NEW - You can now toggle between fullscreen and windowed mode in the video options menu.

NOTE: If you use desktop scaling it could cause problems with the screen resolution after changing from windowed to full screen (right-click desktop->"Display settings"->"Scale and layout" above 100%). You have two options:

• Re-launch the game after switching from windowed to full screen (or changing the in-game resolution).
  
• Permanent fix - right-click the game EXE "StellarTactics.exe", selecting "Properties"->selecting "Compatibility"->"Change high DPI settings" and checking the "HighDPI scaling override" checkbox. The default state for the game is full screen.

UPDATED - After defeating the Brood Mother in the Aznari Ruins after the Dauntless, the door is automatically opened.


UPDATED - Default SMGs are now generated with single and burst fire. Mods can expand this to single, burst and full auto.

UPDATED - Removing a trigger group will now restore the original weapon fire modes. This is NOT RETROACTIVE. Any OLD weapons that were not generated with this newly saved data will default back to single fire mode and a message will be displayed in the log. Re-equip a trigger group to set your fire modes on old weapons. Backup fire mode data is now generated for new crew weapons when creating a new game, loot dropped going forward, crafted weapons going forward, new NPC recruit weapons and special characters that join your crew (Rhamus/Jensen) going forward.

UPDATED - Some changes to game startup sequence and asset pre-load.

UPDATED - Dauntless areas now generate the in-game map with all areas exposed. Fog of war still active.

UPDATED - Some ground missions now add indicators to the mini-map for objects that you need to interact with.

FIXED - The Dauntless hacking tool mission from Rodger Crayson would not place the hacking tool in inventory occasionally when looting the cabinet. Looting the cabinet no longer places the hacking tool in inventory - instead, it moves the mission forward. You must speak with Crayson after looting the cabinet and he will place the hacking tool in your inventory.

FIXED - Multi-stage procedural missions generated by station NPCs could lockup the game if inventory was full when receiving the final reward.

FIXED - Multi-stage procedural missions abandoned by the station NPC before completion could rarely lock up the game when generating rewards.

FIXED - Trade contracts were occasionally generated for bad target stations. That is, a trade contract could send you to pick up or deliver a contract at a station that did not exist. If you have an existing contract that has a bad destination, just delete the contract. Going forward, bad stations are scrubbed from save data when a save game is loaded so this "should" not be an issue in the future. If you see this again, please let me know.

I'm making good progress on BETA. Wrapping up Chapter 3 is the priority right now. In Chapter 3, the enemy has arrived and that means new enemy ships, new enemy characters and new locations to explore. without spoiling the story, I will say that you should be prepared by the time they arrive. So, stock up on "nades", build powerful Psionic attacks in the psionic editor and get comfortable with Azimuth (from Chapter 2) - it's gonna be hell...

I'm throwing in a few screenshots here - work in progress of course. As I get closer I'll post progress updates with more info.

New enemies and ships:


New locations related to the story:


A few things players have been asking for will be included:

• Achievements
  
• Crew mission system. Send inactive crew on missions for experience and rewards.
  
• Azimuth for space combat
  
• Better tutorials (I get it, some players don't want to read a manual)
  
• Adjustments to the economy's effect on the Trade-Net
  
• Unique rare "named" weapons that include powerful effects and new weapon models
  
• Expansion of missions for variety including new space-based NPC mission requests
  
• Crew stats will affect space skills
  
• More devices for the ship hardware mount slot
  
• Better mission guidance
  
• Overall a really solid pass at jank and smoothing out rough edges

As far as dates, I'm looking at June for BETA and releasing the game in September. Of course, that assumes everything goes well and I can keep my current pace.

I realize things have been a bit slow over the last year. Thank you all very much for the support and patience. My wife is doing great! She has a few more rounds of chemo and the latest MRI is showing no traces of cancer. We are so grateful.

That's all I have for now. Thanks as always for your support!

I'm posting a hotfix today for the following issues. This is a data only patch so no version change:

FIXED - In the "Raider Laboratory" mission area, one of the mission area exits was broken.

FIXED - Various pathing errors in the same mission area.

Ver 0.731

A few updates and fixes - mostly related to the Ruins after the Dauntless.

ADDED - Added enemy variants in the Ruins after the Dauntless. It's not just Arachs now.
UPDATED - Added exit indicators on the radar and map in the Ruins after the Dauntless. This should make it easier for players to identify the exits.
UPDATED - Border colors for quality are only displayed when color icons are selected in the video options panel. If you are using the new simplified icons, quality is displayed in the icon itself.
FIXED - The display on the radar and map were broken in the Ruins after the Dauntless. This was related to a bad material z-order that was clipping the map geometry.
FIXED - Z-order clipping of several objects in Ruins after Dauntless.

