Flatspace IIk News

The new Flatspace IIk v1.04 beta is now available to test.

As with previous updates, this is largely an engine update so won't affect gameplay much and should preserve save game integrity.

-The screen mode set up is more thorough, and now the only choices for users are between Desktop and Best (listing every possible mode was getting crazy). If you really need to set a custom mode, you can Browse Local Files and edit the Config.txt file to set your preferred width and height.
-A new font. The v1.03 font had clipping problems. This change meant reprogramming an ancient VB6 font converter!
-The number of installed music tracks is shown on the plug-in screen. Useful for those with the new Music Pack. More music packs will be coming this year.
-Better controller support.

And a few smaller changes. The only one that affects gameplay is that the max Thrust Power has been increased from 1.0 to 10.0 (when editing custom items). This makes it possible to design a thruster that moves capital ships at speeds comparable to smaller ships. Even the most powerful thruster made these big ships slow. Thanks to Mr Stepanenko for his suggestion for this.

Happy playing.

If everything works, the new update will go public in a few days.

Mark

The first Flatspace Music Pack is coming to Steam next month. Three music packs were designed for the original Flatspace and Flatspace II games, but these were in ogg format and not compatible with the Steam release of Flatspace IIk, so when the time came to re-release the music packs I saw this as an opportunity to revisit the music.

The first, original music pack was created in 2005. I'm now a full time artist and my music has changed considerably since then, so I wanted to include some recent music, as well as the best quality versions of those original tracks.

Like any music packs, this will give you a bigger selection of in-game music. When you leap into a sector, a random track might play. The game ships with 4 tracks, and this pack will add 9 new tracks to that. The packs will be on sale on Feb 15th for $3.99, with a 20% launch discount for the first week.

Here is the store page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1020350/Flatspace_Music_Pack_1/

I've made a pdf booklet full of details about the music. Click the Manual link on the store page to read it. You can also find this, and any other Flatspace manuals on www.lostinflatspace.com.

Mark

I'm happy to announce a new Flatspace IIk update. As before, this is an engine upgrade rather than a gameplay one. Here are the changes:

-Default screenmode now desktop resolution. It will reset to this on the first time that you run the update.
-All screens now prefer 32-bit and hardware vertex processing. Options for 16-bit displays and software vertex processing removed.
-Game perspective corrected across different aspect ratios.
-New font. Text now fits much better like it did in Classic Flatspace.
-Video frame rate limited to 500hz by default. New Config.txt options for gameframeratemillisecs (default 20) and videoframeratemillisecs (default 2) to customise the timing of everything.
-The Delete Save Games option in the menu now also deletes the '.bak' backup saves.

Mark

The new Flatspace IIk v1.03 beta is now available to test. Like v1.02, this is largely a game engine upgrade rather than anything that affects gameplay.

You'll also notice a new font, which is slightly smaller and higher resolution. The old font always looked a little too large and closely spaced compared to Classic Flatspace. The game perspective has been corrected too.

Graphics refresh rate has been limited to double the monitor refresh rate.

If everything works, the new update will go live in a few days.

Mark

I'm happy to announce a new Flatspace IIk update. This is mostly an engine upgrade, but should fix a lot of problems with system stability and loading times. Better controller support has been added too. Here is a full list of changes:

-New texture format.
-Much faster loading and Alt-Tab response, and better system compatibility.
-Better controller support, just about every Windows compatible controller should work. New Default Joy controls are designed to suit an XBox 360 controller.
-Delete Save Games option added to Options Menu.
-Fix to Next/Prev Target controls on Control Options (these didn't respond to any Default settings).
-Fix to text placement when applying video changes to switch between 4:3 and 16:4 modes.

No gameplay changes were made.

Mark