Astra Protocol 2 News

Ahoy Captains,

We're starting work on the next feature patch (1.3).
The focus of this patch is mainly gameplay and quality of life improvements.

The main themes we're looking at improving and changing are:

• Additional ship commands
  
• Improvements to how objects are spawned, which should make long distance travel more interesting and reduce the frequency of certain ships appearing early in a run.
  
• Tweaks and improvements to the AI
  
• Additional terminal configuration
  
• Additional documentation
  
• Quality of life improvements
  
• General code fixes and performance improvements
  

As with the previous patches, we have no current timescale to when the patch will release, and the content of the patch may change during development.

Should you have any comments or feedback, please let us know in the comments or via the usual channels, and remember that feedback can also be left via our dedicated feedback discussion thread - here

Ahoy there Captains,

Its been a while since patch 1.2 has launched and feel it is now time to start focusing our attention on the next feature and content patch.

We're planning on a change in strategy for patches moving forward, ideally they will be smaller and more focused.

Our feature backlog is quite long, and thought it would be better to see what you, the players, would like to see so we can work on prioritising features (unless you really loved the surprise drop of the new Captain's Log feature?)

To aid with this, we've created a discussion thread to give you a place to post your feedback, along with any features or improvements you'd want. We can't guarantee that it will be included in the patch, but it will help give us a direction in where to go next.

If you want to provide us with feedback, you can do so here: Community Feedback Thread

or via the usual channels.

We hope to hear from you so we can make Astra Protocol 2 a great experience for everyone.

Attention Captains.

Patch 1.2 is now live. This patch was focused mainly on making space travel more dynamic and adding in new features and improvements.

• A new sector is generated if the player flies outside the known bounds of space
  
• Minefield - Static clusters of explosive mines
  
• Rift anomalies - tears in the fabric of space-time that can appear spontaneously
  
• Heliosaur swarms - sentient migrating space reptiles that can appear on planets and asteroids
  
• Captain's Log - adjusted how log entries are reviewed and ability to create own entries
  

• General code improvements
  
• Tidied up some strings
  
• Scanning missiles reveal payload
  
• Scanning mines reveal payload
  
• Noise system adjusted so that enemies and missiles can be affected
  
• Can prevent spaceships spawning as part of the map generation to give users a little more breathing room at the start (note however this doesn't stop any warping in)
  
• Reason for mission failure displayed on mission overview screen
  
• Recentre command to recentre science and navigation window on the player's ship
  
• New additions and reformatting of the user manual
  
• Tweaked the spawning algorithm
  
• Planets render last, preventing objects from overlapping them
  
• Collisions simplified, resulting in overall improvements in performance
  

• Planets with and without rings should calculate distances consistently
  
• Fixed issue with autopilot and manual controls fighting
  
• Added missing commands to help screen
  
• Fixed issue with inject coolant accepting no parameters
  
• Fixed issue with pressing return twice in autopilot causing a crash
  
• Autopilot calculates time more accurately
  
• Mission length based on in-game time rather than initial timestamp
  
• Fixed spelling of ascertain on the initial transmission
  
• Fixed issue with ship sizes not saving properly
  
• Fixed minor text issue on bios screen
  
• Fixed issue with objects popping in and out too soon
  
• Fixed issue with probing objects returning scan descriptions as if not probed
  
• Program splash screen background is taken from colour palette
  
• Fixed issues with retreating ships dropping all mines at once
  

Numerous save files have been tested, but if you want to keep the data, backing them up is recommended. As per the previous update, the previous patch is available as its own branch.

If you have any comments, feedback, or suggestions, please post them here or via the usual channels.

We hope you enjoy the changes and have fun with the work we've done on Astra Protocol 2.

Hello there Captains,

As we will hopefully be launching the 1.2 patch in the next couple of weeks, we have archived the patch 1.1 build onto its own branch.

As the 1.2 patch will be coming with some new features and a few other changes, we've made the decision to make old builds available to allow players the choice of playing with the new features or to be able to stick with what they're familiar with. We don't plan on supporting these older branches once a newer patch is available.

We intend to handle any future patches in the same way too.

Specifically regarding patch 1.2, we believe that all major tasks have been implemented and all major bugs have been fixed, however we have made a few deep changes which could have repercussions that are a little more difficult to detect, so we need to have a period of bug hunting. If you can't wait for release, patch 1.2 is currently available in the beta branch - however be warned that it isn't complete yet and bugs may still be present, so make sure you back up any save files.

When the patch goes live we will make an appropriate announcement.

Should you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please reply to this post of via the usual channels.

Hi All,

All major tasks for patch 1.2 have been completed but we have some bug fixing and tweaks before we roll it out properly. If you want a peek of what's to come, you should be able to see this by opting into the 'beta - Pre-Release Beta Builds' beta within Steam.

Please note that this has not been robustly tested (its what we're in the process of now!) so please ensure that any save files are backed up. Additionally, whilst the in-game help has been updated on the beta branch, the user manual has not.

Feel free to give it a go, and we welcome any and all feedback, so let us know what you think!

We'll post an update when the patch has gone live properly for those who are happy to wait a little longer.