Work is continuing toward BETA. Meanwhile a few updates and fixes below.

This is a fairly large update as far as size goes. I had to modify a number of materials to make things work for the lower end GPU changes mentioned below.

UPDATED - On some laptops/PCs where the system GPU does not support the required graphics features (mostly Intel GPUs), the game now displays a message at the main menu explaining that an alternate renderer needs to be used. Selecting "EXIT" configures this alternate renderer and exits the game. The next time the game is launched the new settings are used which should support systems that were crashing when using grenades, certain weapon skills and when entering space. Dynamic shadows, rendered curves and SSAO are not supported by this renderer. However, the game still looks pretty good and runs well.

To be clear, this change will not impact most players using gaming PC's.

Save games are not affected by this change. For best results, use a NVidia or AMD GPU which will provide full support for all graphics functions available in the game.

• The Steam overlay is disabled in this mode.
  
• Dynamic shadows are disabled in this mode.
  
• Ambient occlusion is disabled in this mode.
  
• Rendered vertex curves are disabled in this mode.
  
• I'm not sure what the impact will be on the Steam Deck. Officially I do not support the Deck at this time. I plan to do further testing as I get closer to final release.

Version 0.730
UPDATED - Increased the ground equipment schematic drop rate.
UPDATED - Adjusted weapon damage based on quality tier. This is a global weapon modifier and should apply to new and existing weapons in your inventory.
UPDATED - Scenes should be a bit brighter now - extended the dynamic lighting attached to the camera when you scroll around the level.
UPDATED - Minor changes to UI SFX that annoy me.
UPDATED - Restored equipment border color indicators in inventory.

Fixed - Starting equipment for SMG - fire modes set to BURST and FULL AUTO - single fire removed. This may require equipping and unequipping the weapon.
Fixed - If using simplified icons - rollover info now displays the correct icons for slotted weapon mods.
Fixed - If using simplified icons - when trading stacked items to vendors or station storage now displays correct icons.
Fixed - In cargo storage, when sorting by ore, both refined and unrefined ore are displayed.
Fixed - A bug that require the player to press the approach icon before being able to dock or land on planets introduced in the last patch.
Fixed - A number of errors and missing strings in the French translation.
Fixed - A few missing string entries for localization.
Fixed - Enemy HP display on rollover info window would occasionally be out of sync.

If you notice any issues/bugs, please report them here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/465490/discussions/7/



Other patch notes since the last post on the main store page:

1/31/25 - 0.728
I'm posting a few bug fixes and updates today. Here are the notes:

UPDATED - INT EXP bonuses for the following skills: HACKING, FIRST AID, CRAFTING, REPAIR and SALVAGING.
UPDATED - Descriptions are now displayed when rolling over icons on the minimap/radar.
UPDATED - A visual reminder for players to re-center the camera is now placed on screen in cases where the camera has been scrolled away from the active crew leader.
UPDATED - In the CREW MANAGER, you can now drop portraits to the right side of the screen on both the portrait and name fields.
UPDATED - The next weapon special attack skill tier level is now displayed when rolling over special attacks on the action bar.
UPDATED - Stat descriptions updated. Added information displaying various STAT influences. I'll be doing a bit of UI work to break these influences out so they present better in the future.
UPDATED - When new players first start the game - game FPS is set to 60fps instead of uncapped. This does not affect current settings for existing players - only new installs. A warning is displayed when uncapping frame rate to let players know that uncapping the frame rate could cause stability issues on some systems.
UPDATED - Various UI fixes/tweaks

FIXED - Fabricant player portrait genders were swapped and did not match voice.
FIXED - Random crew members being stuck when entering a new area. Previously required crouch->stand to fix as a workaround.
FIXED - Occasionally, crew members were be left behind when moving after entering a new area and require a second click.
FIXED - Occasionally, when entering a new area, the incorrect weapon was displayed for the selected crew member.
FIXED - Zoom In/Zoom Out buttons on map were inverted.
FIXED - The psionics selection bar remained hidden if you swapped to a weapon and then back to the amplifier while not in combat.
FIXED - Default psionic effect descriptions are now translated.
FIXED - Grenade status effects from assigned perks were not being applied. Perk +DMG bonuses were working as expected (+DMG)
FIXED - In space, approaching a target and selecting other orbital bodies via the system object list while approaching would reset the approach target. This would cause odd issues like arriving at a jump point and circling it etc.

