It is increasingly necessary on a project like this though to ensure people can start playing but still accept updates without having to start again

Yea whenever I see a TIG dev log thread relating in any way to "space", I always go and check for cross-over with Startron lest I clash with anybody (I think we're safe for now lol)

Actually no, this was the first update where I've introduced what I like to call a "twiddle". (Which I am defining as any change to the game's generation rules which will apply backwards to previously generated cosmos files.)

So in this case when one generated the cosmos in any version before v0.71, systems would generate at set positions. Then when rendering the cosmos overview in game, those positions were being multiplied by 4 horizontally and 2 vertically which resulted in this juddery movement since the ship's position is an integer and was having to be multiplied by the same amounts to be in phase with the systems it flew between. In v0.71, the generation code was updated to have this multiplication already applied for newly generated cosmoses (cosmi?) while the v0.71 twiddle will detect if an existing cosmos file from before v0.71 is being loaded and multiply all the system's X & Y positions by 4 and 2 respectively (the multiplication was also removed this from the cosmos render methods).

This is the kind of thing I'll have to do more of moving forward (this is why Startron started storing the version in the cosmos file a while back) as it's unfair to expect people to re-generate their cosmos every time a new generation rule is introduced. Obviously I can't do this all the time (Minecraft doesn't for example) but for a simple numerical transform like this, the effort was justified.

Update v0.71
That's a bit smoother

• Fixed the juddery movement in the cosmos (I basically spread the position data out a bit better when it generates the systems (this will be updated for anyone's cosmos files before v0.71))

• Disabled the console's close button in the top right so people don't accidentally close the window and expect Startron to save

• Fixed some wording errors in the bar patron chatter and the story transmissions

• Fixed not being able to beam stuff from the cargo bay to gas giants

• Fixed seeing a bunch of prompts for beaming, collecting, deconstructing or mining in inappropriate places (like on the Cattus homeworld)

• Fixed being able to spam yourself with transmissions by holding down the deconstruct button on space stations

• Added a missing control label for flipping which side of a planet or moon you're looking at - I could have sworn I added this like a billion years ago but this feature has probably gone unnoticed by everybody since very early on because there's been nothing to suggest you can just press F to see the far side

• Added cobwebs to the readyroom if no collectables have been found yet (this is just to have something present in the room so you aren't left wondering what the little blue flashing triangle does)

• Added obfuscation to the player data in the first part of the cosmos file - this is not fool proof as it's just a 1:1 character replacement cypher (and can be turned off with startron.cfg) but it removes temptation to just go and modify your chits to be 999999 (I've avoided obfuscating the system & entity data because this is quite a lot larger and would just slow the save/load process down unnecessarily - I may add an option for it later if it becomes an issue)

Believe it or not v0.70 was the first version I actually sat down to play as if it was a game I'd never seen before so I decided I'd boot up Startron on Linux and see what happened. A good thing too, because I found all these bugs and, at the same time, assured myself that the Linux version does in fact play the same as the Windows version (I was just under the impression it ran slower or something was amiss but nope )

New features are planned for the next version but I wanted to get these bugs fixed and start from a solid position. (Obfuscation was something I had wanted to add since very early on and kept putting it off too, so that's a hurdle out the way.)

Making 2 new videos and compiling the behind-the-scenes content is still on my to do list as well - this may all happen along with v0.72 if things go well

[EDIT:]

Hah, I had actually given some thought to the versioning as I inch closer to 100 releases:
Basically, because it's not really one of those games that has a complete-state (that is to say, I am not aiming for a goalpost here, just iterating on the whole so that each version is better than the last with no need for sequels and addons) it'll probably do something like Minecraft did where it gets a v1.00 release but then carries on after that point anyway. (Alternatively, v0.100 and upwards.)

I'm glad the little things are shining through. I generally feel they are the important things in the games I play and the things that keep me coming back or becoming invested in a game's lore & universe, so Startron is almost a project to see how many little things I can put into a game, and how many ideas I can just think up and then implement.

