Oh yeah, thanks to the second Alpha Testing, I have recopilated a list of improvement to the game. Also we have cleared a lot of bugs that were lurking around the playability of the game.

So  gentlemens and ladys, here are the new improvement on the game:

General Interface:

• We change all the general colors of the interface, from some mix of blue, black, white and ugly gray, we have change it to a more space theme game. Blue and Black it is. Beautiful isn't it?
• Global Colony Window: Now on every interface of the fgame you can go to each of your colonie s with one click. Although the colony manager view is not ready to be playable.

Battle Interface:

• We had made a mayor change here, all the panels and info has been change from position.
• The unit information panel now had a life bar that show the current level of life of all the army, instead of the old lifebar that only showd the current life of the current unit in that army.
• The unit information panel now had a mana bar if the unit has mana. The bar decrease as we use the mana from the unit.
• Camera panning when we select any unit. The camera is going to focus on the current selected unit with a soft movement, please try it and enjoy, you will never believe this is pure HTML.
• Redo of the action bar. Instead of those ugly semibuttons that showed the powe of the unit, now we have some beautiful icons showing us all the actions that the actual unit has. We only show this bar if the selected unit is the current unit.
• Tooltips on everything. From actions, to army turns, everthing on the battle view has a tooltip on it.

Battle Module:

• Now he mana to execute an actions, is taken from the army instead of the player. The player mana, will continue to exist for other battle mechanics.
• Battle feeling: This is a little hard to explain but , if you have tested the game before, now you can fell that the turns on the game are different for good.
• Atackning,Range Attack and Normal Movement doesnt cost mana anymore!.
• Fixing battle bugs, concerning the battle turn system.

Future Improvements

So we have advance a lot on usability and interface, I expect that this version show our improvement on the game.

We have a long road ahead but you can fell now that the game is improving little by litte. Please enjoy the battle system and dont forget to use the Cheats button while you can, because they are going to dissapear when the game enter a beta phase.

We have update a small preview of what will come to the game the next month. The construction of your own Xeno Colony!. The colony is your main base of operation.

Now all the players control a main colony. To navigate to your colony you just need to click on your colony name (at the botton of your avatar). 

Additionaly, if you were to have more colonies, then you can change the actual colony clicking on the selector button, It will appear a colony menu selector, choose our colony and then if you want to travel to that colony, click in his name as well. 

Once inside your colony, you are going to see a screen like the one in the botton.There you may be capable of building and update your colony at pleasure.

Every time you update or construct a new building, your resources decline according to the price of the construcion.

The next step would be programming all the resource management part, how your resources increase, and where do you build your farms and mines.This is going to come the next week.. 

To know the prices of the updates/ constructions, you just need to put the mouse over the construction or on top of the update button. The building time also appear on the bottom.

So enjoy this new changes until two more week where we are going to improve this more!.

After 2 months of hard work, I can say with a lot of pride that version 0.4 Alpha is done. this version relly shine as a version on his own. Will all the novelties and small improvements done to it, this can be the start point from where te game stand as a full playable version of the game.Lets see the new improvements here.

Artificial Inteligence 

Although this is a multiplayer game, with battles between humans players, you have the  choice to confront your strategy with Artificial Players controlled by the computer, well more exactly my web server.

Rest assure that those AI Player are going to give you a good match, trust me, they are more that ready in the bussiness of troop elimination. they just look like real players!.

Bigger Regions

Now the regions are 3 times bigger than before. Thankzs to the dinamic creation of natural looking battle maps. Also to navegate between those big maps now we have the minimap, that show us the terrain and the location of all units in the region.  

Every planet also have between 9 and 16 regions  to play. thats a lot of game right there!.

Initial Planet for every  new player

Now, for every new player that register to the game, we are going to create a new planet filled with 9 to 16 regions. He is going to start with 3 Fighters Units, 2 Archers and one Artillery unit.

Also we will put a random AI player with the same kind of troops in the same region so he can try they new troop. Both player start the battle in different sides of the battle.

Improved Usability

From tooltips to new icons, in this new version we are taking into account a lot of the little detail that make this game great. Now all the cheats button has a tooltip explaining what does they do. We have out 5 cheats button to better test the  game (remember this is an Alpha Version)

All this novelties ready to be tested on the game, so go ahead and taste this new version of the game for free!

The Artificial Inteligence is now on an playable state. In free of obstacles maps the AI works ok. It can give an interesting battle, but it can be improve.

As we are in an Alpha version. The testing for the AI,  is made updating manually the database, taking me a lot of time. Also the new users are not going to enjoy the game, they dont have no enemy to fights or they appear in a crowded region.

So Im going to start programming the followings aspects of the game

• Random creation of new regions. Every new player will have a home region as a start point on its empire.
• The random creation of Solar Systems.We are going to create a star acompanied by planets.
• We are going to recreate all the old creatures from all the players (including AI players).Im going to DELETE all older creatures and create new and fresh creatures in their player's homeplanet
• Every human player is going to have in his home region an AI army to have fun with it.
• In the battle view (region view) We are going to put in the CheatBox a new button to recreate the battle. This means that all the units will be put on one of the sides of the maps.

This is the cheatbox, in all its glory.

• Interface improvements in the battle, specially when the AI player has the current turn.

And this will be all the update. I hope this update is going to be programmed fast. Have a good one.

We exposes Xhelos in the Flisol Arequipa del 2011 Event.The focus was talking about the Artificial Inteligence in Xenos and about game mechanics. For all interested I share on Slideshare the exposition (It's in spanish but i will be happy to translate it if people comments this Post ).

Improving the Artificial Inteligence for Xhelos

As part of my undergraduate Thesis on AI Research for Strategic AI using Potential Fields, i have created an Heat Map to better visualize how my AI take decisions. It's a Beta Work, and is not really a part of my game but it help me a lot to understand my AI. For now this AI Heat Map is going to be online. Also i will try to explain the different options it contains.

AI Visualization

In the right upper corner of the region map, I put a IA Panel. This panel allos us to work with the HeatMap. It has currently 5 options that I'm going to explain next:

Part of a Heat Map

Este mapa de calor indica en sus zonas mas rojas, los mejores lugares para posicionarse. 

Types of Visualizations

• Calculo de Accion: This map show us the best location to execute the selected action. The best places have a value of one hundred (100). Then nearby postions decrease their value, as they move away from the higher value positions.
• Calculo de Obstaculos:As we can't put units one in top of each other, we mark those zones with a 0 value. for now only the units count as a 0, but in a future, buildings, mineral and other kind of obstacles are going to be market with a 0 value.
• Calculo de Obstaculos + Accion: This is the sum of the previous heat maps.
• Calculo de Travel: This heatmap is responsible of the speed that the selected unit can move between different types of terrains. A zero means that this terrain is impassable.
• Calculo Full: This is the sum of all previous heatmaps. Zero values are like a black hole, once a zero value is calculated, this zone cannot be use anymore.

Try the Planet Beta on Alpha Centaury Solar System, this is the only planet that have AI units modified to perform ok in my tests.

Also the action 'Moverse' is not currently operative, so you better dont try this. If you want to know how this move perform, then choose the Calculo de Travel Option.

Have a nice one!