Hello again!

It's been a while since the last real update. While I could give you a hundred excuses as to why we've been dead for two months, long story short they're all about university studies and lack of motivation.

Not all work has been still however, we've slowly managed to build up a quite a long list of random stuff. There have been numerous changes, updates to the sounds, galaxy generation, map, planets, and lots of fixes. No new modules or models this time unfortunately, as not even one of the ones showcased in the previous news post is done yet.

Our current direction for the next update has changed somewhat, and the station expansion will likely have to wait while we implement more drastic changes that will hopefully make the game more playable in the long run.

New Gas Giants

The shader I was working on is finally up and running in-game, giving us brand new animated gas giants. They could still use some work up close, but that's an issue for another time.

Funny story, while adding these in I noticed that gas giants in general were accidentally disabled about a year or so ago in some update. Seems like nobody missed them until now :P

Names and Labels

To give the star systems more of a sense of location, you can now check each planet's and star's name by simply hovering over them using the mouse.

Planets can be either designated by the star they're orbiting (e.g. Earth would be Sol 3 under this convention), or have an additional special name if that planet is of any more significance. This will become more pronounced once we actually add planetary colonies.

Since there weren't any planetary names before, we added those and updated the star names as well, so they're not as generic and boring as before.

Planetary Landings Crashings

To put an end to that age old question everyone absolutely has to ask: "But can you land on planets?" you can now go and see for yourself.

One you get close to an atmospheric or gaseous planet you'll get an atmosphere warning and reentry effects. Shortly after, the planet's scale should become more obvious.

As to what happens next, let's say these ships are generally built to work in space :)

Galaxy Generation Changes

There have been some changes to the way a new galaxy is generated, with about twice as many star systems to explore. It's mostly needed because of the new locations we'll be adding (and have already) so there's still some regular old star systems to complement them.

The galaxy map has an updated set of icons, renders stars smaller and adds some new location types to explore.

Rogue Planets

The first new location to visit in the galaxy are quite rare rogue planets. These planets don't orbit any stars as they've become ejected from their origin systems by some gravitational event in the distant past.

Currently this is the only location where a space station isn't guaranteed to appear, but there may be up to several.

Interstellar Asteroid Fields

Another place you can now explore are asteroid fields where the odds of successful navigation are 3720 to 1.

Be advised however that these can be a bit on the demanding side performance-wise so you may want to avoid them for now on more low end computers.

New Shield Shader

For those of you that missed the old post, the shields now have a new shader that's more transparent and shows impacts.

Target Tracking Camera

Following a suggestion, there is now a checkbox in options that enables this experimental camera mode.

What it does is essentially changes chase mode to always look at the object you have targeted, while disabling auto-targeting on hostile ships to prevent annoyance in some cases. It's still a bit wonky and mostly useful only for small ships, so use with caution.

Changelog:

New Sound Effects:

• turret rotation and lockon sounds
• shield impact/collapse/enable sounds
• a few more explosion sounds
• stars and black holes now have an ambient sound
• updated warp failure sound

Other Additions:

• rogue planets (New Galactic Location)
• interstellar asteroid fields (New Galactic Location)
• gas giants (we didn't notice they were accidentally disabled)
• new gas giant shader, they're now slightly animated
• new shield shader
• post-warp entry effect
• focus on target lock (can be enabled in settings and will track your target with the camera) - experimental
• reworked system and planetary names
• mouse hover over planets and stars shows their name and class
• ships get smaller when approaching planets and explode in a large splat on hitting the surface
• partial reentry effects
• hostile ships may try to ambush you at derelicts, asteroids and funnels
• asteroids now have normal maps (that is, look more bumpy in light)

Changes:

• expanded settings menu
• fewer asteroids spawn in planetary rings now and they don't spin initially, greatly reducing physics load
• railguns no longer shoot through shields are now 30% less effective against them
• firegroup menu no longer drops shields
• hostile ship will now spawn with an equivalent of your current ship mass/size, instead of the stats you had when you first entered the system
• all galaxies include the new system types and new ones will spawn with about 2x as much systems
• stronger fuel explosions, with fuel tanks dropping gas clouds on destruction as well
• station hubs no longer add command points
• minor optimizations
• reworked map icons
• minimap shows asteroids as gray prisms
• reworked screenshake to hopefully be less vomit inducing :)
• things damaged by fuel explosions (e.g. space stations) now aggro the ship that shot the fuel cloud
• decreased spawn rate of knife and fist by 50%

Fixes:

• fixed player shield and reactor settings (hotbar ability on/off) not saving
• fixed issue with shields not setting frequency correctly sometimes
• fixed industrial mk2 engine warp exhaust
• ships now orient correctly before interstellar jumps
• partially fixed dark gui modules when shadows are disabled (still persists in some cases)
• fixed neutron torpedos not checking obstruction on launch
• fixed cruise warp effect color issue at low framerates
• neutral ship warp bounce fixed (ships would appear to instantly warp back from a location they just arrived at)
• fixed phantom targeting issue when collecting a targeted object into cargo containers
• dps stat should now show up for huge ships as well
• gas giants now...uhm...exist?

Known Issues:

• there's a certain issue with sound being muted on startup sometimes, which can be fixed by going into the settings menu and back (we'll probably make a follow up patch for that soon once it becomes clear what exactly is wrong)
• Achievement "Ten Times Light" is no longer obtainable and will be replaced soon

Thanks for reading and have a good one!