I always get surprised about how much progress we can make during a week. This week's special shoutouts go to @jstrout for picking up the slack while I couldn't contribute that much myself. So what are the changes?
Space travel in a persistent galaxy
We generate the star map at the beginning of the game and now travel between different stars is possible. Based on the distance you can hover over a star system and jump to it, navigating the galaxy and visiting different stations. The stations have different commodities available in the market and different prices so it is now possible to start trading and make a profit. 💰️
Events while navigating space
While traveling the galaxy there is now a chance to run into encounters. We only have a limited amount of them yet but the systems and blueprints to generate a ton of them are in place. So from now you never know what you might experience during interstellar travel.
UI Elements and Effects
We implemented more UI widgets to use in the game. (Maybe we will release the UI System as a separate model for you to use in your projects once it is done) We now have bars that can be filled from left or right as well as a text input field. All things that might not be that exciting but sure are useful. Also moving from star to star is now accompanied by a neat warp effect.
Next steps
Next steps are mainly planning the next steps. I can see us focus on a few different areas in the future. (User Interface, Crew AI, Ship Combat, ...) I will keep you all up to date.
As always check out the source at: https://github.com/shellrider-games/Starfarer
and if you want to contribute in any way, (Encounterdesign, art, coding, ...) join the discussion on Discord or in the forums.
