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[vdapps]

Maybe you can declare that Startron is taking place already in another Universe. ASCII Universe. Btw, if our Universe is infinite, or there are infinite number of universes, then Startron Universe is somewhere there.

[Rogod]

@JobLeonard
You meant the card table right?

@vdapps
Oh yea there's a bunch of unwritten lore behind it all lol

This cosmos is not meant to be in any way related to our own :D

(There is actually a hint of this in something one of the bar patrons says )

[Rogod]

Update v0.63
Just tidying up

• Updated the readme (yawn)

• Added a few new patron dialogs relating to spacejack (nothing too useful don't worry )

• Updated the wormhole effect to resemble the new swirly galaxy effect

• Fixed some navigation derps in the space station bar menu

• Fixed the galaxy background in the cosmos overview gradually disappearing the closer it gets to a full revolution

• Fixed the galaxy background in the cosmos overview not continuing to rotate while you're in a system or an entity (maybe I'll make it save the rotation for continuity's sake later)

• Fixed tytopops instantly burrowing upon spawning

• Fixed tytopops being able to withstand the juice extraction process and carry on after apparently being squished (ghost-bugs )

• Fixed being able to push resources off the edge of entities and sometimes around to the far side with conveyors

There are cooler things to come next year; I'm just restricted to a laptop for the Xmas period

[JobLeonard]

Swirly swirly swirl

> There are cooler things to come next year; I'm just restricted to a laptop for the Xmas period

Don't forget to give yourself a proper Christmas break!

[Rogod]

Aye this'll be the last update for a few days at least

[Rogod]

Update v0.64
Reporting live from Cattus major

• News headlines are now displayed on the TV in the bar when the player does certain things (this'll be expanded as more events are added to the game)

• Made sure the news channel detects headline tampering so you can't just type a your-mum joke in the save file and have that broadcast all over the cosmos

• Offset the stars in each system so it doesn't look like you're in the same place in space each time you enter one

• Saved the spin state of the galaxy so you don't come back to the game after 12hrs and find the galaxy doesn't look as you remember it

I could have put more into this update but I was conscious my updates were getting a bit long and wanted to return to the almost-daily incremental updates I'd been posting before

[JobLeonard]

> News headlines are now displayed on the TV in the bar when the player does certain things (this'll be expanded as more events are added to the game)

Tangentially: I love the idea of a living, breathing world where stuff happens in the background. Like, what if the news actually represents things that change regardless of what the player does (price changes, political changes, whatever)

[Rogod]

Hehe, that is actually the plan, yes

I just don't have any asynchronous events yet - but they're on the way

[Rogod]

Update v0.65
We dug too deep

• Combined all the code for drawing the background stars and system-centres from the perspective of an entity you're orbiting, the bridge, the readyroom or a space station into a reusable blob (saves a few tens of lines of duplication). But more importantly, in doing this, I made it scale the system centre depending on how far you are from it whether orbiting an entity or viewing from a window (it caps out at a max size for performance reasons and a min size so you can still see it )

• A worrying event now occurs after a certain number of systems are visited and is reported on the news (not giving too much away yet as this'll reveal more storyline & features in future updates)

• Removed 2 redundant headlines (discover wormhole & discover blackhole) from the last version because they don't really make sense for how the cosmos overview works and would end up overwriting more important headlines by accident (like the new one listed above^)

• Fixed the bridge still showing what's on the surface of the last entity you orbited after having left it

• Fixed single-character entities like pirates and space stations drawing on a black background when over another entity

• Fixed not being able to see the previously-green entity names on green gas giants

Another small update, but I miss the frequent updates of mid-2020 so am hoping to keep this trend going & will likely have another one soon

Oh and on the note of asynchronous events: there are actually 3 ways your ship can break down over time and tytopop hives spawn on planets after some time - these are just not news-worthy events lol

[JobLeonard]

It's nice to see you be so productive (as long as you don't push yourself too much) 

[Rogod]

Am just conscious I go back to work (more programming) next week so am taking advantage of the free time to indulge in the ol' long-running hobby

I used to code for 12hrs a day back when I was an aspiring teenager; I don't seem to have a burnt-out state

[Rogod]

Update v0.66
Picking up an increase in neutrino emissions

• Added a little static transition to transmission portraits when scrolling through transmissions (helps it feel that bit more sci-fi and reactive)

• Added an edge case message for when only one wormhole exists in the cosmos and the player tries to use it

• Added a groovy wormhole transition (previously it was just instant)

• Significantly nerfed the cosmos movement speed between systems so that things like using wormholes are actually useful (upholding the philosophy "distance matters").
  Already it feels more fun to explore when testing now.

• Added generation of Lintorian and Beeboop homeworlds to discover (their functionality will be determined in a later update)

• Fixed having to watch the ship traverse the cosmos to the new system at normal speed when a wormhole is used (derp)

• Fixed being able to queue up movements in the cosmos screen (this got really annoying with the new movement nerf as it meant you'd just be stuck waiting to turn around when you'd made a mistake)

[Rogod]

Just some stuff I've been working on lately :D - Not for public consumption yet

• You can hopefully see where I'm going with this (Making an effort to include more sci-fi gameplay beyond the formulaic colony construction)

[JobLeonard]

Looks like you went and added some Star Control to this game, no?

[Rogod]

Never heard of Star Control :D

This was just me thinking of bits the game is missing to make an immersive space experience

[JobLeonard]

Are you being ironic, or have you never heard of Star Control 2, a critically acclaimed game that has been hailed as one of the greatest games ever made? It's got like, it's own Wiki Page and everything:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Control_II

Also, a completely free cross-platform port exists:

http://sc2.sourceforge.net/

It still holds up very well!

[Rogod]

Unfortunately it falls into the category of being called "Star {something}" or "Space {something}" so it goes somewhat under the radar for me. It's also a little before my time, so I've had no exposure to it personally

That being said, it's totally the era of space-game I'm going for with Startron though :D

[Rogod]

More stuff I've been working on :D - Also not for public consumption yet

• I'm hoping to replace the static space-station-and-menu screens with simple forward/backward navigation around the interior of a torus with the various shops it can turn to at the side

• Don't worry, I'm not making Startronstein 3D or something daft like that; this is merely one of those old 90s gimmicks they used on me in games as a kid xD

• (This isn't raytracing, that's too easy lol - this is polygons with a depth buffer using the subpixel ASCII rendering already in use on entities in the system view etc.)

• If this works well for the space stations I may use it for ship interiors and building interiors on planets etc. (Or possibly even the exterior view of space stations from your ship) - we'll see

• You can probably see why there hasn't been an update in a while (Also I've had a super busy start to the year training a junior dev at work and making all their high-flying new-year concepts come alive xD)

[JobLeonard]

 

[Rogod]

One alpha buffer later (Still not for public consumption yet )

• I could add proper floor texturing but that seems a little overkill for what is essentially a glorified menu

• Proof it's just text, and it works on Linux just as well

• Things are gradually coming together on this but I don't want to release anything til it's an actual feature (I've still got more interactions to code for the new bridge stuff, so I guess the next update will be a biggie)