(Not sure what oscillating rings you're referring to in the solar systems though, or do you mean the little particles of dust coming off of things n swirling around the sun in the middle?)

There are definitely a lot of games that Startron clearly borrows common elements from but part of what I'm going for is to make it as much my own thing as possible then that way I'm not restricted to some kind of template or expected formula (another reason it's in ASCII and not just a standard 2D/3D space game). Basically if there's something I think would be a cool feature in a particular location, I'm gonna add it, and if that happens to be something another game did or something no game's ever done, so be it - Startron is already fairly unique I feel and hopefully will continue to be so by virtue of this method.

That being said, it does amuse me when you guys find games Startron is similar to, because odds are, I haven't actually played those games - Haven't played King's Quest for example (or Star Control for that matter)

EDIT:
I may compile some kind of a behind-the-scenes package/application/pdf/video for Startron if people are interested because I can fairly easily point at the inspiration for most features of the game (for example, each of the collectibles in the ready-room is essentially a nod to something, including the ready-room itself) and there are at least 20 pages of hand-written notes and diagrams from the development process which I'm sure someone would find entertaining. (Not to mention there is a huge list of past implemented features (~400) and future ones (~100) to outline somewhere as well.)

:D

Yea I am planning to do maybe a couple of new videos since the last (meaningful) one was from v0.40 and things have come on a bit since then. I'll probably do a quick overview/instructional one and then maybe a longer play-through similar to the last one.

Definitely glad to hear Startron is working on various people's machines and everybody's having fun with the overly complicated gameplay lol

Update v0.70
So atmospheric

• Added atmospheres to planets (Startron's been claiming this whole time that there's oxorine surrounding the planets with only clouds to hint at it until now)

• Added configuration for positioning the game's window on startup and also updated the README and support page to better guide somebody trying to install Startron

• Added a new surface structure (resonating crystal) which doesn't do anything yet (it'll be used for super-structures in a future update)

• Decoupled the camera from the ship in body view so you can move the ship around and the camera will start following if it gets too far away from the centre - This should make moving around and building stuff a little less jarring on the eyes as you manoeuvre the ship

• Fixed not being able to place monorails between asteroids

Just a small update while I get other things sorted

Right ok, that makes sense. I've seen some evidence of this when dragging it between monitors myself but I tend not to do that often while developing and assumed it was just the resolution on my smaller screen. So if you're saying you get the same thing I'll add it to my list of things to look into as there could be something I can do (perhaps some kind of window refresh or monitor/window-position configuration to mitigate these issues).

As for gameplay, the controls are largely inspired by Dwarf Fortress, where common actions are assigned keys which can become muscle memory over time. For what you're trying to do, your best bet is to follow the instructions on the transmissions you're getting at the top (press R to see them). But if in doubt, always check the boxes in the 4 corners of the screen as they'll show what actions are available from that perspective.

If you get stuck, you could take a look at the gameplay video I shot for v0.40 a while ago:



Most of this is still accurate although there's a lot more in the game these days.

Ah ok, that's a new one on me.

I believe this is caused by Windows zooming in the contents of the windows or upping the font size so text isn't tiny on a large resolution.

I would recommend right clicking the top bar on Startron and going to properties then turning the font size down until it can fit in the window again.

Alternatively, you can try making a startron.cfg file next to the executable with

Code:

squished: on

inside it which will reduce the screen from 120x60 to 120x50 (it's still just as playable, but works better on shorter screens).

I may include some other parameters for adjusting the starting position of the window for that console file if this proves to be an issue.



Also you'll basically always be using the I key to zoom into things, or the O key to zoom out from things (then the L key to leave things like menus and rooms) - Let me know if you get the screen size fixed - I'm intrigued to know the results.

Ah you actually need the x64 console app runtime for .Net further down the page:


Curiously I actually just noticed there is a difference earlier today and intend to update the readme & support section of the website accordingly.

Let me know if you have any other problems.

If you're using Unity, you should be able to translate the whole particle system in XYZ in the opposite direction to the fake-movement of the ship and this'll move all particles within it as long as they aren't set to world-oriented mode.

