Sky Nations
Bug Fix - Demo Sign In
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Update 0.99 - Cameras, Horizontal Wedges and Linux Servers
The first being Cameras. Cameras come in 3 types(Copper, Steel and Titanium) with increasing video quality and health. They all are accessed via the Camera Monitor, which allows you to see through the eyes of multiple Cameras as well as rotate them. Traditionally in real life we use Cameras for security, however the best use for these new cameras in-game is navigation and awareness. You can control them while your driving and switch between them at any time, including Cameras on docked ships. So strategically placed Cameras can help you dock, park and manoeuvre medium to large ships much easier when you have multiple points of view to do so. Without ruining the perspective with having something like a third person view for the whole ship. They could also be used as security for a larger ship.
Horizontal Wedges have been requested for quite a long time, since the addition of 'vertical' wedges. These are wedges with the slope being horizontally facing. Much like their vertical cousins, they are added at the mesh generation level to make them nice and fast which took a bit of time to get right. Horizontal Wedges exist as a separate item for all their vertical counterparts and are named H-Wedges. This is to make it a bit easier to place them, placing all of the angles with the vertical and horizontal wedges together in one item proved pretty awkward. Although it's not quite as nice as I'd like, to place H-Wedges in set directions you need to place them against a horizontal wall to align them in set directions. Which is a bit different from the Vertical ones which are based on the way your pointing when placing them but proved slightly easier for reliability.
The third and quite time consuming part of this update has been redoing Linux compatibility for the client. Pretty much across the board people host game servers on Linux, the infrastructures already exist and it's cheaper for anyone to rent them due to the Windows licensing fees. The server used to run on Linux through Mono, but as the codebase got bigger and more complex it lost that compatibility, however now Mono is much better and it's pretty important so I spent some time making sure it's back in action. Porting some of the steam stuff the server relies on proved quite awkward and so did the tiny differences between how the game server runs on both platforms, but it's all been wrapped up. Including the minor changes you previously needed to make to script project files run under Linux is handled by the server automatically. The game should be fine to run on a recent version of Mono If you run into any weird incompatibilities with Mono 4.2 or above shoot me a line as it's difficult to manually test all of the game by myself.
You can check out the rest of the changes below. Sorry for the delay on the update overall, I've been having some health issues that's making progress on some days a little difficult.
How to update?
The game client will automatically update. For servers, make a backup of your existing server, then simply copy and overwrite the existing files with new ones you can find here.
Change log
Changes
- Linux Compatibility for Game Server has been redone(64bit Linux only). Recommend using Mono 4.2 or above for best compatibility(though it’ll probably work on earlier versions).
- Added Camera/Monitor blocks allowing you to view different parts of the ship using them. Including while driving.
- Added Copper Camera.
- Added Steel Camera.
- Added Titanium Camera.
- Added keybindings for switching and exiting Cameras.
- Added horizontal wedges to mesh generation.
- Added Copper H-Wedge.
- Added Wooden H-Wedge.
- Added Steel H-Wedge.
- Added Titanium H-Wedge.
- Added Glass H-Wedge.
- Added Hard Glass H-Wedge.
- Added Iron H-Wedge.
- Added Stone H-Wedge.
- Added a new icon for Fuel Hopper to correct the dynamic one that was incorrectly rendered.
- Price of items is now in their description. As well as in the Item Database(default: B).
- The Game Server will now convert csproj files across automatically for Linux file paths.
- Added ChangeBlockBatch to Mod API.
- Added BiomeSystem.CreateLand() to Mod API.
- Updated Mod API documentation to include all methods added in this update and previous ones: http://skynations.net/modapi/annotated.html
Fixes
- Fixed a bug where custom mod blocks would be removed from client side chunk cache and appear invisible on reload from cache.
- Fixed a directory issue for Linux server.
- Fixed steam authentication not working on linux server.
- Fixed 64bit Steam API binaries on linux.
- Fixed various compatibility differences between Mono and .NET for Linux server.
