Hi Galactic Survivalists,

Less than 24h until the Alpha release of Empyrion! The perfect time to get prepared for the changes that are lying ahead of you.

First: due to all the new tech added to the code, we unfortunately could not avoid to break your save games this time (note that it is the first save game break since the initial release of Empyrion in August 2015). As a consequence, all server and single player save games cannot be resumed subsequent to the installation of Alpha 1.0. We are really sorry for the inconveniences that may result. On the other hand, we are quite sure none of you would have wanted us to drop any of the new Alpha features in favour of save game continuation. ;-)

Said that, there is one thing you can and should do: blueprint all your stuff right now! Be it Bases or Vessels and even work in progress stuff, because all of your Blueprints will make the transition to the Alpha version!

Second, there is one big topic that is entirely new to the game and may influence the way on how you will lay out your bases in the future: Structural Integrity (SI).

Today we want to explain some of the details. Please keep in mind: This SI version 1.0 only applies to Bases on planets for now. SI for space or for ships and a more granular SI-rule set will be added in future releases!
Let’s start with an important tip: The SI can be visualized with the Building Tools window. Click N and toggle the SI-Shader setting. The overlay will tell you which areas of your building are weak or fully supported. The scale will range from bright green (100% stable) to red/purple (unstable/crash imminent).



Here are a few basic SI rules you need to take into account:
1. Only blocks that are touching the ground will be 100% stable (does not depend on the material used)

2.You can only achieve 100% stability for a vertical row of blocks, if the lowest block is touching the ground. If you have a 100% stable block, a so called “anchor block”, you can build a vertical pillar on top of it as high as the sky. There is no vertical limit (yet).

3. If you add blocks to such a 100% stable pillar in any horizontal direction, so each block that is attached in a row, any additional block will have a lower stability - until the row reaches a breaking point. The maximum range or breaking point for a horizontal, floating, not supported beam made out of any of the four base materials is 12 blocks. Note: The anchor block will keep its stability, as there is no such thing as shearf orce (yet)! Tip: if your line or area of blocks is showing weak spots, just build a supporting pillar!



4. Do not put heavy materials or devices on top of a already weak beam or weak foundation. You might risk the construction to collapse and your devices will be destroyed.



Closing comment: Building with SI is something completely new. So when starting the Alpha the first time, you might want to get accustomed to building with it at first. We suggest to start a creative game and play around with the possibilities and limits of the Structural Integrity, while getting a feeling for building with the new SI rule set.

We are looking forward to your creations and what you are able to achieve with the new SI feature.

Yours,

Empyrion DevTeam

Hi Galactic Survivalists,

Less than 24h until the Alpha release of Empyrion! The perfect time to get prepared for the changes that are lying ahead of you.

First: due to all the new tech added to the code, we unfortunately could not avoid to break your save games this time (note that it is the first save game break since the initial release of Empyrion in August 2015). As a consequence, all server and single player save games cannot be resumed subsequent to the installation of Alpha 1.0. We are really sorry for the inconveniences that may result. On the other hand, we are quite sure none of you would have wanted us to drop any of the new Alpha features in favour of save game continuation. ;-)

Said that, there is one thing you can and should do: blueprint all your stuff right now! Be it Bases or Vessels and even work in progress stuff, because all of your Blueprints will make the transition to the Alpha version!

Second, there is one big topic that is entirely new to the game and may influence the way on how you will lay out your bases in the future: Structural Integrity (SI).

Today we want to explain some of the details. Please keep in mind: This SI version 1.0 only applies to Bases on planets for now. SI for space or for ships and a more granular SI-rule set will be added in future releases!
Let’s start with an important tip: The SI can be visualized with the Building Tools window. Click N and toggle the SI-Shader setting. The overlay will tell you which areas of your building are weak or fully supported. The scale will range from bright green (100% stable) to red/purple (unstable/crash imminent).



Here are a few basic SI rules you need to take into account:
1. Only blocks that are touching the ground will be 100% stable (does not depend on the material used)

2.You can only achieve 100% stability for a vertical row of blocks, if the lowest block is touching the ground. If you have a 100% stable block, a so called “anchor block”, you can build a vertical pillar on top of it as high as the sky. There is no vertical limit (yet).

