Star Explorers News

[h3]Ultrawide Support (second attempt)[/h3]
Improvements have been made to the ultrawide monitor support. Now the helm of the ship has a new, custom overlay menu, that allows the player to enjoy ultrawide support while piloting the spaceship.



I have had a realization that I made the menus all wrong in this game. To really be able to enjoy it at all resolutions, something I am planning to fix soon, I will be creating new, size independent menus, rather than the fixed type I've been using.

These will remain the same size, regardless of the screen resolution used. I already did this for the game menus, like the options menu and such. The main issues are with the ship's helm, and the ship's computer, where scaling the menu to match the screen size causes all sorts of problems with the fonts.

Once I create a new system with scale independent menus, then I will add a proper resolution dialogue (with a list of supported resolutions to choose from) and the game will be playable at any resolution without the 1280 x 720 recommended size restriction.

A couple new features have been added.

[h3]Ultrawide Support (first attempt)[/h3]
A user requested that I include support for ultrawide monitors. Star Explorers already has a custom resolution dialogue, but in this case, either the game would get stretched out, or certain menus would get cut off, making the game unplayable.

Version 4.6 is a first attempt to address this issue. It checks if the screen resolution ration is higher than 1.7 (normal wide scree) and if so, it will scale the menus according to the y axis (height) of the screen, instead of the x axis (width).

This makes ultra wide possible without cutting off important menus. The main areas this effects are in the main menu, the ship's helm, and when accessing the ship's computer. For now, this fixes the main problem, but it doesn't look too great, as there are black bars on the sides of the screen while these menus are visible...

Main Menu


Ship's Computer


However, once you are away from the ship's computer, the game will show the full, ultrawide view like this:



[h3]Improved Fog[/h3]
I should have caught this a long time ago! The fog I was using on vapor planets was linear fog. That meant, that as you turned the camera, certain features of the landscape would appear out toward the edges of your vision, and disappear as they came closer to the center of the screen. It was not a big deal, but it did not behave like real fog.



You can't tell from a single screenshot, but in the above image, it is using radial fog, which curves with the camera, so objects should no longer change their visibility based on camera rotation any more.

[h3]Version 5.0[/h3]
I am still working on my other game Paradox Vector. However, that game is getting closer and closer to being done. Once it is finished, and fully released out of Early Access, I plan to focus much more attention back on Star Explorers (which I miss working on).

This will eventually result in a Star Explorers 5.0, which will improve on a lot of things. The main issues I want to address are the following:

Technical Issues:

• Finally fix the screen resolution issue, so you can play at any resolution without text issues (in progress)
  
• Improve the Video Options menu to include all available resolutions (I'm planning to get this working in Paradox Vector first, then it should be easy to do in Star Explorers)
  
• Make sure Star Chart works, and commands behave as they are described. For instance, right now, clicking M will face you towards the mothership, but will not initiate Warp. However, it says "warping to mothership" it's small things that will confuse new players, and make the game look silly.
  

New Features:

• I want a few different terrain types that will work with the existing algorithm. Having the same sloping hills on each planet gets boring ... I want to have something like terraces, where flat areas are built up with more vertical faces ... not sure what else yet
  
• At least five new grass, plant and tree and leaf models types (each) for a wider variety of vegetation
  
• I would like the different vegetation types to match a particular liquid type. The current tree types might all be used only on water planets. The current fungus types might supply vegetation for Ammonia based planets, so there would be a few other styles of vegetation for the other liquid types ... I hope that makes sense.
  
• Friendly alien spaceships - you could board them and trade with aliens etc...
  
• Crashed alien spaceships - these would be like caves, but with spaceship interior and different kinds of loot.
  

These are just a few ideas. Nothing set in stone yet.

I'm probably using this feature the wrong way, but here I go...

[h3]The Problem[/h3]
There seems to be an error that happens occasionally if you save and exit the game while near the mothership. This bug presents itself when you try to reload your saved game. It will start loaidng then freeze. Now, it normally works, but a couple players have reported errors when saving and exiting, or reloading the game near the mothership.

Here is the original discussion: https://steamcommunity.com/app/502720/discussions/0/1747896085859674969/

For the record, I was able to restore the saved game file, but have been unable to reproduce the bug.

[h3]The Challenge[/h3]
Your challenge, should you feel worthy to attempt it, is to find a way to reproduce this error. If you can explain how this bug gets triggered while playing, you will be doing me and other players a huge favor, and you will be greatly rewarded!

Note, it would probably be best to start a new game, or make a backup of your game files before attempting this. I was able to restore the game in which this error occurred, but just to be safe, keep a backup handy if you are going to attempt this.

[h3]The Reward[/h3]
If you can describe a way for anyone to reproduce this error, I will provide you with free Steam keys for all the other games in my catalog.

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/9006/Schmidt_Workshops_SuperFantastic_MegaBundle/

That would include my latest Early Access game Paradox Vector, my oldest game Anomalies, and my Hand Drawn Shoot-em-up Rocket Blasters.

This version addresses a few issues...

[h3]Radiation on Planets[/h3]The existence of radiation was not being stored correctly, so a planet with no radiation might have radiation the next time you landed on it, or vice versa.

[h3]Radiation's Effects on Animal Life:[/h3]Radiation has a profound effect on a planet's wildlife. Animals on radiation planets may be missing their heads, and have random eyeballs and tentacles on their bodies. Because of issue #1 above, sometimes these features would exhibit on planets where the animal life was normal the first time around, or vice versa.

[h3]Animal Color:[/h3]The color of animal skin textures was also getting changed between visits.

These issues have all been addressed in version 4.5, and radiation and animal appearance should be consistent from one visit to the next.

[h3]Log File:[/h3]Star Explorers produces a log file in the save folder. This file just records certain things that are happening in the game. It is only really useful if the game crashes and I want to see where it crashed. Anyway, due to a problem with the script, the log file was being written into the same file on each play session. Over many sessions the file may have become much larger than it should. Now the game will overwrite the log file during each game session, and it should remain a reasonable size.

Version 4.4 fixes a pretty big bug that was encountered recently.

It seems that planets with biped aliens would not be able to be reloaded after the first visit. The bug was introduced around the release of version 4.0, when I went through the script and made sure certain pointers were not used until the game object being pointed to was actually loaded.

This made the game much more stable, but apparently introduced a big bug that just got caught today.

The game would have stopped working when re-visiting a planet. On the loading screen, you would have seen "Updating Storage Data" under the loading bar.

IT should be working now, but as always, let me know if you encounter any further issues.