Alpha 5 Pre-Release Build 5

[rexspaceman]

Alpha 5 Pre-Release Build 5

WARNING: THIS IS A TEST BUILD FOR THE UPCOMING ALPHA 5 RELEASE UPDATE. IT IS NOT POLISHED, IT IS BUGGY, AND PARTS ARE DISABLED OR POSSIBLY BROKEN. WE DO NOT RECOMMEND PLAYING THIS VERSION IF YOU CARE ABOUT HAVING A SMOOTH EXPERIENCE. PLEASE PLAY THIS VERSION IF YOU WANT TO TRY OUT THE LATEST FEATURES BEFORE THE UPDATE IS FINALIZED.

NOTE: For multiplayer sessions, several attempts may be necessary in order to connect. We're looking into this.

• AI should now be on by default.
  
• Fix for component swapping where components were accidentally being destroyed on swap
  
• Fix for creative mode being broken. This was an oversight in Pre-Release 4
  
• Building drones now will wait for proper arrival and arrive in order they were issued.
  
• Fixed bug with "no paint" display in building. Should now correctly update when tile changes.
  
• When removing a cargobay with items in building mode, the items will attempt to be dropped into the Assembler's associated inventory, then local vessel inventory, and if finally no other room, local space.
  
• Should no longer be able to enter building mode with objects owned by other players or under the control of AI.
  
• Added in other factions, including The Kal'Giri, The Druminence Federation, the Sixiser Pirates and the Ticeroy Navy. There is also now "lawless" faction which represents general lawlessness, and may appear as potentially any ship. ALL FACTIONS EXCEPT EXPLORER UNION ARE CURRENTLY HOSTILE. THIS IS NOT PERMENANT.
  
• Added turrets to regions. Watch out for base defenses.
  
• Added /stuck command. This should be helpful for the unfortunate, and hopefully rare, occasions that you become stuck with another vessel.
  
• Added optimizations and bug fixes for manufacturing.
  
• Added some more UI sounds
  
• Fixed an issue where you were able to alter the components of vessels you should not have been able to alter.
  
• Trash slot works on "other" inventory panel now. Works based off of mouse item.
  
• Fixed several "star system" display issues with phantom images appearing.
  
• UI inventory panels of all types should now have working filters.
  
• Added a loot system. Nearly everything with an inventory now has the chance of having stuff to steal.
  
• Significantly increased the number of asteriod belt regions that will spawn on larger asteroid belts.
  
• Better manufacturing UI. Should now give you more information on why a recipe isn't working or available.
  
• Added shift clicking for to queue a max stack of items for a selected recipe.
  
• Changes to vessel rotation. It is now directly related to mass and tile count. The number of reactors present will add an additional increase. A vessel with no engines at all (main engines or thrusters) cannot rotate.
  
• Fixes background asteroid scroll speed. Should now not move blazingly fast.
  
• Fixed a bug where empty cargo bay mounts weren't able to be removed in building mode.
  
• UI overlay of objects should now correctly update even when they are being modified during building.
  
• Add new region templates. There are now several per faction, and a bit more diverse than the standard load out. Added three shipwreck region templates as well for distress calls.
  
• Adjusted a number of object templates. Overall some stations saw cargo bay mounts reduced. Weapon angles ajdusted on many ships. Thrusters were added to most ships that were missing them.
  
• Added Station One to the game. It's a large space station with many labs.
  
• Spruced up the star system view with new elements. Distress calls should be much more visible. Regions now have a cool label.
  
• Added mouse control back for flying. This must be turned on in options. Left MB moves forward, Middle MB moves backward.
  
• Fixed more tooltip bugs.
  
• Improvements made to loading of templates in building mode.
  
• Rebalanced the tile health to be more in line with previous Alphas and in general with what we want it to be.
  
• Added some new colors to tile painting.
  
• Space dust should no longer clutter your view when zoomed in. No more "space fleas" on your ship.
  
• All beam weapons should be working again. This mainly affects weapons like the mining laser that wouldn't activate properly when fired outside of firing arc.
  
• Added "Set Home" functionality. It doesn't yet do anything though. You will still respawn in the region you last died in.
  
• Fixed some combat logic. Certain tiles were flagged incorrectly and were being dealt the wrong damage from weapons.
  
• Orbit ring coloration in star system is now changed to hopefully give some hints about where the planet/moon/spacestation currently is, and currently is not.
  
• When tiles are killed, any components present are 100% guaranteed to drop. Mounts are 100% destroyed. This is not the final implementation and will change in the future.
  
