Sirius Online version 1.2 is now available! First off, I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Cayne, I'm Irish and I'm new to the Sirius team. I'll be helping with the community and answering questions and opinions you guys might have!
Today is finally the release of version 1.2, a lot of new and exciting things have been added in this update and will hopefully have improved the game immensely. Dex has been working non-stop on trying to make Sirius Online feel fresh and immersive. The community support and input on trello has been an immense help!
Version 1.2 of Sirius Online is now out! Here is a list of everything new and improved in the game, More details on certain additions below:
Changelog
-The universe has been expanded by 25-fold
-The Crimson Dawn has started to appear
-Mission System
-New Faction and Bounty System
-Texture revamping, eg. asteroids and HSD
-General optimization and performance overhaul
-New mining system
-T.O.A.St has been updated
-UI rework
-Guided character creation and voice over
-Scrap fields have been added to the universe
-Item descriptions
-More trading ships have been added
-New chunk based loading system
-Updated respawn mechanics
-New Music by Brishan Palmer
-Launcher has been added to help with resolution and performance problems
How they work
Missions are a new mechanic in Sirius. You will find missions at space stations around the universe. When you get near to a mission beacon, you will get a prompt on your screen with information on your objective. You will be given the opportunity to accept or decline the mission. Declining the mission will make another available. If you accept you will be given a prompt on where your objective is. New missions will be available at each station.
War. A simple word. Three letters, infinite pain. Ever since the Terrans tried to reclaim us as their "Colony", we've been at war. But something is changing.
Something odd.
After the ACT-Incident we thought they were gone. A sad loss for the Colony Council. A company developing AGI to improve upon our technology. To improve working conditions. To make out lives worth living.
One day, their station exploded. We do not know the cause, we don't even know if there were survivors. All we know is that, from this point on, more and more strange ships appeared from nowhere, killed everything and left.
Only one Message was left.
Prepare for the Crimson Dawn
Sirius Online 1.2 is a culmination of over 6 months of work. I spent countless days and weeks looking at valid criticism and improving the game over that. With "Rise of the Crimson Dawn" I present to you the result of this and hope you will have fun creating a character, playing whatever you like and fending off the Crimson Dawn. Over the course of the next months, Sirius will be expanded on these new Features. More missions, more discoveries, more space. Additionally, with RotCD we decided to go a new path instead of troddling down old ones. Soon you will be able to host your own private servers, play with your friends and enjoy the open world. This is a step that many people mentioned but we didn't feel comfortable about it until we absolutely knew it was possible.
I do hope you are going to enjoy Sirius Online 1.2 as much as I did developing it. Hope to shoot you in space,
Sirius Online 1.2 and its release
Hello everyone!
I'm back from CeBIT 2017, and I've spoken to quite a bunch of people to look where the game is going and make things work. In careful consideration of how far the Patch has come, I decided that I'm not satisfied with the current state of the patch and game.
I will, seeing this, take extra time to work and refine the version 1.2 Update. However, to give you the opportunity to give input to the games progress, there now is a publicly commentable Trello:
I will try to answer as many questions as possible and engage with you to see if you have better Ideas for certain parts of the patch. User Mortakapo from the Community Discord already did major wonders, helping with an all new description system.
Please do understand that I clearly want this build done well and tested beforehand releasing to you, instead of the rushed releases from before.
A new Tutorial and Guided Character Creation is on its way, voiced by RedAngelx3, a video of the new Character Guidance is on YouTube:
While sound still needs proper leveling, and a lot of new sounds are on its way, the character creation is pretty much final.
Another new part I'm working at is ship insurance and a proper killscreen. When you die, you can now choose to respawn in your former ship for 1/3 of its original cost or fold and start in the Jaguar again. This should help combat the loss of motivation when you die in an expensive ship.
Again, you have to thank Mortakapo for the Idea of Adding smaller Variants of the Trading Ships to the game, bumping up the Ship numbers to 10 Traders! He has gained MVP Status on Discord and Ingame after the Patch. Also you might see a scanner carrying his Name running errands.
A new chunk based loading system has been added to the game to keep the engine load light and your game performant. If you had heavy performance issues in the past, hit me up and I'll add you to a special QA version folder to check if it works better!
