Game version 0.95.224 released

• [UI] Added missing label for when the colonists have nowhere to go when abandoning a colony. (Issue #1038)
• [UI] Fixed the logic that checks if alien colonists can be resettled to another planet within the current empire. (Issue #1038)

Game version 0.95.160 released

Notable changes:

• Fixed the "Continuous money" checkbox displayed on all options pages.
• Reduced earthquake probability by factor of 10.
• Fixed Mission 3: Carrier Escort message and video order. Issue #413.
• Added new characters â to the charset to support French translation (Issue #645)
• Updated German translation thanks to anonymissimus (Issue #825, Issue #722)
• Fixed sorting planet names on the info panel (Issue #822)
• Alliance against extinct/defeated races is not possible anymore (Issue #821)
• Enhancement: use CTRL+A to select all units in ground battle (Issue #820)
• Hungarian: Changed Drib Empire to Drib Protectorate (Issue #813)
• Fixed NPE in diplomacy when offering money (Issue #812)
• Equipment screen: Add button visible on enemy fleet if it was near its own planet (Issue #819)
• Conquered planets' tax level is reset to moderate (Issue #802)
• Hold SHIFT to sell 10 units on the production screen. Hold CTRL+SHIFT to sell 100. (Issue #808)
• Fixed some space battle related balance issues: (Issue #817)
• Morale reduction is less intrusive and difficulty dependent. On Easy, you'll lose 5% of the morale, on Hard, you'll lose 20%. If you defended your own colony or conquered another, you lose half of the previous values.
• Fighters defending a planet won't run towards the attackers on Hard, but remain where they are. Still, they might get lured away. Let me know if the new behavior is enough or not. Also please check if ship kamikaze still behaves as before.
• Damaged, but otherwise operational defensive buildings will participate in space battles until destroyed.
• AI won't shoot at fleeing enemies. Still, you can trigger a rocket shot and then flee and drain the AI, but at a much slower rate.
• Fixed android mission completion turning into failure on some cases (Issue #800).
• Some minor rendering changes (Issue #746)
• Fixed autosaves not working after a game over and immediate reload (Issue #798)
• Changed planet revolt to sell the original owners inventory (tanks, ships, stations) and give the new owner half the sell price (i.e., 25% of production cost). (Issue #739).
• Planets with race different than the owner will now have about 20% reduced tax morale compared to planets where the owner and race are the same. In addition, alien Police Stations will provide 30% less morale. (Issue #783)
• Added option to enforce target specific rocket/bomb usage under gameplay options. If checked, you and the AI won't be able to fire a rocket at a building, or a bomb at a ship. (Issue #722)
• Fixed diplomacy screen accessible in the campaign on level 4 (Issue #749).
• Added option to accept AI offers such as alliance, surrender and money. (Issue #766). Check out the cheat section of the guide how to trigger these manually.
• Fixed ground deployment next to impassable positions (Issue #730)
• Fixed NPE when loading certain older skirmish saves (Issue #656)
• Added options to allow unlimited labs and factories per planet during a skirmish game (Issue #675)
• Since Google Code stopped allowing uploads, I'll put the new files to my public shared Google Docs folder. The Launcher should be able to download the necessary files without problems.

Game version 0.95.152 released

Notable changes:

• Earthquakes are now less frequent (Issue #785)
• Crash when shipwalking (Issue #788)
• Transferring capital ships between fleets didn't move the vehicles with them (Issue #792)
• English intro subtitle fix (Issue #793)
• Workaround for keys not responding on MacOS when run in fullscreen (Issue #794)

Game version 0.95.149 released

Notable changes:

• Fixed NPE crash when using select same type units (via double click) and ground defenses were the target.
• Adjusted AI behavior to spend less by building static defenses on a single planet at a time.
• Fleets move on the starmap more smoothly. Modders: you need to set the "simulationRatio" parameter in the definition.xml to 10 (previous was 4)
• Added new Gameplay option to use continuous money/morale calculation (default off). This way, money is constantly accumulated from taxing and trade incomes instead of once per new day. It also affects morale calculation: mid-day issues that decrease the morale decrease the tax income as well, but only for the duration of the problem. In the day-by-day mode, the tax income was seriously crippled when an issue was present when midnight passed.
  
  In the new continuous mode, the difference numbers show the delta amount since the previous day's final values. This means that a planet population change indicator slowly counts up/down during the day.

Game version 0.95.147 released

Notable changes:

• Profile selection screen implemented.
  
