Release noteshere. Reminder: to play the beta, you MUST go into your Steam properties for the game, go under the Betas tab, and choose the "current_beta" option. Otherwise you're going to be stuck on the pre-fleets version of the game. If you don't know what I'm talking about regarding fleets, then reading this link is a really good thing to do or you are likely to be mighty confused. So what's new in this build? This is obviously an incremental one, headed towards the non-beta full release of 0.900 that we're aiming at in the next... weeks? That timeframe is unclear, and will be based on testing feedback, which has been rolling in well so far; but there will be loads of incremental beta releases during this period. Anyway, what's new:

• Wow this one was a detour, in the main. If any build is likely to break for you in some crazy way, it's this one. We upgraded unity, and our methods for drawing text, and how dropdowns work, and how the network code (which is used even in single player in a loopback fashion) hooks in... and a whole bunch of other stuff. How we compile, and what we compile against. What the post-processing stack is.
• This was all stuff that needed to happen sooner than later, because there are a plethora of bugfixes in unity and in the textmeshpro asset that we use for text that really make life nicer in general, but this is part of why we did this during the beta period. Also folks were complaining about the fonts a lot, so they're wholly new. There are little issues all over the place with things that could be a slightly better size or slightly more clear, though, I feel like.
• I'm going to be out until sometime on Sunday, and then back fully on Monday. So if you have a big problem in this build that doesn't let you go further, then please just roll back to the prior one in the manner described below (the most_recent_stable thing).
• That said, it's seeming pretty darn good in the main, and I wanted folks to be able to bang on this some while I'm off, so here we are.
• But that's not remotely all!
• WeaponMaster has been making some of the individual-ship AI smarter in various ways.
• Badger has been making some of the threatfleet AI smarter in various ways.
• A handful of quality of life improvements and bugfixes have been added.
• Puffin has been making the balance way more pleasant when it comes to techs, in terms of some things being cheaper and some things being costlier.
• Overall there was quite a bit of refinement, even aside from the big unity upgrade.
• That periodic stutter (which was caused by "garbage collection") should now be gone thanks to a new feature in unity to do incremental garbage collection, so hence the name of this release. We've been asking them for a proper generational garbage collector since literally 2010, and this is at the very least a step in the right direction (and they claim that their R&D folks found this performed better than generational GC in most cases, so... okay, I guess). Anyway it's something we're really happy to finally see!
• Two known issues:
• 1. In the bottom right corner of the main menu, it says you're not logged into Steam even though you are, and also if you are logged into Steam the backdrop for the main menu might be just stars instead of the usual colorful thing with ships flying by. We'll be upgrading our Steam integration dlls next build, which should fix that. Hopefully it causes no other issues.
• 2. The intra-galactic coordinators for turrets and strikecraft do who-knows-what (maybe nothing?) right now. We wanted to get this build out asap, since it's beta anyway.

More to come soon. Enjoy! Problem With The Latest Build? If you right-click the game in Steam and choose properties, then go to the Betas tab of the window that pops up, you'll see a variety of options. You can always choosemost_recent_stable from that build to get what is essentially one-build-back. Or two builds back if the last build had a known problem, etc. Essentially it's a way to keep yourself off the very bleeding edge of updates, if you so desire. The Usual Reminders Quick reminder of ournew SteamDeveloper Page. If you follow us there, you'll be notified about any game releases we do. Also:Would you mind leaving a Steam review for some/any of our games? It doesn't have to be much more detailed than a thumbs up, but if you like a game we made and want more people to find it, that's how you make it happen. Reviews make a material difference, and like most indies, we could really use the support. Enjoy! Chris

[ 2019-04-26 23:40:56 CET ] [ Original post ]