"Holy Cow!" (Update 0.12)

Originally posted by Instructorš No cows were harmed for the development of this update - actually it has nothing to do with cows at all.
Be praised, travelers!
It's been a while this time due to exceptional circumstances - like a team member's XXL relocation (ąøąø±ąøąøąø²ąø¢ from Thailand!), including re-establishing our workflows and communicating straight through the globe at 5 different time zones! :D Expect future updates in the usual frequency again.
Anyway, nothing was left untouched - actually we've created a big pile of new content, bringing the game a good step closer to the 1.0 vision (and everything Beyond). Also, scroll down to the end to see what is currently happening and what are the next steps.
Special thanks to some people that have shown epic support lately - 8ByteGaming, Hakimodo, IndieGameLover, the USMCsky discord community and many more. Thanks to all of you for playing and supporting!
Note: Since 32-bit binaries with their memory limitations are becoming increasingly difficult to support, we will switch to 64-bit with one of the next updates.
But now showtime :)
https://youtu.be/lBeHKpc2jlU

š Story Content
- The Caduceus arc now has an additional mission, new events and dialog
- The Seraphim got their first station populated with NPCs, new locations, background story and sidequests
- Added the pirate leaders in game
- Support dialog camera targets
š ļø Ship Crafting
Yeah! 40+ awesome ships can now be built at Rajid's Garage once the location is unlocked. Some of the new ships are exclusive for crafting and can NOT be purchased anywhere else. Where to get blueprints:
- Random NPC ships have a small chance to drop their blueprint when destroyed!
- Purchase them from traders
š« Weapons


- Plasma, Photon and Nuke Torpedoes
- Atlantic, J12, Sphere and Seraphim Projectile Turrets
- Dual Missile turrets
- Drone Launcher
- Scattergun & Mine Shotguns
- Holy Mines
- Mining Lasers: newly-balanced, can now be upgraded to be more powerful
- Shock Cannons: newly-balanced, the regular one can be upgraded
- Random Weapon Qualities - hey NormireX ;)
(This feature is almost done, but still in progress and will be enabled soon!)
š Celebrities!
To thank our earliest and most loyal supporters from streamers to press, we've just implemented them as ingame NPCs. Meet Nookrium, USMCsky, Leon from Red Event Games and DannyDSC in the Gaia Beyond universe!

The current state is more or less just an introduction of the characters - the basic setup for a whole quest arc. Stay tuned for the crazy stuff that is going to happen here until 1.0!
š Locations






- Jupiter J12 Colony
- Caduceus HQ & Nexus
- Bar: Zion & Atlantic
- Seraphim 'Hall of Prayers'
- Doomsday Fortress
- Seraphim Hospital & Workshop
š New Ships & Stations

Purchasable:
Others:
- Stolen Caduceus Guard (bad paintjob - will they trick you? :D)
- The old "Seraphim Station" was converted into a faction-spawned battleship (Mercia) and will soon be available!
š Portraits
- 2 new Player portraits!
- New Seraphim males
- Old Seraphim male updated & back in game
- J12 male variations
- Various 'crowd' portraits
- Statue
š¬ UI
- Controller button images
- Show the bullet weapon range in tooltips
- Remember the map zoom z position
- Savegame the last camera zoom positions
- Container hacking levels displayed in analysis
š Sound
- All new weapons come with custom fire and hit sounds
- Projectile non-hit explosion sounds added
- Custom mine explosion sounds
- Custom spam weapon sound
- Repair sound added to dialogs
⨠FX
- Customized mine explosion emitters
- Astronaut cargo item
- Heat effect for new Seraphim weapons


Story
- A lot of NPC script and dialog improvements
Ships
- Caduceus: Guards, Hunters & Heimwehr's ship polishing

