Heyyo, long time no text! 

Don't worry, we've been working on the game and got some things to report (this is Andrew typing by the way).

Stellar Systems

That's a lot of planets

As we've touched on before, we have been primarily focused on stellar system implementation. We have been developing the backend for proper generation of celestial bodies, as well as integrating our research and equations to ensure that planets will have realistic masses, radii, orbital distances, etc.  So far I've been able to put my research to good use!

We're also working on some visual updates. As you can see from the above image, when in stellar system view stars now appear as appropriately sized pinpricks based on their distance from the current system. The night sky in Glorious Dawn will be fully composed of stars you can actually visit.

We are also implementing a new camera scheme that is more similar to an RTS game than what we have currently. This will likely be closer to the camera control scheme of the final game. It's still a bit finicky but it will be very fun to traverse the galaxy using this control scheme.

Saving and Loading

.txt files are our friends

As well as working on stellar systems generation, we have been working on a system to save and load galaxies. The team has been discussing and prototyping how to accomplish this in the most efficient. This saving system will, of course, allow players to store their galaxies. It will also greatly help performance at this stage. Stellar systems, rather than running at all times, will have their values stored separately, so that when a player selects a system it will load in from storage. This will help cut down on RAM usage. 

We have a working prototype right now with some interesting bugs for us to fix (pink and purple stars?) As we progress in development, saving and loading will become more and more important.

Steam Release

Truly glorious

Perhaps the most important thing we've been working on, however, isn't directly related to game development. We've begun the process of getting Glorious Dawn on Steam. It's a bit tedious, but soon Glorious Dawn will be available on your favorite game platform, easy to download and access. As development progresses we will be incorporating tools like the Steam Workshop into Glorious Dawn, and we may end up using Steam as the main hosting platform. Since there are fees associated with hosting a game on Steam, we will be charging a small price for the Steam version. However, you'll still be able to download Glorious Dawn here for free.

Music

I don't have a picture but imagine some sheet music here

I also just wanted to mention that our wonderful composer, Nora, is working on even more tracks for the game at the moment. We hope to eventually put together a separate soundtrack release full of our rad Sci-Fi music.

Okay that's it for this week. We'll hopefully do a better job of keeping regular updates as we move forward. See you next weekend!

-Andrew