Star Explorers News

For version 6.0 there will be a new price for Star Explorers!

The game will transition from the current price of $4.99 to $9.99.

This will be happening on Friday night, allowing for Valve's approval. So if you've been thinking about getting Star Explorers, now would be a good time!

[h3]Fruit[/h3]
This update introduces "Fruit," a new type of life form on some planets.

Currently you will see fruit anywhere there are trees or tree-like organisms. I plan to update this to make their appearance more varied.

Each fruit type will be a bit different from others. Most of them will behave like fruit here on earth behave ... they won't really do much at all, but may drop from their trees.

However some fruits may have behaviors. These differ from other life forms as they will also react to each other, instead of just to other life forms. Another difference is that their behavior with respect to other fruits will be different than their behavior towards non fruits. Some fruits, when they stray too far away from their tree, will race back to her.



Currently, fruits will not harm the player nor can they be harmed by the player or by other aliens. They may trigger a floater to explode though. This may also change in the next update, and some fruits may be dangerous ... not quite sure yet.

[h3]Picking Fruit[/h3]
Another thing that makes fruit unique is that you will be able to pick them up and add them to your inventory. Currently, each fruit will take up a full inventory slot. I think I will keep it this way as each one will have slightly different parameters.

[h3]Eating Fruit[/h3]
This is not implemented yet. Your character will be able to eat the fruit, and receive some kind of effect. It may be beneficial, or harmful, or something in between the two. This should be ready in the next update.

[h3]Dropping Fruit[/h3]
Dropping fruit on a planet surface, or in a cave (not tested yet) will allow the fruit to resume its normal fruit-like behavior. But instead of being tied to its tree, the fruit will think of you as its mommy.

[h3]Why Fruit?[/h3]
I'm not sure what I'm doing here. Players have asked me to add something that allows more to be done on planet surfaces. Having plants, it seemed logical to include some kind of fruits on some of them. I don't really know if or how they will effect the gameplay. I am hoping they players will discover some cool things to do with them.

The Version 6.0 Beta just got an update.

I am tweaking the way life can form on planets.

[h3]Vapor Worlds[/h3]
Previously, planets with a vaporized atmosphere, i.e. no surface liquid, could randomly have life on them. This is mostly still the case, but it is not quite as random. These planets will only have a chance for life if the temperature is not much higher than the boiling point of the surface liquid.

[h3]Floaters[/h3]
Floaters were originally going to be life forms that were completely independent of normal factors like having an atmosphere, temperature etc... This is still the case. However, floaters will now always appear on planets with other life.

[h3]Smoke Beasts[/h3]
Not to be confused with floaters(!). Smoke beasts look a bit like floating clouds, but they tend to behave more like the animal style alien creatures. Well, these guys just got a bunch of new, random attributes. These don't contribute a whole lot in terms of gameplay, but they will appear in a much wider variety of colors and forms. I am excited to see your screenshots as you encounter some of these, as I am not sure I can predict all the various possibilities.

The Version 6.0 testing branch has a new update.

There was a bug where, when approaching the mothership, if you cancelled the docking procedure, the UI would become unresponsive and you could no longer click on stars or the mothership itself.

I believe this is fixed now.

I was also able to fix the issue where the docking sound would play even if you had the volume all the way down (sorry for scaring any of you).

This iconic photo taken of the surface of Venus has always inspired me. Sure, it's a lifeless, uninhabitable world of sulphuric acid and extreme heat, but it's a world!



So Star Explorers has some similar worlds, but lately I've realized they are extremely rare due to factors I had not really considered when programming the game.

The boiling point of sulphuric acid is quite high at 610.1 Kelvin. So for these sulphuric vapor worlds to exist they have to be very close to a pretty hot star. Most sulphuric worlds will be a bit further out and either be liquid or frozen. But I know they exist because someone took this screenshot...



The only problem with this screenshot is that is has some kind of RTX shader thing happening which creates a reflective surface. This shader does not exist in the game itself, but is an overlay from a program called reshade.

I would love to see some screenshots of these rare, Venus like worlds without this reshade effect.

The reward is the journey! But really, I will give a free beta key to the first person who posts a screenshot of a Venus like, sulphuric vapor world (with no plants or trees or other life features preferably). Empty and rocky would be great!

The beta key will be for my new, upcoming game called Cyclopean. It's an old-school dungeon crawler set in the Dreamlands of H.P. Lovecraft.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2958790/Cyclopean/

A helpful player pointed out an issue that caused the game to crash to the desktop in the testing branch.

If you approached the mothership for the first time, then instead of clicking on the computer panel, you chose to first travel to another solar system, it would then crash once you clicked on the computer panel.

This was easy to fix, it was just one of those things that I failed to anticipate people doing. So it's always helpful to get this sort of feedback!

Also I just noticed I did not write the correct version number in he uploaded game. It should be 0.1.2, but it shows 0.1.1. I will fix this in the next version as it should not effect gameplay at all.