Starship EVO News

Some big progress have been made on the physics engine overhaul with the migration of the brick narrow-phase logic to the new framework.
It moves from a grid-based system to a Bounding Volume Hierarchy one.

Improvements:

• Significantly less memory usage, especially for large build. On a normal game RAM saving are between 300MB and 400MB.
  
• Entity / Entity collision check is now fully using the new Data oriented logic and multi-threaded, which means that FPS will stay steady during collision heavy situations.
  
• Children entity collision check is also using the new framework but have yet to be multi-threaded. Some large FPS improvements have been made.
  

Changes ahead:
Unlike many voxel building game Starship-evo uses bricks that can be rescaled and placed in various increment.
It only uses a voxel logic to allow a few features like voxel paint, smart border and HP armor computation and up until this update the brick physics narrow-phase.
Having an hybrid solution has many drawbacks like memory usage and code complexity.
Following the latest technological breakthrough it has been decided with the community (discussion) to move away from the voxel logic.

Here are the impact for this and the following builds:

• Voxel paint removal: hull will be painted entirely like smaller bricks. To be done. All ship will be migrated to the new sytem.
  
• HP armor and damage will have a new system (hp per brick). To be done, for now HP have been deactivated.
  
• "Smart border" for hull removal. The border look have been significantly toned down to account for that.
  

The upside for this switch are:

• Massive memory gain: the memory requirement of a voxel-less logic only depends on the number of bricks. It means that super large build will be possible
  
• Large brick will be added to the game later on.
  
• Faster shader (so higher FPS most of the time)
  
• Massive reduction in code complexity, allowing faster developments down the road.
  

This was quite a heavy refactor so bugs are to be expected! Thanks for reporting any regressions.

Bugfixes:

• #3673 Opening the spaceship computer slows fps on large ship after close.
  

Thanks for playing!

This build bring a few improvements to fuel pipes:

• The see through preview has been toned down, and will only display close to the camera and near the center of the screen.
  
• It is possible to deactivate the see through inside the F3 menu.
  
• A pipe 6-way junction brick as been added in small and large.
  
• The codex tabs have been shuffled a bit, now inside the pipe tab will be only bricks compatible with the upcoming fuel logic.
  

Bugfixes:

• Performance issues on the latest multi-threaded code.
  

Thanks for playing!

The game will soon introduce a Fuel gameplay mechanic, where gas will be harvested and used as fuel to generated power.
In that regard two new bricks are introduced: the small and large tank.
These are decorative for now but will be used to store fuel in an upcoming update.
Furthermore following a discussion with the community the pipe can now be built through hull to allow for less tedious ship design.

Bugfixes:
#3650 Switch and logic gates incorrect collisions.

Thanks for playing!

The physics broadphase logic has been refactored.
It uses custom BVH for the world and each entity children entity.
This new framework is entirely multi-threaded and uses Data-driven performance code so there is no performance impact.
For now only the data-structure is updated and the queries (raycast, collisions) have yet to be migrated.
The end goal is so to have each query being multi-threaded, essentially making the game run at stable fps even during physics intensive scene (like space battles).
For the curious you can check the debug option: View World BVH and View Entity BVH.

Bugfixes:

• #3629 Ship preview not visible.
  
• #3630 FPS drop after opening a ship preview.
  

Thanks for playing!

The Ambient Occlusion post effect returns!
You can activate the effect in the Graphics settings.
This will help making ship interior less flat.

Bugfixes:

• #3605 Moon can be generated inside planetary rings.
  
• #3613 Incorrect raycast on weapon on Item Stand.
  
• #3615 FPS decrease after viewing Codex entity preview.
  

Thanks for playing!