As a final Note, the Bullpup-Class ship had to be removed from the game. A radon mesh complexion caused it to overuse memory and leak it like mad. Same goes for the engine trails which are replaced soon by static meshes and moving textures to ensure performance. Sure, they might not look as good as those trails, but I can attach those to NPCs as well.
Now here I am, bringing you those News. If you feel you want to do more for the game, join the Trello and help developing or, if you feel really generous, support the Game's development monthly by donating to the monthly patreon:
Every little dollar helps getting more ships, more capacity and more freedom to work on this.
I keep looking forward to 1.2 being completed and enjoy this version myself already way more than the original release. I do hope to see more of you Ingame, on Trello, the Patreon and the community Discord, which you can join here.
2017: We're back and are returning to the Roots!
Hello fellow Space Dwellers!
2016 was a bumpy ride for everyone, not only us. But as you're not here to get information about what happened to others in the past year, but to us, let's begin what happened and what is to come!
As the first major note, Sirius Online is now only Released and Published by Digital Dawn Studios only. We decided for this step for private reasons. All our decisions now go on us, like reverting black market keys, and reissuing new ones to legit buyers.
This is a crucial step towards clearing up some of the mistakes we made and mistakes we let happen because we were so swamped with work.
Speaking of "we"...
Digital Dawn Studios expands. In December we added a very talented Composer and a likewise talented Sound Architect to our team to replace the stock sounds and music for a more professional space feel.
We will stock up the team over the year with additional designers, community managers and more useful people. That does not mean that we're turning into stuper-stick-up-our-arses suit-and-tie-wearing people with no wordly connection to the base. I will still engage with you in every aspect I can, and will mostly write the news.
But this does mean that the Articles written here, explanations and more get written in better manner. And while we're at it, lets introduce something new:
Some of you might already have noticed that we patched the game on Christmas Eve, where you can open up chests for some gold. This is part of a new Event system which is soon handled by the server. Certain dates can trigger certain events, Eggs on Easter, new Firework-Weapons on NYE and Gifts for x-Mas to name a few.
Aside from Ingame Events, we are about to discuss a schedule for out-of-game-events with the community, because your input matters. So far, we lined out the following events:
A weekly Game Stream Day where The Devs and Staff may play with you or answer questions, basically a community day.
Bi-Weekly FAQ Day. Join the Stream, get to know the Team, ask to your hearts content, even off-topic
Monthly Wrap up stream where we show what we did this month in content, sound or technical things.
An annual PVP Tournament with prizes from possible sponsors
This list can be expanded in any way by your inpout or your Ideas. One Special Event is going to come soon:
The Sirius Online Reunion Project (SORP). We are currently getting everyone together who ever worked with, for and at Sirius, have collected a few ancient clients and updates.
We talk about what has become of the old crew, what they remember well, what worked, our issues, our success moments, everything that happened until we all broke up. and went our own ways.
I for myself am really excited about this.
This question pops up rather often in my personal inbox, since Sirius now has a price on itch.io and on Humble Store, and will soon return Full Priced to Steam, when we sorted out the games transition between Back To Basics Gaming and Digital Dawn Studios.
F2P Sirius will be a thing Basically, the new F2P Client that is coming will be the full game with a lot of limitations, like a hardlimit on money, levels and some functions excluded, like skinning, owning Stations and more.
This might not be satisfactionary for some of you, but as it stands, we all want to get paid for work we do. Especially the new guys deserve some kind of payment for their hard work!
Even though we planned to bring skins as substitute for paying for the game itself, maintaining a skin shop for three, soon four store platforms and staying DRM-Free would be a massive overload of work, distracting us from adding content to the game.
There will be new Skins for each faction, unlocked by killing the opposing Faction, PvP, PvE, and special Events. You can also unlock special Skins in the upcoming new content.
While we're at the topic of content, let me introduce you to the next major patch, releasing in february or march this year:
Rise of the Crimson Dawn is the first Story Pack you will get as a free patch. A patrons Faction (ACT, known as the nearest station to the new player) goes rogue and missing... until they return as a new faction to wreak havoc around the cluster:
The Crimson Dawn uses advanced AGI to jump Fleets of ships into certain locations, including new capital weapon platforms. All players live on the server get informed about such an event, and get a new Mission market set. Invasions are a major feature of this patch and I will make sure they're going to be worthwhile.
Completing such an invasion will unlock a random crimson dawn skin for you, to freely use. These will be detailed in a later Blog Post.
This Faction Story line is also just possible because a Patron has decided to back the Project with at least 20$ per month here: Patreon for The Game
Other things added to the game will be:
Patch Notes 1.1b - Rise of the Crimson Dawn
Hello everyone!
Sirius Online 1.1b has been released and contains the following:
The New
- Space got a few new Companions with the new NPC freighters.
- Freighters are Attackable, but they mark you as criminal and call for reinforcements.
- They also drop epic loot
- Speaking of Loot, an all new Loot System has been added with color-codes for its value
- Items you own are now visible within the market.
- NPCs now have different factions and hunt each other.
- Police Ships and Pirate Ships now can talk, chatter and cheer.
- The UI has been given a massive refresh.
- Space is now 8.500.000 Units Big.
- Hubs have been reseeded
- The Battlefield Module is now active at Resting Point Sigma. It uses a spawner for both factions and makes massive fights happen.
Note:
The Station Building has been Postponed to tie in with a new Quest System in 1.1c.
Happy Hunting,
Dex
Sirius Online 1.1b: Resolution Detector Fixes, Base Building, UI Updates
December is upon us! With the last month of the year incoming, we're going for a pretty amazing bucket list for the final month of the year.
Sirius Online 1.1b will contain the following:
The New
- For those battling with Resolution Issues (Hey, @BigRowdy!), I've written a new Screen Size Detector, reading the Screen Values directly from the Windows API instead of asking your GPU what it can do, mostly resulting in 1080p Fudgery everywhere.
- From 1.1b onward, the Market will get a few new Items, high in Cost, but very useful. And, while No Mans Sky is teasing it all along, I made the same, just faster: Bases. Once you bought a base (2 Mil Creds upwards), you can call construction drones, coming from the next station and assembling your defense tower. This defense tower cannot be constructed within 50km of a Station, a Pirate Hub or any Belt. It will recharge your Shields and repair you for free, can, however, be shot down by other players while you're online. Future Stations will include refineries, updating your resources into higher tier resources and defense platforms, shooting players of the opposite faction or NPCs.
- The UI gets a basic revamp - Color Scheme gets toned down to a black/grey with better readable Icons, better Unification along the way.
- Global Mission, a makeshift way to do things together, is getting removed, for network stability reasons. However, the new Missions Window will be, instead of its former refinery, holding up to four missions and a Progress bar. These missions WILL Reset on each relog! Do them in your session or lose them. The Missions on the Sidebar are gone for Visibility.
- Treasures are back with a few changes: New Ship Graveyards, giant scrap fields can be scoured for lost freight (on Saran), or entire Ship Hulls (Bullpup) to salvage. Be prepared for some fun stuff in the unexplored space.
- [Experimenting with this] Police NPC may be roaming the belts by random chance, fighting the AI. Don't shoot them by accident if you don't want an aggression timer... even though... they might drop fancy loots...
The Changed
- Space is big. In this case, not big enough. So again, I extended the universe fourfold, so there should be content from -2000 | 0 | -2000 to 2000 | 0 | 2000. This will make space much more explorable.
- The Transporting NPCs are not freeloading anymore, but actually doing their thing. They are transporting goods from Station to Station, are in a neutral faction and are influencing the market.
- Every station has now neutral defense turrets. If you attack a freighter, you'll get an aggression timer and are no longer able to recharge inside the forcefield. You will be attacked by the station turrets and any eventual Police Ships.
The Nerfs
- Fun thing, The AI Transports are a bit tougher than your usual Transports, sacrificing their HSD Engine for 4x Armor.
- Removed the Profanity from the AI getting killed.
- Updated T.O.A.St. to Version 3.5. T.O.A.St is the short version for "Tactical Oriented Assistive Stupidity", our self-written AI.
The Patch should be launching around the first December week, if we manage to get everything just right.
I hope you are looking forward to this as much as we do, and already wish you a nice First Advent (the last 4 Sundays before Xmas are called Advent here in Germany!)
*waves excitedly* Dex
PSA: Sirius Online 1.1a coming this Thursday
Hello ladies and gentlefolks,
with a player meeting due on Friday, I'm workin on getting a bunch of bugfixes out to make the playing experiences as smooth as possible.
Fixes Currently Include:
- Fixed Game Crashing on Skinning Venturer and Excavator.
- You cannot enter no name anymore when creating your character.
-- This also prevents you from crashing out of the game with such an account.
