Star Explorers News

I have been working on bringing Star Explorers into A8, the latest version of the Acknex game engine.

You can try it out under "Star Explorers > Properties > Betas" and select "testing" from the drop down.

It looks like all the game's major functions are operational, and it should be compatible with previously saved games.


The main reason I am doing this is to fix the ongoing problem people have had when DEP (Data Execution Prevention) was active on their computers.

After careful tests, I realized the problem stemmed from the older (A7) game engine, but games published with A8 did not trigger DEP.

Now more people will be able to enjoy Star Explorers. If you were one of the folks who could not get it to run, please try out the "testing" version to confirm that it works now.

When you run the new version, you will know it's updated when you see this "A8" logo on the loading screen:



There are a few issues that I still need to address, and probably a few I have not caught yet:


When you re-enter a cave with lava or liquid, there is a weird water model that does not get resized or positioned appropriately. This is the next thing I will be fixing.

Shader Effects are not working in the new version. I have a new bloom shader, but it is set to on at all times. The Old-School Pixel Shader and Smoothing effects are not working in the new version.

Let me know if you find any other issues. I will continue to test and repair things until this is ready for a full release.

This game has been accused of being a No Man's Sky clone by some players. While there are definite similarities between the two games, I wanted to set the record straight about this idea. I actually had a working version of Star Explorers up and running well before No Man's Sky had even been announced.

Now I would not try to suggest that No Man's Sky copied my idea. That would be absurd, in fact there were other games with very similar ideas that predate both games. I wrote an article about this experience here:

The Time I Almost Invented No Man's Sky

After writing this article, and releasing Star Explorers, I did indeed spend some time playing No Man's Sky. I did enjoy it, but ultimately left me a bit underwhelmed. It is an amazing accomplishment in many ways, and I don't want to put it down, or to suggest that my game is in any way better. I am too close to this project to have anything resembling an unbiased opinion.

However, I will mention a few issue that bothered me about No Man's Sky, and how Star Explorers differs on those points.

No Man's Sky seems to require that the player spend a lot of time searching for resources and crafting things in order to get from one place to another. I think I spent 50% of my play time breaking rocks. I was playing on the standard game, for the record. I found this approach somewhat tedious, as, of course, I wanted to explore more than I wanted to look at the ground breaking things.

Star Explorers has a crafting system, but it is pretty much optional. You can find blueprints for objects and gather up resources in order to create certain items. These can occasionally help you in tough situations, and there are a few items that must be crafted if you want to use them, but they are not required to win the game.

I found that every planet I landed on had a lot of very similar features. All of them had life forms of one kind or another, and all of them had those robot drones flying around. I also noticed that every planet I landed on had other spaceships flying overhead, and I could not help but notice that there was generally a lot more "activity" than I would have expected there to be.

Now I understand how this might be preferable to some players. However, I think Star Explorers has a somewhat wider range of experience with planet surfaces. I'm not comparing the artwork, graphics and/or realism, and these are surely also important to players, but by having some planets with no life at all, and by making life somewhat rare, I feel like Star Explorers offers an experience that feels more like exploration.

Landing on a completely dead world, with only rocks, may be somewhat boring. But this experience will make the discovery of life more exciting, and memorable.

No Man's Sky is very impressive and even breathtaking in its scope. Trillions of stars and planets make it potentially as large as a real galaxy! However, after landing on some of those planets, it is pretty much impossible to actually explore even one of them with any kind of thoroughness. As a video game completionist, the sheer size of No Man's Sky makes it really difficult to take in.

Star Explorers creates a new galaxy each time you start a new game. Each galaxy has around 200 or so stars. Each star can have between 1 and 9 planets. Planet surfaces are much smaller than those in No Man's Sky, so if a player wanted to, they could theoretically explore each planet in the Star Explorers galaxy. The game also lets you take notes, so a thorough adventurer could realistically map out each world and complete the game within their lifetime, really within a regular game's play-time of a few hundred hours or so. There is no requirement to do this, I'm just stating that it is possible.