- Fixed jitter at high speeds on clamped chunks due to chunk being moved after being drawn rather than being drawn at same time as parent.
- Fixed the formatting on recipe new lines.
- Fixed the price of coloured switches.
- Fixed price on deconstructor.
Update 0.985 - Big Optimizations and bug fixes
The biggest part of this update however is optimizations, which may not seem very exciting but it's a pretty big improvement. I've spent most of the last few weeks profiling the game server to work out bottlenecks. After seeing a couple of things in a bunch of Capitals that were really slowing the server down, but not wanting to remove or limit them I went to work using Blue Sun's capital as a local benchmark. Which has a bunch of really huge ships, many machines and just hundreds of ships in general it made a great test bed for optimizations and fine tuning.
The very first thing I noticed was the use of Thrusters essentially for free mining, which in reality is an exploit but I have let it slide until now, the main problem with it performance wise it's breaking thousands of blocks and dropping them on the floor which slowly kills the server as thousands upon thousands of collisions are tested against the ground and each other. As opposed to the laser which deposits items in crates. The key change to thrusters in this update is that they will only burn blocks behind them now if the ship is exerting thrust.
The next big issue I found overall has been the performance incurred by very big ships moving. Since they require quite a wide array of collision tests and resolutions in the physics library due to their size and multiple parts, I've worked out a new way of filtering their collisions in such a way that it reduces a lot of unneeded tests. Which on my local test server, which runs at a cap of 100 ticks per second, but would crawl to 10-15 when moving a ship of a 90 block diameter(which is huge! but possible as I found with Aerion's Deathstar). With the new filtering it runs pretty cleanly at 80 ticks. That's not to say that there aren't any situations where something that big or complex won't slow down more, but it's a huge improvement. Generally, through a whole host of physics optimizations both large and small which you can check out in the change log have made the server a whole lot faster overall as every ship runs just a little bit faster.
There's a whole host of stuff you can check out in the change log below, but I wanted to work on stability for this update rather than adding new things, as well as clearing a back log of lower priority bugs. To hopefully make sure the game is relatively stable over the Christmas period both for you guys, so you can enjoy the game over your holiday time off from work and school, as well as myself as I hope to have a short break over Christmas. Which will mean there's a bit of a longer gap than usual to the next update. But I hopefully have some cool stuff planned for it!
How do I update?
The client will automatically update. You can find the new server files on the download page. Make backups of yours server files before you overwrite them as always.
0.985
Changes
- Thrusters will no longer burn blocks when the ship is not moving. This is to prevent an exploit that allowed for free mining, but more importantly hurt server performance badly as it was possible for hundreds/thousands of items to drop per tick(as opposed to lasers which automatically store them).
- Moved a lot of physics related equations to happen only on the physics tick rather than every frame. Huge performance gain on the server.
- Heavy optimizations to Chunk update ticks.
- Exposed TileProperty data for all tiles to the Mod API. It can be called from IChunk.GetTileData().
- Optimized collision filtering for docking between ships to improve performance on very large ships made of many chunks.
- Pretty big physics optimizations for very large ships overall should help their performance immensely.
- Improved texture loading speed for custom server textures via caching them.
- The Steam Auth process window is now hidden to reduce clutter.
Fixes
- Fixed ships behaving oddly when clamped to the ground due to not having linear and angular velocity reset.
- Fixed Deconstructor beam not being removed if the block is destroyed before it’s finished.
- Fixed cost of SPF being added to ship plans even though they’re unreproducible via constructor.
- Fixed a server crash caused by multiple Jump Drives being activated at once to jump to the same location on a ship.
- Fixed a server crash caused by activating a Jump Drive then jumping through a Gate by the Jump Drive has completed.
- Fixed a server crash caused by Queen Spikes targeting a ship with no loaded physics representation.
- Fixed a server crash caused by a ship somehow jumping before all it’s docked parts are correctly loaded.
- Fixed a server crash caused by a timing issue with Jump Drives.
- Fixed jitter/wiggle on clamped ships when the main ship is moving. Especially prevalent on big ships.
