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A new update has been released for Star Explorers. You can find all the Game Update details below. Star Explorers is available for all platforms. The file size may vary depending on the platform.
Okay so here is what’s going on …
A guy posted a Youtube video about Star Explorers a while ago.
The video reached a lot of people and so, despite my best efforts, people are still playing Star Explorers!
This means, invariably, that they will find more bugs. And this, obviously, means I will feel compelled to fix them.
I wish one day I could work on Star Explorers as a full time gig, but that is unfortunately not possible right now. So I am taking the following approach:
- I will be working on it during weekends
- I will keep all changes in the testing branch for now, until I am thoroughly satisfied that it is better and more stable than the default branch
- Once that happens I will release it as version 6.0
So if you want to try out the latest changes (and don’t think that I am asking anyone to do this) you can do so by selecting “Star Explorers > Properties > Betas”
Once you are on the Betas tab, enter “rocketship1234” in the password field, and select the “testing – External Testing” branch.
What’s New?
So I have actually made some significant changes to the star chart and saving/loading functionality already. Actually I did most of this work last year, but lost interest in it and decided not to have it go into the game. This weekend was spent taking that old script and incorporating it into the latest version of the game
Star Chart:
The star chart and in fact the whole way the game generates and saves the galaxy have been completely overhauled. The hope is to completely re-write the star database so that several long standing bugs can finally be squished.
The new star chart works differently than the old one. Here are the major differences:
- As you scan stars and sectors, they will appear on the chart (like before) but you no longer need to click on a sector in order to view its stars. All stars will be visible on the star chart, regardless of what sector you are in.
- Clicking on a star will automatically cause any scanned planets to appear. Unlike stars, only planets of the currently selected star will be shown.
- You can now choose to locate a star that has been selected in the star chart. This will cause your ship to face that star once you return to the helm. This used to happen automatically, but it is now presented as an option, i.e. you don’t have to face it
- You can now choose to warp to stars from the star chart***
*** Okay, this is still very buggy, I would suggest not using it yet.
If I am correct this should solve the problem where planets were not being recognized properly by the star chart. It has yet to be thoroughly tested, so it may generate new errors of its own.
I have not tested this new star chart and save/load function when trying to go through the main quest yet either. I don’t think the new system will recognize finding Acknexium crystals yet. It may also have issues when trying to enter caves, because I had a crash when entering a cave (though that could have been totally unrelated).
In other words, try this at your own risk. It will not work with previously saved games either.
Next week I plan to address the known issues:
- Warping from the star chart works, but if you select anything while warping it will create a bit of a mess.
- Possible bug when loading caves
- Getting the game to recognize when the player finds Acknexium (it might work, but have not tested yet)
Source: Steam
