

Why talking about "military conquest" and not "conquest" ?

As you may know, one of Galactae advantages is the gameplay diversity. Any player know that you have to choose your leader type: Emperor, CEO or President. In a future update, new conquest type will be add for each leader:

Emperor: coup d'etat
CEO: Hostile tender offer
President: popular revolt

And a more pacific planet conquest type will be add for all of them, the ability to buy/sell a planet.

Planet count limit

A max count of planet based on player points have been added to prevent player rushed. E.G. to have a second planet slot, you'll need 769 points.

NB: This update was really tested BUT it can have some bugs, so don't hesitate to report them

Early game balance

While testing colonizations and conquest, I tested the early game balance and edited it. I speeded up the first levels of buildings and first level of research center to prevent game being annoying.

Changelog

Add:

#252 / #638 / #680 / #706 / #717 / #718 / #727 / #728 / #730 / #769 / #772 / #774 / #776 / #778 / #779: Conquest and colonization
#739: Show player credits
#495: Show research status on main screen
#734: Singularity system icon

Improvements:

#683: New error messages and notifications about alliances actions
#757: Improve stats
#738: Resized top HUD to prevent scrolling on most screens
#796: Early game balance (building time)
#797: Early game balance (research speed)

Fix:

#771: Population showed "NaN" sometimes
Combat report were unabled to be read if attacker didn't lost units
Couldn't assign tactic to a fleet
Auto update on fleet end moved didn't work
#789: "Set as read" on multiple reports didn't erease notifications

Côté Dev:

#768: Send errors to server to make bug detection easier
I keep updating database methods using async/await to stop using callbacks and make code more maintanable

Next update

The next update should be at the first birthday of the public version (and the fourth birthday of developement) around June 1st. In this news, we'll talk about some statistics: player count evolution, active players, and so on.

I hope you liked this news, it was fun for me to write this. If you have some question/bug/whatever, you can answer to this subject or go on Discord (https://discord.gg/c8aARey) !

Have a nice day !

Elanis

0.6.5 Update

19/04/2020

Hey everyone !

This my first (real) english news, so if there's some typos I'm sorry.

This news will talk about the 0.6.5 update, and precisely about: graphic upgrade and galactic map optimizations.

Graphic update

It takes one of my vacations days to upgrade some parts of the UI (there's still some work):

Planet:

Old UI - Planet

New UI - Planet

Units/Fleets:

Old UI - Units/Fleets

New UI - Units/Fleets

Here's the list of modifications:

Added lights in up & down bars
Transparency on some interfaces
Gradient and largest stroke on building icons
New icons for unit parts

This new icons are from a bundle I got on Humble Bundle. I edited some of them (thrusters, hangar) to make it work with the game but this bundle was really useful. Here's a preview of these icons:

Icons

Galactic map optimizations

I speaked with many players reporting me the same "bug", the map was very laggy (especially on mobile devices). I decided to use some of my vacation time to optimise this ...

Full changelog

Improvements:

#497: Slow down production instead of stopping it when building prod buildings
#701: Graphical update of unit parts (new icons)
#673: Graphical update of menus
- Added lights in up & down bars
- Transparency on some interfaces
- Gradient and largest stroke on building icons
Improve english translation
Optimized loading time
#698: Map - improve performances
New stats counting (there's another stat counting currently connected player) the number of players that connected in the last 24 hours

Fix:

#691: Kick button out of window (alliances panel)
#729: Somes Fixes with map zoom
#700: Wrong emotes conversion
#732: Can't move map on mobile devices (console error)

On Dev Side:

I keep updating database methods using async/await to stop using callbacks and make code more maintanable

Conclusion

I hope you liked this news, it was fun for me to write this. If you have some question/bug/whatever, you can ask on Discord (https://discord.gg/c8aARey) !

Have a nice day !

Elanis