- Fixed a timing bug on ship loading that would make it possible for clamps to not correctly create a joint between two physics objects of the ships.
- Fixed crushing deaths sometimes caused by the player moving between clamped ships.
- Test fix for fullscreen mode being misaligned with the desktop. Possibly caused by task bar size in Windows 10 and changes to Form.DesktopLocation.
- Fixed a bug where a new custom texture for Servers would be added to the texture atlas for every time it’s referenced rather than combining them all to one.
- Fixed crafting amount dialog cutting off text with the new font size and reworded it slightly.
Update 0.98 - Jump Drives, Power Clamps and Disassembly
I've also added in an opposite to the Ship Constructor, the Ship Deconstructor. This allows you to disassemble ships automatically. It requires land power and a crate for storage, like the Ship Constructor but is a bit simpler to use than its counterpart. All you need to do is drive a ship over it and right click it to activate it. It will fire a beam upwards and slowly begin removing blocks and storing their items(if they have items) in the crates placed around it until the crates are full. This allows more rapid deconstruction of wrecks and old ships in safe havens such as claims or Capitals.
There is also a new tier of Clamp called the Power Clamp. It has all the features of its predecessor, however it also allows power, power capacity and power use to be shared across all the connected ships. This makes larger ships less problematic, since each section does not require it's own individual power sources. Not only does it allow power to be shared across the ships, it also allows Thrust(and thus Max Speed) to be accumulated across the ships. Any ship 'Power Clamped' adds it's thrust to the main ship. These clamps also allow you steer from any of the given ships, however the forward direction will always be that of the main ship(the ship that all other ships are clamped too).
There's also been some more minor changes. Item Recipes have been exposed to Modding. Allowing you to declare your on Recipes(crafting) in your mod folders, in a similar fashion to Items and Tiles. I've moved the backend website stuff that needs to talk to Steam to their new Partner servers, which should mean logins, registrations and account linking should all be much faster as previously their public API had been very unreliable due to Steams large traffic at certain times. Finally, I've recompiled the fonts used specifically in the UI. They're slightly bigger now and play much better with how Windows 10 smooths fonts. They should be specifically much more readable to Windows 10 users and in generally a bit smoother for everyone else.
For a list of all the fixes and changes check out the change log below.
Livestreams
Since my internet connection has increased over the last month or so I've been occasionally livestreaming Sky Nations development during the week and a side project I'm making with a friend every Saturday. If that sounds like something your interested in check out my Twitch Channel and follow it for notifications of when the Streams are happening. I might also stream to YouTube at the same time so there's some recorded VODs of the Streams after the fact and generally get a more consistant schedule if people are interested.
How do I update?
The client will automatically update. To update the server, grab the new files from the download page and paste them over your existing files. Remember to backup your server files first.
0.98
Changes
- Added Ship Deconstructor. Opposite to the Constructor, it allows fast disassembly of ships.
- Added Powered Clamps. These are slightly more expensive clamps that have a higher defense and possesses the below features.
- Power/Power Capacity/Power Usage is shared across Powered Clamps. This means large ships built from many, don’t need to have power sources/capacity in each section in order to power those parts.
- Max Speed is now shared through Powered Clamps Clamps. Max speed is cumulatively added together on the main ship that all ships are clamped too.
- You can steer from any ship clamped to another ship. However, the forward direction is determined by the main ship(the ship that all ships are clamped too). This does not require powered clamps. But may do in the future.
- Added Jump Drive, allowing ships to jump without a gate. This is specifically very useful for large ships and will jump clamped ships along with you. When jumping to another system, you will be put randomly next to one of its gates(not based on the system you came from). To keep current defenses viable. After jumping the drive has a 15 second cooldown. The Jump Drive can be situated on any ship clamped to another. The cooldown will affect all the ships in the cluster. Can be interrupted by damage to the ship.
- Added support for Item Recipes to modding. You can now add your own Recipes in your mod directory under a file named Recipes.xml. Check out the example mod for how to declare recipes.
