Star Explorers News

I have once again updated the testing version of Star Explorers.

It's been a crazy week, and I was not able to do much. I added a few illustrations to the dialogue with the mothership, to show who you're talking to, and give some semblance of a narrative.

I have come across a number of different ideas I really want to implement. However, I think I will hold back for now. I wanted version 3.0 to really just stabilize everything already in the game, rather than adding lots of new content.

New content is fun and all, but it can also introduce new bugs. Version 2.0 was a learning experience, where bugs I thought I had squashed were re-introduced because some of the new content stirred things up in ways I did not anticipate.

So I may swap out some menu artwork, and I will update the manual, but otherwise this represents what I will release as 3.0. I will test the game for a few days before making it official.

Let me know if you find any issues, or have any concerns.

I should probably add a letter or something to the end to highlight these smaller updates, but anyway...

I found another exploit in the star chart script which could cause problems. I have fixed that. However in the process, I found yet another bug.


If you are in the star chart, and have selected a sector, then you click out of the star chart, to the mission command, then you click back into the star chart, and without selecting any sectors, you click on "stars" then the chart will go crazy . It fixes itself if you go back to "sectors" and click on a sector, but it's still a bit of a mess. I will look at fixing this in the next update.


The game was designed to run at 1280 x 720. If a player tries to star the game on a monitor that is smaller than this, it will open a strange window with only a part of the splash screen and/or main menu visible.

In this latest version, I added a script that detects the current monitor resolution, and will adjust the game window to match if it is lower than 1280 x 720.

I would add a similar script for larger resolutions, but the game does not always display things correctly at larger screen sizes, so I still strongly recommend playing at 1280 x 720.

Anyway, hopefully new players with smaller monitors will be able to at least start the game.

For version 3.0, I will finally try to resolve this issue, and make sure the game can run at any resolution without the problems it currently encounters.

A user reported a crash when opening the Star Chart. If you clicked on it quickly, more than once, it caused the game to crash.

I was unable to reproduce the crash, however I did confirm that the game was running the function multiple times even after the chart was open. So now, if the star chart is open, the game will ignore any further clicks on the Star Chart button.

After playtesting version 2.6 quite a bit, I felt the game has a major flaw. Let me explain... When you upgrade your space suit, it allows you to visit a wider range of planets, giving the player motivation to explore.

Well, the problem is that most of the planets are either too far from their star to be warm enough to support life, or too close and too hot to support life. Since planets with life seem to be more interesting then those without, eventually all the new planets to discover will be dead worlds.

I already addressed this with hot planets by adding life to some of the vapor clouded worlds. However, many more planets are far from their stars, or orbit smaller colder stars, and this allows for a great many cold, dead worlds.

So I added a tougher kind of life that can survive in frozen worlds. These "Tundra" planets have grass, creatures, and stunted kinds of trees that are not found on other worlds.


A while back, I added crystal planets. These are a great place to find needed crystals for some blueprints. Well, I also added the possibility for these planets to be inhabited by crystal creatures.


Some planets have fungus like growths instead of trees and plants. Now, on some of these worlds the wildlife will also have fungus like growths instead of fur.


I had a problem with the grass, in that it would react to the player's flashlight in an unnatural way. The grass would glow too brightly for my taste. I have spent a long time tweaking the grass materials and the way they react to light. I think it looks much more natural now...

I had been testing the crystal planets, and had to turn off that option in the process. I forgot to turn it back on in the last build, so I just posted another update with that addressed.