Avorion News

Beta Branch Note: These changes are currently available on the beta branch. The beta branch is for testing experimental changes and for finding and fixing errors.

This is how you get access to the beta branch (USE AT YOUR OWN RISK):
Right-Click on Avorion in your Steam list, Properties -> Betas -> Select branch 'beta'.

"In this update we greatly improved the basic tutorial. It is now much more streamlined with less text to read and more to do. Wherever possible the new tutorial now features interactive sequences."

• Added new Tutorial parts that explain missions, fighting and ship destruction (and reconstruction)
• The Tutorial can now only be played in Singleplayer - set the checkbox to true while creating a new galaxy if you want to play it!
• Player now starts Tutorial with a ship fully equipped to play
• New missions that follow on from the tutorial to explain more advanced game mechanics

"The Story in Avorion has always been rather a loose thread than a real story. With this update we introduce a more streamlined approach that helps players to find and complete all story missions."

• Greatly streamlined the story missions with more subsequent missions
• Added additional "guide" mission for story missions
• Added shortened version of credits that is played when the story is completed

"We completely reworked the UI for commanding ships over the galaxy map. Enjoy!"

• Reworked the UI for commanding ships over the galaxy map
• Ships are now listed on the right of the map
• Routes of ships through gates and wormholes now have different colors
• Fixed several issues when rendering routes and icons on Galaxy Map

• When founding a station, the style of the faction it was bought from can be used to create a plan for it
• Camera settings of different ships are now remembered
• Military ships of AI factions now respawn
• Alliance privileges are now checked when transferring content between ships
• Repair docks can now also restore ships for a player's alliance and vice versa
• Fixed persecutors not spawning correctly in sectors without players but with player ships
• Optional ingredients now double production speed of factories when used in a production

• Improved UI of trading upgrade
• Squads in Hangar tab can now be moved around by Drag n Drop
• Added text boxes for exact values to several sliders
• Hire Crew UI now shows your current crew
• FPS limiter combobox is now disabled when vsync is on
• Display refresh rate can now be configured when using fullscreen
• Added combobox to select the display to graphics settings
• Common resolutions are now made available in windowed mode for convenience
• Added a confirmation message box when disbanding an alliance
• Added scrollbar to cargo tab
• Alliance emblems are now shown in diplomacy tab
• Added a bar to show how much cargo is on the ship
• Fighters tab in Equipment Dock is hidden when player is outside Trinium regions and his ship doesn't have a hangar
• Illegal, dangerous, stolen or suspicious trading goods now have a different color in the sales UI
• Added tooltips for optional ingredients in factory config UI and what they do

"We added localization for Chinese (Simplified), Russian and Spanish. Additionally, we improved performance of several particle systems and fixed a few crashes related to those."

• Added first official support for Simplified Chinese, Russian and Spanish
  • Some texts are still missing, but will be added over the next weeks
• Improved performance of thruster particle effects
• Improved performance of loot & wreckage particles
  • Particles are now no longer spawned when they would be too far away
• Cargo loot changes size depending on amount of cargo
• Loot packets that float around now merge together over time to improve performance
• Improved visibility of rare turrets and upgrades floating around as loot

"In order to make administrating a (community) server a little easier, we added logging about which resources are being exchanged between players."

• Added a "script-threads" command line argument
• Improved logging of servers
• Servers log when players enter the galaxy center for the first time
• Server now logs the items and resources (not text) sent within mails
• Server now logs when a ship from a disbanded alliance was claimed by a player
• Server now logs boarding of ships
• Server now logs alliance vault transactions, and other actions like joining, founding, disbanding, etc.
• Server now logs which items and resources are exchanged in a player trade
• Added option -t to /playerinfo command which prints last online time and total playtime of all players
• Added option -p to /playerinfo command to display resources and other info of players
• Added a /profile command that records a profiling benchmark for the next 30 seconds and then saves it to a file
  • Use this if your server / game has bad performance or lags and you want to help us fix it. You can send us the file alongside an explanation as to what happened.

"In order to fix some very annoying performance issues, we revamped our diagnostics system to a more centralized approach. You can help us greatly by using these easy-to-use tools and sending us the collected data!"

• Refactored profiling to find performance issues more reliably
• Client: Press F10 to save performance stats of the past ~30 seconds to a file
  • Use this when you got consistent FPS problems
• Server: Type /status to save performance stats of the last ~30 seconds to a file
  • Important: Set profiling=true in your server.ini for this to work
• Server: New /profile command that records a profiling benchmark for the next 30 seconds and then saves it to a file
  • Use this if your server / game has bad performance or lags

• Added AllianceEmblem class
• Added a onSectorArrivalConfirmed callback when the client finished loading a sector
• When a player enters the center of the galaxy for the first time, a value visited_center is set
• Added a fullLogId property to players that prints a string fully identifying the player
• Added fullLogId to client Player, client Alliance, Faction, Player, Alliance
• Added a tagDescription property to TradingGood
• Added a color property to TradingGood
• Adjusted Y sizes of labels that are created with only a vec2 and not a Rect
• Added controlPressed, shiftPressed, altPressed, modifierKeyPressed to Input class
• Added lookAtSmooth function to GalaxyMap

"Bugfixes marked with [UBR] are user bug reports. Thanks to everyone who reported! You can report bugs from within the game in the pause menu."

