Jumpdrive
Jumpdrive!
Update on the current situation.
My name is Adel El Hassani and I'm a programmer recently employed to work on Paragon. Some of you have been voicing concerns on the status of Paragon as we were perhaps a bit too silent regarding the development.
There are a few interrogations that caught my eyes, so I'll answer those:
Regarding SirDimples:
SirDimples is currently extremely busy with life as he is moving to a completely different country. He will be back pretty soon.
Why is the official forum gone?
We aren't a big team with people dedicated to public relations so it was decided to close the official forums as the steam forums and the subreddit is already quite a bit on our hands.
Finally, updates regarding the development will be more frequent from on.
Don't hesitate to ask me any question about paragon, I'll be here to answer them.
Alpha 10.6 Live
Paragon now supports OSX 10.7+ on Steam.
Summary of Changes:
UI:
- Positional and boundaries changes
- Hyperspace UI changes
- Changed default display mode to 1280x720
Game:
- OSX support is back!
- Loading time and memory usage is greatly decreased
- Changed Hyperspace clouds gameplay features
- Added new permanent hyperspace clouds that allow cheaper hyper jumps
- External and sidereal cameras use new angles as default
Graphics:
- Post processing system supports multiple layers of effects
- New separate effects for GUI
- Fixed issue passing model material shininess correctly
Art:
- New ships
- New sound effects and music
- HUD changes
- Polish for ships, starports and cities
Input:
- New control binding for deselecting nav and combat targets (default: Y)
Fixes:
- Fixed crash caused by MapInternal returning NULL in rare cases
- Several small fixes
Alpha 10.5 Live
To avoid any possible configuration problems please delete your config.ini file in Documents/Paragon (or ~/.paragon on Linux) and start Paragon at least once so it generates a new one with the latest changes.
About old saves:
This update includes a major gameplay feature change (the new fuel system) and because of that does not support save games from older versions.
Summary of Changes:
Input:
- Joystick support fully upgraded for multiple axes, invert and deadzones
UI:
- New message log
- Multiple HUD improvements and adjustments
Game:
- Hydrogen is now the only and main fuel in the game
- New equipment: hydrogen tanks for storing hydrogen (no cargo space loss)
- Added hydrogen tanks to all ships
- Starting ship changes
- Lots of minor additions and changes
Art:
- New cockpits
- New music
- New sound effects and sound improvements
As usual please notify us of any issues you may encounter in the discussions.
Happy Gaming!
Alpha 10 Live
IMPORTANT:
To avoid any possible configuration problems please delete your config.ini file in Documents/Paragon (or ~/.paragon on Linux) and start Paragon at least once so it generates a new one with the latest changes.
About old saves:
Due to the way LUA information is saved we cannot guarantee that older saves will work with new updates. The way LUA data is stored even a single variable change or sometimes an asset update could actually break older saves. This is a big issue that we are planning to address as soon as possible.
Summary of Changes:
UI:
- Lots of improvements and changes to the UI
Art:
- New models including stations and cockpits
- New ships and improvements to cockpits
- Space stations polish
- Icons overhaul
Game:
- New gameplay feature: Freight Teleporter
- Freight Teleporter allows you to teleport floating cargo and cargo from enemy's freight-bay into your ship's freight-bay
- New equipments to access Freight Teleporter feature
Graphics:
- New chromatic aberration post-processing effect
- New filmgrain and scanlines post-procesing effects
As usual please notify us of any issues you may encounter in the discussions.
Happy Gaming!
Alpha 9.2 Live
IMPORTANT:
To avoid any possible configuration problems please delete your config.ini file in Documents/Paragon (or ~/.paragon on Linux) and start Paragon at least once so it generates a new one with the latest changes.
About old saves:
Due to the way LUA information is saved we cannot guarantee that older saves will work with new updates. The way LUA data is stored even a single variable change or sometimes an asset update could actually break older saves. This is a big issue that we are planning to address as soon as possible.
