Star Explorers
Testing Branch Updated to Version 6.0 Alpha 0.2.0
Tests have confirmed that a more reasonable number of fruits should now spawn, even on worlds where there were too many in the previous build.
Enjoy!
Version 6.0 Problem - Price Change NOT imminent
However, there are some bugs that I thought had been squashed long ago that seem to be rearing their ugly heads once again, making me very uncomfortable with the idea of raising the price of the game.
So I am retracting my announcement about the change from $4.99 to $9.99.
Normally I would just say, hey I will fix those bugs and keep going. However, I genuinely have tried and they somehow never go away. Most of the issues in this game can be resolved by saving the game and reloading it. But that is not a thing I want to charge a premium price for at this time.
Here's an image from the game that represents roughly how I am feeling about things right now...
Version 6.0 is still scheduled to happen. I imagine some time before 2025, or maybe early into the new year. There may be a price change later, if I can resolve some of the underlying issues with the game first. Or it will be the same janky experience with a few extra features stapled on. I will let you all know.
For anyone who bought the game because of the imminent price change announcement, I did not intend this to happen so I am sorry. If you feel like you have been manipulated unfairly, please send me a message an I will try to find a way to make things right. Sorry about that!
Testing Branch Updated to 0.1.9
The Star Chart Upgrade, the Backpack and Storage Expansions, and several other items, when used, would take an effect on your game, but in some cases there was no visual indication that you had used the item. Rather, the item would simply disappear and the effect would take place from that point forward.
Now you have a simple, visual representation of which effects you have acquired. In the image above, you can see icons for the Star Char Upgrade, as well as the Storage Wormhole.
Currently this feature simply shows the icons. It does not let you click on them or learn what they do, once they have been used. I am thinking of adding this functionality though. I am also considering the idea of removing, or replacing these accessories. Right now the game only has a total of 10 possible accessories, so there is no need for removing or replacing them. But if I come up with some interesting accessory ideas, we may see this idea implemented.
Price Change
Regarding the upcoming price change, I am trying to coordinate it between a few different online stores. It may take a couple more days to get done.
Testing Branch Updated to 0.1.8
Eating them may have an effect, and it may not. The effect may be good, or it may be bad. Fruit is a gamble...
The color and shapes of fruit should provide a consistent effect, so once you have eaten a round, orange fruit, you will know what all round, orange fruits do.
Most fruit should be static, behaving like fruit on earth. Fruit that interacts with you or other creatures should be rare. Static fruits will have the same effects as their moving counterparts, as long as the color and shape are the same.
Testing Branch Updated to Version 0.1.6
The game will transition from the current price of $4.99 to $9.99.
This will be happening on Friday night, allowing for Valve's approval. So if you've been thinking about getting Star Explorers, now would be a good time!
Fruit
This update introduces "Fruit," a new type of life form on some planets.
Currently you will see fruit anywhere there are trees or tree-like organisms. I plan to update this to make their appearance more varied.
Each fruit type will be a bit different from others. Most of them will behave like fruit here on earth behave ... they won't really do much at all, but may drop from their trees.
However some fruits may have behaviors. These differ from other life forms as they will also react to each other, instead of just to other life forms. Another difference is that their behavior with respect to other fruits will be different than their behavior towards non fruits. Some fruits, when they stray too far away from their tree, will race back to her.
Currently, fruits will not harm the player nor can they be harmed by the player or by other aliens. They may trigger a floater to explode though. This may also change in the next update, and some fruits may be dangerous ... not quite sure yet.
Picking Fruit
Another thing that makes fruit unique is that you will be able to pick them up and add them to your inventory. Currently, each fruit will take up a full inventory slot. I think I will keep it this way as each one will have slightly different parameters.
Eating Fruit
This is not implemented yet. Your character will be able to eat the fruit, and receive some kind of effect. It may be beneficial, or harmful, or something in between the two. This should be ready in the next update.
Dropping Fruit
Dropping fruit on a planet surface, or in a cave (not tested yet) will allow the fruit to resume its normal fruit-like behavior. But instead of being tied to its tree, the fruit will think of you as its mommy.
Why Fruit?
I'm not sure what I'm doing here. Players have asked me to add something that allows more to be done on planet surfaces. Having plants, it seemed logical to include some kind of fruits on some of them. I don't really know if or how they will effect the gameplay. I am hoping they players will discover some cool things to do with them.
