Thursday, November 02, 2006

Long time between posts!

Wow, it's been quite some time since I updated this blog.

Well, Galacticus is still alive, in fact, more than ever! I am busy toiling away on some really boring changes that came out of the closed alpha test, mostly stuff that is tedious to write about/read on a blog, therefore no updates! :) Real life has mostly remained out of the way aside from a house demolition and construction project at my new country villa outside Portland (it's just a small .2 acre place, totally maintainable with all my other projects and quiet with plenty of spots for a telescope platform - oh, it will have a 700-800 sq ft game studio above the garage :) ).

Regarding Galacticus progress, here are a few things I have been working on in preparation for the next alpha testing phase (which might be public) :

  • Improved race selection and registration
  • Still working on fixing some things that caused items/locations to seep across game boundaries (I had originally designed the database schema assuming one db per game, then I told my wife that SQL server was $5k per server (more like $20k for the Enterprise version I wanted) and she made me go with a shared environment during testing).
  • Totally replaced the research and build model with something far less complicated. Still a plethora of research branches & items, but the requirements and cost models are less restrictive.
  • Working on some production and event tweaks.
  • Improving the starship designer. Yes, you can design and build ships from the hull up!
  • Related to ships, fixing the "upgrade to new technology" because, well, it plain didn't work at all.
  • Fixing some of the balance of the galaxy generation.
  • And a million other little things!

As long as the home construction goes smoothly the next testing round should happen right around Winter Solstice.

Head over to Warped Studios to sign up as a tester!

Back to work! I will make more frequent updates...honest!