New details and screens from Galaxy on Fire - Alliances revealed
Fishlabs raises its ambitions
It's only been six weeks or so since we last hooked up with Fishlabs and took a look at its game Galaxy on Fire - Alliances.
But in that time, the German developer has been working hard on its online multiplayer strategy game.
Of course, given its background making games involving high end 3D graphics, it's no surprise to see the game is already looking better.
Looking goodIn particular, Fishlabs has been implementing new technology OpenGL ES 3.0. This is an industry standard for handling graphics on new mobile devices, tablets and consoles.
One particular aspect is called instancing, which allows developers to have lots of highly detailed objects - such as spaceships - on screen at the same time.
It's using this during the Battle Report part of the game, which is when you get a graphical representation of what happens when your forces attack a planet.
As is typical in such strategy games, you don't control the detailed movement of your forces, instead selecting the number and type of units you want to use in any attack.
Community buildingFishlabs has also been spending time refining the game's user interface so information is provided in a clearer manner.
This feeds into the Alliance system of the game's title, with Fishlabs planning to automatically enroll players into an Alliance when they start playing.
These alliances will be run like clans in Clash of Clans, but with alliance leaders having the ability to promote and demote members on performance. There will also be a voting system so members can decide which planets to attack and which to defend.
And although the game won't be out until later in the year, apparently some Galaxy on Fire fans are already setting up TeamSpeak servers to manage their voice communications and plan strategies which will include having some players focusing on mining resources, while others build up massive space fleets for combat missions.
You can see the new screenshots below, plus a video interview with Fishlabs' CEO Michael Schade.
There's no release date yet for Galaxy on Fire - Alliances, but we expect it will first come to iOS (followed by Android) a some point in the autumn.
This is the new Battle Report screen
Checking out the resource part of the game
Viewing a planet before setting up an attack