• Starter region cargo containers should have some stuff (like raw materials) in them now.
  
• Alt tabbing no longer minimizes game if in fullscreen.
  
• Added /kick command based off of player UID. Still a bit difficult to use, but should be better by final release.
  
• Fixed a wide variety of sound issues. No more clicking when going into warp, or when hitting multiple tiles with lasers. Can now play with sound again.
  
• Fixed several issues with netcode. Players should receive better disconnection messages now, and no more lingering connections on server, causing server to fill up incorrectly.
  
• Venture class ships should now have a Reinforced Tritanium Hull tile for the weapon slot. Makes it a tad more resilient, especially since the AI loves to destroy your weapons first.

ALPHA 5 FEATURE

SHIP BUILDING

We've completely overhauled the data structure for entities in the game. Gone now are the old pre-configured art and template files that determine how a vessel/station/asteroid/etc. looked and functioned. Everything is composed of individual tiles and components now. Any object can be edited and have its tiles added/removed and components changed to suit the desire of the player. Want to make a ship out of rock? Your call captain. Want to paint your Venture in neon colors and a glowing "shoot here" bullseye? I wouldn't advise it, but OK, you can do that. Want to replace those puny side thrusters with engines? You got it.

Weapons/Engines/Reactors/etc. are now broken into two types of entries: Mounts (think "wall bracket for TV") and Components ("new TV"). Mounts are the physical mounting that is placed on a tile. Depending on the mount type, it may be able to be rotated (weapons and engines). Mounts also have a size category (micro, small, medium, large, gigantic) that determine which specific components can fit. Components are the specific individual part (e.g. "Basic Laser 1" and "Mining Laser 1"). These components come with their specific details like engine thrust, weapon arc, weapon damage. You can swap components on the fly, but mounts can only be altered at a shipyard.

How to edit: There is a new component type: "Assemblers". Right now every space station-like structure should have atleast one present. These create a bubble around the tile and any object that passes within that bubble will see a "START BUILDING" button appear. You must be in control of that object to edit it. Pressing that button will change to the building UI. We aren't going to explain too much yet as we kind of want to get first impression feedback. But once you're done, press the "LAUNCH" button to return to normal play.

You can also save your changes to a file and load them again at a later time. You'll be able to share those files (with steam workshop integration coming in the future) with your friends and the community.

Currently tiles are cost free, so you can build whatever you want, however you want. Eventually you'll have to have those tiles available in nearby storage before you can place them. Same with mounts and components.

NOTE: Each entity cannot have more than 255 of any one type of mount.

NOTE 2: "/showbuilding" is the chat command to toggle building manually without an Assembler. This can produce a minor UI "START BUILDING" button glitch sometimes. This does not require cheats at the moment.

NOTE 3: Currently it is possible to launch a vessel with a physical split present. That won't be possible in the future, but it is at the moment. Killing a tile on the object will also trigger a split as well as produce some potentially unexpected behavior.

NOTE 4: Rotatable mounts include weapons and engines. Tap "R" to rotate counter-clockwise in 90 degree snaps. Weapons rotation will be available in more discrete angles soon. Also pressing the LEFT/RIGHT/UP/DOWN arrow on the keyboard will snap to that orientation.

NOTE 5: You cannot currently create a "new" entity out of nothing via the ship builder. Take control of an existing entity and edit it to what you want. A suggestion is to turn on cheats "/sv_cheats 1" and then "/spawn venture1" to create a new Venture ship nearby for editing.

BODY SLAM!

We've done some major overhauls to the underlying game structure. One of our previous limitations was the ability to physically simulate multiple discretely different sections of space. Well we've solved that problem. It does mean the game is a bit more complex under the hood but that shouldn't present any additional problems to players, whether you're playing single player or multiplayer (as host or client). The game server is now the authoriative host for all collisions and players should not be able to get stuck by ramming each other (it is possible if one player is in building mode) as well as players should be able to both physically push other objects (like two players pushing in opposite directions on an asteroid). You will see a new exe "SIRegionServer.exe" present in the game folder, and it will need to be given windows firewall access if it pops up the first time you launch the game. This may increase the amount of physical memory necessary to run the game, but not much, and the game still requires a 64 bit version of windows. This build is not yet ready for linux or mac OSX even if STEAM lets you download it.