For me, bigger is not always better. So while I am impressed and intrigued by the vastness of No Man's Sky, I also prefer my games to be within my personal ability to actually explore.


These have been just a few thoughts on Star Explorers and it's comparison to the more popular No Man's Sky. Again, as the developer of Star Explorers, I am not an unbiased judge of either game, given their similarities. But I felt the need to express my thoughts and experiences with both.

I hope you, as players, would also consider sharing your experiences too.

P.S. I fully acknowledge that Star Explorers and No Man's Sky are in different leagues as far as quality and budget. Star Explorers is priced accordingly. But many people have asked how Star Explorers differs from No Man's Sky, so I feel it is important to give some information on how they compare.

I have fixed the issue that caused problems when playing the game on different Windows accounts on the same computer.

So, briefly, I had changed the Star Explorers save directory from within the Star Explorers installation folder, to the ProgramData folder. This solved one problem, but introduced another one.

In order to resolve this new problem, I have moved the Star Explorers save directory to where it should have gone, to the user's local AppData folder.


Because of these shifts in the save directory, when you open Star Explorers 3.0, you may no longer see your saved game files.

FEAR NOT!

The files are still in the old save directory. So, if you have been following the "testing" version of the game for the last few weeks, you will have to:

• go to "C:/ProgramData/Star Explorers/" and copy your game's save folder (the name you typed in when you started a new game)
  
• then start Star Explorers and begin a new game with the same name
  
• Finally, navigate to "C:/Users/-your username-/AppData/Local/Star Explorers/" and paste your old save folder there, allowing it to overwrite the new one.
  NOTE: AppData is a hidden Windows folder, so you may have to open "Folder and Search Options" - Click on the "Views" tab - then check "Show Hidden Files, Folders and Drives" from the list.
  

Sorry about this inconvenience. Now that saved games are located in the correct directory, this should not be an issue going forward.


If you were playing the default version of Star Explorers up till now, you have a couple options.

Start a New Game
Version 3.0 is more stable than the previous versions, and has a number of new features. To take advantage of this, and reduce the risk of some latent problem being carried over, it is recommended to start a new game.

Roll Back to the Previous Version
If you want to continue playing your old game, you can roll back to the previous version by right-clicking "Star Explorers > Properties > Betas" and selecting "Version2" from the drop down. This should restore the previous version of Star Explorers (2.1) and allow you to continue your game as you left it.

Bring Your Old Game into the New Version
I would not advise doing this. I cannot guarantee it will work 100% but you are free to try if you like.

• Locate your previous save directory by right-clicking "Star Explorers > Properties > Local Files" and selecting "Browse Local Files" from the window.
  
• then start Star Explorers and begin a new game with the same name
  
• Finally, navigate to "C:/Users/-your username-/AppData/Local/Star Explorers/" and paste your old save folder there, allowing it to overwrite the new one.
  
• NOTE: AppData is a hidden Windows folder, so you may have to open "Folder and Search Options" - Click on the "Views" tab - then check "Show Hidden Files, Folders and Drives" from the list.
  

Sorry again for any inconvenience this has caused you. My hope is that this will be the most stable version of Star Explorers ever. If these initial hurdles can be overcome, then you will find a better experience than you had with the game previously, and this structure should be maintained going forward.

If you have any questions about getting your old game to work in the new version, please don't hesitate to reach out to me directly at [email protected], or simple post your questions here or on the discussion forum.

Okay ... so I've found a bug. I will explain what's happening and you can determine whether it will effect your Star Explorers experience or not.

So I have been more vigilant than ever in testing. I have 5 computers set up to test Star Explorers. 2 have Windows 7, 1 has Windows 8, and 2 have Windows 10.

So far, everything has worked fine ... until today.

If I log in to a different account than the initial Windows account used to play Star Explorers, it will encounter an error when starting a new game. It seems the first account used to start the game will have access to the Star Explorers folder in the ProgramData folder, and other user accounts will not.

