Dev Update August 20th 2017

    schema

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    Greeting citizens,


    Just a quick update on the current progress: Due to all the work in the previous months, the power update implementation is going fairly swiftly. The basic mechanics are in. There are still a few things missing, especially in terms of effects, GUI and usability, but it’s coming along pretty nicely. Then, we will do some preliminary testing as well as writing some test configurations, since the whole system is based on a new config and effect environment. All values of the new system will of course also be user-customizable.

    Expect a first prototype dev build in ~2-3 weeks.


    As promised, the first versions of this system will be able to run alongside the old system. For testing purposes, only ships that have a new main reactor block will switch to the new system.


    Thanks for playing StarMade,

    ~ The Schine Team
     
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    Very nice. I'm glad that there will be opportunities for parallel comparison of the systems. Should make systems conversions easier for builders.
     

    Valiant70

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    For testing purposes, only ships that have a new main reactor block will switch to the new system.
    Ah, I like that. It'll make the transition easier on servers and make more sense on our RP server as we make the switch.

    At this point everything is scaled linearly, which will be good to start with. I have some ideas for diminishing returns with mass and separately-balanced capship systems. I'll post a suggestion thread later once I think it through some more. Diminishing returns had problems in the past, but that shouldn't preclude investigating and testing them again.
     
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    Great progress update, glad to see all of the framework that was implemented is coming to fruition! Keep up the great work!
     
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    Hello, I'm very worried, I do not want to be unpleasant but objectively I have a hard time understanding how you plan to move to the next development stage while the current version is particularly unstable. The previous steps were to correct the many bugs, some have been corrected certainly but to the detriment of many others. So of course you will say, I should go to report them on phabricator, unfortunately this is not obvious at all because this instability is incomprehensible, therefore makes it difficult to identify problems in a coherent and objective way. And then I thought especially that the developers also took a little holiday which is still legitimate after the work they provided.
    I could describe some of the problems I encountered, but I guess it's not the subject here, I'm still open to talk about it if asked, but I'm convinced that the current version v0.199.651 has to be corrected in Any priority before considering anything else, even if it means waiting a little more for the energy upgrade.
    When you talk about test phase what seems wise before publishing a version, I wonder under what conditions are carried out these tests because there are many possible scenarios, er ... many? What did I say ? They are infinite so there it appears obviously that the tests carried out not answered contingencies and reflect only a certain category of servers, yet I am not the only one to suffer from these inconveniences, do not tell me that I am The only one to encounter these difficulties because that is not what I found when walking about a lot of waiters. Something I would have missed? In this case there is a communication problem, where to find the information to mitigate this?
    Thank you very much.
     
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    Nice job, can't wait. But I would rather have the dev build up for testing earlier due to the size and importance of this update.
     

    Groovrider

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    Apparently you can buy popcorn in bulk over the Internet as well as flame resistant keyboards for the devs (they're on their way, my treat;)). I've booked time off and downloaded an app that lets me tell the actual temperature of a forum in degrees kelvin.

    Bring it.
     
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    Looks like things are really progressing. Since the Power Overhaul is the big project at the moment (as a part of the overall Universe Overhaul), it's good to see that it's making strides and will be ready for testing in the near future.

    Gonna be nice to have a large reactor in an actual block shape and walking space around it.
     

    schema

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    Toshiro As mentioned in the previous blog post, we are not a big dev team and don't really have that many testers. Therefore we partly rely on the pre-build phase to identify bugs. Unfortunately, only a small amount of players is trying out the pre builds, which means there can be a lot that is missed. In terms of bugs, the most work to fix a bug is to identify it, which means someone reporting a reproducible way to cause the bug on phabricator. Even if you can't reliably reproduce them, saving and reporting the logs with a description of what happened already helps a lot. We are looking into possibly doing a small release in between to fix some things, but we need to know what the issues are and how to reproduce them.