Star Explorers News

This is a pretty big update. What I thought would take a week or so, ended up taking over a month. The Mothership Altair is now becoming a location to visit in-game!

[h3]The Bad News![/h3]
First, I apologize, but this latest version will again require a new game. I hate to do this, and I try not to have this happen, but some times it is unavoidable due circumstances outside of my control. This usually means some error that I wrote into a previous version, but it is what it is.

[h3]Mothership[/h3]
It is still rough, very rough. I have to add some actual characters, new models, and work on improving the graphics, which somehow do not want to work the way I expect them to right now :)



Still, there are new shops for ship, suits and weapons that you could not access from the ship's computer before. That shop is still available, in case you just want to refuel or sell some stuff quickly.

The idea here was to create a different, more familiar kind of environment the player can visit. A kind of home base with friendly npcs to interact with. I do want to elaborate a lot on the look, feel and functionality of the place, but it is currently working and accomplishing a good portion of what it needs to right now. Having player feedback and ideas will be welcome at this point.

[h3]Fixes[/h3]
A few issues have popped up in the previous build, and i have begun to address those as well.

• Leaf alpha - some leaves were being rendered incorrectly. This only occurred on liquid ammonia planets, and only after leaving and returning to the surface ... so that was fun to test!
  
• Missing storage containers - this only effected the visible storage model, not your actual storage capacity. It should work properly now.
  

Lots of new stuff is happening in 0.0.6, including, but not limited to, the following:

• New fungus and plant variables. Different liquid and atmosphere types will influence what kinds of fungus and/or plant-life will exist on a planet.
  
• There are no new plant or fungus models, but the way they form and combine has been altered, so you may discover fungus trees, or branching fungus in your travels, among other things.
  
• Fixed a number of small issues.
  
• New spaceship rooms. Here is where I have spent the most time. I will let the screenshots say the rest.
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]
The last few updates have brought along their share of bugs and other issues, I spent a lot of time repairing those.

1. Star Names - Star names now appear at the man console at the ship's helm, in addition to the star chart. There was a problem where they would not appear correctly if you had not visited the star's sector (either with your ship or in the star chart) and it would show up as "NOT IN DATABASE." This should be corrected, and the star name should appear correctly.

2. Planets crash when loading - After adding sand planets, I introduced a bug that would prevent certain other planets from loading. I was able to identify the cause of this and resolve the issue.

3. Sideways rain - After updating the way rain works, I forgot to update the actual rain model in the Steam version, so rain would have appeared incorrectly. This should be resolved.



[h3]New Features[/h3]
1. New landscaping - There are six new types of "landscape" objects. These are the large scale rocky outcroppings that appear on some planets. The image above shows one of the new types.

Here are a couple more images of the various new types of landscape...


Natural arches...


Craters...

More New Features are being tested...

I was able to identify a problem with some textures on alien UFOs. Occasionally, the levels would appear with dark areas. It turns out some of the textures I was using were formatted incorrectly, so it was actually pretty easy to fix once I found the problem.

[h3]Crashed UFOs[/h3]

Probably the most dramatic change is the existence of crashed UFOs on some planets. You can enter these destroyed craft and explore then, just like the ones in outer space. You won't find the crew on board, but you may come across some other surprises.

[h3]Star Chart Upgrade[/h3]
The star chart now remembers your last position when you switch back to the ship's helm. This should improve the ease of navigation a lot. There is a bug in the star chart too, if you switch back and forth between stars and sectors, or between planets and stars, occasionally the star chart will have an error, and will not know what to focus on.

If this happens, just switch back to the last working focus (i.e. if you were looking at sectors, and then switched to stars, then switch back to sectors). You may have to re-click the star or planet you are trying to zoom in to. I will continue to troubleshoot this issue, but it does not seem to cause any game breaking problems.

[h3]Sand Planets[/h3]

Sand planets already existed in Star Explorers. However, they will now have some different aspects that set them apart from other planets. The new sand planets will be flatter than others, and they will be lacking grass, trees and plants, though they may still have surface liquids and aliens if conditions are right. They also will be lacking caves, but they can still have ancient ruins or crashed UFOs to discover. This is just to add a little more variety to the game's possibilities. I plan on adding more planet and terrain types in the next update.

New Features are being tested...

Aliens on UFOs should now be persistent between visits. So if you meet an alien, and it has an item or a quest, you should be able to come back later and purchase that item, or fulfill that quest.

Star and planet names now appear at the ship's helm. Previously you had to go to the star chart to see the names of stars and planets. This should make navigation much easier than before. You do still need to visit the star chart to enter custom names for stars and planets.


Here you can see the selected star is named "Big Red."


Mercuria, a desolate world, orbiting a dead star in a far off corner of the galaxy.

I already announced this, but I wanted to show you some of the new cave textures that you may encounter in your travels. The caves now reflect the surface type of each planet...