Dev Journal

GalCiv IV Dev Journal #29 - The Planets are Liars

As you know, in GalCiv IV core worlds are the backbone of your civilization.  But not all planets are created equal. This is communicated in two ways: First, by the raw planetary inputs (minerals, tech, food, wealth, culture) and Second, by the types of tiles that the planet has on it. Unfortunately, in GalCiv IV, the two don't reflect on each other.  They're disconnected.  What I mean is that you could have a planet with a high tech raw resource input and have no tiles t... [read more]

Dev Journal

GalCiv IV Dev Journal #28 - Event Updates for GalCiv IV Next

Hello everyone, I hope this post finds you well and ready for another update on GalCiv IV Next. Today I will be talking about some updates to the event system. Galactic Civilizations IV (GalCiv IV) is a 4x game that provides players with a vast, dynamic universe to explore and conquer. As a part of that experience, we've included a system of random events that players can encounter throughout the game. These events serve to keep the game world feeling alive and unpredictable, but we've taken ... [read more]

Dev Journal

GalCiv IV Dev Journal #27 - Battle Viewer And Ship Behavior Improvements

I hope this dev log finds you well and ready for some exciting updates on GalCiv: IV Next. Today, I wanted to share with you some recent work we've been doing on the battle viewer. First and foremost, we have completely redone the cinematic mode. We know that players love to watch their battles unfold in a dramatic and visually stunning way, so we took this to heart and completely overhauled the camera movements. The result is an epic and movie-like experience that truly captures the feeling ... [read more]

Dev Journal

GalCiv IV Dev Journal #26 - A Brave New Galaxy

This is a GalCiv IV After Action Report (AAR).  The goal here is to play the game thoroughly and then share thoughts on what things we can make better, what AI changes we might want to do and share with players some insider knowledge on how we go about iterating on gameplay. Part 1: The Setup For this I'm going to create my own civilization. And now we begin...   Stay tuned... _____________________________________________________________ GalCiv IV D... [read more]

Dev Journal

GalCiv IV Dev Journal #25 - Updating Visuals

One of the things this Winter we're doing is updating the graphics of GalCiv IV in lots of various ways.  One upcoming update to GalCiv IV will be a revision to all the planetary improvements. For example: [New research building]   With 4K and 1440p becoming more common we really needed to up the game. We will also be updating some of the minor races.   So for instance, remember this guy? Pretty grotesque. He's being updated with this guy: ... [read more]

Dev Journal

GalCiv IV Dev Journal #24 - The 2023 plan

So this Spring will mark the one year anniversary of the release of Galactic Civilizations IV.  And we have some really big plans for it.  We've been working hard on a major revamp of the entire game. Here are some of the areas we are making big changes: Totally new combat system. Beam vs. Kinetic vs. Missile as a rock paper scissors mechanic against shields, armor and point defense is going away.  Instead, various types of weapons will have their own pros and cons in ar... [read more]