Starlight: Eye of the Storm News

Thank you for all your support and feedback. Starlight: Eye of The Storm has become a better game thanks to you all! This game is for the community and IS shaped by the community.

As we're approaching our Full Release, this is the BEST time to support us as we transition from Early Access into Full Release!

[h2]WHY buy now?![/h2]

1) Early Adopters receive an achievement reserved ONLY for early access players. Once we go full release, this achievement will no longer be available whatsoever!

2) Full Release price will differ from Early Access obviously due to significantly more contents added into the game.

3) Early Access players/adopters get to go Full Release FOR FREE!

4) Full Release is confirmed to be roughly 4-5 weeks from this announcement! So, you're really getting a great deal!

5) Any feedback as a player will be taken seriously and possibly implemented into Full Release. That means you can, to a reasonable extent, influence how the final Full Release game will be!



If you have a friend who has been hesitating, hesitate NO MORE! Grab a copy now at a RIDICULOUS PRICE!

If you've wishlisted, thank you! NOW is the time to grab a copy!

Looking forward to your support!

Thanks,
JEREMY

As usual we endeavour to bring you the latest bug fixes; some are far more important than others. We'll also reveal some new information in regards to the full release. But first, let's look at the issues fixed:

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

- Fixed major bug with AMD CPU users, that includes Ryzen series of CPUs as well.

Here's how the bug came about:

1. Some players began to feedback how the drift feature doesn't seem to work properly.
   
2. Feedback also included how guided missiles seem to lose their ability track targets after a while.
   
3. Investigations revealed that Drift was indeed not working as planned. For AMD users only, it may appear to be confusing as the player's ship seems to be stuck after the initial pivot.
   
4. For workarounds, the player has to turn on/off the drift feature in order to "reset" the feature to make it work once.
   
5. For some players, this might have been construed as "not fun" or broken.
   
6. The reason why this bug slipped through is because all of our hardware are based on Intel CPUs. For some reasons, their floating point model is somewhat different from AMD's. This is unforeseen and we were blindsided to a certain extent.
   

- The bug was eventually fixed and tested on 4 different AMD processors, including E350, 2x Ryzen 5 and 1x Ryzen 7 before the patch was deployed.

- Also fixed several 3D ship bugs that some players might have encountered; ie, 3D fighters dangling around certain areas with a very unusual drop in frame rate.

[h2]Full Release Tidbits[/h2]

You may have seen a female character lurking around in one of the posters of Starlight: Eye of the Storm? That's Jun Jimin:


Jun Jimin is the designated pilot for Starlight.

For Hellfire, the designated pilot's name will be Kieran (last name to be announced later) and Archangel's designated pilot's name is Talon

The three, along with other characters from the Foresight universe will make an appearance during the Campaign mode to unravel the story of Jun's mission and what happened during when.

The Campaign mode is modular and missions can be picked as and when the player like. Each mission can be a short challenge/scenario mission that has reasonable rewards when completed or a full mission consisting of 3 or more segments.



All segments must be completed within the amount of lives allocated in order to pass the mission and unlock new missions; no continues will be allowed.

The Campaign Mode IS NOT the Arcade Mode.

While you will see some similarities in Campaign mode missions, the mission design is entirely new along with some new ships being introduced to add to your challenge. Unlike Arcade Mode where the default mode of play is to shoot everything on sight, the Campaign Mode will offer some interesting challenges.

We're roughly 3-4 weeks away from a proper Full Release. We thank you for your patience and we look forward to presenting you with the full Campaign mode soon!



If all goes well, and barring the disruption incurred from covid-19 measures and vaccinations, we should be able to finish the game well before end of June and release it in full.

After that, there'll be more contents added such as:
1) New Game modes
2) New ships
3) New weapons
4) New achievements

Please stay tuned as we march towards Full Release!

Thank you for your support as always, signing off for now.

