Star Explorers News

[h3]Mining Stations[/h3]

• Planets where the player has found Acknexium crystals will now be updated with a small mining station.
  
• This station will have a small complement of human miners.
  
• Humans are interactive, and can trade or offer quests, just like friendly aliens.
  

A small mining station is visible in the distance on this volcanic world.


Acknexium production is at 80% sir!


[h3]About the Testing Branch[/h3]

• The testing branch is where I am preparing the next big update for Star Explorers
  
• Version 5.0 should be ready this Fall
  
• There are already a ton of new features and improvements, but I want to make sure everything is working really smoothly before updating the main branch of the game
  
• The game will require a restart if you are moving from the default to the testing branch
  
• Future changes could also require another restart, that's why I want to avoid updating the main branch before everything is thoroughly tested
  
• If you're interested in the testing branch, you can get the password on discord: https://discord.gg/vTxpb8Z
  
• You will also be able to have interesting discussions with other players, and me, the developer
  
• You may even see some behind the scenes development stuff, like this crazy scenario that occurred while trying to get the mining stations to work...
  
  
  
• Or these guys...
  

With the amount of updates and changes to this game, I thought it might be nice to write down some of my thought process behind making it.

This first log entry gives some of the background behind why I started working on Star Explorers, and what other games, films, books and ideas inspired it. I hope you enjoy reading this, and that, perhaps, it will prompt some more discussions...

[h3]About Star Explorers[/h3]
5/7/2021
I wanted to start writing about Star Explorers, for the players, for the potential players, and for myself, as a way to document my thinking behind the game. This is not where I will be posting updates or announcing changes to the game, you can see all that on the Steam Page, but I want this to be about the deeper stuff. This first post is dedicated to those shows, books, games and ideas that really formed the primary influences of Star Explorers.

The whole idea for Star Explorers came up some time in 2013, around October if memory serves, and it was a result of playing a bunch of Minecraft and watching a ton of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes on Netflix. I remember specifically the image of the Enterprise orbiting a new world, and wondering if I could make different worlds, like Minecraft does, but in a way where a player could visit many of them in the same game.



It's that image of the Enterprise's view screen, with a planet slowly circling on the left, and space extending off to the right, that I really wanted to capture. There is something magical about the idea of treading on new ground. The mystery of what may or may not exist on the surface of a new world. The expectancy and anticipation of it all, just like the crew of the Enterprise must have felt (theoretically) whenever they approached a new, unexplored planet, and could see it from the relative safety of their ship before attempting to transport down ... that's what originally motivated me to make this game.

Continue Reading...

A reference to an old file prevented the game from launching.

[h3]Incorrect Normal Mapping[/h3]
Normal mapping was somehow incorrectly implemented on UFO interior walls.
Strange normal mapping artifacts appeared where they were not supposed to on some tiles as in this image:



I was able to identify what I believe to be the root cause, and so now this should appear correctly:



[h3]Aliens shooting through walls[/h3]
Players would be getting shot and taking damage when no enemies were visible. It turned out to be the aliens, not the robots. I made sure they would no longer be able to do this. Several play-throughs have affirmed that it's working, but let me know if it happens again.

[h3]A bug was found in the most recent build:[/h3]

• Entering a cave or ruin and destroying a barrier, would incorrectly write into the storage file, causing the game to crash when trying to re-enter the same location.
  
• This should no longer happen, but if a cave was corrupted in this way already, it will not fix the issue for that location.
  

[h3]New UI Feature[/h3]

• Number keys 1-4 will now switch between equipped weapons/scanner
  
• Scanner is assigned to 1, and weapons are 2-4
  
• Tested on planet surfaces and in caves/ruins, seems to work