Starship EVO News

This update brings several components needed for the survival early game.

Here are the new blocks and features in a nutshell:

• Personal crafting.
  
• New jump/boost jetpack mode.
  
• More wood shapes and blocks. Wood retains original tree color.
  
• Crucible: can smelt ore into ingots
  
• Crafting bench.
  
• Wooden crate.
  
• Wind Turbine.
  
• Stone block, stone retains original rock color.
  
• Coal spawn like other ore. Coal be used to fuel the crucible
  

Personal Crafting
The player can now craft a few basic schematics from its inventory menu.
More survival pratical items will be added over time.
The crafting here is purely manual (so it is made to be a bit tedious)

Crafting Bench
The crafting bench is a stepping stone between the personal crafting and the full fledged assembler.
Like the personal crafting it is manual.

Crucible
Like the furnace the crucible can smelt ore into ingots.
Unlike the Arc Furnace it do not require access to a powered grid but will require coal or wood to process ingots.
It also can only process a few ore type compared to the furnace.
It is possible to queue up several ingots.

Wood and coal
It is now possible to destroy tree to get wood. Wood can be used in various schematics.
More wood shapes have been added.
The wood will retain the color of the original tree, so it is up to you to explore the galaxy to get wood of the color you fancy!

Stone blocks
Stone block can be crafted from rock. Like the tree they will retains the original rock color.

Wind Turbine
The wind turbine is a power generator available early from the crafting bench. It requires wind to produce power. I picked an helix design so it can scale easily verticaly!

Jetpack refactor
Obviously being able to levitate infinitely is not doable for survival, so a new jetpack mode is introduced: the jump-pack.
Jump-pack will provide a boost to the player jump, but also a dash forward when pressing shift.
I am not 100% satisfied with the dash, the keymapping will likely change.
Anti-g and 6-dof are still accessible in 0 or low g environment.

Bugfixes:
#5351 Various issues with solar panels

Thanks for playing!

Some more hotfixes.

Bugfixes:

• #5325 Weapon dropped pass through floor after pickup on stand.
  
• #5305 Ship power stuck at 0 in some rare instances
  
• #4890 Copy/paste of a handheld grip causes issues.
  
• #5296 Solar panel not working properly
  
• #5338 Gravity not working on NPC stations.
  

Cheers!

Quick hotfix of some issues with raycast on mechanisms. #5334 #5333

This build introduce a new game mechanic: scraping!

Change to Life-support system following community feedback:

• the VFX will no longer plays when a children entity moves inside the volume.
  
• Fixed airtightness issues with a few blocks (canopy)
  
• Added a "not airtight" property for some block like girder or grating
  
• Added a decorative air vent cover brick, perfect to hide the life-support brick behind. It would block the vfx from playing
  

Wrecks spawning

• Several wrecks will spawn on the terrain. Frequency depends on the planet.
  
• Some vine will grows on them.
  

Scraping

• A new scraping mechanic has been added: mine wrecks for scraps!
  
• Scrap can then be placed into the furnace to extract iron.
  
• The scraping mechanic will give rise to a consortium and some associated missions.
  
• For now the only scrap is a iron based one but further components will be added.
  

Other changes:
The wreck spawn require significant change to various part of the engine so minimize loading hiccup.
Please report any regression!

Thanks for playing!

This build introduce a capital element for survival: oxygen. As it is expected in any survival space game you will have to manage your oxygen level in order to not die is space.

Player changes:

• An oxygen meter bar has been added to the UI
  
• the player will die when this empty out
  
• Automatically refill inside breathable atmosphere or inside a ship pressurized room.
  
• Die much faster when helmet is off in space
  
• Of course those can be toggled On / Off in creative mode
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Life Support blocks
The life Support system will pressurize the room it is placed inside, allowing the player to breath without its helmet.
There is a nice screen displaying the status and even a rotating fan with some cool VFX!

The algoritm works like in real life: a few oxygen molecules are emitted and will bounce around to find the volume pressurized.
If a molecule ends up outside the ship bounds a leak is declared and pressurization is not achieved.
The downside is that the volume is a box, ie a L shaped room will potentially give oxygen to a volume outside.
You can check how it is working by selecting a Life Support brick with the link tool (molecules travel more slowly in preview mode).
It worked well on the ship I tested, and it will react automatically to any new blocks or moving door / mechanism triggered.

The tank reserve allows for a long uptime (2 hours) before a replenish is needed.
Tank replenish either manually (not recommended for large ships), or automatically inside an atmosphere or near a station (it is magic).
As it would be too tedious to have to pipe them, they cannot be connected to pipes at all.

Again an option has been added inside the Entity screen to provide Oxygen ship-wide for creative or older ships.



Force-Field
The force field will project a wall preventing oxygen from leaking, but allowing player or ship to cross it.
Perfect for hangars!
The brick will raycast at the two extremity to determinate the height of the field.
It comes in standard and wedge variant.

As a bonus two creative new features have been added:

• The Air Vent brick can now play the gas VFX (like in the old days) if active
  
• A new Fan brick has been added: you can configure the fan speed. This is purely decorative.
  

Other changes:
- Can see atmospheric and oxygen density inside the holomap

Still to do:
- Depressurization event