Dev update December 2023

Welcome to the last update of this 2023.
This month has been pretty slow for the development of Virtueror as the holidays and a few other things took a good chunk of my time, nevertheless I am glad I managed to continue a slow, but steady progress.

Let me show you the main new features and changes from this month of development.

Loot box

From now on, you can find a new collectable object spread around the maps: a loot box.

Loot boxes can be collected by your units and reward you with a random amount of resources.
I was tempted to add a (low-probability) negative reward too, but for now that's not going to be implemented and it will remain just an idea.

Growing trees

Trees are no longer a static scene object, but they can grow and expand in the surrounding cells, in a way that recreates a growing forest.

Growth is not as fast as the one represented in the previous image, but you can expect to see the scene changing over time during a mission. Also keep in mind that trees can be destroyed by your units (like anything else on the map), so you can always clear up areas if needed and no green protester will show up to face your lasers! 

Minor updates - Mission mini-map is now only available when a radar station is connected to your base.
- Map editor received a few improvements to simplify the workflow when creating and deleting objects.
- A few fixes and improvements in the game code and in SGL, the game library which is the tech core of Virtueror.
- Updated code of the open source repository on GitHub to the latest changes.

The latest commit that made it into this update is number 1592, which means +47 commits from last month. It's not much, I know, but as I said the holidays took their toll this month and it's better than nothing anyway!

What's next

 For next month I will finally implement some basic game end, that will allow to complete a map when playing to conquer it and that will affect the planet map.
I am also already working on a special structure that can be considered as an advanced loot box and that will give more complex rewards, both positive and negative this time.

Other things will be decided in the next few weeks.

This time I will also try to release a new alpha build at the end of the month as traditionally January has always been my most busy month of development (probably cold and rain do not help doing anything else). Hopefully the tradition will stay the same this new year too!

Do you think I'll manage to put enough work for a new release in the next 31 days?
The only way to find out is to follow the development and the best way to do it is joining the official Discord server of Virtueror.

Support this game: add and follow!

If you enjoyed this update and if you want to support Virtueror I would really appreciate if you could spread the word, but also add it to your collections and follow me on itchio to stay up to date with all the upcoming news and updates.

You can also wishlist and follow on Steam, if you use that gaming platform too.