Now that I have encountered this error, it seems perfectly obvious. I don't know why I have not thought to test on multiple accounts before, it happened by accident.

So, if you are playing on a computer with multiple accounts, and other people are playing the game too, you may encounter this error. It will say "Invalid Pointer etc..."

Previous versions of Star Explorers created all the saved game files right in the game's installation folder. This was fine on older systems, but Windows 10 and some others, would prevent the game from creating and writing to files in the Program Files folder, where Steam games are usually installed.

The new version fixes this issue, but now a new problem has emerged as a result. The good news is that Windows 10 users should be able to play, so this is a vast improvement.

I will be looking into how to resolve this. If you are playing on a computer with multiple accounts, and you want more than one person to be able to play, then, for now, the best I could advise would be to create a separate public account for everyone to use to play the game.

Keep a look out for updates in the near future.

Star Explorers Version 3.0 is up and running!

NOTICE: If you have not been following the recent updates, you may find that your saved games do not show up in the Load Game list. Skip ahead to the "Loading your Old Games" section if you want to do this.


This version of Star Explorers was intended to simply stabilize and repair issues the last version still had. As a result, it is not rich in new features. However, I have added a few touches that should make gameplay more interesting.

• Tundra Planets - May of the planets in Star Explorers were orbiting small, cold stars, or were too far from their star to support life. I have added a new, tougher kind of life to the game, and these things can exist on some of these very cold planets. This extends the exploration value of many of the game's previously dead worlds.
  
  
• Crystal and Fungus Beasts - select worlds may host these startling creatures that are new to the Star Explorers universe.
  
  
• Star Chart Fix - the default star chart will now highlight stars that are in the selected sector. Previously this was only possible with the upgraded star chart.
  
  
• Characters - Two characters have been added to the game: Commander Makki - she leads the Earth Vessel Altair, previously referred to simply as the Mothership. Professor Ignatz - he is the scientist who will be providing help and information about your missions.
  
  

For a complete list of features and fixes, check the announcements since February 24th. Here are some highlights...

• Windows 10 issue - Windows 10 and some other versions of Windows sometimes prevented the game from writing and saving files. This has been addressed and game files will now be written in the ProgramData folder instead of the game's installation folder.
  
• Screen Resolution Issues - players with smaller monitors could not get the game to show up properly and were unable to play. This has been fixed, though the recommended resolution is still 1280 x 720
  
• Resolution crash - changing resolutions could sometimes result in a crash. This has been addressed, and the game will revert to the default resolution if any errors occur when switching.
  
• Updated Star Chart - some major bugs with the star chart have been addressed. The "Star Missing From Database" issue seems to have re-emerged after the 2.1 update, but the underlying cause has been addressed. I have not been able to reproduce this error since.
  
• Sectors can have up to 9 stars again instead of 6.
  
• Dropping Fuel Beacon issue has been fixed, the planet should now recognize when fuel has been discovered every time...
  
• Lava and Ice height should no longer vary from one visit to another.
  
• Grass on foggy planets should now make the appropriate footstep sounds. Also, grass should not randomly appear on planets when it was not there on the first visit.
  
• Missing Terrain file has been added back into the game. This caused the game to crash when landing on a planet on occasion.
  
• Launching rockets in caves has been improved, and they should not blow up at launch.
  
• Unloading weapons sometimes caused weapon types to switch when placing them into a container or selling them to a trader. This has been fixed.
  
• Ammo quantities sometimes were corrupted when moving to storage and back, this has also been fixed.
  
• Armor upgrades should show the correct percentages, rather than decimal amounts.
  

Due to all the improvements, it is recommended that you start a new game in version 3.0. However, if you really want to play your saved game, you may still do so.

Run the "Version2" build of Star Explorers, which is the last default version 2.1 that was active prior to this update. Go to "Star Explorers > Properties > Betas" and choose "Version2" from the drop down.


If you are still encountering any bugs in the game, Please let me know. I will open a new Bug Report discussion if needed.