Dear Stormworks,
This week we add the ability to communicate with a http server from within a lua script.
What does this mean? Get ready for an extremely technical update announcement!
Telemetry
With the ability to send and receive data to and from a http server on your computer, players could connect telemetry systems for their home cockpits. You can use this new feature to control any connected system such as real world cockpit lights, indicators, dials, the lighting in your room, hydraulics, force feedback and more.
For our more technical players who are interested in electronics and software, this means Stormworks can start to enter the real world. Piloting could become much more in depth for players with with cockpit hardware, introducing a whole new dimension to vehicle building.
Rich Presence
Players can send any data they wish from a LUA script to their own http server software. If you can script a http server, then buttons or information in Stormworks can be fed anywhere. When you eject, do you want to announce your coordinates as a distress message on Twitter? Do you want your Discord status to reflect your speed and heading? Perhaps you run a server and you want time and weather data with a real time ATC style map showing where all vehicles or radar contacts are?
Data Display
The new LUA functions mean you can read any data outside of Stormworks into your LUA block. If you can script a http server, you can send any information you want into game. Get real world news headlines on screen, have an in-game Discord chat, or get notifications of what games have just been discounted on Steam.
Limitations
In multiplayer, these scripts are run locally, so while a script may read cockpit buttons correctly in single player, the script does not know what information should be replicated on the network, and thus a players own cockpit telemetry will not affect the simulation on the server. This is only a minor limitation as Stormworks already supports 48 button inputs via the Direct Input API, which work over multiplayer.
We can't wait to see what players do with this new feature and are really excited to see what new intelligent systems are created.
While we respect that this feature doesn't necessarily impact all players immediately, it is the kind of feature that Stormworks should have, and many players have asked for. There is also the usual list of improvements and fixes in the patch notes below.
Much love <3,
The Stormworks Developers
Patch Notes
v0.10.29
Fix - Physics acceleration client desync
v0.10.30
Feature - Microprocessor Telemetry HTTP Requests
async.HTTPRequest(fail_callback, success_callback, url, method, headers, body)
A further example can be found in the lua help tab.
Rework - Editor warnings no longer generate on vehicle load if they are toggled off (this should boost load times back to previous rates, editor warnings are now generated when the setting is toggled on)
Rework - Winch physics nodes now more consistent and less buoyant (reduced winch physics issues in water)
Rework - Removed blood particles from heat-box damage
Rework - Reduced number of blood particles when damaged by propellers
Fix - macOS several issues including shader issues and crashes