I have learned a lot from my experiment in re-making Star Explorers from scratch, and have applied some of that knowledge to the testing branch. This is a pretty major update, but most of the changes will be invisible to players.
The script is much more coherent in some of the fundamental areas like saving and loading games. This should make it less prone to errors and crashes related to saving and loading files, or at least easier to find those errors and crashes should they occur.
I encountered a number of other issues after changing the script so dramatically, but have managed to get all the other systems back online.
Some Minor Differences:
- The Star Chart will only show sectors in which stars have been scanned. This is slightly different that the previous Star Chart, which only showed sectors that the player's ship had passed through. I think the new way works better, as it will no longer show sectors with no data in them.
- Pressing "M" to aim towards the mothership should no longer give a "insufficient fuel" warning. This will be stated when the player actually warps.
- Aiming toward a star/planet when selecting orbit/warp from the drop down has been improved. It was possible to get caught in a strange, shaky cycle that sometimes caused a long delay in aiming. I have implemented a better aiming script, and it should be smoother.
Disengage Orbit
When leaving orbit, you will no longer need to hold the back key, "s" by default. The ship should handle this action automatically now. It will slowly back your spaceship away from the planet while angling upward. This will position your spaceship directly "above" the planet, so there will be no possibility of backing into another planet, or into the gravity well of a star. Planets and orbits are not really scaled realistically in Star Explorers, so this was a problem in the past.
Going Forward
One of the main reasons I even attempted to re-write these scripts were some ongoing issues with the main plot of the game. Finding Acknexium crystals on a planet would sometimes not register when you dropped your beacon. I believe this problem has been resolved. I have tested it numerous times, even leaving the system in which I found the crystals and returning prior to dropping the beacon, and it seems to work correctly every time. This had a lot to do with the complex and elaborate saving/loading system i had devised years ago, so this new one, being much simpler, does not end up with conflicting data as it may have previously.
I am trying to only address those systems that actually present problems, rather than trying to fix or improve things that are not broken. If all turns out as hoped, version 5.0 will be ready and fully stable by the Fall as planned.