3. If you add blocks to such a 100% stable pillar in any horizontal direction, so each block that is attached in a row, any additional block will have a lower stability - until the row reaches a breaking point. The maximum range or breaking point for a horizontal, floating, not supported beam made out of any of the four base materials is 12 blocks. Note: The anchor block will keep its stability, as there is no such thing as shearf orce (yet)! Tip: if your line or area of blocks is showing weak spots, just build a supporting pillar!



4. Do not put heavy materials or devices on top of a already weak beam or weak foundation. You might risk the construction to collapse and your devices will be destroyed.



Closing comment: Building with SI is something completely new. So when starting the Alpha the first time, you might want to get accustomed to building with it at first. We suggest to start a creative game and play around with the possibilities and limits of the Structural Integrity, while getting a feeling for building with the new SI rule set.

We are looking forward to your creations and what you are able to achieve with the new SI feature.

Yours,

Empyrion DevTeam

Hi Galactic Survivalists!

Last week we had to announce a minor delay for the upcoming Alpha 1.0 release. This delay has come unexpected to most of you, and we apologize for any resulting inconvenience. It has been a hard choice, putting us between a rock and a hard place: seeing sad faces because of the last minute delay or seeing sad faces because of some major bugs still present in the originally planned release. In the end, we decided that you deserve an Alpha version, which is as polished and bug free as we can achieve - and rather withstand the wave of critics because of the last minute delay.

The new features that will now find their way into the first Alpha version due to this delay would have been part of the first patch anyhow. Now they just moved slightly forward to the release version and did not consume any minute of the precious development time dedicated to bug fixing! Said that, we are progressing nicely with the bug smashing. Just as of yesterday, we surpassed the milestone of 300 bugfixes and changes made in the course of the Alpha development (not counting in the new features and the fixes of the Public versions that were released in parallel)!

Some folks asked, if we could release more footage videos of the Alpha. For those, we’d like to answer: keep your eyes peeled (for the upcoming week)! ;-)

Enough chit-chat, it is time to get to the real things. As the headline states, we want to show you our new "Empyrion - Galactic Survival" Alpha Trailer, giving you an idea of the new look and feel of the upcoming Alpha version! We hope you like it:

https://youtu.be/iiOVNHc2grU

On behalf of the Developers, Testers and the Community Crew, we would like to thank all of you for your support, your patience, the stream of never ending suggestions – and in particular for the unprecedented way, on how this great community sticks together, even if not everyone agrees on the same things sometimes ;-)

We are very proud of our community - and we hope you all will enjoy the upcoming Alpha 1.0 as much as we did when developing it.

Yours,

Empyrion Dev Team

Hi Galactic Survivalists!

Last week we had to announce a minor delay for the upcoming Alpha 1.0 release. This delay has come unexpected to most of you, and we apologize for any resulting inconvenience. It has been a hard choice, putting us between a rock and a hard place: seeing sad faces because of the last minute delay or seeing sad faces because of some major bugs still present in the originally planned release. In the end, we decided that you deserve an Alpha version, which is as polished and bug free as we can achieve - and rather withstand the wave of critics because of the last minute delay.

The new features that will now find their way into the first Alpha version due to this delay would have been part of the first patch anyhow. Now they just moved slightly forward to the release version and did not consume any minute of the precious development time dedicated to bug fixing! Said that, we are progressing nicely with the bug smashing. Just as of yesterday, we surpassed the milestone of 300 bugfixes and changes made in the course of the Alpha development (not counting in the new features and the fixes of the Public versions that were released in parallel)!

Some folks asked, if we could release more footage videos of the Alpha. For those, we’d like to answer: keep your eyes peeled (for the upcoming week)! ;-)

Enough chit-chat, it is time to get to the real things. As the headline states, we want to show you our new "Empyrion - Galactic Survival" Alpha Trailer, giving you an idea of the new look and feel of the upcoming Alpha version! We hope you like it:

https://youtu.be/iiOVNHc2grU

On behalf of the Developers, Testers and the Community Crew, we would like to thank all of you for your support, your patience, the stream of never ending suggestions – and in particular for the unprecedented way, on how this great community sticks together, even if not everyone agrees on the same things sometimes ;-)

We are very proud of our community - and we hope you all will enjoy the upcoming Alpha 1.0 as much as we did when developing it.

