Starship EVO News

A new Space station computer brick is added, to be placed on stations or station module.
You can toggle the "anchor" that will force the station to remain stationary.
You can also specify the module type if applicable (to be used later by the procedural generation).

Furthermore this build contains many hotfixes following the neovox update:

Bugfixes:

• #3802 SHIFT Rotate keybind not working.
  
• #3805 Removing bricks does not update stats.
  
• #3806 Hoverpod weak stats.
  
• #3812 Cannot place addon in local grid mode.
  
• #3814 Build Range too high compared to delete / paint range.
  
• #3809 Small decals have a vertical size on flat surface.
  
• #3810 Decal on wedge can be clipped.
  
• #3808 Hinge incorrect collisions.
  
• #3816 Rail addon cannot stack.
  
• #3819 Custom paint not loading on save reload.
  
• #3820 Emissive light missing in item icon.
  
• #3821 Color emissive formula tweaked.
  
• #3798 Overlap check with children entity incorrect.
  
• #3804 Addon incorrect scale with grid size different than 1m.
  

Thanks for playing!

The time has come for the Neovox update to hit Experimental as build 21w21a!
It will stay there for a few bugfixes update and a starting zone reboot and then will hit the default branch.

This build is one of the biggest the game has seen!
Starship Evo started its life as a voxel building game like many other building games.
Over time it has morphed to a hybrid tech with voxels and the re-scalable bricks that you all love and that gives some much freedom.
Since the latest physics improvements and refactors we are now able to completely unplug the voxel tech and embrace the true nature of the game building system.



The Neovox update (previously novox) represent a set of new features:

Optimizations across the board:
AS the memory intensive voxels were removed the memory usage is massively reduced, especially for large builds.
The only impact now is how many bricks a given blueprint has, no longer its size.
Furthermore memory usage for brick is really tiny (10mb for some of the biggest ship of the workshop).
FPS and loading times are also improved.

Dynamic Grid:
There is now a new grid-scaling mode for a wide selection of bricks. (Default toggle is T).
The codex is now a lot smaller as 0.25m bricks and 1m blocks where merged.
This is a big change to how you build!
You can switch between a global grid lock or local grid lock by pressing G:

• Global Mode: the bricks will lock to the grid defined by the origin (itself defined by the original starter block). Similar to how hull block used to work. Perfect for large structural work.
  
• Local Mode (the unlock icon...): the new brick will locks its position to the grid defined by the targeted brick. Hence any offset will be carried into a smooth building experience, just like bricks used to work. Perfect for detail work.
  

Massive scale builds:
The two previous point means that now truly massive scale builds are possible. For now there is still a few things to sort for such massive build to be displayed from afar but it is definitely on the roadmap as we plan to replace the Space Habitat by a brick based entity.

Custom color:
For now you can edit the file called "PaintPalettes.xml" on the save folder. An UI will come soon.

Material and Armor type:
This update also introduces various materials. You can replace a hull with another material like with paint.
Each material will have various armor / weight properties (still wip)

Better light:
The new tech is much lighter in memory requirement and has a more realistic look.

New border look: borders are now looking dimmer.

New Armor and damage system using damaged decals. Once a decal is fully damaged they will allow armor piercing.

Heat tweak: hull now dissipate only half the heat. Please use larger system inside your large build to compensate for this!

Voxel Paints are now gone as they where using the voxel tech.



That's it! There is actually a lot more change and simplification behind the scene, it was quite an undertaking to migrate your blueprint to the new format but it is worth it.

Francois

The big voxel removal update is near the corner!
What the community have called the "novox" update is the biggest update of the game so far, please refer to the previous post to learn more about it.

The last two pieces of the puzzle have been added:

New Damage System:

The new damage technology leverage on the current powerful decal tech.
When a block is hit a damage decal is spawned. Each "damage decal" have its own HP, should it be hit again it will look worse and worse.
For now there is three visual stages: damaged, pierced with mesh, and fully pierced. Once full pierced any beam or laser projectile will pierce through the hull and will hit what is behind!
On top of looking cool it is a very important game mechanic, as a stretch hull piece will not provide a stronger armor, just the same as it used to be with the previous voxel tech.




