Small bug fix release


A couple of days ago I uploaded a small bug fix release to Barren Planet.

The first fix is in the AI for constructing new units used by a mobile constructor. The First Landing campaign supplied with the original game uses only static constructor units, so the bug isn't apparent. But mobile constructors have logic to decide where to stand when constructing a new unit, and this logic was faulty in the original Barren Planet release. Units would never consider the square they were already standing on as a possibility, so would always move. Since construction requires all of a unit's movement points, a mobile constructor would never have enough movement points left to build anything.

The second fix changes what terrain a unit can be built on. In the original release, a unit can be built on any terrain. This is because static units cannot move onto any terrain, so restricting the building of a unit to terrain accessible to that unit would have prevented a static unit from ever being built. But in The Polar Expedition, I was seeing heavy units built on ice flows. The remedy is twofold: static units now have a movement cost for terrain they can be built on, but it exceeds the number of movement points that unit starts with; secondly I've restricted the building of units to terrain for which they have a movement cost. This means, for example, that the Gun Platform can be built on top of a Building, or on a Monorail, but not on open ground. And that Snowmobiles and Ice Tanks can no longer be built on thin ice.

New campaigns that are affected by these changes will require the updated version of Barren Planet (1.01). If you install them alongside the original Barren Planet release (1.00), the game will not recognise them as campaign files and will not display them in the Set Up Game screen. The new version can be identified by a discreet "1.01" in the bottom right of the title screen.

Files

Barren Planet for DOS 122 kB
Jul 12, 2023

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