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With so much happening how can we not have a dev blog! For those unawares, you can check out some of what's on the horizon on our public roadmap. Well where to start as so much has happened? Let's kick things off by running through the recent news.
v0.19282 : Putting more fun into battles. Also, boarding!
So the HP update finally came out. Now there's a system that took a lot of number crunching behind the scenes. As always there's a bit more balancing that happens but on the whole it seems to be received really well, with us hearing a lot of positive feedback. We also saw in this update the center-of-mass be introduced, with the temporary move to have missiles target the center-of-mass. And of course, everyone decided to build donut ships to completely avoid missiles. Have to hand it to the community to highlight a problem in the most creative and tasty (om nom nom) way possible.
We also saw the start of boarding. I'm excited for the possibilities for boarding and about finding ways to make it a more viable option for players.
v0.19318 : New explosions, tools and bug fixes
So the second release came out with some more system updates, this time to the way explosions are calculated. Now you no longer automatically die if you're hiding behind a wall. It also reduces the damage done by missiles as well, typically half the damaging explosion propagates outwards into space without hitting anything. This plus the HP system plus upgrades to the way AI moves and targets means that missiles are no longer the default go-to weapon if you want to out-gun your rival. This should mean we see more thought out weaponry, longer battles, and more interesting engagements between you and your opponents.
There was also some updates to a couple other things, such as some textures and moving the missile targeting away from the center-of-mass to now target critical ship systems.
Music Submissions
Over the past month we've seen a number of music submissions come in for the game, with people showcasing who they are, some of what they've made and what they can offer. It's definitely been an interesting and enjoyable experience listening through to the variety of styles and interpretations of what music and sound effects could be in StarMade. Submissions are now closed and Duke will be replying to your submission emails if he hasn't done so already (there's quite a few to get through). Thank you to everyone who took the time to put together some music to submit, we love that your passionate about the game, same as us.
Council Applications Open
If you didn't catch the announcement, we're drawing our first term to a close, it's been a crazy first term, I still remember day 1 that the council members started and how they just jumped straight into it trying to work out the best way to actually coordinate the interactions between each other. I think they've done a great job, and look forward to this next term of council members running from where this inaugural council left off.
So if you think you have the chops to be on the council, applications are currently open. You can apply here. If you're unsure what the council is all about you can click here to find out.
Combining Old and New
You may have noticed that StarMade Dock was down briefly during the weekend. Duke has been working obsessively on getting the old site content moved over, and finally we were able to do that. So if you were a member on the old site you will have all your old posts back, as well as your actual registration date you first joined, making the Legacy badges a lot more accurate. You can find all the old content in a sub-forum called archive for now, we may in the future merge everything all together.
Looking for another Web Developer
To keep up with all we're doing, we need to expand the team here at Schine. We all have day jobs outside of StarMade so to keep up the momentum we have to expand, as there's only so many hours we can all give. So we're looking to add a new web developer to our team. We're hoping there's someone already in the community that's passionate about the game, hence us posting here about it first. You can find out all the details about it here.
So what's on the horizon?
If you keep an eye on the roadmap you can see what's planned and what's in progress, and if you have been there recently you will have noticed something has moved from one to the other. Gamel seemed to be the first to spot it and make a video about it from what I could see, so lucky him he gets to have his video posted here.
So yes the Flashlight is no longer just a dream, it's on its way to become a reality. It's still in its infancy but we're definitely excited to see how much darker derelict stations will become, where players rely heavily on the flashlight. Just watch out because who knows what might jump out at you because...
Fauna is also in progress and I cannot wait! The modelling and art guys have been working hard on the fauna update for quite a while now and it even surprised me how amazing things seemed to have turned out.
Expect that schema will add in a random feature or two that no one expects, even the rest of the dev team, always keeping everyone on their toes.
Things have sped up a little bit, so remember if you have an issue and need support to post in the game support forum and Andy and the team will try to help you as best they can.
Look forward to some cool things to help connect you as players with the community a bit more and thanks for playing Starmade.
Until next time.
- Bench
