So... a lot has changed since the update!

I did say in the last post "you can expect quicker updates to SsC2X". Well, that turned out to be a lie.

Since then, pandemic aside and outside of SsC2X,

• I've reconnected with family
• Gone back to school
• Placed in a writing competition (Yay!)
• Lost my aunt to cancer
• Lost my dog to cancer, in the same week as my aunt
• 
• Moved to my own place
• Got a new puppy!
• 

Now, enough about me. On to the game:

Starship Command 2X has under gone a lot of new work. First important thing was creating my own GUI library for the game (because no one can recreate the wheel like I can), while not perfect and needs polishing, it is fast to use and fast to program.

I've also invested a lot into multi-threading the game, so now It can handle 20k+ sectors and thousands of fleets without notice!

And on said fleets, they way they work is basically, any action the player can take, the AI fleets can do also. This means unlike in SsC (1 and 2) you are no longer the sole "player" in the galaxy, which further expands the "Massively Single-Player" aspect.

I've also spent a lot of time working out how Empires can be generated and rebel. And finally got it so the galaxy will run forever. The main difficulty with this was as a design principle I've tried to avoid as many  hard-coded situations as possible. Like saying if the amount of current empires is greater than 10, don't spawn anymore. Or empire 1 will always hate empire 2. All behaviors, actions, and events are determined by the individual characteristics of the empires and their leaders. You can see the development of this over on my YouTube channel.

So, while I don't expect anyone to play the game to year 150,000. The fact that it can run like that is perfect.

Another feature, I've implemented (at a basic level) is event logging. This will log all actions that any fleet or empire performs. Though be warned at the most detailed level, it can generate about 1GB of text every eight minutes. So yeah, not practical. But it goes to show how many things are taking place in the galaxy.

For this update, I've included a new build containing all the new features (with logging disabled). Right now, only the Auto4X is of any use. Players can't be create, and you can't fly through the galaxy. But with the empires fully working (at least not working incorrectly, there is always more I want to add), I can now start working on the actual gamePLAY (development speed not guaranteed, but development is!).

Note: I've had a report that the game shows up as a virus according to Windows Defender, I feel this is a false positive (I'm not that good of a programmer), and here is the virus total report: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/1bc37cc8c57127b3d049642d3a5036a23192bc576805... showing the all clear.