Testing Branch Updated
I am tweaking the way life can form on planets.
Vapor Worlds
Previously, planets with a vaporized atmosphere, i.e. no surface liquid, could randomly have life on them. This is mostly still the case, but it is not quite as random. These planets will only have a chance for life if the temperature is not much higher than the boiling point of the surface liquid.
Floaters
Floaters were originally going to be life forms that were completely independent of normal factors like having an atmosphere, temperature etc... This is still the case. However, floaters will now always appear on planets with other life.
Smoke Beasts
Not to be confused with floaters(!). Smoke beasts look a bit like floating clouds, but they tend to behave more like the animal style alien creatures. Well, these guys just got a bunch of new, random attributes. These don't contribute a whole lot in terms of gameplay, but they will appear in a much wider variety of colors and forms. I am excited to see your screenshots as you encounter some of these, as I am not sure I can predict all the various possibilities.
Testing Branch Updated
There was a bug where, when approaching the mothership, if you cancelled the docking procedure, the UI would become unresponsive and you could no longer click on stars or the mothership itself.
I believe this is fixed now.
I was also able to fix the issue where the docking sound would play even if you had the volume all the way down (sorry for scaring any of you).
Find a Sulphuric Vapor Planet and take screenshots
So Star Explorers has some similar worlds, but lately I've realized they are extremely rare due to factors I had not really considered when programming the game.
The boiling point of sulphuric acid is quite high at 610.1 Kelvin. So for these sulphuric vapor worlds to exist they have to be very close to a pretty hot star. Most sulphuric worlds will be a bit further out and either be liquid or frozen. But I know they exist because someone took this screenshot...
The only problem with this screenshot is that is has some kind of RTX shader thing happening which creates a reflective surface. This shader does not exist in the game itself, but is an overlay from a program called reshade.
I would love to see some screenshots of these rare, Venus like worlds without this reshade effect.
The reward is the journey! But really, I will give a free beta key to the first person who posts a screenshot of a Venus like, sulphuric vapor world (with no plants or trees or other life features preferably). Empty and rocky would be great!
The beta key will be for my new, upcoming game called Cyclopean. It's an old-school dungeon crawler set in the Dreamlands of H.P. Lovecraft.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2958790/Cyclopean/
Testing Branch Updated to "Pre 6.0 alpha 0.1.1b"
Character Speed
Players have complained about how the speed of your character's movement is too fast, or seemingly modified by the framerate.
I thought I had compensated for this in my script, but my wife recently got a new computer. So I tried it and I saw that it was indeed much faster than it should be.
This new version addresses this issue, and I believe it resolves it. I saw that I was incorrectly using the games frame rate to adjust movement. This is actually necessary to do, if you don't adjust movement based on the frame rate, then higher frame rates will lead to higher movement speeds. In this case, the way I did it was incorrect and inconsistent.
To fix it I had to revisit every single function that moves an entity in the game, and adjust the formula slightly. It was not terribly time consuming once I saw what was wrong.
I think the actual speed might still be a little fast, but it at least appears to be consistent from one system to another. I can still tweak the movement speed as needed based on player feedback.
Star Chart Crash
I was also able to resolve a major bug that would crash the game when attempting to open the star chart. Apparently this crash was being caused by something I configured incorrectly on Steam. The game worked fine on my computer and when run from other storefronts, but the Steam version was crashing.
After altering the Steam configuration, it appears to have been resolved. If you do encounter this (note: this was only in the testing branch) try uninstalling the game, restarting your computer, then re-installing the game.
Alien War
Not a new feature, but I stumbled into this alien war while testing the game recently. These kinds of interactions may not be common, but they are interesting to see on those rare occasions. Presented for your enjoyment ... slow-motion added for fun.
Testing Branch Updated to "Pre 6.0 alpha 0.0.9d"
Biped Weapons
Bipedal aliens that carry weapons were still utilizing the old inventory system, so the weapons were unusable. I have updated this so those weapons can be used after they are dropped. I also prevented the bug that allowed players to take the alien weapons while they were still being held (although I am thinking about re-introducing this as a possible feature in the future).
Alien Bits
The animal type aliens have been updated too. In the past when they were killed their body parts would fling off in different directions. I am not sure what happened but that feature no longer worked. I was able to update it so that it is working again.