Yours,

Empyrion Dev Team

Hi Galactic Survivalists,

As the headline already states - we decided to slightly postpone the public release of Empyrion Galactic Survival Alpha 1.0. No worries, the delay is only for a week: next Friday, April 15th will be the big day!

We want to dedicate the extra time towards additional bug fixing and to get some of the newer features more polished. However, we are not only into squashing more bugs but we will also add more features in addition to the already announced features.

Have a look at the additional features that will be integrated into the Alpha:

- First integration of Offline Protection: Build the offline protection device and your PvP area base and CVs will be save when you log off (same applies to factions, when no faction member is around on the server any more; eventually leading to a full shield-feature in later Alpha development stages!)
- Tier 2 drill that auto-collects ore (available at Tech Tree Level 7)
- New loot for POIs (No spoilers of the contents here. Sorry ;-)
- All plants in the wild now re-grow after being harvested (if you discover a nice spot of helpful plants, come back later and harvest them again!)
- Slider for all lights for setting Intensity and Range individually
- Added new material-related textures for the Texture Tool (each material now has a defined set of “own” textures plus a few that are shared between all materials. This opens up the possibility to have even more textures added in the future!)
- New enemy drone model
- Survival constructor gets a radar- and planet-map marker (so you won’t lose track of where you set it up when venturing around)
- Your player model can now hold its breath for up to 10 seconds under water (without helmet)
- When de-constructing blocks, the items you collect are now shown in your HUD
- New easy to craft food item made out of sea weed (a lot of underwater plants now have nice goodies to collect)
- Bandages (as an easy to craft alternative to small medi kits)
- Quality Settings Fast-Good-Best technically refined. ("Fast" now nearly has every eye candy deactivated and render distances reduced)
- Warp Drives now use Pentaxid crystals as a fuel (added to an individual placeable warp drive tank)
- You can now use your own bases as random POIs for planetary playfields!

The new drone model in action:



You probably want to meet the drone when it is in this state:


The active Offline Protection:



The Offline Protection Device:


The new set of textures:


The new set of loot containers:

From left to right: common, rare, very rare and ultra rare.

Finally, as the remaining days need to be filled with some creative tasks, we ask all our players to think about new sets and additions for the “starter blueprints” in the Blueprint Library!

As soon as the Alpha v1.0 is released and everyone has all the new building, texturing and coloring features and blocks at hand, we’ll start a new round of “Get Your Design In TheGame!”

We are looking forward to the release.

Yours,

Empyrion Dev Team

Hi Galactic Survivalists,

As the headline already states - we decided to slightly postpone the public release of Empyrion Galactic Survival Alpha 1.0. No worries, the delay is only for a week: next Friday, April 15th will be the big day!

We want to dedicate the extra time towards additional bug fixing and to get some of the newer features more polished. However, we are not only into squashing more bugs but we will also add more features in addition to the already announced features.

Have a look at the additional features that will be integrated into the Alpha:

- First integration of Offline Protection: Build the offline protection device and your PvP area base and CVs will be save when you log off (same applies to factions, when no faction member is around on the server any more; eventually leading to a full shield-feature in later Alpha development stages!)
- Tier 2 drill that auto-collects ore (available at Tech Tree Level 7)
- New loot for POIs (No spoilers of the contents here. Sorry ;-)
- All plants in the wild now re-grow after being harvested (if you discover a nice spot of helpful plants, come back later and harvest them again!)
- Slider for all lights for setting Intensity and Range individually
- Added new material-related textures for the Texture Tool (each material now has a defined set of “own” textures plus a few that are shared between all materials. This opens up the possibility to have even more textures added in the future!)
- New enemy drone model
- Survival constructor gets a radar- and planet-map marker (so you won’t lose track of where you set it up when venturing around)
- Your player model can now hold its breath for up to 10 seconds under water (without helmet)
- When de-constructing blocks, the items you collect are now shown in your HUD
- New easy to craft food item made out of sea weed (a lot of underwater plants now have nice goodies to collect)
- Bandages (as an easy to craft alternative to small medi kits)
- Quality Settings Fast-Good-Best technically refined. ("Fast" now nearly has every eye candy deactivated and render distances reduced)
- Warp Drives now use Pentaxid crystals as a fuel (added to an individual placeable warp drive tank)
- You can now use your own bases as random POIs for planetary playfields!

