Development continues after a long break!

Hi everyone!

The project probably seems dead and abandoned to you, but it is not actually the case. I haven't been developing it for almost a year indeed, but recently went back to Sea Wolves, and hope to work more or less continuously from now on. 

Since it is the first post here, let me give a longer overview of what are current development goals. 

Roughly speaking, the game now consists of two quite independent parts. 

1.  Naval battle mechanics and 2 demo scenarios. I am pretty happy with what mechanics I have now, and I am going to leave it mostly as it is for a long time. There will be some changes here and there, bug fixes and such. Eventually, when I come to more roguelike-ish global world campaigns (which is the final goal), a lots of things may change, but not in the nearest future.  
2.  World generation module -- this is the first important step towards campaigns, and is the active development area. It is available in the game, but is 100% in the observer mode, there is no gameplay now, I just use it to test how world generation shapes. When there is enough meat, this will become a basis for an exciting campaign, full of trade, exploration, ship management, piracy and of course, naval battles!

And 'enough meat' at the moment means 'civilizations' and 'economics'. In geographical sense, the world is already quite developed.  Some code for the civilizations is already there as well (you can see via world view that many islands contain 'C' of different colors, these are port-capitals of civilizations!). The next steps to do:

•  Set up civilizations developments (building new villages/towns). 
• Set up collecting/consumption of the goods. Resources are collected in theoutside-capital towns; all kind of constructions require resorces, plus there will be population-based consumption. 
• Set up the trade between civilization. Inevitably, one civilization will often not pocess all the things it need -- this is where the trade with neighbours begins!

Now, regarding what I did last a couple of weeks. There were small bug-fixes in both modes; some interface improvements (mainly, updating help, which should be more helpful now -- also for both modes); some changes in the way the elevations map is generated. Finally, and most importantly, I have added freshwater sources. We have now nice rivers (they are likely to play their role eventually -- historically, rivers were very important for trade) and freshwater lakes, both spread moisture around, for more diversified (in terms of biomes) and better-looking islands (see the screenshot!). Now this is finished , and it is time to work solely on civilizations.

That's all for today! The next game version comes when basic code for civilizations will be done.

Fair winds and following seas!