The time has finally come for all the big developments of the last few months to hit the main default branch of the game. This represents 49 builds made, if you want to see more details check out the github page!
Here is in a nutshell what is new:
Neovox Update:
This build is one of the biggest the game has seen!
Starship Evo started its life as a voxel building game but has morphed over time to a hybrid tech with voxels and the re-scalable bricks that you all love and that gives some much freedom.
Now we finally unplugged the voxel tech and embraced the true nature of the game building system!
It means:
- You can change the grid-scale of a brick, from a mini 0.125 to a giga-size 32m! If you fully strech a 32m-grid brick it will become 512m is size...
- Massive reduction in memory, as now the only factor is brick count. Bricks are quite light too: this massive ship made by Dolan weight only 20mg in VRAM:
- This two features combine means that it is now possible to create massive ships!
- The codebase has been simplified, which means faster dev in the future and less bugs
New Tutorials based on new mission framework:
The work on missions has finally started! The first missions integrated to the game are a brand new tutorial to better introduce new players to the game.
- Learn to use their Jetpack
- Learn the basic of build at the Training Center
- Fix a small repair ship by adding the various system needed to flight
- Fly around the station to repair three modules in order to learn to fly
The framework is still work in progress. The end goal is to allows player to create missions with LUA scripting!
New Stations and Kiosks:
We now have some brand new stations modules thanks to 5URG3! They are really looking amazing and they come with full interior. The level of polish and details is amazing, it no longer feel like a building game!
Another important addition is the spawning of kiosks within the station Hub interior. While some kiosks are purely decorative some other are ensuring key component of the gameplay like the refuel station, the repair station or the mission board.
We also have a slew of new Pirates and Tanker roaming the world. Soon there will be some interaction with them as more missions are added!
Many builders helped me creating those amazing stations and ships, a massive thanks to them!
Fuel Technology:
Fuel will be a major component of the gameplay loop: you will have to harvest, craft and manage fuel through your ship.
For now we have been focusing on the fuel transfer technology: reactor require fuel, and fuel flow from tank to reactor through pipes.
It all happen seamlessly over time - you can check it by building transparent pipe and tank! You can also use valve to stop fuel. More features will be added soon.
New physics technology
Some great progress has been made of the physics side: now the game uses a 100% custom physics engine that uses heavily the new Unity Data Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS) and multithreading.
It means it is super fast and provide massive improvement over the past implementation: now collisions or mechanism no longer slow down the game.
There is plenty of more stuff added, check out the single dev note for more detail!
Happy building!