Jeremy

[h2]What's new?[/h2]

This week as mentioned in the previous week's release, will be dealing only with bug fixes. There'll be no additional weapons added until full release.

[h2]Changes[/h2]

- Micro Laser now fires outwards away from the tip of emission rather than awkwardly appearing in the middle of the fighter.

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

- Fixed a bug where the game crashes whenever you change resolution. This was a bug that crept in some time after release and therefore it wasn't detected until it was raised as a feedback.
- Fixed a bug where certain ships that cause contact destruction destroys other friendly ships inadvertently even in death.
- Fixed a bug in the Auto LOD feature where if you Alt+tabbed while in Windowed mode, the LOD assessment continues to work and upon returning to the game you might find most features disabled until the game starts performing as expected.
- Fixed a bug where a dying ship in an explosion sequence goes off-screen. This then led to the ship being removed BEFORE it can spawn any bonuses for players. Now, dying ships are no longer removed and bonuses are guaranteed to drop (from the side or top) if the dying ship goes off-screen.

[h2]Conclusion[/h2]

We're currently working on new ships, new events, new mission for the full release. The Arcade mode will get a major bonus feature upon full release.

Therefore, unless there's a bug to be fixed (or can be fixed), we'll not be deploying new builds until Full Release.

All Early Access will retain their Early Access adopter achievement and the final release will no longer award that achievement. Thus only early access folks get a chance to attain 100% achievements.

Please keep the feedback or bug reports coming. As promised, we'll be here to listen to your concerns and take your feedback seriously.

Have a nice weekend!
Jeremy

Another week, another update! However, let us quickly announce - from now on, unless there's a critical patch, updates will be done once every 2 weeks earliest.

The reason is simple - we need to focus on building the Campaign mode for the full release. There're things like storyline, objectives, testing, campaign missions etc ... and of course, testing! All of which need time!

[h2]New Weapon![/h2]

Announcing the new weapon:

MK-44 Cluster Bomb (Legion)

The Legion Cluster Bomb will be the final ballistic weapon to be added into the game; at least until the Full Release.

So what is this weapon?

• Ballistic Missile containing bombs
  
• Explosive in nature
  
• Can be detonated by enemy fire (but not missiles)
  
• The missile is unguided; dumbfired.
  
• Upon impact, the missile will detonate the bombs causing an area of effect damage over a period of time.
  
• The impact itself has some very limited enemy bullet neutralization capabilities. It may help out the player for an instance but doesn't qualify as a defensive weapon.
  
• 3 levels, from stage 3, 5 and 7.
  

A level 3 cluster bomb going off, causing a chain explosion


[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Altered firing positions of 96mm rockets and other weapons that may have been firing from thin air
  
• Added some improvements into the Shadow Map technique which improves performance.
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

1. Fixed a bug where a slow ship entering the weapon shop doesn't dock and leaves immediately without an opportunity to purchase/sell or upgrade.
   
2. Fixed a performance bug with the new weapon - Frangible Mass Driver spread weapon where the sound of it sometimes causes the game to slow down.
   
3. Fixed the specular lighting for stage 4 and stage 6.
   
4. Fixed a bug where area of effect weapons do not register hits into the hits combo. Affected weapons - Hellfire Special Missile, MK-44 Cluster Bomb.
   
5. Fixed a bug where player non-guided missiles will be removed off-screen directly causing the projectile trail to cut off immediately even when it's on-screen - which looks really awkward.
   
6. Fixed a bug where a missing custom ship when replaced by a canonical ship doesn't remove the previous engines given to the now-missing custom ship. Therefore it causes 2 sets of engines to appear at the same time.
   
7. Fixed a bug where mine triggered projectiles appear beneath the player's fighter blinding the player from it.
   

The next weapon is likely to be an alien-based weapon.

Also, there'll be a 2-3 weeks gap before the next build and there's a chance that we'll actually prepare for FULL RELEASE by then.

Thanks for your support and finally we can start looking forward to the Full Release when the campaign mode is fully completed.