- Moved web backend to Steam’s new API servers. Logins/Registrations/Account linking should be much faster now and more reliable. Especially during peak times on Steam and during Steam Sales.
- Greatly improved font rendering for Windows 10 for UI fonts.
Fixes
- Fixed a crash on Cap gate generation at server first startup.
- Fixed a server crash caused by missing physics objects.
- Fixed a bug with ship rotation and horizontal clamps.
- Fixed downward clamp offset where the mesh appeared lower than it actually was.
- Fixed a server crash caused by a player starting authenticating then disconnecting in the moment before Steam authentication finished.
- Fixed some server settings in Server Settings.xml resetting due to Rcon loading/saving the settings file.
Update 0.975 - Switch groups and Directional Clamps
- Spore Plants - These are simple plant mobs that spawn in Grass biomes. They emit small spores that will plant new trees and are semi harmful to players.
- Coloured Switches - These allow you to assign a colour to Mass Generators(and hopefully other instruments in the future) and press a switch related to that colour to turn them on and off. Allowing you a simple yet more diverse way to manage power for larger and small ships.
- Directional Docking Clamps - Docking clamps can now be placed in any of the cardinal directions, allowing for an easier time of stitching together ships.
As a side note I also fixed some Server stability issues over the weekend and they should be live on both Com 1 and 2. Sorry for any inconvenience!
As always the full change log is at the bottom.
How do I update?
The client update is automatic on all platforms. The server files can be found here. Make sure you backup your server files before updating. To update just overwrite your existing files with the new ones.
Change log
0.975
Changes
- Added White, Green, Red and Blue switches. These can be used to turn on and off machines grouped to colours(currently this is for Generators, but may expand in the future).
- Added recipe for coloured switches(same as Power switch).
- Mass Generators now have a extra button on their Window allowing you to set the group.
- Added multiple directions to clamps. Place a clamp against a block to orientate it away.
- Added Spore Plants. These spawn randomly in Grass biomes and will help repopulate trees.
- Added a lot of ground work for future NPC spawning.
- Refactored and reworked some base NPC functionality.
- Removed third party libraries that are no longer used or referenced.
Fixes
- Fixed couple of VOIP issues.
- Fixed game looking in incorrect directory for client side texture packs.
- Fixed a crash from trophy statues possible if too many are placed.
- Fixed a crash from Merchant Cat’s horn.
- Fixed a physics crash caused by zero mass ships.
- Fixed getting stuck entering sign text if it gets destroyed.
- Fixed a few minor server crashes.
- Fixed a few minor graphics device crashes.
Sky Nations 0.97 - Broader and Better Mod Support
Mods are now stored in the GameData/Mods/ folder with their own subdirectory within that. Such as "GameData/Mods/BensAmazingMod/". You can write your own scripts and put them in this folder under Scripts, which is very similar to the previous single Scripts folder which has access to the Mod API. However they now sit apart from everything else and chat commands have been cleaned up to derive from GameCommand which the server can automatically see and add to the commands list without you having to do anything extra. However, you can now do a bunch more with scripts! You can create custom scripts for blocks and items as well. If you're interested in this check out the Example mod that is in the mods directory by default which shows simple scripts for chat commands, blocks and items. You can assign one or multiple mods at once in the Server Settings.xml file simply using the tags:
Example
Example2
It wouldn't be very useful if you could create custom interactions for blocks and items if you couldn't create your own items and blocks. So now you can! In a similar way to the scripts. In your mods folder you can define a Tiles.xml and Items.xml which will allow you to specify new blocks and items exactly how the rest of the game does for the server. These are automatically downloaded to any clients that join your server so there's no convoluted process of having to hand out specific files for players to install. For how to define basic items or blocks check out the Example mod mentioned above. You can also check out Tiles.xml and Items.xml inside the server's GameData folder for look at how all the items and blocks in the game defined and all their properties.
