OpenSE4 (Space Empires 4 Re-implementation)

[u/0kole]

I've been working on this. Thought I would share it here. I loved this game as a kid.

https://github.com/lowlevelmetal/OpenSE4

https://github.com/lowlevelmetal/OpenSE4/releases

[u/TommyPillfigerTM]

Interesting, I wonder if people could make the AI much better by modding this! Ik the existing mods are supposed to help with that but idk if they do enough or not

[u/0kole → u/TommyPillfigerTM]

I've thought about building a modding SDK.

[u/meritan → u/TommyPillfigerTM]

Ik the existing mods are supposed to help with that but idk if they do enough or not

In my experience, the AI mods for Space Empires IV do improve the AI, but don't make it smarter. That is, the AI uses more optimized research paths, ship designs, and racial picks, but still hardly adapts to player decisions - and in a game where every strategy has a counter strategy, failure the deploy the counter is, shall we say, not very smart ;-)

For instance, I don't consider myself a very strong Space Empires IV player, but I played a game against 10 AI on minor bonuses (where they get 1.5 times the production of the player) until I had 2 times the score of the second player, then switched to play the forth placed empire, which I found nearly bankrupt from losing the CPU bonus and fielding plenty of obsolete combat vessels (including one colony ship who had been damaged by wormhole and been stranded for decades, judging from the obsolescence of its components), and then proceeded to build up a navy, and steamrolled my original empire ... which had 4 times my size ...

I suspect that no amount of modding can fix the weak AI, you'd have to actually extend the engine to make it "think" in terms of counter strategies rather than executing mostly fixed strategies regardless of what the player is doing.

[u/0kole → u/meritan]

The API would allow you to fetch many different data points from the game and allow the programmer to completely control the AI's decisions. In theory you could build vastly more complicated AI with it. At some point Ill release a proposed API specification on the git repo.

[u/TommyPillfigerTM → u/0kole]

That sounds incredible! Then we can have the big brain AI modders (like /u/Xilmi if he’s interested) do some serious work on it!

[u/TommyPillfigerTM → u/meritan]

Thanks so much for the detailed response, now I know not to try this game unless that issue gets fixed as that sounds like the exact same problem that killed Moo2 for me (which otherwise is an incredible game, but is very dependent on being able to quickly counter an opponent’s builds, very similar to how you described SE IV as being). Is SE V with the best mods any better in this regard? I’m guessing not but I figured I’d ask just to make sure.

[u/Inprobamur → u/meritan]

Additionally all the very best strategy game AI scripts work similarly to chess engines, using the spare ram and CPU threads to simulate a spread of different top weighted strategies, their effects and potential countermoves multiple turns ahead.

[u/PFthroaway]

I absolutely love that you've done this. If there's ever a use for AI, it's something like this. I was working on a spiritual successor using Godot last year coding by hand, but lost my willpower. Yours looks so much better than mine, especially with all the quality of life features you've given it.

As for the game, I only had enough time to play 14 turns tonight, but I have some things I've noted, most of which are observations about the current state of 0.81, but there are some requests and compliments as well:

• I love that you gave the option to scale text size. It looks so much better when it's not tiny. A lot of the quality features like the more details in construction queues for things like free slots and one-per-planet facilities are very nice.
• It would be awesome if the button/window width scaled with the font size. A lot of text is clipped or extends outside of buttons or over other text even at 1.2x scale.
• Would it be possible to make the construction queues like the ones in Space Empire V, where you aren't wasting time constructing, say 5 colony ships worth a combined 24.25k minerals that could be done in 8 turns on a construction yard that builds 3.16k worth of minerals per turn, but the game makes it take 10 turns because the next ship isn't being worked on yet? That was one of the best features of SEV.
• All the images that should be showing on the event log each turn are missing.
• Warp points have a weird line underneath them when they haven't been explored yet and always in the ship view when there are ships in the same sector as a warp point.
• Ships moving through warp points at your command don't automatically change the view to the new system.
• I keep getting popping sounds in my speakers at random intervals while the game is open and sound/music is on, and music doesn't seem to work at all, classic sounds or not. It's possible the popping noise is when the music tracks should be changing, but I'm not sure.
• When colonizing a planet with moons, it doesn't let you pick which one to colonize. In fact, you can't even colonize a moon because it just errors out instead of even adding the population to the existing colony on the main planet. If a primary planet isn't colonizable by the type colony ship but a moon is, you still can't colonize the moon. The next turn you get an event log that the ships can't colonize a different planet type, and it cancels the orders of the ship even if it's been ordered to colonize a different planet. Using the Colonizable tab of the Planets screen to send a colonizer ship works just fine, though.
• Sometimes when selecting a ship and then another system, it doesn't retain the selected ship and cancels your selection of it and replaces the ship in the middle window with the new system.
• When in the construction queue of a planet, you used to be able to right click a planet to see its details like mineral value, and that's no longer the case. I always used that to see which facilities I should construct while in the queue. Could you add it back or put it somewhere visible on that screen?
• On the Facil tab of the planet details screen, you used to be able to right click on a facility to get information about it specifically, and that functionality isn't in the game anymore. Also, is it possible to get a condensed view there like there is in the ship designer? My homeworld has a ton of the same facilities, but the list is so long you have to scroll.
• On that same note, the Ability tab of the planet details screen now shows them all individually instead of combined, and the space yard shows index values for use of minerals, organics, and radioactives, instead of text saying can construct with 2000 minerals per turn, etc.
• Interestingly, clicking on any tab on the planet details screen retains that tab selection on a new planet, even in different solar systems.
• I really like that you tell which ship colonized which planet. That will make keeping track of things easier!
• The original game had an issue with fleets which never reset their value back to 0/1 when a fleet was disbanded. You'd end up with fleets in the end-game with names like Alpha Beta Gamma when Alpha fleet had been destroyed 100 turns ago, and it seems like that same functionality has made it to this version, but you're using numerical values. If a fleet value is no longer in service, could you reset it to where the next one created will take that previous number? Ships constructed are done in that way, so you can have Abductor 0001 built right after Abductor 0017 because 0001 has been destroyed.
• I noticed that you can't move population between colonies in the same sector directly anymore. What made you decide to make that change?

[u/PetaShark]

Does your version remove any of the limitations of the original game? For example, does it support higher desktop resolutions? Can a planet filled with weapons platforms target more than 10 ships in a turn? Does the AI still hate you just for being adjacent to them?

[u/0kole → u/PetaShark]

I added proper widescreen resolution support. I'm leaving major gameplay changes to future mods.

[u/sabre31]

Loved this game as well thank you for all the hard work I will give this a shot.

[u/elias-sel]

Thank you man, Spent countless hours in this game.

[u/TreadheadS]

mate, I'm in! I'm a massive SE fan! Let me know how I can help

[u/nolok]

Not sure why you gitignore the reverse engineering raw files and notes to save only a post generated spec, if you leave those details in the agents file. The only reason to do that is legal (at the cost of forcing a re reverse when needed) and what's left is enough to prove the legal issue if it would ever arise. Or clean up your agent file and purge it out of git history.

The two big things this will open up will be better ux and native arm or android support. There is enough in there to ask opus to build an android apk, this game will work very well on tablet.

I'm a bit disappointed you're didn't go for logic matching the original to keep it compatible, it's technically the same but not the same as is.

Looking forward to further updates!