Hello fellow Space Dwellers!
2016 was a bumpy ride for everyone, not only us. But as you're not here to get information about what happened to others in the past year, but to us, let's begin what happened and what is to come!
As the first major note, Sirius Online is now only Released and Published by Digital Dawn Studios only. We decided for this step for private reasons. All our decisions now go on us, like reverting black market keys, and reissuing new ones to legit buyers.
This is a crucial step towards clearing up some of the mistakes we made and mistakes we let happen because we were so swamped with work.
Speaking of "we"...
Digital Dawn Studios expands. In December we added a very talented Composer and a likewise talented Sound Architect to our team to replace the stock sounds and music for a more professional space feel.
We will stock up the team over the year with additional designers, community managers and more useful people. That does not mean that we're turning into stuper-stick-up-our-arses suit-and-tie-wearing people with no wordly connection to the base. I will still engage with you in every aspect I can, and will mostly write the news.
But this does mean that the Articles written here, explanations and more get written in better manner. And while we're at it, lets introduce something new:
Some of you might already have noticed that we patched the game on Christmas Eve, where you can open up chests for some gold. This is part of a new Event system which is soon handled by the server. Certain dates can trigger certain events, Eggs on Easter, new Firework-Weapons on NYE and Gifts for x-Mas to name a few.
Aside from Ingame Events, we are about to discuss a schedule for out-of-game-events with the community, because your input matters. So far, we lined out the following events:
- A weekly Game Stream Day where The Devs and Staff may play with you or answer questions, basically a community day.
- Bi-Weekly FAQ Day. Join the Stream, get to know the Team, ask to your hearts content, even off-topic
- Monthly Wrap up stream where we show what we did this month in content, sound or technical things.
- An annual PVP Tournament with prizes from possible sponsors
This list can be expanded in any way by your inpout or your Ideas. One Special Event is going to come soon:
The Sirius Online Reunion Project (SORP). We are currently getting everyone together who ever worked with, for and at Sirius, have collected a few ancient clients and updates.
We talk about what has become of the old crew, what they remember well, what worked, our issues, our success moments, everything that happened until we all broke up. and went our own ways.
I for myself am really excited about this.
This question pops up rather often in my personal inbox, since Sirius now has a price on itch.io and on Humble Store, and will soon return Full Priced to Steam, when we sorted out the games transition between Back To Basics Gaming and Digital Dawn Studios.
F2P Sirius will be a thing Basically, the new F2P Client that is coming will be the full game with a lot of limitations, like a hardlimit on money, levels and some functions excluded, like skinning, owning Stations and more.
This might not be satisfactionary for some of you, but as it stands, we all want to get paid for work we do. Especially the new guys deserve some kind of payment for their hard work!
Even though we planned to bring skins as substitute for paying for the game itself, maintaining a skin shop for three, soon four store platforms and staying DRM-Free would be a massive overload of work, distracting us from adding content to the game.
There will be new Skins for each faction, unlocked by killing the opposing Faction, PvP, PvE, and special Events. You can also unlock special Skins in the upcoming new content.
While we're at the topic of content, let me introduce you to the next major patch, releasing in february or march this year:
Rise of the Crimson Dawn is the first Story Pack you will get as a free patch. A patrons Faction (ACT, known as the nearest station to the new player) goes rogue and missing... until they return as a new faction to wreak havoc around the cluster:
The Crimson Dawn uses advanced AGI to jump Fleets of ships into certain locations, including new capital weapon platforms. All players live on the server get informed about such an event, and get a new Mission market set. Invasions are a major feature of this patch and I will make sure they're going to be worthwhile.
Completing such an invasion will unlock a random crimson dawn skin for you, to freely use. These will be detailed in a later Blog Post.
This Faction Story line is also just possible because a Patron has decided to back the Project with at least 20$ per month here: Patreon for The Game
Other things added to the game will be:
- New Mission System The old Mission System is bland, randomized, inintuitive and tries to force you to do playstyles you dont want to. This changes with the new system. On stations and points in the Universe you will find Missions Beacons. Near them and a Description will pop up on the right side otf the screen. If you wnat it, accept the mission with a click, if not, just fly away. They will be replenished regularily.
- Player Outpost Control While this was on the plan for 1.1b, its been moved to Rise of the Crimson Dawn for obvious reasons: a) It ties in better with the updated Mission System and b) It gives me more time to implement more than just one outpost. They will give you advantages for their price, like a personal shield recharge station.
- Changes to Gunnery and Energy Consumption again Shooting someone is rather easy because "Lazors" are infinite. Not anymore with ROTCD. We tied the weapons to your Energy Generator, the same that your After Burner feeds on. In compromise, we removed energy consumption completely from the HSD Engine.
- Updated Graphical Effectsand Gameplay Values A lot of people have approached me about the whole "Docking" thing and I cave. I cave so hard, I'm going to put the Safe Zone and the Shopping area completely into the Docking Bay. With a new Updated Shield effect, the Bey should be open to everyone fast enough to get there. If you're not... the stations turrets can help alot. Also I am adding Moons, Scrapyards, Docking Lights and more to the game!
- Better Handling of Aim, for players and AI. Dear Players: I've heard your cry for aim! I just needed to find a way to predict movement without going esoteric and just selling a crystal ball with each logged in player and NPC. This Prediction is VERY basic and will not work if someone is flying irregularily, but both players and AI will be able to see and use it.
- More Stations and Happenings The Battlefield-Module was a big success in terms of stability and making the universe more alive. I will expand it to make it less predictable, even if the outcome differs every time, the AI Battle only happens at one place majorly. The Universe currently has only five stations, which is rather tiring if you want to check the markets for certain wares. I am considering upping this to 20 Stations and respective Warehouses.
- OpenLocal Initiative I am trying to get this game translated into many languages and am therefore looking for open translators after the patch has hit to start localizing the game.
- Asteroid Collisions for Players and AI
- New Sounds and Music
- The Launcher Returns Older Players remember the Launcher from a time before land... or something like that. We talked through this and with the recent wave of resolution problems on Sirius, we decided to let it return to give you the ability to select your Resolution and Language
- Revamped Character Creator The Character Creation right nopw is a makeshift thing I cooked together to give you the Ability to enter your Name and start gaming right away. This is obviously not the best solution, so I am redoing this one completely and give it more style. You will be able to select your birthplace, faction, profession and much more, which determines your starting.
- Special Edition Ships Patrons will be able to claim a special Code for an Installer that Injects a Special Edition Skinned Ship to the game. It fits its original Build Counterpart, but has an otherwise not obtainable skin and Lights attached to it.
- Bugfixes
- More Bugfixes
- Even more Bugfixes A lot is on my to do list, thats why the release of ROTCD is most likely end of February to Mid March. With ROTCD we will also leave Alpha Stage and Enter Beta. Up next, you tell us what you think about the changes, the community events, and the patching schedule towards Beta! I am looking forward to hear from you,