So you can have your own items and blocks for your server. But to make them unique you'll want your own textures, which is also now possible with Custom Skins(Texture Packs) for servers. Servers can now have their own texture packs assigned, once assigned they will be downloaded by the clients that join and automatically set over what the client has currently selected. Allowing you to give your server a unique look. They work very similar to the Client side texture packs in that you just need to provide a .PNG image file of the same name and directory as the texture you want to replace. However, they also allow you to add textures . Putting new textures in these Texture Packs allows you to reference them in your own Items and Blocks so you can make them look however you'd like. To set a custom texture pack simply use the tag:
MySkinDirectory in the Server Settings.xml file.
For a fuller list of changes and fixes check out the change log below. I will be shortly writing a whole bunch of documentation for creating mods on the wiki. Which I'll link to when it's done.
How do I update?
The game will be automatically updated by Sky Nations Launcher or Steam depending how you play it. The server files are available here:
http://skynations.net/?page=download
Make sure you backup your server as always before overwriting it with the new files.
Change log
Changes
- Added custom Mod System for servers. Which automatically downloads their relevant content to clients that connect. Mods are created and added in the GameData/Mods/ folder of the server. See “Example” in this folder for an example of how to make simple changes. They are selected in ServerSettings.xml as: MyModName
- Servers can now have their own Texture Packs. These are automatically selected over what the client is using if a texture pack is set. If not then it’s vanilla or the clients choice if they have Texture Packs installed.
- Servers can now have their own Items.
- Servers can now have their own Guides. These appear under Server in the knowledge base(default key B).
- Servers can now have their own Blocks. Which can have their own new textures through the new server Texture Packs.
- Mods also support their own scripts which live in the given mod directory to prevent awkward manual installation and conflicts.
- Chat scripts no longer require to be manually added to the chat commands list. They are found automatically so no manual editing is required which would cause potential conflicts.
- It’s now possible to write scripts for Blocks. See BlockExample in Example mod folder.
- It’s now possible to write scripts for Items. See ItemExample in Example mod.
- Removed a bunch of debug messages from release build of the server.
- Added Machine Parts to Merchant Cat store.
- Added Machine Parts drop to Merchant King.
- Defense Drones no longer take damage from Merchant Kings beams.
- Changed guide directory to be coloured. Guides and Directories in the in-game knowledge base are now different colours to make them easier to differentiate.
- Chat command “/who” can now be activated as “/playerlist” and “/players”.
- Chat command “/r” can now also used as “/reply”.
- Chat command “/ignore” can now also be used as “/block”. The same works for “/unignore” as “/unblock” and “/ignorelist” as “/blocklist.”
- Added “/ts [id]” command for admins. Allows admins to teleport to a ship of a given ID. This includes across instances(systems).
- Added “/bs [id]” command for admins. Allows admins to bring a ship to them of given ID. However that ship must be in a loaded area.
- “/shipcount” has been re-added.
- “/admin” can now also be used as “/op”.
- “/tp” and “/bring” has been exposed and rewritten as scripts rather than being internal.
- “/bring” and “/tp” now work across zones(previously they would just take you to the position.
- Many chat commands have been cleaned up and optimized during their move to the new scripting setup.
- Defense Drones now self destruct if the boss zone is empty of players to prevent players luring them to the gate on death.
Fixes
- Fixed some timer issues for Merchant King.
- Fixed a crash caused from getting debug connection info.
- Fixed some interpolation issues on a couple of entities(MK beams being most majorly effected).
- Fixed new player block taking players to MK instance by mistake sometimes.
- Fixed an exploit of being able to create multiple energy wells on a ship through the constructor.
- Fixed legacy ships using above bug to only take power from the first Energy Well, rather than removing Energy wells.
- Fixed a crash with item dragging to Ammo window.
Sky Nations - Merchant King 0.96
Anyway, onto the more interesting stuff. A new boss event has been added called Merchant King, much like the Magmasite Queen he will appear randomly at intervals. A portal will become available on the map that will lead you to his instance. Currently he drops 2 unique items and some resources. But I may be adding some further drops in the future. It'll be interesting to see if I need to make balancing changes to him as well as this is the first boss that requires a lot of skilful positioning on the players part! If you're lucky enough he could drop a neat trophy for you to parade around!
In other slightly different news, for journalists and YouTubers/Streamers who are interested in picking up a Sky Nations press key. All press keys are now done through a service called DoDistribute and can be found here. This is to help weed out a lot of people posing to be other people in order to get keys and the long process of trying to verify them.
How do I get the Update?
To see a full list of changes check out the change log below. The client will update automatically and player server files will be available here shortly.
Change Log 0.96
Changes
- Added Merchant King Boss fight.
- Added Merchant King trophy.
- Added Merchant Horn. Dropped by Merchant King, can be used to call Merchant Cat.
- Removed the drones from Merch Cat. They now protect their true leader the the Merchant King.
- Added debug tracking for requested, failed and open requests for chunks to help solve a loading issue.
- Added packet batching for when players enter a zone that isn’t loaded at all(such as logins/deaths/direct teleports). To hopefully resolve loading issues for some players.
- Merchant Cat will no longer wait for players to leave his vicinity and will keep to his schedule much better.
Fixes
- Fixed admin /inst sometimes leaving the player stuck.
- Fixed a crash when teleporting between zones with Inventory character preview open.
- Chunk Caching has been set to default off in order to help identify a loading issue some players have where they get stuck on logging in. A checkbox has been added so it can still be set on in the Options menu for those with slower connections.
- Fixed batching sizes for terrain data. More should be sent over one packet(and thus load faster for most people)
- Fixed an issue with how entities were batch created over the net.
- Fixed a possible server crash.
- Fixed an issue with Merchant Cat where he couldn’t leave spawn if it didn’t have any gates. When no gates are available he will jump to a random non-capital system.
- Fixed Merchant Cat’s warnings being said at the wrong times.
- Ported over to Lidgren to avoid various issues caused by Raknet wrapper.
- Fixed jumpy interpolation on players.
Update 0.95 Paints!
The idea is to allow players a bit more customization over especially large areas of ships and buildings which require specific materials to be functional, for their defensive or cost effective properties but also suffer from looking a little bland because of it. Such as a big tanky ship made solely from Titanium. The patterns of the blocks are still maintained so you can still tell the difference for the most part between different defensive materials if your an attacker for example.
There is also a new player held weapon, which is a Grenade Launcher. The Grenade Launcher does explosive damage to players(it does not damage blocks) and should be a pretty good addition to anyone's arsenal whether they be attacking or defending. In conjunction with this there is also now damage indicators for where you're being attacked from. This is shown by a red gradient on the 4 cardinal directions of your screen, making figuring out and responding to boarders attacking you an easier less confusing task in the heat of the moment.
As always, there's also a bunch of minor additions and changes which you can check out in the full change log at the bottom of the post.
How do I update?
The launcher and Steam will automatically update your client for you.
The server files are available here. Make sure you backup your server files first. Then just copy the new files over your existing ones.
Change Log
Changes:
- Added block painting. Blocks can be painted with a new item called Spray Paint. Selecting the spray paint item and holding right click will allow you to select a colour. The first ‘blank’ colour will erase paint.
- Added Syphon fuel type for Ice biomes.
- The colour inside Mining Syphons now reflects the Syphon fuel colour for the biome.
- Cleaned up the colour palette layout on the Item Kit to be separated by shades.
- Added damage direction indicator. When you get hit the direction will be shown to you.
- Changed mallet sound.
- Added Red Lantern.
- Added White Lantern.
- Existing lanterns have been retextured so all lanterns match textures with the Green Lantern style wise.
- Added Grenade Launcher and Grenade Rounds.
- Changed the recipe for Lanterns. All colours of lanterns can be crafted with 1 burntout core and 1 glass.
- Added some more community creations to the loading screens.
Optimized laser mining and other raycast events considerably.
Fixes
- Fixed a bug with power per second making it incorrect for very large volumes of power produced.
- Fixed a crash that would happen for certain users during Steam authentication when joining a server.
- Fixed a couple of minor crashes.
