Star Explorers News

Some new additions to those fun little guys.

[h3]Robot Cache:[/h3]
Now, like aliens, instead of dropping a random piece of tech, robot bodies will stay where they are and turn into a temporary cache with tech items inside.

[h3]Effects:[/h3]
To make this more enjoyable, I also added a smoke and spark particle effect to these "powered down" units. Here's what it looks like...



[h3]Frequency: [/h3]
Robots and alien bipeds were pretty rare in UFOs. I have increased the probability of encountering one, so you should not have to look quite as hard to find them.

I was able to implement some recommendations from players in this small update.

[h3]1. Save Icon:[/h3]
The save icon works a little better now, but is still not a reliable way to tell if the game is actually writing to the disk just yet.

[h3]2. Reload Old Game Dialogue[/h3]
The actual text was missing from this dialogue box. It probably did not effect too many people. You can use this feature in the Load menu if you transfer a saved game from another computer.

[h3]3. Star Chart Overlay[/h3]
The star chart overlay will now turn off when you leave the ship's helm. It will remember the last setting, so it will turn on again automatically when you return to the helm. This way the green overlay lines will not appear when you are walking around your ship, or the mothership.

[h3]4. Erase Game Issue[/h3]
Some players complained that when erasing an old game file, it did not allow starting a new game with the same name. For now, I have not been able to reproduce this bug. I am able to delete a game, then start a new one with the same name. I will have to investigate further...

[h3]5. Guide Text[/h3]
The interactive guide text was appearing above the loading panel. Not a big deal, but I fixed it anyway.

[h3]6. Run Movement Speed[/h3]
I have reduced the movement speed of the player on planets and in caves. It was a bit fast according to some feedback.

[h3]7. Alien Bodies[/h3]
Instead of ejecting a small, hard to find body part on dying, alien bodies will now turn into a kind of temporary storage cache with the alien body part(s) inside. Don't put any stuff in these temporary caches though, they will decompose along with everything inside them when you leave that location.

I was able to implement some recommendations from players in this small update.

[h3]1. Oxygen Usage:[/h3]
Oxygen will be used faster when running. You will also hear the breathing sound a bit louder and faster. This simple mechanic just gives some slight feedback and consequences for running too much, and I hope it enhances the atmosphere and immersion of the game a bit. Prior to this, there was no actual reason to use the standard walk movement at all.

Also, oxygen usage will drop even more if you are not moving at all. So if in doubt, stand still!

[h3]2. Window Resolution Warning[/h3]
A warning about window resolution was added to the video options menu. I hope to continue making this work better, but for now it simply explains that the window size should not be set higher than desktop resolution, and more importantly, that using the "Border" feature will add pixels to the window size, potentially messing up the game window if set too large.

[h3]3. Save Icon[/h3]
Another feature I am implementing is a disk writing icon that now appears in the lower right corner. This is a first attempt so don't trust it completely yet. It tells you if the game is writing to disk. Right now it works, but it does not appear to handle all conditions yet.

As a rule, it's best to shut off the game after saving it at the helm of your ship. If you shut it down on a planet, it's fine, but try not to do that right after landing. The game may still be writing data about the surface features. I am working on making the disk icon show up more accurately...

Some players were having an issue with installing the latest updates. It turns out a file "imgui.dll" was getting flagged by their anti-virus.

This file was added when I (unsuccessfully) attempted to update the resolution dialogue in a previous branch of the game. However, I had accidentally left the file in the game folder.

I removed that file, as well as a few redundant .bak files for some recently edited models.

Hopefully this will prevent any conflicts with anti-virus software.

I would like to formally apologize about yesterday. With the release of version 5.0 and the business of Realms Deep, I kind of panicked when a major bug was reported. My big mistake was trying to hastily patch it and not really seeing all the long term consequences of that patch.

So I ended up making the problem worse.

But I had a good rest, and a fresh perspective early this morning. I believe I have successfully mitigated the problem in three ways.

1. I prevented the game from hanging when trying to land on a planet. Now, even if the same conditions exist, it should not fall into an endless loop.
   
   
2. I found the root cause of the crash, an invisible arm that is used in orbiting planets. The reference to this arm gets removed from the game when leaving orbit. The problem occurred when leaving orbit, then quickly going back into orbit, which is why the issue showed up more in the interactive guide (because the guide directs the player to do just this) but could also occur outside of the guide when the same conditions were met.
   
   
3. I was able to load a crashed game by adding a redundancy in the code. Now, if the reference to the orbit arm is not found when reloading, the game will create a new arm and assign it the right parameters automatically. This should no longer be needed with the prior fix, but I wanted players to be able to reload their crashed games if possible.
   

Sorry to get so technical, but I wanted to make sure everyone knew what was going on. The new system can be stress tested (if you want to try that) by rapidly leaving orbit, entering orbit then landing on a planet.

Hopefully this particular bug will not cause any more issues. But please feel free to reach out if you encounter any related, or unrelated issues with Star Explorers. Thanks for your patience.