"The building UI structure has remained mostly unchanged over the years, getting more complicated over time. Feedback from you and our experience at GamesCom, Dreamhack etc. confirms that it has a steep learning curve. To tackle this problem we went back to the drawing board. Almost every element of the UI has been reviewed with usability, discoverability and meaningful placement in mind. A lot of work has been put into improving the building UI and we hope you like it. There might still be some rough edges. Please let us know what you think!"
Beta Branch Note: These changes are currently available on the beta branch. The beta branch is for testing experimental changes and for finding and fixing errors.
This is how you get access to the beta branch (USE AT YOUR OWN RISK):
Right-Click on Avorion in your Steam list, Properties -> Betas -> Select branch 'beta'.
The old Building Inventory has been broken up into separate specialized windows:
Blocks Window
"Being able to quickly find and select the desired block and material is extremely important. Also, for new players, discovering the button that opens this window should be easy."
- Added big "Blocks" button that shows the current block to the top left
- The window now always shows all the blocks
- Unavailable blocks in the current material are shaded
- Scrolling changes the material
- All available shape variations for the current block are shown below
- The blocks selection can be filtered
- Transform and Match functions can be toggled in the blocks window
- Implemented new advanced block functions:
- Select all blocks of the current type
- Transform all selected blocks
Turrets Window
- Added big "Turrets" button below the "Blocks" button that shows the current turret
- Added "Mark Installed Turrets As Favorite" button to make them easier to find e.g. when they temporarily need to be removed from the ship
Colors Window
- Added big "Colors" button below the "Turrets" button that shows the current color
- Implemented new advanced color functions:
- Select by color
- Apply color to selection. With these functions color schemes can be changed quickly
Repair Window
- Block-by-block repairing can now be enabled by pressing the button in the top left of the repair window
Saved Designs Window
- Templates have now moved to the "Saved Designs" window
- Designs can now be saved and loaded from the clipboard
- Added combobox to change the material of a design
- Added filter bar
- Workshop designs can be filtered by tag
- Designs can now be renamed
Stats
"Most of the time, always seeing the FULL stats of your ships was both overwhelming and unnecessary. To improve this we added several options for you to configure. Influence of Crew and Energy problems can be toggled, as well as the influence of System Upgrades. This means you can see the stats of your craft in full glory, even if you don't have the full crew yet."
- Stats are now configurable
- Categories can be shown or hidden
- Only the most important stats are shown by default
- Improved colors to better differentiate between minor changes and potential problems
Quick Selection
"This is the thing at the bottom of the screen."
- The Quick Selection supports Blocks, Turrets and Designs
- It can be filled via Drag & Drop or by pressing a number when hovering a Block, Turret or Design
- The most common context-sensitive shortcuts are shown above the quick selection
Additional UI Changes
- Grid Size and Scale Step can now be set via text boxes
- All View options are now combined in a small View Settings window
- Same goes for Mirroring options
Performance
"Your prayers have been heard. Building performance has been greatly improved on both server and client."
- Improved performance of the ship editor
- Greatly improved performance of multi-block operations (remove, add, colorize, change block type)
- Greatly improved performance of undo, redo and repair
- Greatly reduced the performance impact of all of those operations on the server
- Decreased network traffic for fighters and general position updates
Scripting API
"Modders rejoice: We finally got around to adding a search function in the Scripting API docs!"
- Added a search function for the scripting docs
- Several building-related callbacks now support batch processing. The functions in question were renamed and now have variable arguments for the affected block indices
- Renamed onBlockAdded to onBlocksAdded
- Renamed onBlockRemove to onBlocksRemove
- Renamed onBlockRemoved to onBlocksRemoved
- onBlocksRemoved now transmits all the removed blocks, including their removed orphaned children, as opposed to onBlocksRemove, which only transmits the blocks chosen to be removed by the player
- invokeFunction can now be called with script path or index
- Fixed an issue where client sector's invokeServerFunction() was directed to the player, not the sector
- Renamed runRemote[Entity,Faction,Sector]Code and invokeRemote[Entity,Faction,Sector]Function to run[...]Code and invoke[...]Function
- Improved documentation of these functions
- invokeEntityFunction now optionally accepts a table instead of two arguments name and factionIndex
- Added search function to documentation
Bugfixes
"Bugs marked with [UBR] are user bug reports. Thanks to everyone for reporting and keep it up!"
- [UBR] Fixed an issue where turrets could be selected even if they were obscured
- [UBR] Fixed some events starting even though game is paused
- Fixed an issue with remote sector calls crashing the server
- [UBR] Crew payment timer is only reset to 0 on payment or destruction, no longer on crew leave
- [UBR] Fixed upgrades sometimes being invisible in system upgrade overview
- [UBR] Fixed some issues with ship AI and docking to stations
- Fixed possible server hangs on login
- Fixed player events starting even though game is paused
- Fixed an issue where the ship builder's safe-mode permitted deletions even if they would remove additional blocks
- Fixed potential crash when boarding
Note: We rolled out a hotfix, fixing crashes in combat and, most importantly, a crash when deleting blocks or pressing Ctrl-Z after coloring a block