I spent more time experimenting with neural networks. I have a pretty nice framework for training them, and while working on it, I even found some performance issues and other bugs I could fix. I got quite good results with activities like mining and intercepting incoming asteroids and splitting them into smaller pieces. I will definitely incorporate this into the game’s AI behavior, but it was about time to get back to the main work.

Planet Siege

First, I resumed my work on the racing mode, but I’m not quite sure it’s that much fun, and it didn’t really show the best parts of Frutiverse. So I got back to Planet Siege, but I’m changing it a little bit. Instead of two teams trying to destroy each other’s planets, you’ll have to protect your own planet from incoming threats, either solo or with teammates. You can destroy the debris with your weapons or simply use gravity to divert it so it doesn’t hit the planet.

To make things more interesting and give players more options, I created planet defense buildings. The first is the Gauss cannon, a pretty powerful gun capable of splitting asteroids into smaller pieces. A few cannons won’t make your planet invincible, but they can improve your chances of survival.

Another option is to deliver mined resources to the shipyard and then build ships that can help you with defense.

All these things still need balancing, but I think I’m heading in a good direction.

Rest

Of the other small updates, I’m most happy with completely replacing the building and ship assets with a pipeline that uses JSON definitions to generate both their physical representations and textures. It really speeds up the process of creating new objects.

Another big success was setting up SteamPipe to release proper Linux and Windows versions. I also put together a simple way to send crash reports directly from the game so I can look into the problems.