Update v0.76
Electromagnetic interference is disrupting our communications!

• Debuffed communications near black holes

• Added arrows to fly into at the edges of planets and moons to flip them (seems trivial but solves the problem of people not realising you can flip them)

• Added an options menu finally! (You have no idea how long that's been on the to-do list )

• Moved the language selector into the options menu (so it's actually reliable now and not tied to the cosmos save file)

• Fixed energy funnels saying recently fired-upon systems don't have entities

• Fixed being abled to fire energy funnels at nothing

After the larger update last time, I wanted to tackle some more niggly stuff (like options menus and bugs) that have been putting me off working on Startron so I can get back to doing the fun stuff.

But yes, you can indeed kill planets now lol. I am hoping to make the moral/ethical issues of doing so key to the story when I introduce the Grog α and Grog ß (so far only referenced in bar patron chit-chat) so we'll see where that goes.

:D! Love it!

Reminds me of a game I made a long time ago for Android except you're doing a much better job in my opinion lol

Keep going!

Update v0.75
Ima firin' mah lazer!

• Improved the appearance of pulsars (now they don't look identical to magnetars and neutron stars)

• Added a PC speaker beep for various interface actions (it helps to have some kind of feedback when performing actions in a game with such limited graphics ) - This can be turned off with the config file outlined in the readme or support section of the website. If neither your operating system or computer provide a PC-speaker interface, you won't hear anything :D

• Added an interface for energy funnels:

• Added a firing animation for energy funnels (planet killing tech):This stuff will become more important for the story later on but for now it just lets you obliterate any entity in any solar system. (Charging up the energy funnel will devolve the sun 1 level until it becomes a black hole, so make sure to build it in a system with a big sun or in a binary system so you get your money's worth. )

• Added some missing config information to the readme too

Might want to think about calling it something else - Prison Tycoon is already very similar product
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_Tycoon

That is just adorable.

Makes me want to play all game genres in that engine :D!

Update v0.74
Why don't you see green suns?

• Planets and moons now generate with craters on them (they illuminate depending on the direction the sun is in and must be cleared to build on)

• Your last position on any entity is now stored so navigating in and out of things for repeated tasks is far less tedious

• The cosmos now generates systems with 51 possible solar-centres (instead of the 10 previously found).
  
  These solar centres can be any of the following:
  Black holes, wormholes, pulsars, neutron stars, magnetars, nebulæ, black/brown/red/white dwarves, yellow/red/blue main sequence stars & red/blue giants - and on top of this, most of the star types, plus black holes, can make up binary systems now (making the total of 51 system types now found in v0.74)

• Old star system types are automatically converted to their v0.74 equivalents to ensure backwards compatibility

• The stats on the bridge have been laid out better to account for longer system type names

• Binary systems also now orbit eachother slowly (they're no longer just 2 yellow circles sat next to eachother)

• Made the generation readout on the main menu disappear while generation takes place, so you can tell it actually did something

• Redesigned how asteroids generate so there is more land mass and they're a bit more useful now
  (Deliberately not touched gas giants as the original shard-like appearance from before suits the interior of a gas giant better in my opinion)
  

• Suns now have random corona bursts so they're a little more lively to look at (does not affect binary systems yet - I'll save that for a future update)

• Planets now show a thin surrounding atmosphere from the system view

Been a bit busy lately with some drastic positive shifts in lifestyle, so this update's a lot later than I had originally intended (I also wanted to pool all the cosmos-generation stuff into 1 update so it's less disruptive)

Am now off to play in the Zenith alpha for a week too

Have fun all

Update v0.73
Got her all fixed up for ya

• Shifted the system name from top right to top left on the cosmos overview (consistent with the system overview now)

• Highlighted the R key on the flashing transmission prompt at the top of the screen

• Added a prompt for when you try to collect from a body with no yards

• Provided a readout of some basic cosmos stats when generating a new cosmos on the main menu

• Ensured homeworlds are more populated (sometimes they'd generate with 0 visible cities which looked dumb - not game-breaking, just silly)

• Made build mode flash the building you have selected so you can more easily see what you're doing when creating colonies

• Made hailing pirates from the bridge actually work (I acknowledge there is still a bunch more to implement on the bridge - I'll get to it )

• Squished down the menus in the corners of the UI so less screenspace is taken up with text, leaving more room for the game (it was starting to look kinda ugly with all the blank lines between options)

