0.5: Mining Site and Sneak Peek on the Game Design Document

After many hours of calculation for  the Mining Site and the production mode Resource Mining I implementing them.

Here's a screenshot of a part of the game design document concerning the infrastructures, and especially the Mining Site:

I try to calculate these values based on real stuff but also on other data in the game, obviously I don't try to make it realistic but at least coherent. It's cool but requires many hours of research and calculations, for sometimes an average result...

I must also add a new product: Mining Machinery, which is used for the construction of the Mining Site.

And after that I'll complete also the implementation of the production segment, and test the system with this first production infrastructure.

Delays, delays, delays, again... and many work hours yet :)

0.5 Status

I completed all resource spots data + discovered resource spots data.

Now I working for adding the last infrastructure of this 0.5, a Mining Site, which obviously allow to be linked to a resource spot and exploit it. For now it will be only possible to extract resources and until the 0.6 I'll add some new infrastructures for extracting other kind of resource like the water (if there's any ... ).

After this Mining Site is implemented I'll complete the production segment, and FYI I updated my to-do list, and I can confirm that segment is the last game system update of the 0.5.

Finally I'll update a bit the interface and it will be done.

I also cleaned up some useless time wasting task like Facebook, less shit more dev :)

Stay tuned.

Fractal Terrains & 0.5: Resource Spots Data

Well first, i just upgraded my copy to the new Fractal Terrains version. This software is a key tool for creating orbital object's custom maps for FARC, and i'll create some for the current planetary system actually in the game for testing before to begin to generate final maps along final planetary systems data, regarding that the current one is only a crude system for testing purpose.

If you're interested of what this software can do you can take a look here for the full features list: http://www.profantasy.com/products/ft_features.asp and here for the features of it's free addon.
I made a fast & dirty test map here:

It is even possible to add clouds cover and craters, and support multicores !

Now the 0.5... The resource spot data are now implemented for all regions and there's 2 data: Quality and Rarity.

Quality indicate the quality, or resource purity, that can be found in the region. It's indicated by a letter, like a school score. The table below describe these letters:

Quality	Level
F	Bad
E	Poor
D	Fair/Average
C	Good
B	Excellent
A	Perfect

Rarity indicate the rarity level of a kind of resource in a region, more it's rare, more it will be difficult to find a usable spot.

This data is indicated by a named level, each of these levels is in the following list: Rich, Abundant, Common, Present, Uncommon, Rare and Not Present.

These two data will be used during region's resource survey.

There's also 2 calculated data by resource spot discovered: 

- Mean Quality Coefficient: which is used directly for resource extraction by some production modes. It represent the part of the resource itself that can be extracted out of the waste.

- Spot Size: indicate the usable size, in infrastructure levels. It caps the sum of infrastructures which can be built to use the spot.

All this is implemented and uploaded w/ the last SVN commits of today.

Please take a note that two thing:

1/ for now, resource survey isn't implemented and will be not until the end of the so called playable alpha (0.6). I just implemented hardcoded data which is sufficient for this alpha.

2/ for now, resources depletion aren't taken in consideration, maybe it will in far future (2013, 2015, 2025 ?? ok joking..).

That's all for now, tomorrow i'll begin FINALLY the production segment and yeah... FINALLY go toward the end of these nearly 9 months of dev for this 0.5 (the time for a human baby to be "assembled").

0.5: Production - Resources and Their Locations

Well it has been a long time (since September 21) w/o any post and SVN commits, due to some overtime and free time laziness. But it's done and the project is back again.

I completed many parts of the game system concerning the transition rule and particularly the staff, it wasn't a big deal but the routines weren't completed at 100%.

Now I begin to work on the production segment itself, but just before that,  i need to implement the resource data for each region of each orbital objects included in the testing planetary system.

Resources are the basic products a colony can produce. They are directly extracted from an orbital object's environment. Most common resources are water, hydrogen and carbonaceous ore, but they have many others (15 in total for now).

Resources can have 2 kinds of origin: the Direct Resources Locations (or DRL) and the Resource Spots.

Both the resources spots and DRL appear in the resources list of the current region.

The Direct Resources Location (or DRL) are origins that doesn't requires any resource survey before to be exploited by the player/AI.

There's 5 types of DRL:

- Atmosphere: if an orbital object has an atmosphere it's possible to extract some of it's gases for storage and later use in game. Of course all depends of the atmosphere composition because only a few of these gases are usable. The list of these usable gases in the game is the following: Argon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Hydrogen and Methane. Depending on the importance of these gases in the atmosphere, a production infrastructure can extract more of less of them.

 - Arable Lands: if a region has a type of terrain named Arid / Fertile / Coastal Arid / Coastal Fertile with a Liquid Water hydrosphere it has arable land for direct farming.

- Edible Fauna/Flora: if an orbital object's biosphere class is Carbon-Based the fauna is edible.

- Hydrosphere:  this DRL indicate that exist exploitable local hydro sources. Of course it depends on the orbital object's hydrosphere type, only Liquid Water, Liquid Ammonia and Liquid Methane are taken in account. A local hydro source can be a river or a lake for example.

- Oceanic: this DRL is available for any coastal region. The sea/ocean is directly exploitable and used by the Sea Pumping & Filtering production mode.

The resources spots requires that a preliminary resource survey is made, There's actually 5 types of resource spots, detailed below:

- Gas Field: is a underground gas pocket from where the gases can be pumped, exploited by Natural Gas Processing production mode. The spot indicate the proportion of each gas in the field that can be extracted, so the % for the CH4 and N2.

- Hydrosphere Well

- Icy Ore Field: like Ore Field but for Icy Ore extraction.

- Ore Field: more or less underground ore lode. The nature and volume of the ore contained in this lode is listed by product with a %. Possible products that can be in a Ore Field are the following:

- Carbonaceous Ore

- Metallic Ore

- Rare Metals Ore

- Uranium Ore

- Underground Water

These spots are listed when they're discovered and have a size data which indicate the total size in infrastructure levels. This size is used to cap the number of infrastructures assembled or built on these resources spots.

I hope the above is clear. Anyway it's that i implementing now, it should not take long since it's only data management code and an update of the region's data structure.

After that i'll implement the production segment (yup it's the fourth post that i saying that...) and will test it with resource extraction.

There will be also an interface update to show the colony's storage and production matrix.

Stay tuned.