- [Major Update] 2.0.0 - UI Overhaul, Global Resources, Ship Designer, and more! - 18 May 2020
I'm happy to announce a major update to Galactic Dominion bringing to you much needed improvements to the UI, quality of life controls, tutorial, gameplay balance, and new features. Here are some highlights. Hope you guys enjoy it! UI Overhaul Global Resources, Balance & Optimization First Time User Experience Full Changelist UI Overhaul One of the biggest complaint was the game's controls. I've gone through each of the menus and controls in the game and re-implemented and expanded on quite a number of them. The new UI is more streamlined and efficient for fast gameplay. All the menu animation has been sped up to not waste precious time on menu transitions. The Star Control is now a movable window that can stay open even when you select a Fleet. You can also clearly see both the Industry and Drydock queue as well as manage the Workers, Industry, and Drydock all in one panel. Clicking on…
- [Update] 1.1.0.a - Fix starvation issue on larger galaxies - 24 October 2018
Release Notes: - Fix potential starvation issue on large galaxies when Food Supply consumption exceeds the (previous) max of 10k --- Previously, the maximum amount of Food Supply was 10k. This meant that on larger galaxies you can have population consumption that exceed this amount, even when all technologies are maxed out - and if you are prevented to produce more than 10k this essentially means that your empire was starving. This limit has been increased to 100k. For existing games, loading a save file will automatically update the max Food Supply to the new value. However, if you were previously producing more than 10k, your Food Supply may suddenly increase to a high amount. New games should not have any issues. --- I hope to be able to roll out more updates in the coming weeks!
- Galactic Dominion - Version 1.1.0 is Now Live! - 30 September 2018
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33473594%2F349e81076776131ae0761634c143cb82a675c5c5.png We've finally incremented the build to Version 1.1.0 with a brand new Steam logo. Since 1.0 the game has come a long way and been patched 12 times. I want to take this opportunity to summarize all the changes that has gone in since 1.0. 1.1.0 Focus on Unit Hotkey: If you have a Star, Star Fortress, or Fleet selected you can hit by default to pan to it. If you hold the key it will follow the Unit. You can change this key in the Input Mapper. The Unit selection circle is now thicker and green for easier visibility. Fixed an issue where the Star Fortress HP was not showing in the battle info panel. Fixed and issue where in Turn Base Mode a Units destination Nav point was not positioned correctly. 1.0.2018.08.18.l Game Speeds: x0.5, x1.0, x1.5, and x2.0. Research Game Set…
- [Update] 1.0.2018.08.18.l - Research tweaks, Speed Control, and other Quality of Life changes - 28 September 2018
Release Notes: Game Speeds: x0.5, x1.0, x1.5, and x2.0 Research Game Settings: Randomized Effort Factor Research Tree Zoom In/Out and Middle Mouse pan Research In-Progress is now an different color Fleets can now be Split while In Dock Fleets will now move to an offset location if the dock is occupied/full Fixed issue where the Objectives button disappears in Turn-Based Mode --- Game Speeds You can now toggle the speed with the "-" and "=" keys. These are customizable in the Input Mapper. Unfortunately, if they are not map you will have to reset to default first. During early game you can speed up the game to get things moving and then if it gets too intense you can slow it down. This is only available in Real-Time Mode. --- Research: Randomized Effort Factor This option will multiple a Research Topic's effort by up to +/- 10% in order to give more variation to Research costs. This is e…
- [Update] 1.0.2018.08.18.k - Hotkeys and Input Mapping - 23 September 2018
Been working on this update the last couple days. There's now an input system that can be customized to your liking. By default the keys are laid out as follows: https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33473594%2Fe3c10e17d98b7779f695b44923b217d0140b3359.png --- Customization of your hotkeys is done through the Control Mapper button in the Options Menu. Clicking on this will open the mapper where you can set the General keys or the specific Star and Fleet Panel keys: Star Industry Star Drydock Fleet Actions Fleet Tactics https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33473594%2Fe010d514e3791834fcdcacddd675d0b295fd8adc.png https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33473594%2F764bbc2551a350c5863abaddfccb17fd74c57f26.png --- The hotkeys for the Star and Fleet panels are laid out by default (on a standard US Keyboard) to match…
- [Update] 1.0.2018.08.18.j3 - Zoom to Mouse position and other tweaks! - 19 September 2018
--------------------- Release Notes: --------------------- 1. Zoom In to Mouse position 2. Tweak thresholds for Camera panning near the screen edges 3. Slider panel lock distribution ToolTip --------------------- Finally - You can now zoom in to the Mouse position! However, if you prefer the old way (i.e. zoom to Camera center) you can toggle it back the Options menu. 'nuff said. The thresholds for the screen edge pan have been decreased so it does not overlap the zones of the Minimize/Close buttons of the Star/Fleet Control. This way you should not accidently pan when trying to close these panels. There's now a little text in the ToolTip when you hover over a Slider Control (i.e. Worker distribution in the Star Control or Scientist distribution in the Empire Control) - that says "Click on percent to lock distribution."