STAR SYSTEM VIEW

No more warp gates (those will be back in the future with a different purpose) and hard linked regions. Now you're able to fly as you want around the star system and when you get close enough to an area you'll exit warp and gain direct control of your ship. You are now able to move to different star systems just by flying to the edge of the current star system. We've changed how star systems are generated and you should see differences in stars, planets, moons, asteroids and space station types. They're grouped fairly logically too. Dynamic regions representing ships; either trade convoys, military fleets, pirate attackers or distress calls will come and go and move around the star system. You currently can't interact with them yet, but eventually you'll be able to intercept them (or they intercept you) and the potential for interaction (either trade or combat or other) will ensue.

FULL OF STARS

The universe is now ((2 ^ 16) ^ 2) (approx. 4.2 Billion) in possible star system count. You will run out of hard drive space before you're able to visit every star system. A star system can now (in theory) have up to 2 ^ 16 number of regions as well (though things will start to fall apart performance wise after several hundred). So the game has really grown in size. We've also overhauled how game data is populated, giving us far more flexibility for generating scenarios and layouts that we hope will be fun to engage in. It does mean overall each playable area will be smaller than before, but we expect each area should be more consistently fun too. Current build has a small test set of templates which will definitely expand by Alpha 5 release.

UI IMPROVEMENTS

We've done significant changes to the UI. Things should be a lot smoother and sharper but retain our classic style. The paperdoll panels are completely removed now, and have been replaced with icons that appear on the object itself in physical space. Much sleeker. Inventory appears in vertical panels anchored on the left or right, and can be collapsed for easier viewing if needed. The map panel is currently disabled altogether and we're still determining if or how much of it should return and if it does return, how it would look. Menus should be the same, keybinds should still work as before. "I" and "U" and left clicking on vessels/entities are still the main way to interact. Mouse actions should be the same for splitting stacks, moving items, slotting components etc.

MANUFACTURING

Manufacturing has been completely overhauled. Gone are the days of spamming LClick to make items instantly. Labs have been repurposed as they now are the heart of the manufacturing process. Here's how it now works: Each recipe has a set of required materials (e.g. silica and tritanium ore). Each recipe has a manufacturing time (e.g. 1s). Each lab has its own queue process that it will work through in order they were entered, and attempt to pull materials from local storage, and at the end of the time duration, deposit the outputted manufactured item(s) into local storage. An entity can have multiple labs. So there is now the additional benefit to thinking of logistics with manufacturing. You could even put a lab on your Venture, though it probably won't fly very well. Labs will stop processing if the altered in the ship builder, in no materials are available for the recipe, or if no storage space is available for output.

We'll explain more on what different labs do in the future, but some of the basics include number of queue slots, as well as different recipes. Different factions in the game will also offer unique recipe types so there will be a potential need to build up faction standing if so desired to gain access.

HOW TO LOAD BUILD

In Steam, go to > Library > Games. Select "Space Impossible". Right click on "Space Impossible" and select "PROPERTIES". Select "BETA" tab. In the pull down window, select "publictest".

Then please "OK" and close. It should start downloading immediately. If not, open properties back up and select "LOCAL FILES" and press "Verify Integrity of Game Cache".

HOW TO UNLOAD BUILD

To unload this test version, do the steps in reverse. Under the BETA options, switch to "NONE".

CONCLUSION:

We rushed this build a little bit, but we wanted to get something out before the start of 2017. The last few months have been hard, but we wanted to give something for the holidays. We know we have some really dedicated fans who would love this type of thing, but also know it's not quite ready for everyone. So if you aren't interested in trying out this build we fully understand and also please understand from us this isn't up to our usual degree of polish. We'll be taking a approximately a week off for Christmas, so someone will try to check the forums atleast every day, but don't expect any bug fixes, new builds or the like until after the new years. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays and New Years. See you in 2017.

[rexspaceman]

We've also added subforum for discussing Alpha 5. Please use that for leaving feedback.

[FloofyJesse]

Finally!

[wiseman15]

Pretty fancy! I love the new paperdoll. I also ran into another Venture-like ship while star cruising and felt immediate affection for it... but it couldn't communicate in any way. Pity.

[Stuffie]

Originalmente postado por wiseman15:

Pretty fancy! I love the new paperdoll. I also ran into another Venture-like ship while star cruising and felt immediate affection for it... but it couldn't communicate in any way. Pity.

Glad you like it so far Although not in this test branch interaction with the ships in the star system view will becoming with the full alpha 5 release. You will be able to to engage them in battle or join them to trade and in later updates we hope to add to it, tying interaction closely with the faction system.