Star Explorers News

Just a small addition to improve user experience. I fixed it so the mouse cursor will appear in the center when switching mouse modes.

So, if you are in combat mode, where the mouse cursor is fixed in the center of the screen, and you hit the space bar to switch to navigation mode, the mouse cursor will be in the center of the screen. Previously it would show up at a seemingly random location, as it would not lock the position of the windows cursor, only the game window cursor ... if that makes sense.

This will also effect any other time the mouse mode changes, like when opening your inventory or interacting with NPCs...

I did not have much time today, but I thought I would give a little update to the game's FOV settings.

The spaceship FOV has been reduced from 60 to 50 ... this may get tweaked ... it should improve framerate when viewing the center of the galaxy from the outer edges. I may include an option to change this in a future update.

The player FOV slider has been updated in the video options to go up to 140. I would not recommend using this unless you have an ultrawide monitor.

There are just a couple small changes to the UI

• Pressing the interact button "E" by default, will now close any open dialogues or inventory panels, as well as alert panels
  
• Pressing the jump button "Space" by default, will now close any alert panels, but will keep inventory and/or dialogue panels if they are open.
  
• I found an issue with the screen resolution function that would cause errors if youtried changing the resolution without changing the type (fullscreen vs window). This should
• hopefully* be working correctly now.
  

[h3]About 4K[/h3]
I found a way to scale menus to better match the new, high resolution monitors. The system works, but it would take a very long time to redo all the game's menus to work with the new system. For now I have put this idea on ice.

I am considering revisiting this before the 5.0 update is ready. Perhaps once all the gameplay and new features are ready, I will have time to implement this with the 5.0 release, but my current thinking is that it will just delay the release unnecessarily.

I will be reflecting on this idea, and welcome any feedback from players.

There are lot's of things going on, but today the update is purely visual...



Neon lights and signage have been added to the alien city for your viewing pleasure ... if you are lucky enough to find it! Vertical neon signs with strange symbols equals cyberpunk, so we are totally hopping on that bandwagon this week :P



It also serves a purpose, some of the buildings were a bit darker than intended, so these extra lights will help in navigating the interiors. (There are also areas left intentionally dark).

There are a bunch of small fixes and updates in this latest build.

• The Alien City got a better exterior model.
  
• Footsteps in the alien city will no longer sound like gravel.
  
• Caves - stalagmites and stalactites will no longer get the player stuck!
  
• I made them passable now, since they were never really intended as barriers. The big, hallway-blocking stalagmites and stalactites will still function the same way, but the smaller, individual ones will no longer be a burden.