12/27/24 - 0.727
Fixed - When using player generated custom portraits, the paper doll area of the inventory was not displayed correctly.
Fixed - Corrected portraits of Kchor and Fabricants in the recruit display.

12/21/24 - 0.726c

Hair models were not being correctly applied to character models based on new portrait selections. I'll be doing a bit more testing on this - however, this should solve the majority of the issues - like offset hair, incorrect hair color etc.

12/20/24 - 0.726b
Selecting some of the new Kchor and Fabricant portraits could lead to a lockup when re-entering the character information and inventory screens.

Shields now display correct colored quality border in loot window.

Fixed a potential crash bug.

Crew models selected to match character portraits should be better aligned. Let me know if you see any errors. Updated models only update on transition so they are not visible immediately when selecting a portrait.

I'm posting a few bug fixes and updates today. Here are the notes:

UPDATED - INT EXP bonuses for the following skills: HACKING, FIRST AID, CRAFTING, REPAIR and SALVAGING.
UPDATED - Descriptions are now displayed when rolling over icons on the minimap/radar.
UPDATED - A visual reminder for players to re-center the camera is now placed on screen in cases where the camera has been scrolled away from the active crew leader.
UPDATED - In the CREW MANAGER, you can now drop portraits to the right side of the screen on both the portrait and name fields.
UPDATED - The next weapon special attack skill tier level is now displayed when rolling over special attacks on the action bar.
UPDATED - Stat descriptions updated. Added information displaying various STAT influences. I'll be doing a bit of UI work to break these influences out so they present better in the future.
UPDATED - When new players first start the game - game FPS is set to 60fps instead of uncapped. This does not affect current settings for existing players - only new installs. A warning is displayed when uncapping frame rate to let players know that uncapping the frame rate could cause stability issues on some systems.
UPDATED - Various UI fixes/tweaks

FIXED - Fabricant player portrait genders were swapped and did not match voice.
FIXED - Random crew members being stuck when entering a new area. Previously required crouch->stand to fix as a workaround.
FIXED - Occasionally, crew members were be left behind when moving after entering a new area and require a second click.
FIXED - Occasionally, when entering a new area, the incorrect weapon was displayed for the selected crew member.
FIXED - Zoom In/Zoom Out buttons on map were inverted.
FIXED - The psionics selection bar remained hidden if you swapped to a weapon and then back to the amplifier while not in combat.
FIXED - Default psionic effect descriptions are now translated.
FIXED - Grenade status effects from assigned perks were not being applied. Perk +DMG bonuses were working as expected (+DMG)
FIXED - In space, approaching a target and selecting other orbital bodies via the system object list while approaching would reset the approach target. This would cause odd issues like arriving at a jump point and circling it etc.

Hi all. I decided to branch away from the chapter 3 content so I could post an update that includes a few things I think you might like for the holidays.

First, this build does not include chapter 3. I am still working on that and it is moving along (finally) at a reasonable pace. Instead, I am releasing a smaller update with the following main features:


Updated icons – The new icons are simplified and designed so you can easily visualize object types (weapons, armor etc.) and their quality levels at a glance. These icons are now the default icons for the game. You can revert to the original icons in the options menu in the video panel by selecting “Vivid Icons”. You can do this in-game and open the inventory and then exit to instantiate the changes. I’m still looking into icons for the various perks.


New crew portraits - By default, updated portraits will be assigned to your crew. If you preferred the old portraits, they are still available by entering the inventory or character info screens, selecting the crew member you want to adjust and then clicking the portrait. The portrait/voice UI will be displayed. Scroll past the new portraits, and you will see that the old portraits are available for selection. Note that you can also open the crew manager, select a crew member, select “REVIEW CREW MEMBER” and adjust the portraits. When starting a new game, the old portraits are not available – though they can be assigned once you are in the game.

Custom portraits – You can now add custom portraits to the game. Detailed instructions are provided in the new “PLAYER_PORTRAITS” folder in the install directory. Here are the basic steps.

• Make sure you exit the game.
  
• Navigate to the game install folder and open the “PLAYER_PORTRAITS” folder.
  
• Open the “instructions.txt” file in notepad or other text editor.
  
• You can have a total of 20 portraits for Human Male, Human Female, Fabricant (male/female) and Khor.
  
• The portraits must be 512x512 Pixels and be perfectly square.
  
• Portraits must be saved in JPG format with the “*.jpg” extension.
  
• These portraits must use the naming convention called out in the “instructions.txt” file or they will not be displayed in the game.
  
• The old portraits are stored in the "PLAYER_PORTRAITS" folder now and you can use them as a template/example.

