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- Feb 17, 2012
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Hello and welcome to StarMade,
This update features a upgrade to the core of the game, resulting in a huge performance boost.
Performance Upgrades
I've took some time to go back to the basics for a new special feature, that will soon come.
In the process of reiterating all the basic functions, I made some changes that have a huge impact on the performance of the game.
It's actually pretty rare, that people other than the one implementing it can see an actual increase in performance. But you will not only see it right away, it will make playing a lot more fun!
The game is now able to load a whole sector in seconds. Also a whole sector can now be displayed at once without any problems. Loading new segments (chunks) is now at least 10 times as fast, as it was before. The memory used is reduced to 20% from what it was before (which means, more stuff can be loaded). Also the memory, a sector needs on the graphics card has been halved, resulting in higher loading speed, as well as more segments, that can be displayed at once.
Demonstration of the performance for v0.079 - Indie DB
Other Changes & Bug Fixes
Sneak Preview
Here is a first look at a special feature that will come soon. Fully interactable, landable, and buildable planets:
This update features a upgrade to the core of the game, resulting in a huge performance boost.
Performance Upgrades
I've took some time to go back to the basics for a new special feature, that will soon come.
In the process of reiterating all the basic functions, I made some changes that have a huge impact on the performance of the game.
It's actually pretty rare, that people other than the one implementing it can see an actual increase in performance. But you will not only see it right away, it will make playing a lot more fun!
The game is now able to load a whole sector in seconds. Also a whole sector can now be displayed at once without any problems. Loading new segments (chunks) is now at least 10 times as fast, as it was before. The memory used is reduced to 20% from what it was before (which means, more stuff can be loaded). Also the memory, a sector needs on the graphics card has been halved, resulting in higher loading speed, as well as more segments, that can be displayed at once.
Demonstration of the performance for v0.079 - Indie DB
Other Changes & Bug Fixes
Fixed shooting from cockpit. The client and the server were aiming differently when players were in the cockpit, leading to misses
Characters are no longer able to move ships. You can no longer move ships and similar objects with your avatar. This also makes using gravity on ships a lot more stable (as you are not pressing the ship down anymore)
Fixed fps drop when targeting large objects: A significant drop of performance could be observed when targeting big objects like the death start. Because this drop was only caused by tinting the corsair green when targeting an object, I replaced the method used with a much lighter one.
Fixed missile damage and orphan segments on client: If a missile shot deleted the last cube in a segment, these blocks remained solid on the client, but not the server and were therefore indestructible, and were also causing physics bugs.
Missiles now hit multiple targets: When multiple structure are near a missile explosion, everyone will now take damage depending on how close they are. This also includes the one, that fired the missile, so don't shoot missiles at point blank.
Fixed ship exit when hit by missile: The player will no longer be forced out of the ship, when the core is affected by a missile explosion (but still intact)
Transparent materials like glass didn't calculate any lighting and was optimizing away sides of adjacent blocks, when it should be treated like air when it comes to lighting.
Blocks with orientation were displayed in the wrong way. The sides didn't face where they should.
Orientation is now relative to the camera. For example if you press shift+forward when seeing the right side of the ship, the block orientation will be pointing to the left.
The fixed camera build-mode (activate by pressing left control in build mode) is now 100% accurate to the mouse cursor's position.
When holding the left mouse button in fixed camera build-mode, multi block placement mode will activate. This means that you can rapidly place blocks while holding the mouse button. The placement is restricted to a 2 dimensional plane defined by a restriction of the dimension you last build on (sorry, I can't explain it very good)
Example: you have a big plane, if you press and hold the left mouse button with pushing left control, you will be able to draw on the plane with new blocks. You can however only add blocks, that are directly above the initial plane. Trying it out for yourself is probably the best method to explain, since it's actually pretty simple (but hard to explain).
Sneak Preview
Here is a first look at a special feature that will come soon. Fully interactable, landable, and buildable planets:
