Rather than waiting 10 years again from the previous edition of our sporadic naev newsletter, we’ve only let 2 years pass this time. In this edition, we’ll talk about some improvements in 0.10.0 that may have gone under the radar, and the upcoming 0.11.0 release.
State of 0.11.0
With a ton of commits and content since 0.10.0, things are starting to shape up for 0.11.0. This release has focused greatly on reworking and improving existing systems by bringing up to modern standards. In particular, things such as how weapons are implemented, how ship stats are dealt with, autonav internals, npc/news/derelict internals, reworking old missions into the visual novel system, etc. have been mainly rewritten to improve shortcomings. While this is not really visible in the end product directly, it has enabled a lots of new features and improved the overall robustness of the game.
However, this release is much more than just elimination of technical debt, as this release features a lot of new content in pretty much every area of the game: more events, more missions, more lore, more outfits, and more locations. The icing on the cake are new mechanics such as point defense systems, flow mechanics, and trials. Overall this is shaping up to be quite a large release and we are excited to share it with you.
Universe Revisited
As mentioned before on the blarg, the universe has been completely rework for 0.11.0. The universe should have a much more natural feel that matches the lore, with the Sol Nebula being more omnipresent as you travel around. This has required significant changes to many systems and system objects, so that many places you knew will probably seem familiar but quite different at the same time. It may take a while to get used to. In numbers, some 67 new systems and 123 new space objects have been added, mainly around the Sol Nebula to give a more in-depth sensation of destruction and the fragility of humankind. Besides the typical planets and stations, these systems also contain many secrets that you can uncover.
House Sirius Rework
For 0.10.0, the Soromid got a major rework by getting true bioships that can level up and learn different skills, now it’s only fair for the neglected House Sirius to also get the same treatment. Instead of extreme biological engineering, House Sirius relies on psychic abilities called flow. While individuals don’t possess very strong powers by themselves, House Sirius has designed their ships to be powerful amplifiers to be able to unleash potent abilities on the battle field. The player will also be able to obtain similar psychic powers and unlock the full potential through new tests that can be found throughout space. Each test will require the player to overcome obstacles in order to unlock new abilities and also increase their overall psychic powers. While Sirius ships have flow capability built-in, other ships can also use structural outfits to enable flow capability, allowing for more customization. That said, Sirius ships get unique bonuses from flow powers which are not available to other ships.
Plugin System
Although the plugin system was introduced in 0.10.0, it has gone largely unnoticed. Currently, it is possible to replace and modify all parts of the Naev that are implemented in Lua, which includes important parts such as autonav, many outfits, ship explosions, and more! Not only that, Naev has option networking built in with enet, allowing for networking functionality. On this line, there is a very much WIP multiplayer plugin, that allows for playing with other people. To make development somewhat easier, a development manual is being worked on, which covers things like how to write content for Naev and how to structure plugins. Given the advanced programming possibilities with the Naev Lua API, the only limit is your imagination! Oh, there is explicit support for total conversions too!
New Content
There’s also a bunch of new content being worked on. Not only have the NPCs and news you can find at the spaceport bar been greatly reworked to me more relevant to the context at hand, but many new missions, factions, and mechanisms have been implemented. The new universe has also given opportunities to diversify the different factions and make them feel more unique, from taunts to landing messages.
First of all, with optimizations done to the engine, it’s finally possible to have efficient point defense systems, something that has been asked for by players for a long time. Point defense systems will automatically target nearby missiles, torpedoes, and even interceptors! Of course the exact specs will depend on the outfit, Guardian Systems use powerful lasers to focus on torpedoes or interceptors, while Soromid Spittle Clusters have been bio-engineered to create screens of bubbles to block weaker, but faster missiles. A new neutral faction has been created to replace the old Trader’s Guild. The new Space Traders Society is an organization that spans different guilds and has important subfactions such as the mercenary guild Astra Vigilis, the Mining Vrata, and the Imperial Red Star. They have important presence in several systems where new outfits are also available for trade. Finally, more events missions have been added throughout the universe, and although not finished yet, we expect the conclusion to the Minerva campaign to make it into 0.11.0.
Game Optimization
One issue Naev has traditionally had with the large systems it features, is slow downs when many pilots were fighting each other as a result of a primitive collision system. Well, it is no longer an issue as the current system has been reworked with quadtrees. Testing shows that it is much much faster in extreme cases, with the game easily handling hundreds of ships fighting each other without slowing down. Furthermore, many aspects of the game have been profiled and optimized such that the game should run much more fluid than 0.10.0. Tests show that where Naev 0.10.0 would choke and become a slide show, Naev 0.11.0 will be able to run without a hitch, such as 50 Dvaered Vendettas fighting with 50 FLF Lancelots. That said, given the high levels of time compressions capital ships can reach, it is likely in some extreme cases you may experience some slow downs.
Concluding Remarks
This concludes the Sporadic Naev Newsletter Vol. 3, and see you again in the next one!
New Autonav
Pirates have always been an issue for the law-abiding player. They are everywhere and relentless. However, with the addition of patrol lanes in 0.9.0, the universe has become a safer place, at least where the patrol lanes exist. Although that made things much easier for the player, a gaping flaw was that the autonav system did not understand how to use these lanes. For 0.11.0, we implemented the long awaited feature that autonav will now use patrol lanes if configured to!.
So how does this work? By default, autonav will use patrol lanes of non-hostile factions when jumping, and will not use them otherwise. You can configure it to not use lanes for jump, and also to use lanes for landing on planets or stations from the new settings option accessible in the info menu. The settings button replaces and incorporates the “Set GUI” functionality.
To get this working the entire autonav system was scrapped and rewritten, this also has the added effect of being much more accurate and efficient when travelling around. Overall it’s a win-win situation! Hopefully this will ease the early game and save many pilots from meeting their fate at the hands of the hordes of marauders lurking in the darkness.
As always, you can opt-in to the nightly beta branch on steam, or download the nightly from itch.io or github to get the latest and greatest of Naev development. Due note that this can be unstable, and make sure to back up your 0.10 saves first!
Ships Go Boom
This post is about development on Naev 0.11.0.
At the 2nd anniversary of posting about implementing raymarched fancy explosions, it’s time to talk about trying to use the system to its full potential. And by full potential, I mean custom ship explosions!
All of the factional ships have been given custom explosions, some slightly different from the “standard” explosions, while others have much more radical changes, including different explosion types, secondary effects, and radically different colours. Time to explode and damage have also been changed, while some explosions now do different damage types and/or apply disabling effects. This should help have the different factions and ships feel more different.
From the technical side of things, custom ship explosions are done by using Lua scripting for ships, similar as what was done for outfits. This opens up a whole new possibility of what can be done with ships, I won’t cover other things being done with this yet, but it has to do with the Great House Sirius rework which brings about psychic powers. All these changes will be included in version 0.11.0 which should be released around December this year. Lots of exciting development to look for for the rest of 2023!
Naev 0.10.6 Released!
The Naev DevTeam is proud to announce the release of Naev version 0.10.6. This releases fixes some minor memory leaks and some data inconsistencies. It is recommended to update to as soon as possible. We hope this is the last 0.10 release before 0.11.0.
Although it has been tested, there are almost certainly still bugs around, please report any issues on this tracker, and feel free to join one of our chatrooms or discussion boards (here).
You can get the latest version from any of the following sources:
Changes since 0.10.5
Fixed potential segfault with invalid semver strings
Fixed sign error when buying artifacts in the Baron Prince mission (sorry)
Fixed behaviour of naev.trigger with parameters
Fixed Lua spfx volume changing with game speed
Fixed memory leak in luaspfx trails
Fixed missions doing things in systems they should not
Fixed Adrenal Gland III’s time speed up effect
Fixed Misi giving upgrades for free
Fixed minor planet check in frontier war missions
Fixed silent installs on windows
Fixed typos
Naev 0.10.5 Released!
The Naev DevTeam is proud to announce the release of Naev version 0.10.5. This release fixes an important crash among other minor fixes. It is highly recommended to update to as soon as possible.
Although it has been tested, there are almost certainly still bugs around, please report any issues on this tracker, and feel free to join one of our chatrooms or discussion boards (here).
You can get the latest version from any of the following sources:
Changes since 0.10.4
Start counting effect stacks from 1 not 2
Fixed launcher weapons using outfit mass instead of ammo mass
Fixed some typos
Fixed equipment of Lancelot in “Sharkman Is Back” mission
Fixed clicking on jump points also selecting planets in some cases
Fixed some events not claiming systems that could interfere with other missions
Fixed some formatting in the alt text when hovering over outfits in the equipment window
Changed music.stop() API to stop music from continuing by default
Fixed potential memory issues on some platforms
Fixed crash when changing to Japanese language on Windows using Japanese locale
nelly02: Nelly now stops recommending stuff that only does a little disable
shadowvigil: Fixed mission not spawning escorts
flf_patrol: Missions should no longer be able to have ridiculously low credit rewards
hypergate_construction: should actually claim the system
ec06: refuel tanker should provide as much fuel as possible
taiomi: fixed claim check for last mission
taiomi09: fixed smugglers becoming hostile in some cases
Universe Revisited
This post is about development on Naev 0.11.0.
Since 0.10.0 was released, those of you on nightly builds have probably noticed that not much has been going on. Truth is, development has been going on in a parallel newmap branch that just got merged into main, and will appear in the next nightly. Why the parallel development? Although Naev has seen many changes during it’s development, the fundamental layout of the universe has remained largely unchanged. However, this was sort of unmaintainable due to inconsistencies with the lore of the Naev universe, and, after the release of 0.10.0, we thought it was a good idea to revisit and rethink about how the universe itself is laid out to make it more consistent.
