Starship EVO News

Some hotfixes following the planet update.

Bugfixes:

• #5144 Stars not visible on planet without atmosphere
  
• - Stars not visibles during the night.
  
• #5145 Chained joystick can trigger player lock out.
  
• #5136 Ship power shuts off.
  
• - Music played on planet surface are from the uplifting playlist.
  

Thanks for playing!

Our biggest update finally lands - pun intended.
Explore the vast galaxy and land on each planet you like - they are all unique in their own way.

Just a quick foreword: this marks the final major update needed to implement what a lot of players have been asking for: a proper survival mode. Indeed after a first phase focusing on major tech overhauls (building system, GFX and physics engine), I have been hard at work in the past months adding to the game:

• The mission framework (now only use on the tutorial and the bounty hunting mission
  
• Crafting
  
• Mining
  
• The fuel system and fuel harvesting
  
• The inventory system
  
• And now planets.
  

So stay tuned!



Now onto the planets:

My vision from the beginning was to create a rich galaxy with many planets to explore. Each planet is generated procedurally - which means they are all truly unique.

I am using a 3D voxel technology which gives the ability to created interesting terrain up-close and allows mining - but the real kicker is that I have created an hybrid technology which mix 3D voxel with 2D maps to allow some HD views of the planet from far away. This means that they look great when viewed from space, and the transition space / ground is really seamless visually.



A lot of planets will get asteroids rings too. You can see the individual asteroids from the ground it is pretty spectacular!

On the grounds planet will range from barren to lush with a lot of vegetation including trees.
Ore veins are waiting for you to be mined - unless you prefer to mine some large monoliths!



A lot of attention has been given to the atmosphere and the clouds - it is a crucial element to set the mood of a planet.

I could go on and on the technology created for the planets - it was really quite hardcore.
But better to check out the devlog for more info!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

A few features are missing or need improvements, here is what I would like to focus on (once the survival mode is out)

• Day-night cycle
  
• More variety in landform and terrain material.
  
• More variety in rocks, plants and tree.
  
• Proper cave networks
  
• Better clouds - they are too flat and samey
  
• More asteroid variety: they are too samey.
  

I leave you with a few more shots of what you can experience in the game!

This build contains the much needed fix for AMD GPU users.

Also fixed:

• #5121 Ship inside water
  
• Ambient lighting on atmosphere less planet
  

Planet have finally landed!
Fully explorable and procedural planets are replacing the old prefabs.

Dont fall in love with a planet just yet as they will likely be tweaked further which will impact the terrain generation.
Likewise export your ground structures so you can reuse when this happens.

Bugfixes and improvements:

• Player no longer sliding on slope
  
• Settings might get reset in some conditions
  

Thanks for playing!

First sorry the update is still not out! I want to release it when I am satisfied with the result and I have a few items on my list to tackle.

To be honest I have spent a lot of the time on tracking and fixing bugs...
A few things I added where tree and monoliths though:

Trees:
They are randomized to an extent: their color of course but also their bark and leaf texture are swapped randomly. The color will sometime matches the ground color and sometime be of an complementary color. The tricky part was working on a LOD tech so they are not too resources intensive.
I would like to spend more time to also generate procedurally the trunk but this will have to wait for another update!



Monoliths and ore veins
Of course the ultimate goal for exploring planet will be to harvest resources and mine ore especially. I added ore veins with that in mind. Another feature was the monolith: most of the time these will be standard rocks but once in a while you will see more exotic shapes like pyramids, prism or else. And if you are lucky they will be made of raw ore! As they are visible from afar this will be quite convenient to mine large quantity of metal.

I leave you with a few screenshots! I am not satisfied with a 100s of little things but it is getting there!









Cheers
Francois