• Fixed several issues in scripts
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where turret designs could get lost when merging blocks
• Fixed an issue where the rotation arrows of the turret brush pointed in the wrong direction
• Credits can no longer be scrolled back infinitely
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where fighter orders weren't applied when leaving a sector without them and then returning
• Fixed several issues where turrets could be placed on blocks where they shouldn't be placed
• Fixed an issue where turrets could get duplicated
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where the ship name could protrude from its texture
• Fixed an issue where transform mode was disabled when clicking the block button or pressing its keyboard shortcut
• [UBR] Exodus mission corner sectors can now be found even if the mission is not active
• Fixed several issues with translations
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where flat corner blocks couldn't be placed back-to-back
• [UBR] Dangerous transformations to holo blocks are now prevented
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where width and height were swapped in craft stats
• Fixed an issue where the "You need X, Y, Z resources" message could contain negative values
• Fixed an issue with refreshing the servers list
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where collecting cargo could crash the game
• Fixed an issue where "loot collected" sound effect would sometimes be played when loot despawns
• [UBR] Block brush: Fixed an issue where the block size was messed up when rotating in voxel grid mode
• Fixed a crash when lots of particles could be seen on screen
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where no traders could spawn at first when founding a new station
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where trading overview upgrade could display wrong values for the first sector after first relog
  • Also fixes the "sell price: error getting supply demand factor: 3" error message spam (which was not critical)
• Fixed an issue where AI factions would rebuild the wrong factories after they were destroyed

We are happy to share good news with you today! Our official Community Servers are now assigned, and you can already explore the galaxy together with other players! The verified servers are clearly marked with a blue checkmark and are accessible to everyone without a password. The servers are provided free of charge in cooperation with 4NetPlayers and are managed by selected administrators.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the numerous applications! Unfortunately, we could not assign a server to everyone, so some applications are still on the waiting list if a server becomes available again in the future.
We will continue to work closely with both 4NetPlayers and the server administrators to ensure that you get the best performance from the servers.

We would also like to inform you that our friends from Stray Fawn Studio are releasing their game Nimbatus - The Space Drone Constructor! Today at 18pm CEST it will leave Early Access! 😊 For the launch there is a discount of 25% for everyone until 21.05.2020 9am PST! Take a look, because for all who love space games, it's definitely worth it!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/383840/Nimbatus__The_Space_Drone_Constructor/

Concerning an update, we would also like to inform you that we are working on it with determination. Unfortunately, we can’t give you an exact date yet. We ask you for a little patience and understanding. In any case we will keep you always up to date! 😊

This small update is the next step in bringing you our official servers. For more details please read our previous announcement.

Beta Branch Note: These changes are currently available on the beta branch. The beta branch is for testing experimental changes and for finding and fixing errors.

This is how you get access to the beta branch (USE AT YOUR OWN RISK):
Right-Click on Avorion in your Steam list, Properties -> Betas -> Select branch 'beta'.

• Official Community Servers are now marked in the server browser
• Added "Rent A Server" button to the multiplayer menu which opens the website of our official server hosting partner 4NetPlayers

• Added configurable motd to server.ini that is displayed when a player logs in
• One admin can now join over the maximum player limit to enable better supervision

"Bug reports marked with [UBR] are user bug reports. Keep it up guys! :)"

• [UBR] Fixed an issue that caused automatic miners and salvagers to get stuck
• [UBR] Fixed an issue where the tutorial wasn't playable in creative mode

We are happy to announce that official community servers are coming! Due to the current Covid-19 situation, we are all encouraged to stay at home and we want to help you through this time. We have already made all the necessary arrangements and are currently working on the final touches to get the servers live.
After consulting with many server hosts, we have found out, that it works best if each community plays according to their own ideas. That's why we provide you with the servers for free and you can administrate and lead them the way you want! We only set some ground rules to ensure that everyone is treated fairly. You can decide how you run the servers, which community you want to build, how often the servers will be wiped and so on.

[h2]How is this going to work?[/h2] We have organized servers for you via 4NetPlayers, which we will provide to you for free. There will be several servers and it is important for us to work closely with you together, to get the best possible experience for you and to achieve improvements! The servers will be marked separately so that you can clearly see which ones are official and verified.
If you are interested in administrating a server, send us a quick application with the following content to [email protected] :

- Your name
- A link to your Steam profile (must be public)

And please answer the following questions in your application:

- Are you already hosting a server or do you have experience in game server administration?
- How long have you been playing Avorion?
- Do you already have a community? If so, how big is it?
- How many administrators would manage the server?
- Please tell us, which kind of server you would like to have. For example, PvP or PvE?
- Why would you like to administrate a server, what is your motivation?