- Fixed a crash caused by the route finder with no possible path on custom map layouts.
- Fixed some inaccuracies with explosion coverage.
- Fixed a rendering issue for lasers on some graphics cards.
Update 0.94 - Ice Biomes and Fuel Hoppers
Since these new frozen isles are very big. Like really, really big. I spent quite a bit of time improving what terrain looks like at a distance since it had never been an issue before. Mipmap bleeding has been improved greatly, so large areas should blur less to incorrect colours and light fogging has been added to help aid in depth perception. These and a couple of other changes have made quite an improvement, not just too the new very large isles but too existing ones as you can see below:
A lot of the work on 0.94(and hold ups) has been improving how the game itself integrates with Steam to bring some really useful features the game has been lacking. Previously the game servers themselves never talked directly to Steam's Servers which made it quite awkward to use a lot of Steam features. The servers now do and can even be downloaded via SteamCMD or the Tools section in the Steam Library. A huge benefit from this is being able to use Steam's VAC(Valve Anti-Cheat) and much more reliable authentication, where previously as you may of noticed the authentication would occasionally go down without warning. This should hopefully lead to being able to use the Join Game and Invite features on the Steam friend list pretty soon!
For a full list of the changes check out the change log at the bottom.
How do I update?
The client will be automatically updated for you. To update your server. First of all make sure you make backups first. Then simply download the server files and overwrite your existing files with them.
The server files will be available shortly.
Change Log
Changes
- Added Ice Biome.
- Added faint distance fogging to give better depth perception.
- Added wind sound when ship is moving at moderate speeds.
- Added Machine Parts block. Sourced from Ice biomes.
- Changed Gravity Well component for Mining Syphons to Machine Parts to make them cheaper.
- Added Fuel Hopper. Fuel Hoppers automatically feed all mass generators on the ship, as long as it has fuel in it.
- Added Steam implementation to game servers. You will be able to use SteamPipe(also known as SteamCMD) to run the servers on dedicated machines(with which you don’t need to be logged in) or you can simply run it from your Steam client via Steam Library->Tools. As well as the standalone as before.
- Added Valve Anti-Cheat(VAC) support for Steam users.
- Added support for SN Servers appearing on friends list and elsewhere. Future update will hopefully allow invites/join game.
- Vastly improved authentication speeds. No more client hanging on waiting for Steam to reply if the Steam Web API is down.
- Added VC++ 2013 x86 redistributable to the game for first time installs. Should fix any issues running the game for people on fresh windows installs.
- Greatly improved mitigation of mip mapping bleed for flat surfaces a long distance away.
- Ships store much less data when unloaded on the server, servers with a large amount of ships should use considerably less memory.
Fixes
- Fixed a bug where Chunks would sometimes be jumbled up.
- Fixed a bug where non-English characters were not being encoded properly by new networking library and thus would appear as “???”.
- Fixed disconnections before full authentication occurred would sometimes leave a ghost of a player in-game.
- Chunk Cache will now automatically do its best to spot errors in the cache and remove bad files. This will automatically fix corrupted data in the cache.
- Fixed an issue making it difficult for non-English character names to login.
- Fixed an exploit with switches.
Update 0.93 Switches, Crafting, Brakes and more!
Airbrakes have been added to ships to allow for much finer air control while braking. The braking without Airbrakes essentially cancels your thrust but does not cancel your velocity as many of you may have noticed, so your ships tend to coast a bit after braking. Airbrakes cancel your velocity via air resistance allowing you to come to a complete stop much quicker. They do however have a couple of caveats, there cannot be blocks in front or behind them as it blocks any air resistance in the first place. You can however have other Airbrakes in front or behind them.
There are two new blocks that should make running very large ships significantly easier in this update. These are switches for lasers and generators. Essentially what these allow you to do is turn all of the given block on or off at once by simply hitting the big button the switch. If your lasers or generators are in a mixed state, for example some are on and some are off it will go with the majority status. So having 5 generators on and 2 off. It will see 5 of them are on and switch them all to off. This allows a much simpler and less frustrating job of managing them on your ships and also allows you to embed them in places you don't have to be able to reach. I also hope to add more switches for similar tasks like Thrusters in the future.