  Existing profile can be selected either via typing in the name or clicking on the list entry. Double click or press ENTER to accept the selection (or click the button). You can't delete a profile from within the game, but you can delete the directory in the "save" subfolder manually.
• Fixed satellite deployment/destruction related issues.
• Fixed unit selection via SHIFT+Click not adding units to the selection.
• Fixed some erratic fleet-AI behavior on higher game speeds.
• Modified damage calculation to a sublinear function of the number of attackers in space battles. For example, attacking with 10 units with 100 dps/unit yields an effective 400 dps. This new behavior can be disabled in the open-ig-config.xml under the key "spacewarDiminishingAttach" set to false.

Game version 0.95.145 released

Notable changes:

• Added button sounds to some colony info buttons. [Issue #723]
• Added tooltip text to the auto-build settings on the colony info screen, explaining each settings. Note that due to the large tooltip, they might not be fully readable below 600 pixel window height.
• New gameplay option: allow the AI managed planets to produce items, default true. Some expressed annoyance with the original always-true mode. Note that the AI will still deploy items available in the inventory.
• AI: will build equipment factory to build radars to improve on exploration. [Issue #770]
• AI: will build military spaceport much earlier.
• Spacewar: fixed display of DPS, it no longer shows the fraction. [Issue #771]
• Spacewar: fixed select all button selecting rockets and kamikaze units.
• Modified diplomatic responses to allow positive AI answers to happen more likely.
• Groundwar: Units and barracks now prefer the more damaged enemy units in their fire range.
• Groundwar: Mines are now properly triggered by passing vehicles.
• Fixed mission 17 - prototype not catcheable with Pre-Warp trait. [Issue #772]
• Starmap: added indicator below the planets telling if there is an operational Military Spaceport on the planet:  . Due to lack of space, it is not shown on any of the information screens, and besides, it is meant to be a starmap aid.

Game version 0.95.144 released

Notable changes:

• Use PgUp and PgDown keys to jump between planets. [Issue #721]
• Fixed auto-colonization not working properly.
• Modified vehicle pathfinding to reduce the number of turn-arounds when the command was issued in-between two cells.
• Fixed AI patrol not moving anywhere and producing small zig-zag like movements.
• Fixed database screen's information button: now it opens the planet list instead of alien races.
• Fixed the production line's button tooltips.

Game version 0.95.132 released

Notable changes:

• Fixed some campaign start and game load issues. Should fix the cases where attacking enemy planets wouldn't work.
• Fixed the Coffee Break achievement and Oldest Man achievements

Game version 0.95.131 released

First of all, sorry for the delay. My last few months of professional life was so intense, it drained all my enthusiasm and energy from Open IG. The current release is just a couple of easy-fixes:

• If the player goes into a trade agreement with another empire, the Trader ships travel to those planets as well (cosmetic) [Issue #596]
• Intro English subtitle corrections [Issue #725]
• Fixed crash when ship-walking on level 4 [Issue #727]
• Fixed the research tip on lab reorganization [Issue #733]
• Fixed earthquake frequency [Issue #737]
• Fixed hyperdrive availability problem in case of the Pre-Hyperdrive trait [Issue #747]

From this version on, the game requires Java 7!

Unfortunately, the main issues (such as the balance) and developments (multiplayer) are still on hold. Balancing usually can't be expressed scientifically, but worked out by testing, testing and testing. The issue with the multiplayer is that I need to change many things from the ground up, which is on the borderline of redesigning the whole game. 

I don't have the time nor the commitment anymore to do this now. I feel with each change and improvement, I only get diminishing returns, and many problems faced are becoming harder and harder to fix within the confinement of the (original) game. 

I'd rather put my efforts into a completely new game. I have some ideas, but nothing substantial yet.

Anyway, If you find any issues, such as things that worked before not working anymore, don't hesitate to report an issue (I messed up the ground battle due to the MP and tried to restore it to a playable state).

Game version 0.95.119 released

Notable changes:

• Improved pathfinding performance for larger battles and when selecting buildings as targets. [Issue #702]
• Modified AI to attack its enemies even before it finishes the galaxy exploration.

Game version 0.95.115 released

Notable changes:

• Added rain and snow effects to most planet types. They are randomized in terms of frequency and duration, but usually last 2-3 ingame hours. The rendering is not final yet. Development by Bajor "Danyetz" Dániel.
• More Russian translation by Grigoriev Kirill.

Game version 0.95.110 released

Notable changes

• Russian language support. Russian audio has been integrated, although some of them might not be properly synchronized to the videos.
• Fixed some missing labels across languages.

Game version 0.95.098 released

A few changes have been made in the game files and directory-lookup logic to accomodate the modding community.

One notable change is the way buildings.xml references image resources. In previous versions, the buildings/building/graphics/@base attribute hosted a pattern to locate the image resource based on the tech/@id attribute value. This setting made the reusing of graphics for other races complicated: you had to copy the actual image to a different directory. In the new version, the image is directly references by the tech/@image attribute. See an example here.

