Who are the Star "Raiders"? In the design of Star Rangers, the Raiders have always been a part of the story.
Someone, whom you suspect is Professor Thadeus, has been accepting candidates for body-modification.
These modifications include extra organs to survive the rigours of space and perform tasks such as replacing calcium, and keeping blood pressure in check on other organs such as the eyes - a very hard problem to solve in micro-gravity.
The concept of the Raiders is based on real science, and if the Raiders in the game happen to get in your way, well that's because they may not be very happy about the changes to their bodies in the long run.
They don't like Ranger habs, but they do like not having to work as hard to get their own supplies. Why?
Maybe you should find Thadeus and ask.
Previous Notes: "RG, our resident artist designed these raiders to reflect an alternate near-future path to space exploration.
With body modification, such as extra, new and more resilient organs, such as kidneys, specialized, lungs and others, comes a risk. We know now that much of our identity and even "intelligence" is based on our own bodies: how we use and move in them. Will mankind change as we enter space. Change is coming, but will humans resist or try to change themselves fundamentally to enter deep space? Time will tell, but in the meantime, lets see what that might look like."
New Build Coming
We're Listening.. !
Next Build Features: -as we bring everything up to speed,
-we're adding a somewhat scary NPC (so far): the Star Raider.
- a persistent base for some fast loading gameplay so you can focus on objects like vehicles and plants rather than habs.
- Ceres is getting a mini-update as well, with one of the new persistent buildings and new airlock (from our end programming, yours: stability).
Unity 5 on Internal! : Instructions
Right Click Star Rangers in your Steam Library
Select Properties
Click on the BETAS Tab
On the Drop-Down Menu Labelled "Select the beta you would like to opt into:" select "internal -"
We'lll tweak it up and then start rolling out new features and a new map!
We Are Upgrading to Unity 5
Started this about 1 month ago.. Basically we are upgrading to the new game engine.
It is much faster - more to play with very soon.
Version 1 of the Ceres Landscape is Going Live
Please enjoy version 1 of the Ceres Landscape.
There is a holiday easter egg if you care to hunt for it!
CERES
-Discovered: January 1,1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi of Italy (first asteroid/dwarf planet discovered)
-Size: 975 by 909 kilometers (606 by 565 miles)
-Shape: Spheroid
-Rotation: Once every 9 hours, 4.5 minutes - sped up to be about 1/3 of our accelerated earth day.
The object is known by astronomers as "1 Ceres" because it was the very first minor planet discovered. As big across as Texas, Ceres' nearly spherical body has a differentiated interior - meaning that, like Earth, it has denser material at the core and lighter minerals near the surface. Astronomers believe that water ice may be buried under Ceres' crust because its density is less than that of the Earth's crust, and because the dust-covered surface bears spectral evidence of water-bearing minerals. Ceres could even boast frost-covered polar caps.
Astronomers estimate that if Ceres were composed of 25 percent water, it may have more water than all the fresh water on Earth. Ceres' water, unlike Earth's, is expected to be in the form of water ice located in its mantle.
"Dawn delves into the unknown and achieves what's never been attempted before. A mission in NASA's Discovery Program, Dawn orbited and explored the giant protoplanet Vesta in 2011-2012, and now it is in orbit and exploring a second new world, dwarf planet Ceres."
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/
We're Still Working on Bugs plus, Elon Musk and the Future
So I just wanted to ask for your patience as we work on bugs; thanks for it.
There are also some extra items showing up before Christmas - but the bugs are the primary item.
From a business side, we've got some hurdles to jump over before November, but we'll be there.
Thanks again for your patience.
Little side note: I know Elon Musk's designer on Facebook. If you have any questions about the new Mars ship, I can ask them privately for you.
Rescue at Ceres: Coming Soon
While we work on of course, bugs, we thought we'd drop in another map. This is our universe after all, so who knows what we might find...
Next week I'll be posting a contest announcement.
_The_ contest for Early Access.
Thought on Steam Review change: We’d like yours if you bought Star Rangers.
We’d like your review if you bought Star Rangers and here are some thoughts on the review system change - it's not all good news for a game like ours.
Thank-you to all that support Star Rangers with your words, thoughts, playtime, and pocketbook.
As I'm sure some of you are already aware, Steam has removed the counting towards a positive percentage all reviews written by those who activated games using a Steam key; i.e. those who bought the game elsewhere or was given it as part of the community (fundraising, humble bundle, flying bundle, community members) will have their reviews show up, but the thumbs up do not count in the overall rating. Sad.
Since Star Rangers started with a fundraiser (a hearty thanks again), anyone who in fact bought the game that way & received a key, and anyone working on the Intern team no longer has their reviews counted. That’s okay - but unfortunately, it means that our ratings don’t reflect about 50% of our players ( :( ), and enthusiastic ones, some of whom donated 50 or 200 dollars or even more. That’s very unfortunate because it means Mostly Positive suddenly became a Mixed Rating, and that affects how we build a community.
In response, the developers would like to ask, if you have time, those who have purchased the game to write a review. Please: be honest. Star Rangers grows from criticism, even Den’s [Khal made me write that DMJ :] because it allows them to grow and learn from those mistakes.
