Star Explorers News

With the recent overhaul of the testing version, as expected, some things went a bit screwy. As it turned out, the helpful little markers that show you which stars you've been to (highlighted in blue) and which ones you haven't (highlighted in red), had gone off, and stopped showing their colors.

This latest patch fixes that issue.


In other news, I (with the help of a YouTuber who was playing Star Explorers) discovered a major bug in the default version of Star Explorers. It seems that starting a new game after having selected a saved game to load, will write the new game's save information INSIDE the folder of the selected saved game. This means when you start up Star Explorers, you game will not appear on the load menu.

I may patch this in the default version ... or I may just update it to version 3.6 once I am happy with it. A decision will be made by some time tomorrow.

Okay, the testing version has been updated again. This time, you may notice a new feature right away. Since I upgraded to GameStudio A8 - Professional Edition, I am able to create a snazzy, custom loading image :)




The other big change is in how you access the main menu after starting a game. Something was wrong with my script. If you went back to the main menu after starting a game, then loaded another game, or started a new game, it would cause all sorts of errors.

For the time being, until I can fix these issues, I have set it back to the way I handled this previously ... namely, that going back to the main menu restarts the game. Effectively, this has the same functionality, it just lets you see the loading menu briefly. I know it's kind of a screwy way to do things, but at least it will be stable (or more stable anyway).

Okay, I have updated the testing version of Star Explorers. I want to make a small clarification. If you have been using the "testing" version, you should switch over to the "beta" version. That is still currently on version 3.5. Originally, I made the testing version for my own use, so I could test it before updating the beta.

Recently, I got lazy, and just updated the testing version, ignoring the beta version.

Testing is supposed to be for me to make sure everything is working before I update the beta. It's just an extra level of protection for players. But if you feel like you are on the cutting edge of Star Exploring ... feel free to continue to use the testing version.

Anyway, as I mentioned, I refactored the code and fixed a bunch of potential missing pointer problems.

Also, I believe I was able to isolate the crash some players experienced while using the star chart in full screen mode. I was able to get the game to crash, just to see if I could reproduce the problem. I made some adjustments, and now it does not crash in the Star Chart in full screen mode.

The game will still crash if you load a saved game, after going back to the main menu while in-game. The saved game will load fine, but then it will crash when you try to land on a planet.

The good news is that I was able to reproduce this problem too, so that is always the first step in fixing a bug. I expect to be able to address this in the next update.

Nothing too exciting to report, however, I have spent this past week refactoring a lot of code in Star Explorers. I encountered quite a few pointers that were not properly conditioned, so they could have been resulting in random crashes. I fixed these, and also removed a bunch of pointers that were not being used.


The glamorous excitement of refactoring code, in all it's glorious splendor!

For anyone who does not know, pointers are references to game objects, that allow one game object to modify or effect another. However, if a script references a pointer, and that pointer has not yet been assigned, or has somehow been removed, then the game will crash.

By adding a line like this: "if (pointer exists)" before referencing it, I am able to make the script more stable. Most of my pointers already had these conditions set, but I guess there were a few that I did not write as carefully as I should have.

Now for some testing to make sure I didn't break anything along the way! I expect to release a new testing version of the game in the next few days.

If you've been following the devlog I started on www.schmidtworkshops.com you will already know what's been updated.

The following issues have been addressed:

• Switching or Reloading a weapon now prevents it from being fired
  
• The speed of the mouse is now factored into camera movement
  
• Item generation is now optimized to generate a wider variety of items
  
• Alien generation is also optimized similarly
  
• UFO damage will be more noticeable
  
• UFOs should now have a glowing effect, and should be more visible
  
• Camera tilt has been increased to 90 degrees (used to be 60 degrees)
  

Do let me know if you have any questions or concerns.