Star Explorers News

[h3]Ozone --> Oxygen[/h3][p]I was testing out the game to see if achievements were still working. So I only had two unfinished, so I tried the "Die by suffocation and acid simultaneously" achievement. I noticed that the planet with liquid sulphuric acid had an ozone atmosphere, so I saved the game, restarted in normal mode, and tested it out. But then I saw that my oxygen meter was not running out, and I left the planet only to see that the atmosphere was not ozone, but oxygen!

So some ozone planets were getting re-loaded as oxygen for some reason. I seem to remember this being pointed out some time ago, and I was sure I fixed it ... but I guess I was wrong.Well I was able to fix it, test the achievement and succeed to die in acid, while simultaneously suffocating to death. Yay!

[/p][p]It's really great news, but it does not explain why some players are not seeing the achievements pop up. Maybe something about this latest build has fixed the issue, but I don't think so.

Can anyone else confirm that achievements are working? It may be something I did wrong, but I can't seem to reproduce the problem. Maybe I can help the player troubleshoot the issue from their end. Any feedback would be great.[/p][p][/p]

[h3]Weapon Swapping Bug[/h3][p]I added a small variable that allows players to disable/enable the mouse scroll wheel. A player was experiencing trouble when playing with a trackpad, and my hope is that this will allow the game to be played without causing said trouble. [/p][p]If you are not having trouble with the weapons swapping at random, there is nothing for you in this update, move along...[/p][p][/p][h3]How to Update Settings[/h3][p]Right now you can only change the setting in the configuration file.

Before you can edit the file, you need to update it by opening the game, going to Options > Video Options change any setting, then click "Restart." Now the new thing will be added to the configuration file.[/p][p]
Go to "C:\\Users\\-Your_Username-\\AppData\\Local\\Star_Explorers"

Open the "options_1.cfg" file.

The last line will have the following text:

enable/disable scroll wheel,1

Change the 1 to -1 (NOT ZERO)

Save the file and restart Star Explorers. [/p][p][/p][p]Now you broke your scroll wheel, congratulations!
[/p][h3]What's a Scroll Wheel Precious?[/h3][p]The scroll wheel does two things in the game. First it allows you to zoom in and out of your star chart. I've tested this and it's still perfectly usable without zooming manually. The other thing it does is swap weapons when you are away from your ship. Instead of manually scrolling through weapons, just use the number keys 1-4 to choose the weapon (1 for the scanning device, 2-4 for equipped weapons).
[/p][p]Hopefully this will prevent the weapon swapping bug and allow the game's myriad other bugs to come back to the forefront![/p]

I think I used this version number already ... oh well.

The game has not really been changed much. However, when you click on the mothership, the words "Target Sector" have been changed to "Mothership Sector" because that is the sector being shown.

Also, in the last build I was testing the wormhole device, and left it set to "on" by accident. It is now turned "off" so you in new games you will not start with the wormhole device installed. The wormhole device allows you to interact with your ship's inventory no matter where you are. This is an expensive item that normally only appears later in the game.

Somehow I had linked the fruit creation script to both trees and plants, where it was only optimized to work with trees. The result was way too many fruits spawning on a planet and frame-rate going down to 4 fps.

Tests have confirmed that a more reasonable number of fruits should now spawn, even on worlds where there were too many in the previous build.

Enjoy!

Okay I wanted to apologize for the price change announcement. Thanks to the last few updates, more people have been playing the game, which is great!

However, there are some bugs that I thought had been squashed long ago that seem to be rearing their ugly heads once again, making me very uncomfortable with the idea of raising the price of the game.

So I am retracting my announcement about the change from $4.99 to $9.99.

Normally I would just say, hey I will fix those bugs and keep going. However, I genuinely have tried and they somehow never go away. Most of the issues in this game can be resolved by saving the game and reloading it. But that is not a thing I want to charge a premium price for at this time.

Here's an image from the game that represents roughly how I am feeling about things right now...


Version 6.0 is still scheduled to happen. I imagine some time before 2025, or maybe early into the new year. There may be a price change later, if I can resolve some of the underlying issues with the game first. Or it will be the same janky experience with a few extra features stapled on. I will let you all know.

For anyone who bought the game because of the imminent price change announcement, I did not intend this to happen so I am sorry. If you feel like you have been manipulated unfairly, please send me a message an I will try to find a way to make things right. Sorry about that!