Summary of changes:
Game:
- Optimization pass for loading times and game
UI:
- Default look around controls changed to SHIFT + WSAD
- Minor adjustments to UI
- Holding "S" (decelerate key) while in transit speed 2 will drop speed to 1
- Transit drop speed respects Joystick axes motion
Fixes:
<*> Fixed crash caused by some projectile types
<*> Fixed crash caused by planetrings effect
<*> Fixed issue causing shield to not be visible
<*> Fixed inconsistencies in irradiance lighting between different types of models
Alpha 9.1 Live
Summary of Changes:
Art:
- New ship models
- Polish for multiple ship models and cockpits
UI:
- New HUD indicator for current mission that shows destination space station
- Added new default controls for external camera rotation to match cockpit camera
- Multiple adjustments to UI
Fixes:
- Fixed issue with mipmap generation that lead to corrupted textures in UI
Alpha 9 Live
Art:
- Completely revamped cities (15+ new buildings)
- New City Starport
- New Small Starport
Core:
- Renderer code went through a full upgrade to OpenGL 3.1/3.2 core profile (3.2 prefered)
- All shaders ported to GLSL 1.4/1.5 and uniform blocks for big data structs like Lighting
- All Paragon rendering upgraded to the new renderer
- Tested for visual and stability bugs on intel, NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards
- New renderer ported to linux successfully. OSX WIP
Graphics:
- New shader-based antialiasing (FXAA)
- New tone mapping effect that includes: gamma, exposure, color balance and vignette
- New approximate irradiance diffuse/gloss lighting effect on all game models
Game:
- New camera freelook feature by default SHIFT + cursor keys
- New current mission feature allowing player to set a specific mission as current
- Extended mission system to include a variety of new states
- New ability to cancel active missions
UI:
- Mission info menu now includes Cancel mission button
- Missions list shows and allows setting of current mission
- Sector view shows destination of current mission
- Modified control system to allow more flexibility
- Added loading screen between main menu and game start
Fixes:
- Fixed issue with specular shininess being set incorrectly
- Lots of other small adjustments and fixes
Alpha 8.02 Live
Summary of Changes:
Art:
- Polishing for models and textures
Stability:
- Fixed player AI glitch when entering Sol
- Fixed thruster trails rendering code causing crashes sometimes when in hyperspace
- Fixes for invalid ships for tradeships and fulcrums
- Fixed issue causing a black ship silhouette to appear in main menu sometimes
- Fixed issues causing floating point exceptions
- Removed unused hudtrail object
- Several minor fixes
UI
- Implemented ability to buy and sell items in bulk
- Changed galactic, economic, and system view background to be more consistent
Alpha 8 Final
On the art front there have been upgrades to existing assets as well as several new ships and cockpits added to the game
For the upcoming Alpha 9 we're planning to focus on graphical and gameplay enhancements including improvements to the HUD, new shield and fuel mechanics, a greater degree of settlement variety and further development of factions.
Summary of Alpha 8 Changes:
Art:
- New ships, including the medium class Unitech Long Range Explorer
- New cockpits
- New megastation hangar and re-modeled exterior
- New transit drive sound effects
- Changes to megastation textures and a few more minor modifications to assets.
Game:
- New Transit visual effects (active when post-processing is enabled)
- Better ship thruster visual effects
- Lighting changes
- New effects system with OpenGL 3.1 support
- Ships and stations moved over to pattern based paint markings system
- Crashes produce crash dumps for debugging purposes that we can use to reproduce the crash in the debugger. described here
AI:
- New AI now handles all docking actions
- Lots of AI improvements and moving NPC ships to new AI
- Disabled piracy status on ship-ship collisions
UI:
- Better crosshair and lock reticle
- Autopilot/Comms UI changes
Fixes:
- Fixed an issue causing crash when exiting hyperspace
- Fixed issue causing messages to repeat in message log
- Fixed instability issues caused by dlls with mixed visual studio versions
- Fixed crash caused by perlin noise functions overflowing
- Fixed crash caused by NPCs trying to fly around invalid bodies
- Fixed issue that sometimes caused background in intro not to get rendered
- Fixed issue with switching post processing on/off
- Fixed issue with post processing causing a random crash on some machines
- Correct version of Visual Studio 2013 runtime is now deployed with Paragon.
- Fixed LUA crash that happens when switching to equipments tab if the language is non-english. Any string constants that are not defined by that specific locale will use english constants as fallback.
- More external shared dependencies for linux have been included in the release following reports that libpng12 was missing.