- Reduce the autopilot speed based on distance to target pos
- Waechter animated lights
- Tyrell Wharf visual improvements
- CoC & FTA Transporters were slower than their loaded versions
World
- General performance improvements
- Improved background starfield
- Earth texture: structure added
- Nebula edge & pixelation fixes
(thx to 8ByteGaming for ploughing through all the pirate hordes twice to find them!) - Greenhouse location pic details added
- Bar location pics polishing and faction-related details
- Rajid's Garage: sky added
- Bokaj Lab minor changes
- Turret Platform respawn time increased
- Some spawners added
UI
- Loading Screen: Hide the mouse cursor
- Loading Screen: Visualize the early level loading progress
- Side notifications (tutorial hints) centered
- Player portrait selection: temporary layout change
- Weapon comparison: DPS should be at the top
Portraits
- More updates on all player portraits
- Fancy backgrounds added on a lot of portraits, more to come
- Harrison Cruise polishing
- McKenzie polishing and leg version
- Some reassignments
FX
- Particle emitter performance improvements
- Main menu background improved
- Customized projectile explosions, more to come!
- 2-framed emitters optimized
- Projectile improvements

- Rare crash when loading "coll_geometry convex_polygon" settings
- Savegames: Mission Target can be lost
- Ship slot tooltips can stay indefinitely
- Flickering HUD emitter
- Some weapon volume fixes
- HUD auto pause should not override dialog auto pause
- Character HUD: Crash when leveling up from the script
- If a person with a ship is docked on a station and then moved to a new location, the location change HUD event can fail
- Enemy ships with the behavior set to autopilot are not considered for the fight music check (No auto fighting music during The Cure battle)
- Add an error when the active person dialog block changes while a dialog is still active (and don't crash)
- Support changing the player docked location when a dialog ends
- Crash when unloading a level with an active message request
- Landable news text breaks if one entry is too long
- Locked Caduceus HQ dialog returns you to Distribution Hall
- Laser scale could be too small
- Elisha dialog block 1_1 stage 2 can break (Albatross)
- Do not treat weaponless enemies as active enemies (Can't chat near Caduceus Drones)
- Turret only ships should distance themselves with the weapon range in fights
- Message HUD: Number keys sometimes don't work for answer confirmation (8byte)
- All blocking HUD windows exit differently with ESC if the focus is not on the main window anymore
- Landable HUD: Controller doesn't work
- Shield "Init Time" comparison is broken
- Savegame upgrades based on quest stages do not work
- Kalypso does not enter "Atlas HQ" when "Genocide Consignment" fails
- Eric Strong repair option broken
- Don't crash if a weapon drawable is missing
- A ship with a mining attack state does not defend itself when under attack (RoadsterTracker)
- Auto-pause missing for the first dialog with Vasquez
- Dialog repair removes less credits than displayed
- Destroyed containers should only drop 25% of the loot
- Persons do not restock on creation
- Noob does not retaliate on "Ambush Henderson."
- New Game Menu: Draw the ship emitter
- Some Auto-Pause events are triggered incorrectly
- Weapon range doesn't recognize decel (also breaks the fight ai)
- Emitter can miss the last emit if the last frame ends on the emitter ttl (see p_shockwave)
- CEGUI SharedStringStream Thread fix (failed to convert attribute 'position' with value '0.0' to float)
- Don't show a notification if a person credits change ended up becoming a 0
- Random NPC Fighting lines often not triggered
- Turret platforms have a wrong death sound
- Fix the Jurgen Winters corpse description
- Weapon comparison could have an empty "()" comparison block
- Weapon comparison line formatting does not match with lasers/bullets
- The small sprites mouse selection radius increase is broken
- Default_Dialog_Handler_gac is not used
- Reset the last camera zoom positions when starting a new game
- The CZE_TO_MAP camera zoom event ends instantly. Should only end when near the target z
- Ghost items in cargo ("type": 4) (not deleted on load)
- Shizhong goes to meeting point instead of Kalypso after hacking
- Controller: ship slots can be selected in ship crafting hud
- Controller: landable focus elements can be selected from blocking HUD windows (limit focus to the blocking window)

NEXT GOALS
- Random weapon qualities Hold on, NormireX! ;)
- More sound customization As mentioned before - improving the overall impression
- Station scales Some are a bit off - using a real scale overview to balance sizes
- Halloween things!
š»

Let's have a chat on Discord:

Learn more & stay tuned!