Star Explorers News

A strange problem with liquids on planet surfaces has been fixed. Somehow the water/wave shader stopped working at certain distances, causing the liquid to turn into a flat color.

Here's what it may have looked like:


I found out that I had foolishly set a distance on whether shaders would be drawn or not. This caused the water shader to turn off at a certain distance from the center of the map, where the water model's origin was. Turning this limit off fixed the problem.

However, in the process of figuring this out, I was able to address a similar but unrelated issue. The water model also had a strange way of reflecting light, causing it to brighten up significantly when the player approached the center of the planet map. This actually looked very similar to the image above, though one could still see the water ripples in this case, and the color would stay roughly the same (though brighter).

I assumed this was the problem being experienced, and tweaked the way liquids respond to light. The result is a much more stable water shader that should not brighten up in unusual ways, nor disappear completely. Enjoy!

[h3]Hostile Miners:[/h3]
I am finding some more issues with miners. If you shot at an alien the miners would react as threatened, and aim their guns at you. This should no longer happen. But if you attack them, they should respond like neutral or hostile aliens.

[h3]Alien Types:[/h3]
I have allowed alien animals to appear on the same planets as humanoid aliens. I think this should be more interesting than having just one or the other. Currently, animal type aliens and humanoid aliens should ignore each other, but I am thinking of including some kinds of interactions in the near future.

[h3]I fixed a couple bugs:[/h3]
In the last update, Acknexium miners did not display their names.
The inventory wormhole item was not working with ship storage upgrades, so you could only see the first storage slot when using the wormhole from a planet or cave.

[h3]Problem found:[/h3]
I was informed that the water shader for planet surface liquids would stop working. I have been able to reproduce this problem, but so far unable to fix it. I will be looking at why this is the case in the near future.

Liquid surfaces on planets were getting strange lighting issues. I have modified the material I use, so this should not happen anymore. However, the liquids are now looking a bit darker than they should. I may still modify this a bit.

Mining stations will now appear closer to the center of the map. Previously, mining stations appeared right by the player's landing spot. However this was causing some weird issues with NPC disappearing. I've moved them to the center of the map to avoid this issue - rather than actually fixing the problem :)

Miner dialogue has been updated with new statements. They are no longer going to repeat the same info as NPCs on the mothership, but will offer their own unique perspective to the player.

Dialogue repeat issue - previously, NPCs could repeat themselves in the dialogue window. This has been resolved for new NPCs, but existing, reloaded NPCs may still have this issue.

The day/night cycle got another slight adjustment. Now the sun's position should be more consistent between visits to a planet. I also adjusted the sun's brightness a bit, it was getting too bright on certain planets.

A few other minor bugs and issues were also addressed. Nothing that effects gameplay.

I was able to track down a bug that I believe was responsible for a crash that happened occasionally when landing on planets - software crash, not spaceship crash. I have not experienced the crash since, so hopefully that was the cause.

[h3]Day/Night Cycle[/h3]
I also re-introduced the new day-night cycle feature. In this version of the game, when you land on a planet, it might be either day or night. Previously, planets always started in the day time, and you would have to stay on the surface for a long time to see night.

UPDATE: I just uploaded 0.6.4a which fixes one small problem and one potentially big problem.

After entering a cave the sun would go back to its original position when you returned to the surface. Now the position should be consistent upon entering and leaving caves.

Also, I replaced UFO textures with a new file type that requires less memory. It caused a crash, but that should hopefully no longer happen.