Once you have added your portraits/illustrations, launch the game and load any save (or create a new game). Open the inventory, select the crew member you want to adjust and select the portrait in the upper left of the screen. The portrait/voice UI will be displayed. Scroll through the portraits and if everything was done according to the instructions, you should be able to select your custom portrait.

Custom portraits must be assigned once you are in the game. Right now, they are not visible during character creation.

Updated NPC portraits - I've updated all main story NPC portraits.

If you discover any bugs, out of place icons or issues with the portraits, please post them in the bug forums at the link below:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/465490/discussions/7/


I hope you all have a wonderful Holiday and best wishes to you and your families. Thank you for supporting Stellar Tactics!

Hi all! A quick update today. First, thank you all very much for the kind notes in my previous post. It means a lot to us. My wife is doing well. The first series of chemo is complete and surgery was successful. She will still be going through post operative radiation and chemotherapy over the coming months. She responded very well to the treatment up to this point.

Work is getting done on chapter 3 and a number of other things that I need to do to get ready for a full BETA. Here is a quick summary:

Chapter 3 – of course.

Crew missions – These missions will let you send idle crew members on various tasks that reward general and skill experience for that crew member and rewards like credits, weapons, armor, ship equipment etc. The rewards depend on the type of mission the crew member is sent on. I’ll explain how this works in detail once the system is finished.

Updated crew portraits.


Player generated portraits – I’ve finished work on loading player generated portraits. That means, you will be able to add any images you want (512x512 JPG’s) and they will load into the game for selection using the inventory or character information screen portrait/voice selection screen.

New icons for general inventory items. The new icons are simplified and made so you can easily distinguish between various items like weapons, armor, mods and grenade types. I’m also looking at ways to generate icons for the rest of the content like component parts, trade items, ore, refined ore etc. There are lot of icons in the game so I may not be able to create unique icons for everything – though most icons in the game will get a treatment of some sort.


New enemies.

New enemy ships.

Updates to the economy.

Assigned stats will affect space skills.

New devices for your ship – equipped to your hardware mount points. These will let you apply various de-buffs to enemy ships via the security bonuses and security perks in the electronics skill line.

Various bug fixes – as always.

Patrolling enemies are out – To be clear – patrolling enemies are terrible. I wasted almost a month trying to get this to work and really, when it comes down to it, it’s just an annoyance. There is already a chance that wandering into the line of sight of another enemy group could trigger “adds” to the current combat session. Add to this with patrolling enemies and it's just not sustainable. So, this is scrapped. I wish I could get my time back…but that’s the way game development works – you try something and it just doesn’t work.

I don’t have a release date for BETA at the moment as my schedule is still variable. However, I wanted to let you know that progress is being made.

I hope you all have a great weekend, and thank you for supporting Stellar Tactics!

First the facts since I’ve seen a few comments:

• This game is not abandoned! It will never be abandoned.
  
• I’m running late with chapter 3 and all milestones I’ve set following that.
  
• The last patch was 2/9/24 – a hotfix. I generally do not post minor patch updates on the main Steam page.

You can always find the latest patch notes here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/465490/discussions/0/343787283753661833/


I’ve struggled a bit with whether I should share this as I generally do not talk about my family. I do think it’s important to be transparent, so here it is.

My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer in January. I’m sure some of you know how this goes. Endless tests, MRI, PET scan, samples, and doctors office visits. She is half way through the first cycle of chemo and doing well. We were lucky that we found it early as the prognosis is excellent. My heart goes out to anyone who has or has had this disease and their loved ones – or any form of cancer for that matter. It’s terrifying!

My time has been very limited since February, and I have not been making the progress I expected. I am working on the game. However, my wife takes priority, and it’s been a bit difficult staying focused. Around the middle of April, I started working at nearly my normal pace. All of the locations, enemies, enemy ships, modeling and other assets for chapter 3 are complete now. I’ve finished about 1/3 of the dialog, and when that’s done I’ll start integrating everything.

Right now I’m considering just finishing everything on my list and releasing chapter 3 and all other planned content/features in one major patch as a full BETA, rather than mini-releases over the coming months. It will save time and I won’t need to pause for bug fixes between updates. As I do this work, I’ll try to post progress updates more often. I get it, if you don’t hear from me on a regular basis – some might assume I’ve abandoned my game. Not going to happen…

I'm not posting this looking for well wishes or sympathy. Really, I'm convinced she will be fine. It's a difficult treatment though, and I need to be present and supportive. I am asking you to be patient with me as I work through the rest of this content. It will get done - I'm on it.

Thanks as always for your support and have a great weekend!