Wunomi's World is a new world with a geostationary ring located in the reworked area near the Nebula.
What does this mean? Although an effort has been taken to try to keep most of the underlying topology, that is, what systems are connected to what systems, there were limits to what we could conserve and the result is that lots of things have been changed. This is particularly pronounced near around the Nebula with many new systems and interesting space objects being added. There are also many new secrets you can find that can be quite useful to your player character, we leave it up to you to find them.
You can try the development version if you are brave (please back up your saves first!) by getting the images available from both github and steam via the opt-in beta.
If you try it and find any issues, please report any issues on this tracker, and feel free to join one of our chatrooms or discussion boards (here).
Some other new changes brought with the merge:
4 new missions
Space dust is properly antialiased
Planet properties affect quantity of missions available
Changed the visuals for some of the nebulas
Show enemy/ally factions in the faction standing info window
Can sometimes find POI events with a pulse scanner equipped when entering systems
Minor speed ups to patrol lane computations
Naev 0.10.4 Released!
The Naev DevTeam is proud to announce the release of Naev version 0.10.4. This release fixes an important crash among other minor fixes. It is highly recommended to update to as soon as possible.
Although it has been tested, there are almost certainly still bugs around, please report any issues on this tracker, and feel free to join one of our chatrooms or discussion boards (here).
You can get the latest version from any of the following sources:
Changes since 0.10.3
Fixed crashes related to multiple effects being active at once
Fixed multiple mission_done hooks not passing parameter correctly
Fixed plugin strings not being initialized with mismatched saves
ec06: made the final battle work much better
Naev 0.10.3 Released!
The Naev DevTeam is proud to announce the release of Naev version 0.10.3. This release fixes several important crashes among other minor fixes. It is highly recommended to update to as soon as possible.
Although it has been tested, there are almost certainly still bugs around, please report any issues on this tracker, and feel free to join one of our chatrooms or discussion boards (here).
You can get the latest version from any of the following sources:
Changes since 0.10.2
Fixed crash when using fits currently selected ship outfit filter
Fixed escorts always being set to aggressive when loading a save
Fixed Dvaered standing cap increase being lost after loading game
Made space dust a bit less bright when it starts turning into lines
derelict_rescue: play money sound instead of victory sound on completion
rehab: fixed crash when aborting rehabilitation missions
foundation station, efferey: fixed not using pirate landing script
Naev 0.10.2 Released!
Happy New Year! The Naev DevTeam is proud to announce the release of Naev version 0.10.2. This release fixes several important crashes among other minor fixes. It is highly recommended to update to as soon as possible.
Although it has been tested, there are almost certainly still bugs around, please report any issues on this tracker, and feel free to join one of our chatrooms or discussion boards (here).
You can get the latest version from any of the following sources:
Changes since 0.10.1
Fixed escorts sometimes not following their leader and landing
Fixed autonav always wanting to go to the edge of jump points
Fixed crash when causing multiple dialogues to run in the background
Fixed outfit lua being called before initialization
Fixed not giving the AI a name when updating a save breaking the updater script
Fixed deleting last snapshot of a save switching to another pilot’s saves
Fixed saves and snapshots not displaying correct name with version mismatch
Fixed crash when deleting Lua-side fonts, should fix crash with POI
Fixed swapping ships with mission cargo sharing name with other cargo can lead to wrong cargo getting duplicated
Fixed original music at Research Post Sigma-13
Fixed music stopping after playing once in new games
Change music API to make it explicit you can temporarily disable the music engine
Set windows compatibility mode to Windows 7 when cross-compiling
legacy gui: fixed line artefacts near fuel / energy bars
pulse_scanner: fix potential error on init
patrol: don’t have an invisible time limit to reach the system anymore
taiomi: fixed some claims
zbh03: landing when hostiles spawned will fail the mission
bounties: mention there is a time limit to reach the system, not made explicit though
zpp01, zbh01: bumped chance to 30%
poi_intro: can’t board nelly again
Naev 0.10.1 Released!
The Naev DevTeam is proud to announce the release of Naev version 0.10.1. This release addresses minor issues and bugs from the 0.10.0 release and does not add any new content. It is highly recommended to update from 0.10.0 as soon as possible
Although it has been tested, there are almost certainly still bugs around, please report any issues on this tracker, and feel free to join one of our chatrooms or discussion boards (here).
You can get the latest version from any of the following sources:
Changes since 0.10.0
Fixed many stations not marked as stations
FLF combatants only appear on FLF spobs
Fixed cases where the player could be forced to take off when not spaceworthy
Show engine volume option same as other volume options
Use nearest neighbour interpolation for small resolution vn images
Fix engine sound being played at high time compression values
Try to fix issue where music stops playing
Statically link libenet on steam versions
diy-nerds: fixed reward and description not matching