Alternatively, don't use the built in particle system at all - that way you've got more control over the individual sprites and can put them when and where you want, then have access to move them after the fact too (like when the ship changes direction/velocity).

An RTS for Android works for me, show us more.

I wish the app stores had more original game genres available rather than all the microtransactions, time-passage games & clickers.

Heh, while I wasn't stunned by the presentation choice (not a fan of sepia tones) I gave it a go and it was kinda fun anyway (cute music).

However, I feel the environments need a little more variety as each island looked practically the same as the others.

Also I believe I found a bug where if you're in the process of transitioning from 1 screen to another, and click again in the same area, it'll jump you forward to the following screen as if your character had walked that far. (Unless you intended this as a kind of fast-travel solution which is fair - figured I should tell you anyway )

Oh no, not a delinquent triangle!

Sounds cool so far though, show us more :D

So firstly, I love the concept. I am a big fan of bizarre space-oriented adventures and fantasy in space beyond the traditional sci-fi that gets redone over and over.

As for your technical problem with the stars: I would suggest just using the skysphere of stars only as a background and having other stars (as particles) fade in around you and whiz past as you move. So the faster you go, the more particles appear and stay in place as you move past them (make their image identical to the stars on the skysphere if you like), and the slower you go, the fewer star particles there are until you stop and then you're left with only the skysphere again as a backdrop. (This is how other games achieve the effect as far as I'm aware and avoids your background-snapping issue of moving skyspheres around.)

If you're looking for input into the game, I'd want to see something like different kinds of tomatoes, or enhanced versions (maybe different alien colours) as you progress to different planets. (Maybe they can give you some kind of weird effect that acts as a barrier of entry to the next frontier beyond just the adjacent suns & planets.)

I liked how the sunflower concept sounded too, it would be great to see some pictures of that to grasp what's really going on. (Maybe make a few gifs showing the core game concept so it can be more easily digested in your post.) (Also maybe explain what the UI is telling us as well.)

Looks like a good start though, have fun

Yea I'm usually the one at work saying "Let's just continue using what we've got - there's nothing wrong with it" (knowing full well the amount of time spent on upgrading tech, only to find there's another thing to upgrade when you're done and no work ever gets done )

:D

Sadly Startron is entirely coded in C# with just a few DLL calls to make the magic console stuff for Windows+Linux happen.

I think I'm a little too far down that rabbit hole to start unpicking it now anyway.

The only parts I haven't got under control are: Sound in Linux, and a MacOS build - everything else seems to be working just fine with respect to typed input, ASCII, colour & whole-screen updates.

Update v0.69
Where we're going, we don't need roads !

• Added monorails which can carry workers a greater distance than roads

• Animated roads, monorails and conduits so you can actually tell what is happening (also helps to make a functioning colony look inhabited )

• Animated hives and tytopops so they look alive too(This also happens to be showing a tytopop juicing machine just for the lolz )

• Made it so that ramming and evading from the bridge actually look like something's happening

• Added some more bar patron chatter

• Tweaked nitygen gas and potanium ore to be distinguishable from one another on purple planets

• Fixed the addon shop being 1 square too short so it looked all cramped & stoopid

• Squashed some tech debt and refactored a fairly core mechanism to be safer and slicker throughout the program

Heh, I was planning on just having a 3D view from various buildings you create first - no redshirts will be harmed for a while yet

[@JobLeonard]

@JobLeonard
I did think about making navigation around your own ship use the same perspective, but as yet I have no plans to be able to board other vessels. Beaming down to planets, though, is far more in the direction I wanted to take the project, especially now I realise I want to add more planet-surface content anyway.

@vdapps
Abandoned stations isn't something I'd considered yet - I'll add it to the ideas bucket.
The trouble with any kind of gameplay that involves shooting or any realtime interactions is that the control scheme is restricted to being single-key typed input rather than multiple realtime keys (so I can't just go make Doom or something). The closest viable option is to make some kind of turn-based crawler. We'll see what I come up with.