Crafting has also been changed a little to allow you to batch craft large numbers of items much easier without having to worry about the interface shifting as your materials change. Simply clicking on a item in the Crafting menu will now bring up a window allowing you to specify the amount you'd like to craft. Saving a countless clicking! If you'd like to craft a single item like you could before just hold shift and click the item. When entering numbers into the Crafting popup it will adjust them if they are not a multiple of the item you are making. For example logs create 3 planks. Trying to craft 4 planks would lose you two potential planks from a log so the input will adjust it down to 3 to save you doing the maths.
An early detection system has been added for both claimed and non claimed areas called the "Detector Dish". There is still some work I'd like to do it on but the basic functionality is there. You can place it down in a system and right click it, this will align it to your Nation. Any moving ships in the System will be detected by it and it will alert your Nation members of it. This is useful as an early warning system and a intruder detection system for those remote areas you can't always have people at.
The temporary "R" values next to System names on the Map have been removed and replaced with a appropriate block to display them called a "Prospector". When turned on it displays the Resource Value of the System you are currently in.
One of the larger changes that won't hugely be apparent is that we've moved to using a different Networking library. The networking library is basically what handles the messages between the game server and client, previously I'd had issues with a bug in the one we'd used as it would resend a lot of data when it didn't need to and cause large blocks of data such as loading a system as you enter it to be inherently slow for players with less than perfect internet connections. This is solved with the new library and many people with slower than average internet connections(such as myself!) should see zones loading much faster and overall more responsiveness to many actions in-game that require the server to ok them.
As always there's a whole host of other changes. Check them out below in the change log.
How to update
The client will be automatically updated by Steam or the Sky Nations launcher. The server files will be available shortly once I've cleaned up any bugs that pop up on the Community Servers.
Change Log
Changes
- Added Airbrakes for ships.
- Added Generator Switch.
- Added Laser Switch.
- Added Prospector block which identifies Resource Values of systems.
- Added Detector Dish that detects non-aligned moving ships in the zone and reports it back to all live members in the Nation.
- Ported to new network library to decrease loading time of zones significantly for players as well as overall use less bandwidth due to a bug in old network library.
- Changed Crafting panel to have an enterable number for the amount you would like to craft. To craft 1 of an item without the amount window simply hold shift while clicking it.
- Splash should be more accurate and wider for Missiles.
- Increased missile block damage by 20.
- Missiles now use Continuous Collision Detection(CCD) to increase accuracy at high speeds.
- Changed Full Screen mode to be Borderless Window mode instead which is much improved and allows better tabbing while the game is full screen without unloading content.
- Changed max chat log line count from 70 to 500.
- Updated Escape Drive description to match its purpose.
- Optimized render culling of small ships.
- Corrupted or otherwise troublesome ship files are automatically moved by the server to “Crash Logs [Version]/Corrupted Ships/” folder to prevent them causing further errors along with a note for their loading error for debugging.
- Night is now x3 brighter.
- Changed Atomic Waste value to 4 from 20.
Fixes
- Fixed a crash caused by incorrect emblem data.
- Fixed a rendering bug with screenspace object shaders.
- Fixed a potential server crash.
- Fixed a server crash caused by removing some objects in certain circumstances that no longer exist.
- Fixed a bug that would cause Trophies to disappear upon jumping systems.
- Fixed a server crash caused by Merchant Cat falling off his ship as he jumps.
- Fixed a crash caused by empty chunks generating physics representations(likely caused by a corrupt chunk).
- Fixed doors only placing the bottom block if a player exists in the space where the top block should be.
- Potentially fixed a bug that would cause players to be teleported to odd locations when attempting to pilot a freshly unclamped ship for the first time.
- Fixed Nation Beacons sometimes resetting to the wrong position on system reloads due to the timing of collisioeneration.
- Fixed a crash caused by a timing issue when generating a mesh.