Star Explorers News

It's going to require another new game at this time. Again, sorry. Also, I have some fixes in store, but the new functionality is in place. I wanted to get something up this weekend, just to test it a bit before I go crazy.


• NPC names - human and alien
  
• NPC dialogue - humans and friendly aliens only. This will get an overhaul soon. They just give you three phrases right now. They can repeat the same phrase and there are not a lot to choose from, but I have a longer list to add to the game. I will also prevent them from repeating in the next build.
  
• Alien City - It still needs a proper 3D collider, so you might get stuck in some of the windows or details. I am working on that now. For now, I recommend staying on the ground and using the proper doors as much as possible. There are also some weird issues I will fix soon, like it rains inside the buildings (if it's raining) and alien NPCs seem to switch trade items with each visit. But overall it seems to work, and adds a new environment to the game. GOOD LUCK FINDING IT!
  




If this works out, I may add one more unique alien city to the game. That would again require a new game at this point, but I will see if I can work around that.

[h3]UFO Debris[/h3]
The debris produced by an exploding UFO worked only for the first storage compartment. This was actually true for debris from asteroids as well. This feature should now be working correctly.

[h3]Misplaces Sitters[/h3]
It appears that for new games, the seated NPCs will appear in the correct positions. I am not sure why this problem happened, but it appears to be working properly for new games, so I am not going to worry about it at this time. If you have a saved game, and you want to correct the position of the seated NPCs, you can go to your game's save folder in "C:/users/-your username-/AppData/Local/Star_Explorers" and find your game's save folder. Open that and delete the "mship_storage1.txt" file.

This should correct the positions, but it will also reset all the NPC inventory.

[h3]UFO Update[/h3]

• UFO's should no longer be brought back if you destroy them. This will not work retroactively, so you will have to destroy them one last time.
  
• UFO Bipedal Aliens should now behave properly. They were getting stuck in the previous build, and would not react to the player. Their guns would appear, but would remain stuck in the middle of the alien's body. Now they should hold their guns, and either attack the player (if hostile) or behave neutrally if not.
  
• UFO Bipedal Aliens should now spawn inside of the UFO rooms. They were in a bad habit of spawning between the walls. They still might shoot through walls, but I have reason to believe I will be able to fix that in the next update.
  
• UFOs will now produce space debris if you destroy them. Capturing this will put alien tech item's into your ship's storage.
  

[h3]Vsync[/h3]

• I have included a file in the game's save folder called "Vsync.txt" which you can edit. It will be set to 0 by default, enabling Vsync. If you want to disable Vsync, open that file in "C:/users/-your username-/AppData/Local/Star Explorers" and change the 0 at the end of the line to a 1. If you don't know what vsync is, just ignore this.
  
• Previously vsync was set to be disabled by default, and there was no way for users to change it.
  
• I will look into adding an in-game button to enable/disable vsync.
  

[h3]Problem[/h3]

• All the seated NPCs in the mothership seem to have moved a foot or so (in game space) forward, and are now intersecting the tables at which they sit. This is true for games that are reloading the mothership, I am not sure if it effects games in which the mothership has not yet been entered.
  
• If this is only for reloaded motherships, I will probably not fix it. I would test it now, but I cannot work on it any more today, and I did not want to delay the update.
  

[h3]Mothership Issues[/h3]
Mothership NPCs have been improved, with better lighting/shadows. Also, their inventory for sale has been adjusted so they will not have as many alien items. Vendors will now have a better budget with which to buy back items.

[h3]Cave Pits Removed[/h3]
Pits should no longer appear in caves. These are still a feature I want to add, but currently there is no way to escape them.

[h3]Wind Reduced on Storm Planets[/h3]
Storm planets will no longer push the player around constantly, however, tornadoes themselves will still push the player and damage them.

[h3]Issue with Missing Planets[/h3]
I found a strange issue where planets do not reload properly. I was not quite able to resolve why it was happening, but have applied a work-around for the time being. Hopefully this will not cause any new problems!

[h3]UFO Robots[/h3]
Robots have been reintroduced to hostile UFOs. They were replaced by bipedal aliens, which should still appear on UFOs, so now you should be seeing both.

[h3]Missing Lander[/h3]
During playtesting, I noticed the player's landing craft did not appear in the UFO hangar. However, when reloading a UFO, it appeared where it should be. Let me know if this is still an issue. I would resolve it, but it is not game breaking, and I wanted to upload the new branch tonight.

[h3]UFO - Ancient Ruin Bug - FIXED[/h3]
This update fixes a bug that was introduced when I added crashed UFOs to the game. What happened is that when a planet had either a crashed UFO or an ancient ruin, it would not allow that planet to reload on later visits.

It was easy to fix once I was able to identify the cause. I want to thank the players for reaching out and for their patience. This sort of thing is inevitable when new features are added, especially when it's me programming them :)

[h3]Galaxy Bug - NOT FIXED[/h3]
There is another bug that will prevent a galaxy file from reloading. It is actually easy to fix the file but I have not been able to identify the cause yet. If you encounter this, where the game will hang when trying to reload from the main menu - or I suppose it might happen when returning from a planet or the mothership - please let me know. I can fix your file if it happens, and it might give me a clue as to how it occurred.

I plant to test some ideas on why, where and when this might be happening.

[h3]Loot[/h3]
The most feedback about the mothership so far seems to be how it is causing some unbalance as far as loot and money are concerned. I like a lot of the suggested solutions to this, so I will be working on re-balancing these aspects of the game in the latest version. If you have any feedback regarding this, let me know here, or over on the discord server: https://discord.gg/vTxpb8Z