- AI at F-CC doesnt randomly shoot you as newbie anymore.
- AI should have gunnery and aggro range at the same distance now.
- AI at pirate Bases have been reduced and made much stronger, to be in line with player ships.
- Limited Ship Turn Speed in Camera Mode.
Notes:
A new Tutorial is in Pre-Production to make your start easier. In the meanwhile I'm recodring and uploading tutorial videos on how to move and play the game.
Any more Bugs you'd like to see fixed or color variant you'd love to see ingame? Comment below and let me know!
Dex
Patch Notes 1.1 - Sirius Online Classic
Sirius Online Classic 1.1 is slowly coming into a finished state, and now we're going to list some changes.
New:
- Removed the Particle Spray from Ships and replaced them with small explosions.
- When you hit a ship, the Targeting rectivcle should light up in red now.
- Attached Turning speeds to ship inertia
- Removed Ship Techtree
- Added Painting Workshop instead (More in a devblog soon)
- Removed atmospheres temporarily for performance purposes
- Updated Asteroid Textures
- Removed Mainzone Display
- Minor UI Fixes
- Implemented new Grouping system
- Crafting Window Removed (Currently nothing really planned for this, might remove it entirely)
- Added value to ships and instant refund of old ship when switching to new ship.
--> When you buy a ship, its buy value will become the ship value. It diminishes with use, so you'll get only a partial bit back when switching to a new ship
- Introducing new Ship:
Bullpup
Class 4 Explorer/Trader Hybrid
The Bullpup combines the Cargospace of a trader with the Perks of an explorer and creates a new, versatile class of ransackers, capable of finding and looting treasures strewn across the universe.
Role Bonus:
Can Detect Ship Graveyards
Can Detect Lost Freight
200% Bonus on Ore Detection
- added Chatlog saved in Local Appdata
- added Character Creation and two Character Profile Slots
- New Visual Effects for Players in Scan Mode
- Mining has been reworked to work as a siphon unit instead of shooting asteroids. A new visual effect has been added.
- Removed Action Skills as a result of rebalancing.
- Pirate Incursions can happen at any time and will be announced through chat
- Server Economy has been updated and features a way broader price range for minerals.
- Universe has been extended.
- New Market Systems for Guns, Ships and Items
Fixes:
- Guns should no longer stay on the ecliptic axis
- Backspace should now wrok agian ot fxi tpyoes (*backspaces*) ...work again to fix typoes
- Pressing Shift should not randomly launch the HSD Anymore
Changed:
- Massively rebalanced the guns for a faster and more native combat feel
- Changed Universe Layout and expanded it
- Moved Location Tracking to Minimap
- Rebalanced some of the ships
The Patchnotes can, may and will change over the course of the coming development week.
Dev Blog: Where I’ve Been And What I’ve Done
It’s been a while since the last entry, due to school I had little time to work on Sirius Online and other personal projects. But now that school is on break, I had some time to spend and used it to learn Unreal Engine more and get my personal projects out of the way. I know, I promised it would be done by the end of August, I didn’t know that I’d hit so many bugs in Unreal Engine that I had to wait for to be fixed and that packaging for Steam could become a nightmare for hours.
Anyway, with that out of the way, let me show you something:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn_r5iRPioE
While those that follow the DDS YouTube and Twitter channel might have already seen it, this is still the first large step towards the new Sirius Online. The next step is to implement projectiles, health stuff, death and respawning. Probably not in that order, but anyway, I hope that it won’t take as long as this took to do.
the stable and unstable branches were unable to connect / lost connection just now due to an unscheduled server restart. I'm not sure why it restarted, but I've started everything up again, so you should be able to play the current version again.
- Xaymar
Sirius Online Classic goes Free2Play
Hello everyone!
We have quite a cool announcement to make:
In the wake of Creating the UE4 Upgrade we decided as team to give you the complete Classic Edition in Blitz3D for FREE!
This can be downloaded:
- Via Steam in your Stable Build-
- via ITCH.IO >>> https://vektordex.itch.io/sirius-online
- via IndieDB >>> [Following]
This Step is crucial for us to finally get some people playing, have the servers fill up and, if people decide to donate to the development, some funds for new UE4 Build.
For those of you that own the game LEGALLY on Steam (Excluding G2A-Buyers), you will get the Unreal Version once its done, as the Engine Upgrade is part of the full price game.