The new drone model in action:



You probably want to meet the drone when it is in this state:


The active Offline Protection:



The Offline Protection Device:


The new set of textures:


The new set of loot containers:

From left to right: common, rare, very rare and ultra rare.

Finally, as the remaining days need to be filled with some creative tasks, we ask all our players to think about new sets and additions for the “starter blueprints” in the Blueprint Library!

As soon as the Alpha v1.0 is released and everyone has all the new building, texturing and coloring features and blocks at hand, we’ll start a new round of “Get Your Design In TheGame!”

We are looking forward to the release.

Yours,

Empyrion Dev Team

Greetings Galactic Survivalists!

Today we have a very special update for you all!

As part of our upcoming Alpha Release, we have been hard at work preparing Empyrion to work with the latest and greatest in Windows Operating Systems: Windows 95!

Empyrion really looks beautiful in 256 colour technology! Convince yourself.

Omicron looks really nice at this time of year:


Akua also looks very inviting:




Features:
- 256 Colours
- 4 MB Video Memory
- High Resolution 1024x768 Graphics
- Optimised for CRT Monitors and the Latest Pentium I Processors

We hope you will enjoy this amazing new feature and have fun running Empyrion on all your latest Windows 95 systems!

Cheers

Eleon Dev Team

EDIT (April 2, 2016): In case you have already prepared your old PC to get it in shape for Emyprion, we have to disappoint you - it was only an April Fools' Day prank ;-)

Greetings Galactic Survivalists!

Today we have a very special update for you all!

As part of our upcoming Alpha Release, we have been hard at work preparing Empyrion to work with the latest and greatest in Windows Operating Systems: Windows 95!

Empyrion really looks beautiful in 256 colour technology! Convince yourself.

Omicron looks really nice at this time of year:


Akua also looks very inviting:




Features:
- 256 Colours
- 4 MB Video Memory
- High Resolution 1024x768 Graphics
- Optimised for CRT Monitors and the Latest Pentium I Processors

We hope you will enjoy this amazing new feature and have fun running Empyrion on all your latest Windows 95 systems!

Cheers

Eleon Dev Team

EDIT (April 2, 2016): In case you have already prepared your old PC to get it in shape for Emyprion, we have to disappoint you - it was only an April Fools' Day prank ;-)

Hi guys,

We decided to release another small patch (PA 5.4.3) for the current Pre-Alpha before releasing the Alpha version of Empyrion. We fixed the problem that CV/HV/SV could fly through each other in Multiplayer, i.e., there was no collision between vessels.

Bug Fixes:
- Fixed problem in Multiplayer that CV/HV/SV could fly through each other


Alpha Preview:
We would like to show you some screenshots of the new temperate planet that will be integrated in the upcoming Alpha version:





The new handheld chainsaw:


Finally, the new HUD of the remote controller player drone:


Stay tuned for a more detailed blog about the new structural integrity.

Cheers

Eleon Dev Team

Hi guys,

We decided to release another small patch (PA 5.4.3) for the current Pre-Alpha before releasing the Alpha version of Empyrion. We fixed the problem that CV/HV/SV could fly through each other in Multiplayer, i.e., there was no collision between vessels.

Bug Fixes:
- Fixed problem in Multiplayer that CV/HV/SV could fly through each other


Alpha Preview:
We would like to show you some screenshots of the new temperate planet that will be integrated in the upcoming Alpha version:





The new handheld chainsaw:


Finally, the new HUD of the remote controller player drone:


Stay tuned for a more detailed blog about the new structural integrity.

Cheers

Eleon Dev Team