Starbase Progress Notes: Week 50

[ElluFB]

Starbase Progress Notes: Week 50
I hope December is treating you all well. We still have people working on Starbase before their winter holidays, so let's get on with the latest progress notes, enjoy!
December 9th - 13th

Design

Features

• New test entities added to a cargo beam test map, the beam power consumption tested again
• Object rotations in carry mode tested, axis lock threshold adjusted for better user experience
• Cargo lock beams power consumption tested, the power consumption levels adjusted for better balance
• Cargo lock beams power consumption tested in test environment and with Nautilus cargo ship in real gameplay situation
• Four new mining backpack variants created
• UI screen issues in asteroid mining job fixed, all the screens are working again
• Economy configuration updates: major test adjustment to infantry weapons
• Triangle thruster and receiver bolt profiles updated
• New shop UI worked on
• Material cube bolt positions tested, bolt profiles will be created to improve usability
• Density property changes, effects on damage formula and possible updates and improvements to damage calculations

Spaceships

• Triangle thruster bolting updated in Ithaca V1, Lictor, Veles, Zilant and Pioneer

Code

Gameplay

• Further testing on torpedo guidance made
• Inventory issues caused by refactoring fixed: items unintentionally dropping to world, not picking up, stacking on wrong situations and whole bunch of others
• Dragging area of station inventory UI is now larger and more intuitive
• Ships are now spawnable only from areas that have access to the station inventory they are saved into
• Remote LOD ships now have "traditional" thruster sounds
• Mass units related debugging and reconfiguring made
• Internal handling of material mass and density unified, resolving various display and logic issues
• Network and memory relays changed to have enabled flags on both sides of the connection; both must be on to function
• Cargo beams sometimes remaining in effect when shut off fixed
• Device networks treating nearly depleted batteries as infinite power sources fixed

User Interface

• Ship sub pages added to the company tree
• 'Add member' button in Company Roster now sends company invitation and 'Join' button accepts the company invitation
• Invitations now close when inventory menu is closed

Starbase Spaceship Creator

• Feature that allows opening a damaged owned ship inside the SSC in the making
• Multiplayer issues that occurred when joining a SSC session during edit to test mode change have been fixed

Renderer

• Renderer support added for rendering early and late 3D GUI, render flags added to HUI functions to allow terminals to render early
• Early and late GUI support bridging between game and renderer

Art

Stations

• Collision errors fixed for material cubes at market station
• VIS skydeck decoration polishes made
• Storage floor decorations work underway
• Main hall parenting polishes made

Weapons

• Sentinel rifle has been added to the game (with temp textures), rig made and configured to work in-game
• SMG Gatling textures updated and paintjobs updated for better combinations
• Torpedo Launcher: Some visual tweaks to the Torpedo Launcher, a few details removed
• Transition animation made for pickaxe and rifle weapons when entering weapon lowered stance when standing

Other

• Skybox stars redesign underway
• Material Cubes: All the material cubes now have similar bolting holes like the biggest versions have
• The thruster effects optimized by removing unnecessary particles etc.
• A beam mesh's incorrect origin position fixed
• Asteroid rock designs underway

Gallery

Click for full-sized images:


Videos

As always, feel free to ask any questions regarding these progress notes!
And if you haven't yet, go add Starbase to your Steam wishlist!

 

[CalenLoki]

I see a lot of polishing, testing and balancing, but much less new features.
Are we getting closer?

Tinkering with cargo ships atm, so picture with material cubes is the most interesting for me.
How big are they? 12cm to 144cm?

 

[AkseliFB]

I see a lot of polishing, testing and balancing, but much less new features.
Are we getting closer?

Tinkering with cargo ships atm, so picture with material cubes is the most interesting for me.
How big are they? 12cm to 144cm?

20cm, 30cm, 40cm, 50cm, 60cm, 72cm, 96cm, 120cm and 144cm

 

[CalenLoki]

Thanks!

Those first four numbers confused me, as they are not compatible with building grid. I guess they are meant to be stored inside cargo containers.

Speaking of which... How much space is there inside them? 120cm^3?

Also 50cm makes no sense. Assuming that crate is 120cm, it doesn't allow any efficient stacking.
It also looks closer to those boltable sizes, which increase in 12/24cm steps. So should be 48cm instead.

 

[Dom-MonsterMunters]

Loving the personality in those animations.
Keep up the awesome work! Can't wait to get into it!

 

[einar4050]

Love the hologram looking logos! Would be great if you could have custom ones to use in shops.

 

[MattheoAR]

Looks very polished! Great work! Makes me even more excited for EA!

 

[AkseliFB]

Thanks!

Those first four numbers confused me, as they are not compatible with building grid. I guess they are meant to be stored inside cargo containers.

Speaking of which... How much space is there inside them? 120cm^3?

Also 50cm makes no sense. Assuming that crate is 120cm, it doesn't allow any efficient stacking.
It also looks closer to those boltable sizes, which increase in 12/24cm steps. So should be 48cm instead.

Yes, cargo crate can store 120cm^3.
The smaller ones are not supposed to be used much. We just need some smaller variants if player decides to take them out from a backpack to gameworld. You can play some tetris with the little ones if you like even numbers in 10 intervals will fit well in the 120cm^3 space. What you should do is use the 60cm^3 cubes which is the compressed size of the full processed material slot in the backpack.

 

[CalenLoki]

Thanks
Can we pleas have smaller cargo crates, for use as weapon racks/lockers?
Something like 144x72x72 (120x48x48 capacity), with glass lead?

Those big ones we have are too big for use in smaller ships.

Btw. How big are hand tools and weapons? Do all of them fit in 120cm? Or maybe some are too big? Minigun? Rocket launcher?

So many questions... Sorry.
But how big is player inventory?

 

[Rake]

I like the different poses, sad we won't get alpha till next decade though.

 

[GhostRider3322]

I'm really pumped for this. Keep up the great work guys

 

[Kenetor]

Got my video up too!

 

[Rake]

Got my video up too!

You stole my decade joke.

 

[ParaEwieYT]

Will there be custom faction flags? I want to make a faction called space poland (im american, i just love poland) and i would like my profile to be the symbol of my faction.