I'm posting a few fixes and updates in todays patch before I lock everything down and start integrating the chapter 3 content. I've completed all assets for the new content update and it's time to put everything together.

This update adds pre-caching for all space content. You will notice that resources are being loaded when the game launches. This means a longer load to the main menu of the game, however, load times to space while in the game with be much faster. I also did a bit of work on load times for transitions between ground locations and will continue to work on this.

You will also find a new "Dark Space" option on the video options screen. This will set a single high resolution sky throughout the game. I felt this was a good option for players who would prefer a more realistic experience when flying through space. If you enable this at the main menu, loading a save will apply the new setting. If already in the game and in space, you will need to save and reload to see the changes.



Join Bumpy McSquigums as he streams Stellar Tactics live on the store page over the holidays. Here is the full schedule:

All streams will start at 1 PM EST and last 2 hours assuming no technical issues.
December 21
December 22
December 23
December 27
December 28

As always, thank you for supporting Stellar Tactics.

Notes for this patch:
UPDATED: The game now pre-caches content when first loading the game. This results in transitions from ground to space loading much faster than before. Your mileage may vary.
UPDATED: Improvements in loading speed between ground mission areas.
UPDATED: Using the character info, inventory, log, and ship UI now pauses the game while in space.
UPDATED: Asteroid fields indicated by [AF] in the star system object list on the star map and in space are now named "Asteroid Field [AF]". [AF] wasn't good enough.
ADDED: The video options screen now has an option for "Dark Space". This will set a single space material taken from public domain imagery of the Milky Way galaxy. I'm adding this for those of you who would prefer a more realistic space background. When enabling this option, you will need to exit and launch the game again for the option to take effect.
FIXED - Raider base story location - lighting and transition from last level to previous level location.
FIXED - Crew members would occasionally spawn above floor level in some areas.
FIXED - Map zoom in/out now matches the environment zoom mouse wheel settings. In - mouse wheel forward. Out - mouse wheel back.
FIXED - Disabling autosaves from the options menu was not functioning as expected.
FIXED - In a few instances, NPC's turned hostile could end up invisible. For example, Lazlo Eklund.
FIXED - Crew members equipped with armor, weapons, devices, and shields cannot be dismissed. You must remove all gear from a crew member before dismissing them in the crew manager. This resolves a problem where the crew could be dismissed, destroying story-critical devices like the Aznari Scanner and Psionic Amplifier.
FIXED - Missing planetary description info when targeting Coven base during story content mission.
FIXED - Ship pitch control would invert when flying in certain directions while using the keyboard controls. Tuned keyboard controls so they are more responsive.
FIXED - A bug that would fail to display planetary mining node scan data.

Other recent patches:
11/14/23 - 0.722b
Fixed: Cargo volume on the "Ship" screen was not displayed correctly when various sorting filters were applied.
Fixed: Ship equipment on the "Ship" screen did not display the correct quality indicators in the cargo list.
Fixed: If you had very high skill in mining, and perks selected (+Mining speed), it was possible that you could depleted an asteroid before fully heating the asteroid. I adjusted the minimum bracket scaling to compensate for this.

11/3/23 - 0.722
Fixed - Ship repair components should not be rewarded from asteroids - really - I really hope so this time :)
Fixed - When mining, the asteroid "heat" bar would flash and disappear when mining.
A bit of tuning on the new mining system:

--The "Lower" indicator of the "sweet spot" when mining is decreased further with mining skill. At higher levels of mining skill, it was possible that an asteroid could be depleted before it even warmed enough to enter the "ideal heated" state.

--Increased the amount of ore generated overall when mining. The new system feels a bit slower because asteroids are being depleted at a slower rate - however, the amount of ore mined is greater than before over the same amount of time. Increasing the amount of heat (changed above) and increasing the amount of ore generated should bring things back to where they were before - if not better.

--Increased the amount of heat generated during a pulse.

--I should mention, some asteroids are "clunkers". This is by design. You can usually tell when you crank the energy on a turret to max and after a few pulses, it has not heated significantly. It's best to stop mining that asteroid and move on...

11/1/23 - 0.721
Fixed - Cargo inventory was not being displayed correctly. This was a display only issue and did not affect the items in your cargo. Let me know if you see any further issues related to ship cargo not being displayed.
Fixed - If an asteroid was clicked rather than actually targeted by first selecting a turret, the asteroid would incorrectly think it was already targeted and could not be mined.
Fixed - In some cases, stopping mining could leave an asteroid in a state where it could not be targeted by other mining turrets.
Fixed - Asteroids were rewarding ship repair components - ooops!