Jeremy

The Full Release development is currently in full swing. While we want to release full release content as soon as they're available, we'll need sufficient contents before we can do it properly.

However, we understand some of you might have been waiting for a story mode or unlocking the Vanquisher which is locked away inside the Campaign (story) mode. Therefore, we're releasing some new features and new weapons that can help enrich your experience and make the game more replayable.

[h2]What's new?[/h2]

1. New Weapon: 96mm Rockets
   
2. Additional improvements made to Advanced Target Computer.
   
3. New automated Level Of Details adjustment option.
   

[h3]96mm Rockets[/h3]

• Salvo-based
  
• Dumbfire (not guided)
  
• Higher damage than Phoenix Missiles
  
• Fires in a narrow dispersion angle
  
• Low level weapon comparable to 38mm Explosive Cannons
  
• Explosives - means it does a lot more damage to Slavic Sirerian ships.
  

[h3]Advanced Target Computer[/h3]

Aimed weapons will now use the Advanced Targeting Computer to get a Lead on the target. This means weapons like Omni Mass Drivers benefits greatly, making it more lethal than before.

** Cost of upgrading your Target Computer isn't changed.

[h3]Automatic LOD adjustments[/h3]



This has been changed from the original Custom LOD settings. The following has been changed/added:

1. Turning various graphic options like bloom, shadows, etc will no longer automatically change the LOD option.
   
2. No more Custom LOD
   
3. Selecting Low, Medium or High LOD NO LONGER changes your existing graphic options like a preset.
   
4. LOD levels will actually have an influence on performance from now on.
   

The Automatic LOD is an continuous assessment of your machine's performance regardless of specifications. If your machine fails to keep up with its target frame rate, it'll automatically turn off features. Naturally, if your machine performance improve, those features will be turned on again.

This new feature is built to allow players to have a more smoother gaming experience without the need to trial and error with graphic options. However, the game will still respect your settings and will not save settings that were automatically set along the way until you Apply graphic options.

This feature doesn't account for the following options though:

1. Display Resolution
   
2. MSAA settings
   
3. V-Sync
   

These 3 options will still affect performance as well. We recommend going 1080p if you can but not 4k if your graphics card can't support the amount of fillrate and shader performance required. If you're using a Nvidia graphics adapter, you may want to switch off MSAA completely and turn on driver-based FXAA under your Nvidia Control Panel instead.

Lastly, for V-sync, if your machine can't keep up with your refresh frequency, usually, 60hz, please turn off V-sync for a better performance.

[h2]Changes[/h2]

1. 38mm Explosion Cannon has been improved slightly. Fires more smoothly and accelerates faster.
   
2. Improvements made to shadows rendered onto 3D objects.
   
3. Added a dynamic LOD for shadow filtering. This has caused the game to load a tad bit slower and in some cases freezes for 2-3 seconds. We'll work towards improving the performance in the near future.
   
4. Improved the look and feel for 3D Asteroids and Phobos
   

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

1. Fixed the problem where shadows flicker sometimes at certain angles for 3D objects
   
2. Fixed a bug where players can milk custom fighter salvages for unlimited money and capsules.
   
3. Fixed an issue where some player or enemy projectiles will disappear prematurely due to an incorrect estimation of maximum projectile range.
   

It's great to see the number of bugs so far is getting lesser. However, there're some things that are beyond us to fix.

We'll need to continue to collect more data especially from players using a Ryzen CPU. The symptom is such that when you drift, your fighter will only rotate once and it gets stuck there even when you move it around.

Also there's a limit on how we can help our Linux players playing via emulation. Please post on Discussion to explore ways on how we can help you out.

Lastly, we'll be fully focused on developing the rest of Full Release story mode and will be releasing new builds less. There's also a new array of weapons lined up to be added from time to time.

Thank you for your support! We look forward to hearing from you soon!

Thanks,
Jeremy