Star Explorers has received its first update. It's nothing huge, but more of a preliminary, housekeeping kind of update. Here are the issues that have been addressed:
- A simple in-game tutorial has been added. Nothing fancy, but when you are receiving messages from the mothership, there is a second tutorial section which gives practical advice on how to accomplish the tasks.
- Configuration changes are now saved in separate file and loaded each time you play automatically. Now you will only have to set up your screen, mouse configuration and volume levels once. The changes will be carried over into your next play session automatically.
- The Sector Cube is now more versatile - This cube existed and showed the boundaries of the sector in which the player's spaceship resided. Now, it will appear not only in the player's current sector, but in any sector the player chooses in the star chart. Also, by clicking "target sector" in the star chart, the sector cube will be automaticlaly repositioned on the sector in which the player must complete the current mission. You can still toggle its visibility with "O" or by ckicking the "show/hide" button in the star chart.
- More screen sizes have been added. NOTE: some of these are untested. Annything over 1920 x 1080 is too big for my monitor. Also, I had an error when trying to use 1680 x 1050 at full screen.
- Cursor should be released when you press "esc" allowing you to use the mouse in other Windows programs while Star Explorers is running.
- Mouse Sensitivity Slider added to the "Options > Controls" panel.
- Mouse Invert Y Axis option added to the "Options > Controls" panel.
- Unsaved Games - Previously, if you started a new game, but forgot to save it, or had not yet successfully returned from a planet, the game would not load again. Now it should automatically save your game right after creating it, so even if you turn it off before landing on a planet, you'll still be able to reload the game.
- Checks previously saved games - Now if you accidently type an existing game's name into the "New Game" window, it will check to see if that game exists already or not. Starting a new game with an existing name would have caused lots of errors. This should not happen any more.
- New surface features - The first of many new planet features has been added. Now some planets will have what I call "landscape features" which are essentially just big rocks. Nevertheless, they give a more unique appearance to each planet, allowing for more variety. Some aspects of these features still need tweaking, as aliens might go right through them, and shadows seem to have a problem of flickering on their large surfaces. I am working on these issues and will hopefully correct them by the next update.
- Compatible with the original release of Star Explorers. All these new features SHOULD work flawlessly with any saved games you may have.
Thanks for keeping up with the development of Star Explorers, and as always, let me know if you have any questions or concerns!