Barren Planet: A Third Week of Beta Testing

Sunday, 16th April 2023

Some issues have been found in beta version 2 of Barren Planet. These have been fixed, and a third beta test version released to the beta test team. Time will tell whether this is the last beta test version necessary.

Beta version 2 introduced difficulty levels for the computer player. But this broke another feature: dedicated single-player campaigns, which allow one side or other to be designated as the computer player. Dedicated single-player campaigns are good for creating linear games where the levels for the human player get more and more difficult as time goes on. The single-player campaign feature now understands that there are 3 different kinds of computer player.

I've also been increasingly annoyed by the delay in moving units when running at the speed of an original IBM PC. So I've introduced a less intelligent but quicker pathfinding algorithm for human players. The human will have to guide their units around some of the more complicated obstacles now, but units will move without an annoying delay. Computer units still use the intelligent pathfinding algorithm.