Starcom: Unknown Space News

As I was drafting last week's update, apparently a number of new players were hearing about the game from Splattercat's YouTube channel. As I've said before, as a mostly solo developer, I'm very dependent on these kinds of channels for visibility. So thank you Splattercat for supporting indie game development!

The timing was fortunate: Icarus has recently been promoted to the default build and having a large number of fresh eyes on the game is helpful to figure out how some of the recent changes improve/change the first time player experience.

The mission system has definitely improved, but there are still apparently a handful of points where players are getting "stuck" with nothing obvious to do, leaving them frustrated.

Like the game's players, I need some clue that there's something that needs investigating. For example about an hour into the game, the player is sent to find a missing vessel:

En route, they receive a hint that there's a nearby object in deep space. They can find it on their own, but if they do not, one of their crew members will eventually pinpoint it for them. But based on one player's feedback I determined this player managed to find the missing ship without ever triggering the deep space hint.

The game has anonymous analytics, so once I knew what to look for, I was able to tell that 1.8% of all players (at least who opted-in to analytics) encountered this issue. That might not seem super high, but that's 1.8% of players for whom the game was effectively halted due to a bug that they never realized was a bug.

I'm continuing to review the missions and analytics to help identify these types of issues, but I wanted to take this opportunity to remind players: if you find yourself stuck with nothing to do, please submit your save via F8. The feedback is anonymous, so if you'd like a response either post in the forums or include an email.

Incidentally, for new players there is an opt-in "unstable" build available. It actually isn't very unstable at all, but has not had as much testing as the default Icarus build. It adds some QoL improvements, minor bug fixes, and experimental localization. There is one known issue introduced in this version: the "[X]" prompt for some artifacts is sometimes not displayed (notably the wormhole stabilizers at the very beginning.

Until next week!
- Kevin

After several weeks of reduced productivity due to surgery, this past week marks a return to my normal schedule.

As I mentioned last week, I've been working on alternate solution to a late game challenge that was turning out to be a bit too frustrating for many players. I finished that up last weekend and have switched to my favorite development activity: creating new content.

I decided to start with a little side quest/story that I had an idea for while recovering.

The story adds a new alien faction and I wanted to give them a different fixed gun attack to fit with their character. A while back I mentioned refactoring missiles to separate the projectile behavior from its core control logic, allowing for more flexible missile variants. So I decided to do the same for the fixed projectiles, then spent a ridiculous amount of time tweaking their attack.

Other tasks from the past week:

• Implemented a new opening for the prologue that adds a brief intro and zoom-in before the start.
  
• Tracked down a bug in the void exploration logic that makes some encounters like the "luminous ether" much rarer than intended.
  

As always, new features/content won't be available in-game until the next named update and may change.

Until next week!
- Kevin

This week was a bit less productive: Kristin (my wife) had a surgery last Friday. She's recovering well, but there's been a fair amount of downtime due to hospital visits, extra errands, etc.

As I mentioned last week, there is a patched version of the Icarus build for anyone who wants to try that out. It doesn't add any new content, but addresses several minor issues and implements experimental localization for German and French. It sounds like this build as at least as stable as default, but I'd like a little more data before I set it to the default. It is still an Icarus build, so compatible with current saves.

The main thing I've worked on in the past week is work on an alternate solution for a late game "challenge" (anyone who has completed Icarus can probably guess what the challenge is). I spent a day doing one version of an implementation, didn't love how it felt and started over.

I've also been working with the new modeler on some new ship modules which are coming along nicely.

Until next week,
Kevin

The new Icarus build continues to go smoothly with relatively few issues reported, although there are some. I've posted an opt-in patch to the unstable branch to address some of these. The main purpose of this patch is to add preliminary experimental support for localization. Since that involved small changes to almost every system in the game, I decided to make it opt-in until sufficient players have had a chance to try it.

It is save compatible with Icarus, so if you want to check it out it adds (Google Translated) German and French as well as several QoL improvements.

Right now, I'm continuing to monitor Icarus for issues while beginning planning work for the next content update.

Until next week!
- Kevin

I've uploaded a new Icarus build to the opt-in beta branch. Since this is still on Icarus, it should be save compatible with your existing Icarus game.

This is the first version of experimental localization and every string in the game has been touched, so it may have introduced bugs. It contains Google translate versions of German and French for testing.

Additional non-localization related changes:

• Map mode performance optimizations
  
• Added map option to highlight incomplete anomalies
  
• Added toggle to some log entries to show on map
  
• Added map zoom modifier (CTRL) to keep cursor position constant
  
• Changed music audio codec to substantially reduce disk, memory usage
  
• Changed screen scaling ratios for HUD
  
• Fixed NPC Ships not being moved out of gateways for autopilot jumps and point portals
  
• Fixed two null reference issues
  
• Minor UI, typo fixes
  

Patch 15016 changes:

• Fix missing command crew hint insights
  
• Fix for secondary weapons initially displaying "missiles" regardless of actual installed secondary weapons
  
• Missing survey out of range error message
  
• Several log entries displayed "[0]" instead of correct string
  

Patch 15018 changes:

• Minor changes to two early missions to reduce risk of player missing key interactions: void detection of Polyhedral artifact extended and more explicit hint regarding possibility of Ermyr bribe
• Improvements to UI performance of switching to Research Lab and Missions
  
• Fix for an infrequent null reference
  

Patch 15019 changes:

• Wormhole stabilizers at beginning of game not showing interaction prompt
  
• Increased dimming of fully explored systems on map (to help identify star systems where players may have missed exploration.)