Star Explorers News

In my refactoring project, I ran across a pretty major bug that occurs during galaxy formation. It was actually quite easy to fix though, so I thought it would be good to update the default game as well.

This bug may have been responsible for the "Star missing from database" issue that plagued me, and players, from long ago. I never did quite get to the bottom of that one, but addressed it by writing workarounds and such.

It will only effect new games, however. You should be able to continue your current game without any trouble, as this only changes things that happen when a new galaxy is created. But players who do start a new game should have a more stable experience.

It may be too early to say, but the new save/load script does seem to be more stable so far.

I spent some time on a few issues that have been brewing in my mind for some time. Nothing too major, but things that may help to increase the game's immersion a bit.

[h3]Sun Movement[/h3]
Until now, whenever you landed on a new planet, the sun would be somewhere around the mid-morning position. Since planets are relatively small in Star Explorers, this meant few players would ever experience night time in their travels.

Now, the when you land, the game takes the actual planet model's current rotation and applies that to the sun's position. So when you land, it may be any time of day.

[h3]Planet Orbit[/h3]
In a related effort, I have written an simple equation that keeps track of each planet's position in orbit, in all solar systems. It effectively allows planets to continue orbiting their stars even when the player is in a different star system. When you return to a system, planets will be in new positions based on how much time had gone by when you were away.

This does not currently apply to the Star Chart, where planet positions are still just randomized. I'm not sure if anyone will even notice this, but I was trying to see if it could be done for the sake of thoroughness.

[h3]Tree Leaves[/h3]
Some planets with trees were failing to reload their leaves when returning to the surface, specifically on planets with a vaporous atmosphere. I believe I have found the cause of this error, and it should not happen any more.

The 0.5.1 release earlier today fixed several foundational issues, but caused a variety of smaller bugs. I was able to address several of these very quickly.

[h3]Issues:[/h3]

• The interactive guide was stuck when viewing the Star Chart the first time. This should work once again.
  
• "Orbit Disengaged" audio on landing. A script error caused the disengage audio to play when landing on a planet. It should no longer do so.
  
• "Press and Hold" is no longer required when leaving orbit. This phrase was removed from the tutorial panel as well as the interactive guide.
  
• Unused orbit rings were visible when viewing the star chart overlay, when a system had less than nine planets. This should no longer occur.
  

[h3]New feature:[/h3]
Solar systems used to randomize the orbit of planets whenever players left and returned to them. Now the game has an algorithm that keeps track of each planet's orbit, and they will continue to orbit (mathematically) even when the player is in a different star system. It probably won't impact anyone's gameplay too much, but I found it satisfying to get that to work. There was also a bug in the 0.5.1 update that allowed a planet to randomly appear directly over the player's ship on a reload. This was obviously bad, and needed to be fixed, though it would only occur very rarely.

I have learned a lot from my experiment in re-making Star Explorers from scratch, and have applied some of that knowledge to the testing branch. This is a pretty major update, but most of the changes will be invisible to players.

The script is much more coherent in some of the fundamental areas like saving and loading games. This should make it less prone to errors and crashes related to saving and loading files, or at least easier to find those errors and crashes should they occur.

I encountered a number of other issues after changing the script so dramatically, but have managed to get all the other systems back online.

[h3]Some Minor Differences:[/h3]

• The Star Chart will only show sectors in which stars have been scanned. This is slightly different that the previous Star Chart, which only showed sectors that the player's ship had passed through. I think the new way works better, as it will no longer show sectors with no data in them.
  
• Pressing "M" to aim towards the mothership should no longer give a "insufficient fuel" warning. This will be stated when the player actually warps.
  
• Aiming toward a star/planet when selecting orbit/warp from the drop down has been improved. It was possible to get caught in a strange, shaky cycle that sometimes caused a long delay in aiming. I have implemented a better aiming script, and it should be smoother.
  

[h3]Disengage Orbit [/h3]
When leaving orbit, you will no longer need to hold the back key, "s" by default. The ship should handle this action automatically now. It will slowly back your spaceship away from the planet while angling upward. This will position your spaceship directly "above" the planet, so there will be no possibility of backing into another planet, or into the gravity well of a star. Planets and orbits are not really scaled realistically in Star Explorers, so this was a problem in the past.

[h3]Going Forward[/h3]
One of the main reasons I even attempted to re-write these scripts were some ongoing issues with the main plot of the game. Finding Acknexium crystals on a planet would sometimes not register when you dropped your beacon. I believe this problem has been resolved. I have tested it numerous times, even leaving the system in which I found the crystals and returning prior to dropping the beacon, and it seems to work correctly every time. This had a lot to do with the complex and elaborate saving/loading system i had devised years ago, so this new one, being much simpler, does not end up with conflicting data as it may have previously.

I am trying to only address those systems that actually present problems, rather than trying to fix or improve things that are not broken. If all turns out as hoped, version 5.0 will be ready and fully stable by the Fall as planned.

In my second official dev-log entry, I describe what the heck I've been doing for the past month. Lots of progress, but little to show for it (yet)...

"I finally put my thoughts together and decided to do a small experiment. I would start a fresh project and import only the game assets, like textures, 3D models and sounds, writing the actual script from scratch. I allotted myself two weeks to accomplish this task, and would decide on any long term changes after this two week period expired.

I did not expect to get very far in two weeks, but I felt that was enough time to figure out how things would go. Well, they went pretty well. I was able to rewrite many of the game's basic systems in a much more efficient way than I had 7 years ago. This highlighted to me many of the redundancies and problems that were plaguing my current script..."

continue reading...