Personal Reflection from Dragon the Intern When I, Christian, an intern, started working with the Development team, I was given charge of creating a group of game players, who have provided what we consider valuable feedback, and even more importantly, game time! The team also wrote reviews which are still posted, and yes, also flagged honestly we received the game for free, so that’s another group of supporters, that are not counted herein. But their feedback is important none the less.
-Dragon
Personal Reflection from Astronicus
On behalf of the Project Whitecard Team, I thank you all the players and supporters (Den, DMJ March, Flying Cheesecake, SydKhaos), and we shall continue to work hard to bounce back from this temporary setback, and we would have never gotten this far without all of you guys' support, and for that I thank you, and the people here at Project Whitecard thank you.
Reviews are honestly less important than the feedback you’re giving on the discussion board, and sales are up due to the Juno level.
Reviews for an Early Access game should take this into account the fact that it’s just so: Early Access.
But in conclusion, it’s actually better if we don’t have to focus on reviews too much, we’re slowly but surely finding our audience.
I built this game to have a platform to have fun with, and so let's celebrate that.
-Astronicus (Khal). :)
Star Rangers 1.0.2.0b
Main Changes:
- New map selection menu
- New Juno map
- Fixed map borders to prevent players from falling off
- Audio level settings now save/load correctly
Map Selection details:
- Joining multiplayer rooms should no longer select the wrong room
- Maps no longer get hidden outside of their scroll box
- Room list now auto-updates when changed
- Added location/classifications to each map
- Windows now correctly scale to various aspect ratios
- Global chat should no longer go off screen
- Background will now change for all selected maps rather than only create
- Existing named bases are now listed in "My Bases"
Changelist:
r7353
- Fixed room password bug
- Fixed room IsTutorial bug
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r7352
Removed MapSelection Highlights, changed font, made borders transparent to fix missing fonts.
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r7351
Changed Fonts on My Bases Window and Global Chat Input Field
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r7350
Added MapSelection Highlights
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r7349
Fixed rhino chill bug
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r7348
- Polished MapSelection for build
- Added Test Levels check box
- Implemented server status
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r7347
here is the scene with faster rotation of the earth.
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r7346
- Implemented Multiplayer service status in MapSelection
- Updated solar system selector to support new map selection
- Refactored map selection scene to Game Settings
- Implemented basic location filtering
- Fixed an issue where the preview window would show incorrect texture
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r7345
Created Custom Input Module For UI Element Scrollbar Focus. Implemented Scrollbar Focus on elements selected by methods other than mouse clicks.
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r7344
Fixed RhinoChill messages
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r7343
Fixed Horizontal Spacing in all layouts Fixed Global Chat Input alignment with odd aspect ratios Room Info Window Scaling is fixed (child of Global char holder Start Base Button has been fixed. Fixed spacing in connectionstate text.
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r7342
Scrollbar Focus on keyboard-selected items in SelectionMenuUnityUI.unity Fixed scroll in general on menus. Connection status text is now a layout group with multiple texts.
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r7341
Fixed Layout Grids on SelectionMenuUnityUI.unity Added in drop-down menu for game type and required functionality. Now almost fully implemented.
---------------------
r7340
- Integrated new map selection into main menu path
- Updated map selection scene to fix base loading
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r7339
Fixed map edge colliders
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r7338
Implemented basic map load service/view
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r7337
- Updated MapSelection with Create/Join functionality
- Sorted tutorial maps to top
- Don't show password dialog for tutorials
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r7336
Fixed click focus on UI scene
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r7335
Fixed wrong window open
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r7334
Fixed layout for odd aspect ratios
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r7333
Fixed window sizing in preparation for grid layouts
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r7331
Added image for juno info box.
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r7330
- Updated create window to load selected map
- Implemented improved back end for loading scenes in multiplayer
- Added owner to rooms
- Fixed typos in GameSettings
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r7329
Added functionality to PasswordWindowUi.cs
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r7328
material fix on space printer
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r7327
Player's online text added
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r7326
Corrected Juno orbit
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r7325
ButtonKeyboardSelect.cs implemented
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r7324
Added KeyboardButton components to MapCreationViewItem.prefab and RoomJoinViewItem.prefab
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r7323
- Fixed My Bases Menu.
- Made Preview Window Independent of Create window.
- Created new PreviewWindow component
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r7322
Updated MapSelection scene
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r7321
GameSettings now includes BlockedBlueprints which stop players from receiving or printing particular blueprints. Minerva parts are added to the blocked blueprints list.
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r7320
Fixed a small typo in the intro story
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r7319
Button references in password window are added
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r7318
Implemented player list for room selection
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r7317
Fixed Game Breaking Bug stopping players from playing on Titan_Landscape_OberonsCrossing.unity
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r7316
Fixed underground Lander-Exit bugs
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r7314
- Improved MapSelectionViews/Services
- Corrected listening to PhotonEvent: ReceivedRoomListUpdate
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r7313
- Made Audio Category Volume Prefs Load when the level starts.
- Added audio volume functionality to scenes that don't have gamemanager.prefab
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r7312
Created Juno level
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