ΔV: Rings of Saturn News

[h3]Quality of Life improved[/h3]
This update follows the player-voted path of improving the general player experience with the game. I turned my focus to the Enceladus Prime station, mainly the upgrade menu. With the steady addition of the new upgrades, the list was becoming too large and difficult to navigate, so I had split it into separate, foldable sections. Upgrades will now warn you that your ship is not adequately powered to install it - but it will not prevent you from buying one if you really want to.

Due to a popular request smart camera was reworked somewhat. While zoomed out all the way, the zoom-in should not be evident. It will still auto-zoom when you are excavating and will zoom out if something dangerous approaches.

[h3]Streamlined physics and AI[/h3]
With all the recent testing we done I managed to pinpoint and fine-tune the performance of many parts of the game - but the one you are most likely to notice are the physics and AI. While there are still cases when FPS drops that I need to isolate and fix, most of the time game ran perfectly smoothly in our soak tests.

I tuned the Artificial Intelligence that handles ships had a lot, as I watched it extensively while running tests.

[h3]More bugs fixed[/h3]
As usual, there are bugfixes and polishes to the game. With the help of community members, we managed to find and fix more conditions that would lead to crashes or game freezes. I used the bug fixing opportunity to patch up multiple small graphical glitches that have annoyed me for way too long. Finally, I changed how the game handles a gamepad in some menus - while they could be used with gamepad fully, it was just not convenient.

I was quiet for few last days. We were not idle - we were hunting.

[h3]Hunting for runtime errors.[/h3]
Race condition is a elusive bug to trace. It happens when two parts of the code run simultaneously and interact in unexpected manner. It could lead to crashes, strange behaviour and more weird effects - but the worst part is that the bug is dependent on computer speed, and that can change by having a browser open, second monitor connected, updates in background and myriad different things.

The one we traced caused crashes and things disappearing from the screen. It was really rare on Windows, but quire common on Linux systems - which led me initially to believe that it was a platform issue. It was not, it just happened that Linux run part of the code fast enough that the bug resurfaced more often.

[h3]Debugger was not helpful.[/h3]
Usually I would trace this kind of a bug with debugger or debug build - but it didn't work this time, since they both slow down the execution, and crashes were not happening. I needed a full, optimized release build running Linux to crash reliably in few minutes, nothing else seemed to trigger that reliably. And in order to fix a bug, you need to see it happening.

Fortunately I found out that I could use Windows Subsystem for Linux to trigger exactly same problem. That was a godsend - now I could debug the game without switching the system, which allowed me to iterate much faster.

[h3]Finally crushed the crash.[/h3]
And now we have the bug pinned. Crashes were triggered by a transponder on your Lidar screen, appearing and disappearing as a ship flew past asteroids and out of your line of sight. With just right timing it could crash the game. It happened on all systems, but it was just easier to spot on Linux. If I didn't support that system, finding this bug would be nearly impossible.

0.193.6 release fixes that - along with couple of other unrelated bugs that just happened along the way.

A week-long sale is about to end, don't forget to check if you have stuff left in your cart that you wanted to get!

This is a bugfix release, patching up the recently found bugs. Changelog:

• Fixed a race condition in geologist code that could cause a game to crash if lot of minerals were identified in quick succession and some of them left the detailed simulation area promptly.
  
• Fine-tuned AI pathfinding behaviour to make mining ships more careful when navigating the obstacles in rings.
  
• Fixed a race condition in ship dealer that could cause game to crash if you entered and exited dealer multiple times in quick succession.
  
• Fixed a bug in adaptive autopilot code that caused it to be very wasteful when flying with variable-thrust NTR RCS.
  

This is a patch release, fixing some bugs and polishing up some aspects of the game. Changelog:

• Installed system that you can no-longer afford now is correctly highlighted.
  
• Newly bought had illegal cargo bay, leasing to confusing display in upgrade menu.
  
• Processing trace amounts of ore with MPU won't display 0 on the HUD now.
  
• Adjusted alignment shifts for most of the dialog options.
  
• Toggling systems in OMS menu will now have an audible click as your pilot toggles switches.
  
• Adjusted the range of simulation for important items. They will now persist longer than dust and gravel.
  
• Your geologist will now keep track of estimated cargo value. He can get confused if you lose cargo or pick up items that he didn't apprise yet.