The past month has been jam-packed for the Predestination crew. We made a lot of progress with the fleet combat part of the game, designed our first reptilian race (The Sauros), and hosted work experience weeks for two students aiming for careers in the games industry. We also moved to a new house with more office space to work in and applied for some government funding to help your pledges stretch further.

Update notes for fleet combat:

• Added projectile weapons such as mass drivers, with their own graphical effects.
• Added dumb missiles that travel to the target hex and explode, or explode early if they enter a hex with another ship or object in it.
• Implemented smart missile AI that locks onto a ship and follows it, avoiding obstacles.
• Added interceptors. They use the smart missile AI and attack the target ship every turn until destroyed.
• Implemented area-effect weapons (smartbombs, area missiles).
• Implemented proximity mines and cloaked proximity mines.
• Created some basic explosion effects with screen shake, and a timing system to synch explosion graphics and screen shake with sound effect volume.
• Implemented a module system that lets us create interesting non-weapon ship technologies. Modules added so far include: Holographic Projector Matrix (creates decoy holographic ships), Afterburner (double movement for one round, then takes a round to recharge), Shield booster (consumes movement points to boost shield hitpoints), Cloaking device (ship is invisible until its next turn, but then takes a round to recharge).
• Fleets can now engage each other in the galaxy view, which switches to the fleet battle screen.
• Ships can now retreat from combat. They will wait for one full round without moving or attacking and then warp out.
• Combat now detects the winner when one side’s ships are all destroyed or warp out.
• Ships destroyed in combat are now removed from the galaxy view.

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