2020-11-01 Steam Update, Server Crash

[Haxus]

Steam Update

I've been working pretty hard to make Shores of Hazeron totally solo playable, in preparation for a Steam release. A huge amount of work was needed to stitch everything together.

This was one of those great house keeping opportunities, from a coding perspective. It was a chance to unify some code under a common interface, code that was getting duplicated on the client side and on the server side. That work flushed out a couple of bugs.

The first wave of changes is complete. All game functions are ready for solo use. A fair bit of testing is needed.

I started building my first solo city. With a little agent-level help along the way, the city could be launching spacecraft by the end of today.

The bug I am currently chasing causes a new avatar to sometimes start in orbit, suffocating to death. It happens a lot in the solo play version. I ended the day on Friday with the bug in hand. The cause of the bug was a surprise, not at all what I expected. The bug will be fixed before I continue building my city.

I am tentatively planning for a Dec 1 release date of the Steam version. That seems very achievable, at this point.

Server Crash

The master server crashed during the weekend, which broke the server grid. It is back up again.

Server software was not updated. Changes have been made that require a coordinated release of a new client with the server. I am not quite ready for that yet.

[resonkinetic]

Cool. I experienced that spawn bug online a couple weeks ago

[Deantwo]

Cool. I experienced that spawn bug online a couple weeks ago

Yeah that would explain why some players never get an asteroid too some times.

[QuakeIV]

I've had the spawn in orbit bug in regular MP a few times, wasnt an often thing though.

[Rockinsince87]

Steam Update

I've been working pretty hard to make Shores of Hazeron totally solo playable, in preparation for a Steam release. A huge amount of work was needed to stitch everything together.

...

I am tentatively planning for a Dec 1 release date of the Steam version. That seems very achievable, at this point.

Awesome! Can you tell us about the feature list? or would you prefer to wait until release?

[Neils Iyssada]

Steam Update

I've been working pretty hard to make Shores of Hazeron totally solo playable, in preparation for a Steam release. A huge amount of work was needed to stitch everything together.

...

I am tentatively planning for a Dec 1 release date of the Steam version. That seems very achievable, at this point.

Awesome! Can you tell us about the feature list? or would you prefer to wait until release?

Same here, I'm curious to see what will make a solo universe interesting !
Actually the only points of playing SoH is to be the top empire and making designs.

[Deantwo]

Actually the only points of playing SoH is to be the top empire and making designs.

What are you talking about? I play Hazeron for the community and player interaction.
So unless the solo-version has a "galactic" IRC channel, I don't know how interested I am in it.

However I will probably get it on Steam anyway though. If nothing else just so I can test it and update the wiki with some solo-only information too.

[Rockinsince87]

I would love to see the single player Hazeron behave much like any 4x strategy game with AI generated empires that play and react. 
Add basic diplomacy and menu driven AI diplomacy interactions and your good. 

Something along the lines of the game Distant Worlds. Add in a galactic news network while your at it, (so you can see what's going on) plus 4-8 player coop via steam and you have 
a first person real-time space strategy game. There is absolutely nothing on the market like that and I could see that selling really well.

Hazeron has most of the required elements to make that work already. It's just missing the previously above mentioned features.

[Norway174]

I doubt there's enough content to make this a viable solo-player game. So you make a city, and another one. And another one. And then what? It just fizzles out.

At least, in the MMO, you could spread out, and run into other players. Form alliances, or fight them. Or come across former players decayed worlds.

[Rock]

Cool. I experienced that spawn bug online a couple weeks ago

Yeah that would explain why some players never get an asteroid too some times.

Yeah I never got a village nor an asteroid in my last empire so I can see this - been too busy to play unfortunately so I think my empire is probably RIP anyway.