Nov 12, 2010

Star Ruler - Demo - Valve

Updates to Star Ruler have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Fixes>

Fixed a major bug in single threaded mode that prevented ships from leaving systems.
Object icons were messing up in Medium & Low texture quality.
Fixed some minor issues with the tutorial.
Crash when selecting a shipset.
Remnants no longer run out of fuel.
Changed order for movement updates to prevent a one-frame delay in motion prediction.
Clients in multiplayer were shown the victory message before joining an empire.
Governors no longer build structures that are not unlocked yet.
Layout scales are now rounded to 3 decimal places to prevent floating point errors from showing up.
Pirates with money troubles weren't buying pillagers because marauders were cheaper.
Joining a multiplayer game after going back to the main menu from another game would not load the map correctly.
The fighter hull had a 5% flat dodge chance instead of it being based on relative velocity.
Changing the max number of selectable AIs in main_menu.xml did not work. The default still goes up to 10, but it's moddable up to 200 AIs.*
Fixed various issues with updating hulls (SubSystem modifiers not working when a hull is updated). Designs in previous saves should be able to benefit from being updated, depending on the type of modifier used.
Fixed fleet icon not showing after load and not disappearing when docked.
Ship owner was being set after effect activation, leading to certain effects (notably Research) crashing on ships.
Structures with non-natural levels (farms) could not be renovated manually.
Zoom to cursor checkbox was saving incorrectly.
Planet orbits were sometimes stopping after loading a save.
Undocking sometimes hurled ships across the vast expanses of space at insane speeds.
Damage order based on sub system position wasn't taking the size of the sub system into account. Now, a large sub system can protect little sub systems 'inside' it.
The music now instantly stops playing upon exiting, rather than when the game finishes cleaning itself up.
Treaties would randomly crash in multiplayer.
Objects thought they had far higher acceleration than they really did (due to not taking mass into account). Should significantly improve movement patterns, especially when it comes to planets.
Our custom GUI elements were not being properly deleted, causing a memory leak in the GUI.
Goto object orders weren't being saved/loaded.
Order lists were being loaded in reverse.
The dim2di for the blueprint window's tab buttons was using 2 px less than it should have, resulting in part of the button being cut off in the window.
Sending chat messages with the # character in them no longer causes weirdness.

Changes

Various game data files (PlanetTypes.xml, build_queues.xml, ...) can now be overwritten by mods.
Script data loading now falls back to the default files (mods no longer have to copy the Script Data directory).
Empire names and colors are now moddable the same way system names are.
Changed the standard maps to use a single copy of object descriptors, rather than making a new one for each object. Significantly speeds up map generation for common map sizes.
Removed unnecessary window generation and resource loading during script testing.
The tutorial can now be localized.
An auto-colonize order can now be removed by right-clicking on the planet and unticking it.
The AI now periodically retrofits its obsolete ships.
Slightly sped up locking in general, and reduced overhead related to creating those locks.
AIs obsolete their old designs and retrofit their old designs to larger versions. (Cruisers go up to scale 24 over time).
Planet orbits were much slower than intended. Planets now orbit at faster speeds, and their speed is based on the size of the star.
Changed various memory allocations over to a pooled system. Slight gains when setting the game up, but far more dramatic gains when exiting.
Objects now register themselves instantly during map creation, significantly improving map generation speeds.
Empty strings no longer allocate themselves on the heap.
Star Ruler's icon has been replaced with a higher resolution version.
Mods can now add their own Locales that are loaded after and can override the base game's.
Weapon effect graphics are now allocated in a pool, significantly improving performance when watching combat.
Updated French, Russian and German translations.
While updating the blueprint window to the planet window's style, reduced the image size, saving a slight bit of memory.
Objects are destroyed on-demand when the game exits, speeding up game exit times.
Planetary rings now have ambient lighting.
Planetary rings are now more common.
Timed game effects are now allocated on a pool. Improves performance in combat.

Additions

An optional toggle in the system window to display stored resources for planets in the list.
Ships can now be scuttled at planets for resources. They provide 50% of their cost to the planet.
Added support for ttf fonts and locale-specific fonts.
Added basic per-system minimaps.
Add Require:Tag to restrict subsystems to blueprints that have that tag.
Script bindings for Irrlicht's quaternion.
Relative military strength bars for pinned systems/stars and systems in the system window's system list.
"Zoom to object" buttons in planet window, pinned list and the system window's planet list.
The clusters map now has separate options for flattening the overall map and the clusters themselves.

Removals

Removed duplicate ship designs from the tutorial mod.