Star Explorers News

This update adds a few warning messages and removes some redundant script when attempting to drop a beacon around a planet. This is in response to several players who were unable to drop the beacon after finding Acknexium on a planet in the main mission.

[h3]Fixed - Maybe[/h3]
First, I found a couple scripts that might have been responsible. I was able to remove some code that could have prevented the game from behaving correctly. I cannot say for certain whether this script was responsible for the error, as I was unable to reproduce it yet. But the script did appear to be potentially problematic.

[h3]Warnings[/h3]
I added a few warning messages. If you encounter these - in a grey window that says "alert!" that will help me track down the root cause of the problem, in case the above changes did not fix the problem.

Based on some recent feedback I was able to resolve a few bugs, and improve on one feature.

[h3]Bugs[/h3]
Target Sector Missing - previously, the target sector and show overlay buttons in the star chart, were only visible once the player clicked on a sector. This was not really a bug, just poor UI design. Now these buttons should appear regardless of the selection state.
The game *should* now allow you to drop items inside UFOs
Keybindings for Roll Left and Roll Right were incorrectly displayed in the control options menu
Using the Tilt keys (arrow up and down by default) was reversed previously

[h3]Resting[/h3]
Now, when you use the Sleep Pod to rest, if you are orbiting a planet, the planet will rotate an additional 90 degrees. This allows you to kill some time, for instance if it is night time on the planet surface, and too cold to land, you no longer have to wait for the planet to slowly rotate.

This is a small update. I was able to retro-fit the video options menu to manage filtered/unfiltered textures.



In the process I removed an old shader I called "smooth pixels" and made this manage the texture filtering shader. Texture filtering will be off by default, so you should see each pixel clearly, as in this image:



If you set texture filtering to "on" - still called "smooth pixels" in the menu - you will see the textures no longer have clearly identifiable pixels.



Note, there are other options like old-school pixels (off by default), which effectively lowers the screen resolution, and posterize (on by default), which decreases the depth of the colors. These can be adjusted to suit the player's preferences.

So ... this update introduces some interesting changes to the Star Chart as well as how planet temperature is handled.

[h3]Star Chart:[/h3]
The most significant changes here is that you can now manually move the star chart overlay temporarily when viewing the star chart. By default, you will use the arrow keys to do this. The effect is similar to the "target sector" function. It will temporarily move the overlay to a sector that is not actually present in the star chart - a sector your ship has never visited - and it will allow you to see that sector's stars highlighted at the helm of your ship.

This is a feature that has been on the to do list for a while and several players have requested something like this recently. The reason this feature is necessary, is because sometimes it is difficult to identify stars or sectors that have not been visited. Now by moving the overlay around in the star chart, you can have an immediate idea of where those unexplored sectors are. The TAB - help menu has been updated with instructions on using this feature.

Another minor issue caused a star overlay circle to appear at a random location when the overlay was active, with no star to justify its presence. This should no longer happen.

[h3]Planet Temperature:[/h3]
The recent temperature range update has caused an interesting gameplay issue. Players had to guess whether it was day or night on a planet, and often landed when temperature conditions were not ideal. Now you can see the current time of day of the planet you are orbiting from the ship's computer.

NOTE: Day and night are indicated by a number between -180 and +180. Negative numbers (between -180 and 0) indicate night-time (low temperature). Positive numbers (between 0 and +180) indicate day time (high temperature). The sun will set when that number reaches +180, and the "clock" will switch to -180, dropping to night time temperature. At time 0, the sun rises, and the temperature will go back up.

[h3]F11: [/h3]
The F11 key (by default) will temporarily toggle the HUD. I had to fix an issue where it was not operating correctly, so it should be fine now.

The Black Sphere of Death:
This was a problem when visiting the Mothership Altair. The mothership interior sometimes intersected the model for the outer space background, and it would appear as a great, black wall inside of the mothership. It did not actually cause any issues in the game, but it looked very weird. Hopefully after this update it will not frighten anyone any more.

[h3]Bugs:[/h3]
With any new changes, I try to be careful and make sure there are no adverse effects. However, sometimes things get past me and will cause problems for players. If you encounter any new issues, please don't hesitate to let me know.

I have added a redundancy to the screen resolution script, so hopefully it will not try to open the game in an impossible window size - thereby defaulting to a size too small to actually play. This will not give any error messages, but if an impossible window size is attempted, it will default to 1280 x 720.

A player discovered a problem when running out of oxygen. Somehow it caused his health to increase, and thereby increased his movement speed to absurd levels. This should now be resolved, but let me know if you encounter any related (or unrelated) issues.