Week 51 (December 14th – 18th)

Hello everyone! Starbase development will be quieting down for the holidays, so the progress notes will be taking a break until January 11th, 2021. See you then!

Please note that the “Progress Notes” are different from the Starbase Alpha “Patch Notes”. Progress Notes are snippets from the development team and what has been worked on during the previous week, and many of the features might not be present in the current or upcoming builds of the Closed Alpha. Some features, especially in the design portion, can be subject to change as the development continues.

Design

Features

• Old Robur station has been removed from the universe
• Charodium ore consumption has been fixed for refined material (now identical with other ores)
• Crafting data for Laser Cannon Ammo Structure (mirrored version) has been fixed: it now uses Arkanium insted of Xhalium

Spaceships

• Santa’s Little Helper Bots have replaced Vasama in Sunny Ship Center with “The Sled”.
• Swine has been removed from Rando 3 temporarily due to issues
• Ship shops have been added to Robur station
• Refuel stations have been added to Robur station

Other

• Resurrection Machine has been changed to Reconstruction Machine

Code

Gameplay

• Fuel rods should no longer break when attached to structures without bolts.
• Auto-bolting has been patched to work with angled beams (also for corner-shaped attachment plates now)

User Interface

• A bug with ores not being stackable has been fixed
• Mining job tutorial can now be completed in all mining job instances
• An issue where auto-bolting/unbolting got stuck when switching tools or grabbing an object while unbolting has been fixed
• An issue where auto-unbolting removed weld bolts has been fixed
• An issue where auto-unbolting certain object caused other objects around it get unbolted has been fixed

Audio

• Ship mass support has been added to structural collisions (equivalent to how asteroid collision sounds are handled)
• Distance information to nearest planet has been fixed

Art

Animations and Emotes

• 1st person weapons/tools now have animations when firing an empty gun
• 3rd person animations improved in mid-air events (either due to jumping or falling)
• Emote_yes_fps was removed and changed into /thumbs
• Rummage animations have been polished (1st person)

Weapons and Effects

• ‘Afterburn’ FX refined and recolored in Mounted Plasma Hits: the spawning and scaling rates over distance have been optimized
• ‘Afterburn’ FX added to Mounted Laser Hits: optimized the spawning and scaling rates over distance
• ‘Afterburn’ FX added to Mounted Railgun Hits: optimized the spawning and scaling rates over distance
• Propellant explosion FX Updated to better match explosive damage area – also added more dissipation to reduce ‘clumping’ on slower moving explosions
• New effect created for the large propellant container
• Fuel Rod explosion FX updated to better match explosive damage area – also added more dissipation to reduce ‘clumping’ on slower moving explosions
• Tractor Beam FX updated to be more ‘stream like’ and notably different to Resource Bridge
• Some of the reticles have been fixed due to them not being visible enough against darker backgrounds – reticle effects have been improved

Other

• Some adjustments have been made to auto exposure (less dramatic change from dark to bright)
• Devices: ammunition storage crate has been added
• Lighting and holograms added to: Balestra ship shop, Argentavian Federation ship shop, Kbot ship shop
• Reconstruction Machine was cut into 4 smaller pieces that can be carried. Inventory icons have been created for the pieces
• UI icons created for buttons in the top bar in SSC:
  • New icons: asset browser, toolbox, tool options, multi-user undo system, materials, scene view, properties, YOLOL script editor, building budget, paint colors, material cost
  • Sharper versions of existing icons: LOD viewer, create, attach, detach, show spaceship orientation

Gallery of the week

Videos

Don’t forget to join our official Starbase Forums and Starbase Discord for Starbase-related discussion and content!

See you next week! 🚀