Starcom: Unknown Space News

The default branch has been updated to Kepler 17316. This does not add any new content, but fixes several bugs and adds some QoL enhancements. It should be compatible with any existing Kepler saves.

Changes/Fixes:

• Difficulty option at new game start (can be changed at any time from options)
  
• Reduce memory footprint of some textures
  
• Captain's Log notes not scaling correctly on map
  
• Open Steam Deck keyboard overlay for new game player, ship name
  
• Default map zoom preference not being saved
  
• Several minor audio adjustments
  
• Havok, fighter stats
  
• Show dev console for unhandled exceptions
  
• Fix for main menu not loading if most recent save is corrupt
  
• Fix celestial artifact "highlight investigate" not shown
  
• Fix Kyrnan alliance reward issues
• Hopefully fixed "duplicate PLAYER persistent" bug
  
• Remove unused analytics calls
  
• Null reference check for certain enemy modules
  

It's been a busy week. Last week's announcement of the "last chance before price increase" sale brought a lot of new players and returning old players, who had questions and feedback, so I spent more time in the discussion forums than usual. So welcome new players (and welcome back old)!

Players also helped me investigate some issues. One player found the main menu didn't load: they were just stuck looking at the space backdrop. Another player couldn't load their save.

The first issue was the result of a corrupted save.

The second was a result of the rare "duplicate player persistent" bug which prevented the player from loading their save and has been lurking in the game for quite a while. Fortunately, they submitted a save which finally allowed me to reproduce the issue. Normally, when the game is saved, the player's ship is removed from the universe and saved separately with the player object. Somehow, in this case, the player's ship was left in universe causing there to be two entities with the same id. (Unfortunately, they submitted their feedback anonymously, so I have no way to tell them how to resolve their issue)

The root causes of both these bugs were not directly related, but they revealed a problem that had been introduced with the switch to production build: the Unity error display window is gone, so players don't see any error message that hints at a possible problem. So I've changed the error handling logic to open the game's developer console, which should show the most recent exception. Hopefully exceptions remain rare, but if they do occur players will at least get a hint of what's gone wrong.

A patch for these issues (build 17316) is now on the unstable branch and will be promoted to default in the next few days. The build also adds some minor QoL improvements including changing some of the UI sounds which some players report being too high pitched.

A third issue, reported after that patch was deployed, caused players to be unable to progress on one of the early mission paths: Bribing the Ermyr to let you land on the Forbidden Planet. Not a true soft lock because an alternate in-game path existed, but definitely a bug. Apparently this bug has existed for a while, and probably had been experienced by some players, but this was the first time I became aware of it. This one will be fixed shortly.

Thanks for reading, until next week!
- Kevin

Starcom: Unknown Space entered Early Access over 18 months ago and has come along way since then. Based on player feedback, the game is in great shape and a near-future version of the current "Kepler" build will likely become the 1.0 release. While this does not mean that I'm done with development, it does signal that the main storyline now has a proper ending, and that I do not plan on introducing any save-breaking changes after this point. The official graduation from Early Access still needs to be scheduled and depends on coordinating with some external factors, but is planned for later this summer.

The current sale is a last chance to get the game at a discount from its "Early Access" pricing. After this sale is over the price will go up to its full release price.

Once the game graduates from Early Access, I plan to continue working on the game. There are a number of pieces of additional content I have ideas for, as well as some new features, balance tweaks, and quality of life improvements. I'm also considering making some of the content creation tools I've build available to anyone interested in modding the game.

[h3]Weekly Update[/h3]
In the past week I've been working closely with a German translator to create a proper professional German translation, along with getting some feedback from Alex who did the original Starcom: Nexus German translation.

Hardy, the game's portrait artist, has worked up some new store graphics that I'm excited about. Here's a preview:



In addition I've worked on some minor fixes/updates:

• Difficulty option in new game
  
• Map zoom to mouse preference not saved
  
• Highlight investigate not highlighting space artifacts
  
• Captain's notes no longer scaling correctly (bug introduced with a recent map optimization)
  
• Memory footprint investigation, optimizations
  
• Havok, fighter stats in ship systems panel
  
• Minor sound tweaks
  

These updates aren't in the game yet, but will be added in the near future with some additional changes, initially as an opt-in.

I'd like to thank all the Early Access players who have supported the game and helped shape it through development with their suggestions, feedback, and bug reports!
- Kevin

The default branch has been updated to Kepler 17312. The main purpose of this build is it is the first public non-development build. You probably had noticed that the game says "Development Build" in the lower right corner. Besides getting rid of that text, this release build also removes some debug and profiling instrumentation. So it may improve performance for some players as those add a little overhead.

Besides that, the build adds/fixes:

• F8 indicator removed from HUD (F8 still submits feedback)
  
• Some analytics calls removed
  
• Difficulty settings added to options menu. Difficulty is application-wide, rather than per game.
  
• Havok charge should now persist across saves
  
• Fixed missing localization symbol for "quick save not found"
  
• Minor RP buffs
  

- Kevin

Yesterday was Independence Day here in the US, here are some explosions to celebrate:



As I talked about last week, I've been largely focused on graduation related tasks: marketing materials, promotion, translation, business stuff, etc.

The opt-in Kepler branch has been updated with a new build. The main purpose of this build is it is the first public non-development build. You probably have noticed that the game says "Development Build" in the lower right corner. Besides getting rid of that text, this release build also removes some debug and profiling instrumentation. So it may improve performance for some players as those potentially add a layer of overhead.

Besides that, the build adds/fixes:

• F8 indicator removed from HUD (F8 still submits feedback)
  
• Some analytics calls removed
  
• Difficulty settings added to options menu. Difficulty is application-wide, rather than per game.
  
• Havok charge should now persist across saves
  
• Fixed missing localization symbol for quick save not found
  
• Minor RP buffs
  

I plan to promote this build to default in the next few days barring any reports of serious issues.

Until next week!
- Kevin