Please note that you must be a member of our official Discord Server, so please let us know your Discord ID in the email.
Here is the link to our Discord:
https://discord.gg/ebwtqkQ

[h2]Short Q&A [/h2] Will there be a charge for the servers?
- No, the servers are provided by us free of charge. We host them, you can use them.

Where will the servers be located?
- We will provide servers in the EU and the US.

Will we be able to mod our servers?
- For now they will be unmodded.

Will it be PvP or PvE servers?
- Both will be available, we have not yet determined the exact distribution.

What are the rules?
- In order to provide a good experience for a broad majority of players, there will be some ground rules set by us. Server admins are free to extend the rules, as long as they don’t revoke ours.

We are looking forward to hearing from you and we hope that we can assign the first servers soon! :)

Beta Branch Note: These changes are currently available on the beta branch. The beta branch is for testing experimental changes and for finding and fixing errors.

This is how you get access to the beta branch (USE AT YOUR OWN RISK):
Right-Click on Avorion in your Steam list, Properties -> Betas -> Select branch 'beta'.

We're releasing a small patch that should fix several issues that have come up over the past two weeks. In the meantime we're hard at work for the next free update, so stay tuned!

• Order chains are now started when the galaxy map is closed and Shift was still held

• Added warning text about potentially losing turrets next to the apply button in ModifyWholeShipWindow
• Blueprints are now called "Blueprint" in tooltips
• Turret blueprints are now rendered with a blue background in shops
• Adaptive Vsync is always used first, when trying to enable vsync. If it fails, normal vsync is enabled.
• Fighter order buttons can now be toggled back off when clicked a second time
• Added a notification for when there are not enough slots to activate all turrets
• Newly received items are now always sorted up
• Added a "Tools" title to the tool buttons on the right side of the building mode
• Added "repair" and "repair target" orders to map commands
• Added warnings for mod version changes that will break compatibility
• "Transfer to Alliance" button is now invisible while not in an alliance

• Reduced volume of background music vs action music

• Several backend performance improvements for servers with many AI factions and players
• Added a chat message for when player enters 0:0 and the guardian was already beaten and has to respawn first in multiplayer
• Xsotan swarm event can now be limited to a configurable amount of sectors with players

• Added more debug logging to find more issues
• Client-sided mod version compatibility check with server only checks "major" & "minor" version numbers, to allow "patch" version to be used for backwards compatibility

• Added new Sector/Entity callbacks onScriptValueChanged, onAllScriptValuesChanged, onScriptAdded, onScriptRemoved
• Added new Player callbacks onScriptValueChanged, onAllScriptValuesChanged, onScriptAdded, onScriptRemoved
• Added new Galaxy callbacks onScriptValueChanged, onAllScriptValuesChanged, onScriptAdded, onScriptRemoved
• Renamed all "Multiplicator" occurrences to "Multiplier"
  • Left in "Multiplicator", those are now deprecated and will be removed in future versions

• Fixed an issue where crew quarters delta wasn't shown in building stats
• Fixed an issue where the turret factory ui wasn't correctly refreshed on show
• Fixed an issue where non-turret items could be added to the turrets window in building mode
• Fixed an issue where crew morale was not saved correctly
• Fixed several issues with german translation
• Fixed loop-order button not being shown when ship does not yet have some command running
• Fixed an issue where trading overview didn't list new turret factory supplier goods
• Fixed some issues where turret designs would get removed during modification of entire ship
• Fixed some issues where turret designs would get removed when merging blocks
• Fixed some issues with torpedo UI when auto-loading is enabled
• Fixed an issue where players of newly founded alliances wouldn't be immediately known as such as members of the alliance
• Fixed an issue where the AI wouldn't attack an alliance's ships
• Fixed several crashes in lua scripts
• Fixed a rare hang when collecting cargo
• Fixed an issue where map ship icons would be shown in the wrong place
• Fixed "Show in Workshop" button for mods not working
• Fixed too narrow list entries for mod paths
• Fixed some issues with respawning of asteroids
  • Fixed default respawn not being triggered due to non-obviously mineable asteroids being present
  • Fixed respawn not being triggered once all asteroids have been wiped from the sector
• Fixed an issue where camera shake would continue while paused
• Fixed an issue where disabled turrets would fire in out-of-sector simulations
  • This fixes an issue where ships with repair turrets and armed turrets would hurt their target instead of repairing it
• Fixed an issue where the crew transport ship wouldn't bring enough crewmen
• Fixed an issue where trading posts could sell for less money than they buy for
  • Trading post prices are now affected less by their stock
• Fixed an issue in building mode where transforming only the orientation didn't work
• Fixed an issue where "Transform all selected blocks" would reset the orientation of the transformed blocks
• Fixed an issue where turret designs on edge blocks were positioned incorrectly when the craft plan changed
• Fixed an issue where stations wouldn't have enough cargo space to be able to trade/produce
• Fixed an issue where hailing text would be displaced on MacOS