Time to take the metaphorical warping Dutchmans out of the oven, and release them into the game in the form of derelict ships. Most of these are designed by you, the players. The five winning ships from the Derelict Ship Design Contest are included, and waiting for you to explore them.
For those of you unacquainted with the new derelict ships, a short explanation; Every so often a new energy signature will pop up in a solar system. When investigated these will reveal themselves to be a ship or station. If it’s a ship it might still be moving. But in any case there is a large likelihood of Skrill roaming in the vicinity. Derelicts need to be hacked to gain access, and a lot of the onboard devices might be broken once you get on board. On top of this there is also a fair chance that the self destruct will activate once you teleport on board. Luckily there is a good reason to venture onboard one of these vessels, as you might be rewarded in the form of tools and resources.
On the technical side we’ve been working on more optimizations, (please refer to the patch notes for more information about this), and we’ve fixed a whole slew of bugs. We’ve also updated the file browser in the editor, and integrated it into the game, instead of taking you to a Windows Explorer menu.
We’ve also updated the menu of the trade stats cartridge that you can find in various tool stores around the galaxy. It had been released by accident in the past, but we’re finally getting around to polishing it up. With it you can scan a system when it’s placed in a data terminal. After a short while it will list the best values for buying and selling resources, and what station you need to visit to do so. When you visit multiple systems they will be added to the UI, so you easily switch back and forth between trade stats to find the best deals.
We’d once again like to thank all participants from the ship design contest, the winners have been added to the credits, if you’re not happy with how you’re credited, please let us know, and we’ll update it.
Thank you all for playing and see you star side!
-The Split Polygon Team
Patch Notes for IR Beta 0.2.9.00
PS: We will also be streaming Interstellar Rift again tonight at 22:00 CEST (21:00 UTC), in Dev Stream #65 at https://www.twitch.tv/splitpolygon. We'll be talking about the changes in 0.2.9, answer your questions, and also talk about upcoming features in 0.2.10.