What’s up you crafty space survivors?
The team is back in office after a week at Reboot Develop 2018 conference held in Dubrovnik and working full force on our next update. Today we are going to cover a number of changes that went into the code or “beneath the hud” so to speak!
Nav Map
First thing we want to discuss is the nav map. In order to improve its stability we had to dive deep beneath the surface and rebuild the code from scratch. The end result of this work is that nav map is now a lot more stable and its functionality has been expanded with a multitude of new options.
To start off let’s discuss the visual changes. Aside from better indicators, players can expect a lot more detail about various objects, most notably planets and moons, their orbital values, mass, rotational period etc. In addition, each celestial object now has a visual gravity radius that should make it easier for players to judge orbits at a glance. The second change is the ability to manually input orbital parameters when creating custom orbits and to have multiple custom orbits at once. Third change is the seamless zoom that had replaced the old “three step system” allowing you to zoom as close as you want or as far as you want to cover the entire Hellion system.
Another improvement and one that was long overdue is that ships can now warp independently of players. Yup, that’s right, you can now set up a warp maneuver, align your ship and leave the controls. No more waiting for the 5 seconds mark. This also opens up some new options for resourceful players. Want to try and tackle the turrets of that military outpost, but don’t want to risk losing your ship? Plot a course to your home station, set a decent departure time, initialize and lock the doors behind you. Win or lose the ship will head back home with or without you.
Movement
Parallel to our work on the nav map we’ve put a lot of time and effort into improving how the game handles dynamic objects and player movement. Desync issues have been the bane of many a brave explorer and have caused our colonists much grief ever since their arrival to the Hellion system. We expect these issues to become far less prominent with the next update and to eventually disappear entirely once our work on improving server/client communication is finished.
Loot Distribution
With the amount of work going into code improvements we also had to touch on the loot distribution and spawn mechanics. Some of these changes aren’t immediately apparent but provide us with a lot more options when it comes to adding new locations and items, most notably new stations and outposts for our colonists to explore. These changes will also let those who host their private servers add their own station designs into the game as premade locations.
You wanted it, you got it!
Lastly here’s just a simple quality of life feature, but it is something players have been asking for a long time. We’ve added the option to freely change docking port name tags in the same way you edit labels on crates. So no more wondering if it is this corridor or the other one that leads to the airlock.
All of these changes and the new Steropes class are arriving to an Outpost near you in mid May. And finally for all those who are anxious to see more of the new ship here’s a few more screenshots.
Fly safe!