• Fixed the "What you say" part of the intro sequence not displaying its image

• Fixed some poor grammar/layout in the credits

• Fixed the background shop interaction while typing in the Captain's log

• Fixed destroying buildings not giving any resources at all (this will be upgraded to a proper loot table later so they give you back more of the valuable resources spent building them - ensures mistakes are less devastating)

• Fixed cobwebs & dust showing in readyroom even when collectibles are present

• Fixed the camera sometimes losing the player when zooming into a new body (it just made for an ugly onscreen shuffle as it sought you)

• Fixed the rare artifact heading on the bar TV only showing for collecting the pirate flag (now works for all other collectibles)

Just some of the low-hanging fruit I found on a recent playthrough - more features and bigger improvements to come

I love it!

Just all of it :D!

The artstyle is right up my street - would totally play this !

Looks like Starmade - just don't do what they did and run out of ideas/players

I didn't even realise that was possible lol

I just recorded it on a headset mic with OBS into a .mkv then put it through a video editor to up the volume

Oo that's something I hadn't actually thought of.

In theory yea, it's possible - and for system↔cosmos too

I will have to investigate !

Fixed the videos :3

Update v0.72
Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed

• Redesigned the main menu and added a little section for acknowledgements

• Added a transition between views and locations in game

• Corrupted the database in pirate ports

• Added 5 superstructures (from left to right):
  
  • Verse portal
  • Particle accelerator
  • Terraformer
  • Energy funnel (currently doesn't do anything yet - this'll be expanded on in future updates)
  • Ship factory

• Hid the blueprints for these in the pirate port database

• Added lithrogen canisters to the wares for sale in Captain T's shop

• Balanced some pricing regarding lithrogen & juice

• Converted space stations in nebulæ with no neighbours to pirate ports (because having them just on black holes & worm holes would sometimes mean they were rare enough that you would never find one in your cosmos)

• Fixed some missing prompts on the UI

More importantly, as promised, I recorded a long-play video as well as a short demonstration for v0.72:

So is it Fells Wargo or Fell Wargo?

I think everybody will have to wait on that one

Plenty of other things I want to get in first (e.g. I'm more likely to figure out music on Linux before Startron on DOS)

I'll consider it as a for-fun project later on in this already-for-fun project

DOS compatibility!
The future!

• Zomg Startron for DOS released today :D!

• Now you too can enjoy Startron at home on only 3 high density 3½" floppy disks!

• Order yours today!

Please note the date

Don't tempt me lol

I have actually considered seeing if

I could get Startron to run in DOS

[@JobLeonard]

@JobLeonard
Aye obviously I was still trying to do Startron's own spin on a background planet (pun intended) without actually copying anyone too heavily - I'm sure if I'd played Civ4 it would have made it into the ole imaginarium and contributed some aspects to Startron somewhere

@vdapps
I never got on well with Communications, possibly because it just felt like a stopgap between Alpha & Delta and I knew things were about to go wrong (not to mention you can't please everyone with the comms they get you to send out at the end )

From what I remember of a brief glance at the code, the Doom1 code had floating point arithmetic in it although I suppose in theory you could do it without (maybe )

Vertical walls & horizontal floors definitely make it easier to make some kind of a 3D engine like that though (hence Startron doing so) - If I'd gone for full 3D polygons, I'd still be coding it trying to recreate Quake1 in ASCII to this day xD

Either way, the menu & planet parallax is literally just me moving objects around on screen in a convincing way - there's even some floating point arithmetic in there to get the planet to zoom in at the start - but no trigonometry, vectors or matrices anywhere

[@JobLeonard]

@JobLeonard
Hah, not quite, (Civ4 is another game I've never played )

I was going for this menu design in actuality:




@vdapps
I suppose it does look 3D yea. (There's actually 0 3D maths involved in this screen at all ) It's entirely unrelated to the Doom1-style polygon engine used in the space stations

Coming in v0.72!

A cookie to whomever figures out what game inspired the new menu screen

Aye, I could see that happening with Startron lol.

I do at least try to pool any cosmos generation stuff into single infrequent updates when it's necessary, just so the majority of version updates are providing new things to players without breaking everybody's saves.

That being said, it is worth mentioning that all Startron cosmoses are backwards compatible by design, so it does have that going for it. (This just means any newly generated features aren't accessible without re-generating or a twiddle.)