Star Explorers News

Well, I ended up going back to the previous version of the testing branch after all. I tried to work with a brand new saving and loading system, as well as a brand new star chart. However, as I was building these, they ended up pretty much as convoluted as the originals.

So here we are at version 0.4.9. I was able to update a few small issues that were also included in the now defunct branch I'd been working on.

[h3]Fixes and Features[/h3]
The big bug that happened with star formation was addressed, as it was in the default branch. I believe this one was responsible all these years for the "Star Missing From Database" error. I guess we'll see. Basically, there was a weird loophole that allowed stars to form without being assigned a star number (something important, but internal to the game's script) so they would not be saved correctly in the database. Starting a new game will be required if you want to avoid this issue.

Smoothed out the warp/orbit movement script. There was a horrible jitter that could happen when trying to get the spaceship to face a star or the mothership. This should go a lot smoother now.

Pulling away from planets has been improved here too. Now you no longer have to hold the back key (S by default) in order to successfully leave orbit. Pressing it once should make your ship automatically back away and upward, so you will not end up backing into another planet or get sucked into a star's gravity well.

I also found several missing texture issues that were resolved. These would not have cause crashes or errors on their own, but may have contributed to any instability players have experienced.

[h3]Next Steps[/h3]
I really want to get to the 5.0 release. I feel like the game has been filled out in almost every way that I originally intended. I plan to test this current version and fix any issues that pop up until the end of Summer. I also plan to have another major look at the screen resolution script very soon. I think that is the biggest issue the game has at this point. Expect some more updates to this in the near future.

Somehow the new version had too many changes and I somehow created an endless loop which refuses to allow the game to load.

I will be looking at it more closely, but for the time being I am rolling the testing branch back to the last working version 0.4.7.

This uses the old save load system and the old star chart. It does not have some of the recent improvements like backing away from planets and better aiming towards stars and such. Those things were not dependent on the newer save/load system, so if I cannot get the latest version working, I will re-introduce those improvements in this branch.

Sorry about all this, it seemed to be going so well until today. Give me a couple days and I will either figure out what went wrong, or start back on this older branch. Thanks for your patience!

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.