- [Update] 1.0.2018.08.18.j2 - Camera Pan Sensitivity slider - 18 September 2018
Small update today! In the Game Options you can now adjust the sensitivity slider for the Camera Pan. Previously, the value was around 20, now it's default to 10. Also, this should be the last update that will reset your Game Options. Under the hood i've done some refactoring of the code to make it more scalable so going forward if we need to add new options it will perserve your existing option values. ːsteamhappyː
- [Update] 1.0.2018.08.18.j - Research Update and Quality of Life changes - 17 September 2018
--------------------- Release Notes: --------------------- 1. Research now has a small chance of a Scientist boost 2. Quick Play now has Extended Research setting 3. Options Menu now has Screen Edge Pan 4. Fix Star Spectral Type not showing the proper Star type --------------------- Research should have a bit more randomness to it as there's a lot of uncertainty involved when doing research. So now every "tick" there's a small chance that your Scientist, or Scientists if you have multiple assigned, will have some deep insight in the topic increasing the amount of progress they contribute in that tick. With this, no two topics will progress at exactly the same pace. --- Since research boosts effectively reduces the overall time needed for research you now have a new Extended Research setting in Quick Play. This will increase the amount time needed for research significantly. https://stea…
- [Update] 1.0.2018.08.18.i2 - Fix Achievements not unlocked for some players - 16 September 2018
For players who won some Quick Play games before Tuesday's 1.0.2018.08.18.h2 update there's a chance that the Achievements did not unlock. If that happened then the opportunity to unlock them became lost for certain achievements - (e.g. Galactic Solider, Leader, Commander, etc set of Achievements). The reason is that the condition to unlock the achievement was very precise, for example, to unlock the Galactic Leader you need to win exactly 5 QP games, less than 5 and more than 5 will not work - and if you won exactly 5 before .h2 you might not have unlocked the achievement - so even if you keep playing and won more games it would not go back to do the Achievement check. This has been fixed now, so if you did not get your Achievement - next time you win another Achievement enabled QP game - it will trigger all the checks. Unfortunately, for the one time achievements such as Tactical Geni…
- [Update] 1.0.2018.08.18.i - Star Info ToolTips and Game Styles! - 16 September 2018
I've been experimenting and working on some bigger updates in the last few days. Here's a rollout of what's new with 1.0.2018.08.18.i (I'll talk about the versioning numbers in a future post). --------------------- Release Notes: --------------------- 1. Star Info ToolTip will now show up if you Mouse over a Star 2. ToolTips now show up slightly faster in general 3. Star Influence border is now highlighted in the Empire color 4. Game Style (Palette and Pattern) can now be changed from Options Menu --------------------- Star Info ToolTips https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33473594%2F311a4152b4ec588a508eefbc55a03dc006814877.png If you Mouse over a Star (whether zoomed in or out) you will now see the same information as if were to click on it. If you have not unlocked the proper Scanner technology or explorerd the Star you will see the "Information unavailabl…
- [Update] 1.0.2018.08.18.h2 - Fix Chapter End Outro Not Showing Up! - 12 September 2018
I got sidetracked from working on some new features to investigate this issue ːsteamsadː A number of people have reported that they did not get the Chapter end game popup and saw strange things happen at the end of the game (e.g. Troop counts were jumping erratically, etc). The Campaign progression still progressed as the end objectives were met. The issue was actually related the Steam Stats being updated upon completing the Chapter. Your achievements and stats are incremented and synchronized with Steam but there was a possibility that it could not synchronized correctly with Steam causing the game to "soft" hang. Today, being Steam's regular Tuesday maintenance cycle - seems to have caused this issue to happen to more people. This has been fixed now! ːsteamhappyː But if your stats/achievements did not unlock you will unfortunately have to try again.
- [Update] 1.0.2018.08.18.h - Remove the Pause Menu Transition Anim - 10 September 2018
Small quality of life improvement here. Previously, in the game scene, every time you went into the menus the game would play a small transition animation to pan the camera to the side before the content loaded. While this was cool at first (at least I thought so) - it broke the pacing after extended play. Particularly if you needed to jump in and out as you macro your Empire. This animation took about 1 second to pan in and another 1 second to pan out. It meant that you were losing 2 seconds every time you went into the pause menu. This has been removed completely so the transition is now near instantaneous! I've also started working on some slightly bigger updates but will keep that for a future announcement. Until then!
