Starship EVO News

Check out the latest devlog on mining and the new terrain tech!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Thanks for playing!

This build introduce some physics performance improvements and add collision for the mined ore.
It also fixes various crash and a memory leak.

Hotfixes:

• Crash and memory leak due to FMOD (audio plugin)
  
• #4737 #4734 Brick Connectors are not deleted on tank delete
  
• Various terrain save issues
  
• #4730 ##4690 Glass flickering
  
• #4714 Collision with asteroid happens too far away from the ground
  
• Updating beam color does not change VFX color
  

Thanks for playing!

Hotfix build with some improvements to the fuel experience and some physics perf improvements.

Improvements

• A new fuel tank format is introduced, with a more conventional sizing
  
• Bounds will show when placing the tank, allowing for a more precise placement
  
• Pipe flow rate is multiplied by 4. Now a 0.25 pipe can fuel 16x 1m reactor at full power.
  
• Physics optimization for rebuilding BVH Trees: it can leads to massive saving for entity with plenty of children entity.
  

Hotfixes:

• #4717 #4702 VFX shows on player after source is unloaded
  
• #4700 Paint effect still showing when tool is unselected.
  
• #4692 Deleted mechanism sfx still playing.
  
• #4675 Pipe see-through view not working
  
• #4688 Exit to title and loading back can cause issues.
  
• #4723 Control assignment issues.
  
• #4720 Flickering on handheld weapons.
  
• #4719 Handheld bugs
  
• #4699 #4726 Decals dont show metals.
  
• Repair and fuel see-through view are fixed.
  
• Plenty of fixes regarding Damage decals.
  
• Leak in physics BVH tree construction fixed.
  

Thanks for playing!

Various improvements have been made to the terrain technology.

• The mesh creation algorithm has been changed from Marching Cube to Dual Contouring.
  This allows better and smoother contour, minimizing some artifacts. Furthermore it will allows to create better hard surface sculpting or terrain shape in the future.
  
• Border gaps between LODs have been fixed.
  
• Terrain modification is now saved! Beware though before starting a big project: the save format is likely to be update it the future, so it is highly probable you will loose any mining done.
  
• Mining has been improved to give smoother and wider results.
  
• Some large rocks are now spawned on the terrain.
  
• Shadow flickering is fixed.
  

Please report any issues, I would now like to push that branch to Default!

Thanks for playing!

Mining makes its debut!
It is still very much work in progress, this update focused mainly on ore spawned while mining.

This update is released is experimental branch for now, as a few people reported some trouble on the previous terrain/asteroid refactor update. You can switch from/to experimental without corrupting blueprint format, but please be aware that the system was reduced in size in the terrain update so your build will appear further from the sun.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Features:

• Iron, Gold, Silver and Cobalt ore veins are present on asteroids.
  
• Mining beam added (model, vfx and texture are placeholder). Mining beam will deal less hull DPS but are more efficient to mine terrain.
  
• Ore vein and rock will spawn an ore / rock. Sand wont spawn anything.
  
• Spawned rock/ore will be "sucked" toward the player ship. They will disappear once close to the ship.
  
• Spawned rock/ore are integrated to the rendering and physics tech.
  

There is still quite some things left to do:

• More mining tool
  
• mined terrain will reset when higher LOD are loaded
  
• mined terrain is not yet saved
  
• rate of drop to be tweaked
  
• Still a few issues like hole in terrain to be fixed.
  
• Collector brick will be necessary to collect ore.
  
• item management (container and conveyor) to pick up ore
  
• and of course do stuff with the mined ore!
  
• more optimization will be needed on the physics side to deal will big quantity of floating ore mined.
  

Finally a question for you: what mining tool you would like to see in the game?
I think having beam is necessary as it is the most seamless to use but I open to add drill or else as people might like them too.

Hotfixes:
#4715 #4696 Cant paint decals