Hello players,
This update is mostly for bugfixes and to introduce internationalization to the game. We are currently experiencing issues with our CDN (cloud), so depending on your location it might take a little time for the update to become available. We hope to fix these issues in the coming week.
Language Packs
As some have probably already found out in the last build, StarMade will now support language packs. Although, there isn’t a complete pack available yet, they can already be created and used by setting them in the settings.cfg. As soon as there are official packs, an option in the startup options to change languages will become available.
There is a fully functional language editor already available in the startup options under “tools”, which automatically takes the original texts of the latest version and marks them as changed, so updating from version to version should just be a thing of translating new or changed entries. To create a language to use, it will have to be placed in StarMade/language/languageName/pack.xml
Keep in mind when changing the default “english”, as that is the original “blueprint” for language and will reset, as that is based on the build itself.
The reason for the delay on that was to finally go over every text entry in the game and to re-engineer corrected text into the code.
Internationalization is always a critical point in development, since if it’s done wrong, it can severely slow down development from that point, or even cause a complete mess (I witnessed that happening in previous work experiences).
To prevent that, a lot of extra design work was put in.
Technically for a coder, using internationalization is as easy as using printf with just a different function name. There is now a preprocessor that will automatically process all uses of that function and create a Language Class with static variables replacing the occurrences. On startup those variables will be filled with the entries from the used language pack. This means, that performance doesn’t suffer at all from using language packs.
Furthermore this system even saves performance, as all occurrences of ingame server messages are automatically indexed and just the index and its arguments are sent, so the client can use a translation if possible. This means, a lot of text that took bandwidth from the server is now reduced to just sending a number.
Bug Fixes
We heard the criticism about the transporter beacon and we agree that it makes shuttle play too irrelevant. The “beam down beam” will therefore be on hold for a little while until we further assess the balance and maybe come up with more elegant solutions. The transport beacon now has a charge time. The default is a little slow but item improvement will also be a thing. If there is future debuffing needed, we are playing with the thought of having the beacon discharge on the movement of the astronaut.
Some major bugs have been fixed. Foremost, there seemed to be a NullPointer which was plaguing servers, which hopefully shouldn’t happen anymore.
Also, all weapons/tools have been a little bugged *due* to the optimization where it appeared that the entity behind another entity was hit. This issue has been fixed and does not occur anymore.
Race Gate laps have been fixed. There was also a bug that Race Gates wouldn’t always trigger when going through, which has also been fixed/improved.
Another bug was that people were getting stuck in their cores, which should have been improved now. Getting stuck inside a block prevented you from removing/using it, but that has been fixed completely, so it should be easy to unstick yourself.
Furthermore, the tutorial has been fixed. There was a problem that NPCs appeared to fall through the tutorial station, as well as a NullPointer when talking to NPC-00.
AI macro Simulation was pretty broken overall, but should now be fixed. Response fleets should once again work correctly, as well as other encounters/patrols. All weapons trigger a fleet event again.
Some minor fixes have been made to shipyards to prevent exploitation. Also, there was a bug that any multi slot item in an inventory of a deconstructed ship was lost. This is now also fixed. The bug that ships are cut off was already fixed in the last release.
Collision damage has been improved and now applies to both colliding entities. It is also saved correctly.
Lastly, linking a computer to itself will no longer cause that computer to lose its link with the shipcore. This caused it to disappear from the Weapons Menu.
You can now also use the admin command /simulation_info and /simulation_clear_all to combat potential lag caused by simulation (pirate groups getting stuck, or just cleaning up in general).
The next update scheduled will be in two weeks,
Thanks for playing StarMade,
- The Schine Team