Star Explorers News

This update combines the last two testing branch builds and adds on additional fix.

[h3]Update 5.1.4 [/h3]
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/502720/view/3111423019465325111

This update attempts to fix an issue where the game can crash when hitting alt-tab and switching to other windows applications. According to internal testing this does seem to resolve the problem and make the game more stable. Please let me know if you continue to experience any other crashes. It is an ongoing struggle.

[h3]Update 5.1.5 [/h3]
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/502720/view/3111424923978486798

This update introduces a simple UI scaling technique. Since the game was designed long ago with smaller monitors in mind, the text and panels can appear quite small on modern hardware. Now, If you play the game in window mode with a border, you can maximize the window. This allows you to play with a full screen window, without actually increasing resolution. By increasing the screen size, without increasing the resolution, text and panels will scale up accordingly, making them easier to read.

[h3]Update 5.1.6[/h3]

In this most recent update, I was able to correct a problem in which planets were not being counted properly. Now the game should keep track of how many planets you land on, and award Steam achievements accordingly.

Note: Steam Achievements will only work if you are playing on Normal mode or higher. Casual and Easy modes do not grant achievements.

Also Note: I was told that cave achievements might not be working too. Unfortunately I was not able to find out what might be causing this. However, it is also possible that the report was made in error. Please let me know if you have had any issues with the cave achievements.

This is an experimental update. I am not sure if it will be of value to players or not.

The game has a few different modes for how it appears on your screen. Full screen is there, of course, as well as a windowed mode, with or without a border. However, now there is a new option in the bordered window mode that you may want to try.



Maximize:
If you use a bordered window, you can now "maximize" the game window. What does this do? It is different from full screen mode. It stretches the game window to fill your monitor, however, it is still technically in a window. Also, the game resolution is not increased when doing this, so you can play the game at 1280 X 720 (for instance) without a monitor that actually supports that resolution. This means menus and text will not be super tiny when playing at full screen.



Again, I don't know if anyone will care for this feature. If you want to try it out and offer any feedback, go to "Star Explorers > Properties > Betas" and select "testing" from the drop down menu.

Why?
Again, the main reason would be to have full screen without reducing the menu and text size. When I started working on Star Explorers, 1280 x 720 seemed to be a good size to play games (for me) and unfortunately I did not integrate scaling into the UI system. This was a "quick fix" for that problem, though obviously it is not perfect.

However, I also think the game performs better in windowed mode, and now it is possible to play in a window, while still covering the full screen.

Issues:
Due to the stretching of the game window, the windows mouse pointer will occasionally appear over the screen. I have been able to limit this during the first person portions game, but you will see it when in menus and when accessing inventory. Other than that, it seems to work as intended...

Please let me know if this is something you'd like to see included in the default game, and if you encounter any problems with it.

I recently became aware of an issue when pressing alt-tab, which could send the game crashing down to the desktop. I was able to reproduce it, and it seemed to happen when loading levels.

I have updated the script to go into freeze mode whenever the window is not in the foreground, and it seems to have made it more stable. I would love to hear from anyone who wants to test it out. To do so you will need to activate the testing branch.

In your Steam Library, go to "Star Explorers > Properties > Betas" and select "testing" from the drop down menu. This should update your game to version 5.1.4. Then you can alt-tab your heart out, and see if you can get it to crash.

There was also an issue when pressing "enter" which could also crash the game. I think I have resolved this issue as well.

My hope is that I have done these things without completely breaking something else in the game. Anyway, your feedback is always welcome.

There is a strange inventory bug that has been perplexing me for a while. Some inventory slots can get disabled, and are no longer usable. With some new feedback, I thought I would have another go at it. So I started looking at my weapon unloading script, which seemed to be a possible suspect in this case.

Well, I found some stuff, but so far nothing that would quite explain the bug in question. However, I was able to resolve some other bugs. One allowed you to unload a gun more than once, if the second or third backpack containers were open. That should no longer happen. Also, there was a strange situation where the weapon in your first equipped slot would not be clickable if you had your second or third backpack container opened. It was only clickable when the first backpack container was opened.



So here you can see the laser pistol is selected, while the second backpack container is open. You can also see that I was able to successfully unload the weapon.

Oh! I also highlighted the little square that tells you which backpack is currently open (currently opened containers are shown in orange). Note: If you have not upgraded your backpack, you will not see those little square selection buttons. However, once you do, it will be easier to know where you are looking in both your backpack, and your ship's storage.

I am still going to be trying to recreate the disabled inventory slot issue, and hopefully find a solution for that. If you have any insight as to the cause, or are able to recreate it, please let me know.

There was a strange issue with lighting on some planets, where they would become much brighter than intended. It was a remnant of an experiment I did, but forgot to switch back to the default setting. Planet lighting should be more natural again from now on.