--

The second notable change is the introduction of the dlc directory under the game's directory, where you can place your mods nicely and separated from other mods (previously, you had to dump everything into data).

You can have subdirectories denoting mods or zip files stored here. Each directory or zip file acts as a resource root similarly to the main zip files in the install directory, e.g., if you have a local resource generic/database/newrace.png, the file will be located under dlc/mymod/generic/database/newrace.png.

Note that the mod name doesn't provide a separate namespace, e.g., having multiple mods specifying the same local resource will overwrite each-other. This is especially true for skirmish/campaign like plugins: if you have a skirmish/human2/definition.xml, it might overshadow someone else's skirmish game. Therefore, I recommend using unique directory names below the language levels to avoid confusion:

generic/skirmish/myfirstmod-0.1/definition.xml
en/skirmish/myfirstmod-0.1/labels.xml
generic/myfirstmod-0.1/images/newrace.png

etc.

See an example structure here.

Game version 0.95.094 released

Notable changes:

• Buildings list on the info panel now get a light-red color when the player doesn't have enough money to build them.
• Quick research now displays the research cost under the description.
• Fixed cases where the money can go below zero.
• AI will now explicitly build Water Vaporator even when the morale is above 50.
• Some German translation fixes (external contributor).
• Fixed virus bomb missing battle parameters. (Issue #655)

Game version 0.95.093 released

Notable changes:

• Fixed quick-research panel button visible in levels 1-2 in some cases.
• Fixed cases where the AI could attack strong allies.
• Added trade agreement management: trader AI starts to visit the other planets as well. Updated the diplomacy screen to allow trade agreement to be established only once. Going to war with the other will clear the trade agreement.
• Added more traits. (Issue #642)
• Fixed traits not working in skirmish mode.
• Fixed victory condition checking.
• Fixed initial fleet not equipped properly.
• Added mouse scroll and keyboard navigation to information/inventions screen (Issue #651)

Game version 0.95.092 released

Notable changes:

• Fixed NPE crash in space battle (Issue #654)
• Fixed Technology victory checking to ignore Pirate and Trader AI players.

Game version 0.95.091 released

Notable changes:

• Added logic for shared-radar for campaign and skirmish. You need to have a relation of 80 with the aliens along with an alliance against someone else. The settings can be changed in the definition.xml.
• Modified AI diplomatic reaction to consider the current relation with you (and the third party in ally case), therefore, if you are good friends with the alien, they will accept money in P = relation %.
• Starmap modified do disallow attacking fleets and planets of the same group in skirmish.
• The game now can play external OGG music. Place your music under /audio/generic/music and name your files Music4.ogg, Music5.ogg etc. You don't need to padd the numbers. (Issue #639)
• Fixed case where the new trait system did not properly load old saves. (Issue #643)
• Fixed a no-progression bug. (Issue #644)
• Fixed NPE crash due the new message-history behavior on the bridge (Issue #647)
• Added new failsafe cases for level 3 when you manage to desert a Garthog planet, a colony ship will automatically recolonize it for you. (Issue #649)
• Skirmish victory conditions fully implemented. The new win screen, loading and saving a skirmish definition will be handled later (Issue #638, Issue #259, Issue #637)

• Added AI logic that pushes colonization in case its enemies own more planets.
• Added custom planet image for equipment and space battles. Each image should resemble the surface type of the actual planet.
• Changed Load/Save screen to highlight skirmish saves in Orange/White.

Game version 0.95.090 released

Version 0.95.090 is just released.

The skirmish is almost complete, you can now create a game, but victory conditions are not checked yet, and some advanced features (such as shared radar, non-attackable allies, pirate behavior) are not implemented yet. But still, you should be able to play, save and load the skirmish game.

Note that many labels are still not translated into German and French.


For documentation on the new Skirmish screen, please refer to these blog posts: Galaxy, Economy and Victory tabs and Players tab.

If your Launcher doesn't seem to recognize that new version is available, please be patient. Sometimes the Google Code web access lags behind the SVN, which is out of my control.

Enjoy.

Launcher 0.37 released

Now that we want to support French language, the Launcher had to be updated in order to manage a long awaited scenario: selecting the languages you want to install and maintain.

When you install the game the first time, the following dialog will be presented to you:

If you have the game installed already, you can manage the installed language packages via the Other options  > Select language packs... menu item:

In this case, the dialog receives two additional options:

• You can start the installation of new packages once you click "OK". If you did not check this option, you can run the Verify installation command, which will take care of the now missing files.
• You can ask the launcher to remove unnecessary language files, freeing some disk space.

The package sizes and total amount of download is displayed for your convenience.

The final convenience feature is the ability to force-repair the Launcher itself. Just click on the Repair Launcher menu option.