- [Update] 1.0.2018.08.18.g - Balance Campaign Chapter 3 - 9 September 2018
I've been hearing that Chapter 3 was a bit too hard so took a look into the balancing more. Since I've played each Chapter so much I knew exactly what had to be done in each one so it is a bit difficult to balance - perhaps even more so than Quick Play mode since in the Chapters there are some scripted events. In any case - Spoilers warning - don't read if you haven't tried to play Chapter 3 at least once. You will have to start Chapter 3 from the start for the update to take effect. Changes: --- - The time before the Machines spawn has been increased. - The number of Fighters they spawn each click has been reduced. - The time before they auto-conquer a Star has been increased. If even after the changes you still find the Chapter too difficulty, try these hints - and we can look into it more. Hints: --- - The objective is to get to the final Star as soon as possible. - Move your Colony…
- [Update] 1.0.2018.08.18.f - Disabling Unity Analytics & Big Font Mode for ToolTips - 9 September 2018
Release Notes: --- - Unity Analytics is now disabled - Added Big Font Mode for ToolTips --- First, I want to address the issue of data collection and why I decided to disable it altogether. There's a lot of misconception surrounding data collection particularly in recent months with what happened to Facebook and all the horror stories we hear about data privacy. In the software industry, particularly in gamining, there's a lot of collection of user data going on. Companies want to know the patterns and things we do in-game so that they can either serve ads and purchase offers or reduce risk and design game modes that from data they can be more certain players will play. All AAA companies does this and they DO NOT give you the option to Opt-Out. Instead, they put the disclaimer in their EULA (End-User License Agreement) when you first install and start the game. If you don't accept, you…
- [Update] 1.0.2018.08.18.e - Changing Star Names & Showing them while Zoomed Out - 8 September 2018
Release Notes: --- - Added the ability to change Star Names you own - Star Names will now be shown while Zoomed Out if your Scanner Verbosity is set to at least Low (default value) --- https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33473594%2F7456c2dc83e5f2e20c38ec0727d46a0a858a5019.png Thanks SnottyGremlin for the original idea - i.e. to be able to see the Star Names while you're zoomed out as it helped to give positional context. Very true - and not too difficult to add. The biggest challenge was resizing the text when you zoom out out - The font size differs depending on the Galaxy Size your playing in since you can zoom out more in a larger galaxy. Some things to note: - You must have discovered the Star (i.e. found the connecting Star Lane) - Your Scanner Verbosity must be set to at least Low for it to show up - This is in case someone wants to take a screenshot w…
- Post-Launch - Product Backlog and Ideas! - 8 September 2018
We want to give you guys a quick update post-launch. We're getting some great feedback (and criticism) on the user interface and controls. All feedback is appreciated so we want to get all the ideas organized and prioritized so we can start improving the base game immediately. To help with this we started 2 Discussion threads: Product Backlog & Updates We'll be providing you guys visibility on what we're working on currently and any changes that goes into the game. Product Ideas & Feature Request Here you can pitch your ideas and feature requests and we can see how we can get it into the game.
- Galactic Dominion is Now Live! - 7 September 2018
Hi Everyone! We're excited to announce that Galactic Dominion has officially gone live. In celebration of the launch of our first game we're offering a 15% launch discount on Steam! https://store.steampowered.com/app/871710/Galactic_Dominion/ Enjoy! Forever Years http://foreveryears.com
- Combat Mechanics and Research - 6 September 2018
Tomorrow, Galactic Dominion will go live! But before that we will go into a bit more details about a couple more mechnics. 1. Combat a. Fleet Combat b. Fleet Tactics c. Star Fortresses d. Planetary Bombardment e. Ground Invasion 2. Research --- 1. Combat Combat can either take place in space or on the ground so we'll go into a bit more details here. 1.a Fleet Combat Fleets are composed of Ships. And Ships can come in a few types. Colony Ships, Transports, Fighters, Bombers, and Battleships. Colony Ships and Transports are non-combative and used mainly to colonize and invade enemy Star systems respectively. (More on the invasion further down) Fighters, Bombers, and Battleships are the main weapons in your Fleet. Each Ship type has it's strengths and weaknesses. Fighters - Cost the least, have a boost to movement and fires a laser canon at a high rate. It does however, have lower hit poin…
- User Interface and Controls - 3 September 2018
Hope you're all having a good weekend! User Experience has always been a challenging area and it's no different for Galactic Dominion. There are so many things a player can do in the game we were afraid that it would be too overwhelming when it came to controls. Furthermore, the design goal is to make sure that players experienced a quick-paced action strategy so we wanted to try to keep the player in as few screens as possible. --- With that said, a lot of information that had to be cramped into the game scene so we divided it into essentially 2 sections. We will go over them at a high level and revisit them in details in future entries. 1. Galaxy Map a. Overlays b. ToolTips c. Empire Control d. Star Control e. Fleet Control 2. Pause Menu a. Research Menu b. Stars Menu c. Fleets Menu d. Statistics Menu Galaxy Map On the Galaxy Map, the player can zoom close into the each individual Sta…
- Quick Play Mode - 31 August 2018
The Quick Play mode is designed so you can have a lot of replayability. These are the settings you can change: Galaxy Size Number of Stars Empire Race Opponents Difficulty Empire AI Assitance Total War Star Lanes Turn-Based Mode https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33473594%2F19258964fe7cc88c4285529b601f1d941872cdab.png The first couple is pretty straightforward. You can customize the size of the galaxy and the number of Star systems in it. Essentially on large galaxies, the travel time will be longer if the density of the Stars are reduced. So a Huge Galaxy with only 5 Stars will take much longer to travel between compared to a Small Galaxy with 5 Stars. The Empire Race allows you to choose between 4 different races in the game. Each one will have a different bonus and penalty to resource or technology growth. I won't spoil too much about the different races…