New Light Technology:

On top of that a new light system has been added. The previous tech (single light texture per ship) was a huge memory bottleneck for large ships and was not even compatible with very large ship because of directx texture size limitation.
The new system uses a state of the art technique called tiled rendering, allowing many lights to be drawn for relatively cheap (if you over-use lights it might still lag though!).
Lights are also now physically correct, with a sharper look and with specular reflections. It means that metal will looks like metal! The result will also be in line with the sun lighting.

Before


After


If you did used bare metal interior you might not like the new look though and might have to do a bit of paint work!

Community feedback.

Building Grid:
There was a lot of discussion regarding the building flow of the game. A lot of people where used to the "smart" brick placement (which use the local grid of the targeted brick) and did not like the constrain of the global grid lock. You can now switch between those to mode by pressing the [G] key:

• Global grid lock: each brick locks to the grid defined by the origin (created when the starter block was placed). Similar to the old hull block grid mode.
  
• Local grid lock: here the local grid of the targeted brick is used, so you can add and carry offset easily Similar to the old brick grid mode.
  

We might still need a bit of fine tuning and naming / icon change as some people where confused by the name.

Heat Dissipation:
The heat dissipation of hull was removed but will come back due to popular request. I will explain the impact in a subsequent post.

Stay tuned!
Francois

I wanted to give some updates on the next patch for those of you who are not following the github.
This will be one of our biggest updates with quite a few changes for you the players and even bigger changes behind the scene.

Killing voxels:
Starship Evo started its life as a voxel building game like many other building games. Over time it has morphed to a hybrid tech with voxels and the rescalable bricks that you all love and that gives some much freedom.
Since the latest physics improvements and refactors we are now able to completely unplug the voxel layer and embrace the true nature of the game building system.



It bring the following features and changes to the game:

Optimizations: getting rid of voxel massively reduces memory usage, especially for large builds. The only impact now is how many bricks a given blueprint has, no longer its size. A 10km wide death star made of 10.000 bricks will weigh as much as a 10.000 hyper detailed fighter.
To get an idea, Dolan's mighty H-106 Kodashi, absolute beast of more than 200.000 bricks (a 10.000 bricks ship is a ship with a lot of detail already...) is weighing around 10mb in GPU memory, and around the double CPU side...
It is also improving fps, depending on the scene the gains can be substantial.
Loading times are also massively improved.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2303258817

Dynamic Grid: I introduced a new grid-scaling mode. Many blocks can now be rescaled to 0.125m, 0.25m, 0.5m, 1m, up to 32m by x2 increments with a toggle key. Hull, weapons, systems, mechanism and many more that came in 1m and 0.25m versions one are now merged into the same block. For convenience each grid-scale will snap to its own grid like the 1m and 0.25m used.
Of course you can use blocks of different scales in the same build, and on top of that you can still drag to stretch the block to non-uniform scale like before.



=> those two features mean one thing: mega builds are gonna be possible! This allow us to spawn larger NPC stations, and even use the brick tech to redo the space habitat.

Custom color: This change makes the technical integration a lot simpler, so custom colors are making a comeback! There is no limit on how many custom colors a ship can have.

Material and Armor type: This update will also introduce various materials. You can replace a hull with another material like with paint. Each material will have various armor / weight properties.

Better light: The light tech has to be also reworked, the new tech will be much lighter in memory requirement and allow for dynamic light control and true specular lighting.

Massive reduction in code simplicity: While it took (more) time to complete, these changes are massively reducing the code complexity, which will allow more features in the future.

New border look: While they added a bit of pop on the hull block they were a bit unpopular for smaller bricks. Now they are removed as it was a feature using the voxel layer.

New Armor and damage system. As it was also using voxel it had to be reworked, the new system working by bricks. It will actually be simpler for newcomers as there is no longer any difference between hull block / smaller bricks, everything is a hull block now!

Voxel Paints are gone: Last to the chapter of things that had to go: voxel paint. I liked them, a lot of builders didnt (those who like to build big). Now you will have to use decals for finer details.



That's it! We are still working on bug fixes, migration issues and a few more finishing touches. This update will be released in Experimental first, I will have a few back and forth with the community to get a hold on the new dynamic grid beast.

I cant wait to see what you can do with the new tech!
Francois

This builds adds some revamped Spaceship, hovercraft and building sounds effects.

Improvements for spaceship sfx:

• more connected to player input
  
• Deals better with perspective
  
• Account for ship size.
  

Bugfixes:

• #3689 Symmetry overlap check do not work sometime.
  
• #3697 Ship fall through the ground when far away.
  

Thanks for playing!