Star Explorers News

There are just a couple small changes to the UI

• Pressing the interact button "E" by default, will now close any open dialogues or inventory panels, as well as alert panels
  
• Pressing the jump button "Space" by default, will now close any alert panels, but will keep inventory and/or dialogue panels if they are open.
  
• I found an issue with the screen resolution function that would cause errors if youtried changing the resolution without changing the type (fullscreen vs window). This should
• hopefully* be working correctly now.
  

[h3]About 4K[/h3]
I found a way to scale menus to better match the new, high resolution monitors. The system works, but it would take a very long time to redo all the game's menus to work with the new system. For now I have put this idea on ice.

I am considering revisiting this before the 5.0 update is ready. Perhaps once all the gameplay and new features are ready, I will have time to implement this with the 5.0 release, but my current thinking is that it will just delay the release unnecessarily.

I will be reflecting on this idea, and welcome any feedback from players.

There are lot's of things going on, but today the update is purely visual...



Neon lights and signage have been added to the alien city for your viewing pleasure ... if you are lucky enough to find it! Vertical neon signs with strange symbols equals cyberpunk, so we are totally hopping on that bandwagon this week :P



It also serves a purpose, some of the buildings were a bit darker than intended, so these extra lights will help in navigating the interiors. (There are also areas left intentionally dark).

There are a bunch of small fixes and updates in this latest build.

• The Alien City got a better exterior model.
  
• Footsteps in the alien city will no longer sound like gravel.
  
• Caves - stalagmites and stalactites will no longer get the player stuck!
  
• I made them passable now, since they were never really intended as barriers. The big, hallway-blocking stalagmites and stalactites will still function the same way, but the smaller, individual ones will no longer be a burden.
  

[h3]New feature! [/h3]
The Wormhole 2000 is a special alien item that you can find in the game. It is a small, portable wormhole that will establish a link between your backpack and your spaceship's storage. This way it will be much more convenient to manage all the stuff you collect on your explorations.



It's alien tech, so you'll have to look around in order to find one. Even if you do, they're not cheap!

[h3]Strange cave - texture issue[/h3]
New caves should no longer have the strange, green glowing areas with incorrect textures. This was not a common problem, but it was pretty ugly. Old caves that you revisit may still have this problem, but the cave area will be missing completely. I could not find any way to fix this, but going forward it should not happen in any new caves.

[h3]Cave pits[/h3]
Cave pits were somehow included in some of the recent builds of the game. These will be replaced with the standard downward sloping hallways. I do want to add pits again, but I will need to supply a way to escape them before I do that.

[h3]Alien NPCs[/h3]
Aliens in the alien city should now have consistent items in their inventories like the NPCs on the mothership.

No new features today, but I was able to fix a number of issues.


[h3]Fixed Stuff[/h3]

• Meteors will no longer disappear if the player goes off the edge of the map
  
• Meteors now have special sound effects
  
• Warp Effect no longer has that strange size limit. It should work properly at all resolutions
  
• The game was occasionally resetting full screen back to windowed mode, or more recently windowed mode back to full screen, which is now the default. This should no longer happen