We're extremely happy to announce that the biggest update we've had yet is ready for release! There are a lot of changes, some of which we will not list because they're either internal, already shared with other news post, or fixes from the original systems we pushed out at the start of our private beta.
We've also decided to remove HB13 entirely, as it's been outdated for almost 3 years now, and our verification servers are down, so new players aren't able to launch it anyways. We might go back to the old project and remove the verification process and re-bundle it back in Homebrew if the demand for it is high enough.
We've also made huge changes to the modding API, for most users, this isn't an important change. So we moved those changes to the bottom of the post.
The World of Homebrew
Our underlying world system has gotten a complete overhaul, allowing us to make worlds far larger than possible before.
This fixes the jittering you'd see when driving far away from the Valley, (or not so far away depending on your hardware..), and having insane amounts of space for future islands!
We also moved the islands around to better suit the new system, modified the existing islands, and inserted a new huge area to replace flat-lands.
To get a true feeling of scale, we suggest hopping into Homebrew Patent Unknown yourself, and fly around a bit.
Server Changes
The server has been rewritten to be more stable, and requiring less bandwidth per server instance. We've run these servers since the start of our beta phase, and have had very little issues keeping them online!
Work on the server will continue after this update, where we'll optimize the internals, making it less resource-intensive, and allowing for more players online.
Other Changes
With the lua changes, we've rewritten our gadgets to have more features, more control, fewer bugs, etc.
The Settings also got an overhaul, all running in Lua!
There's also Discord Integration, a new Weather System, Tornados, Lightning, Blimps that populate the world, allowing server-client of variables (like time and weather), all moddable through Lua! Feel free to play around with the default lua files (StreamingAssets/Lua/main/), and see what you can come up with!
We've spent a lot of time and effort making sure the Lua changes were stable and more complete, adding a couple houndred helper functions, to make everything easier for modders, and players.
Besides that, we've also implement a new audio-system in place, handling all the ambient sounds in the world.
In a future release, we'll be upgrading the audio for engines and the like to these new standards as well.
Main Changelog
Fixed Mouse not locking correctly when in-game
Fixed Game minimizing when alt-tabbing
Fixed glitch where water would bug at a certain depth (causing FPS drops)
Fixed Second Keybind not showing up correctly when bound to a new ID
Fixed issue with Equation Box where it would replace the incorrect token
Fixed wings not applying wind properly
Fixed wings not applying underwater drag properly
Fixed GPS boxes not displaying full world-position
Fixed Ramjets not working as expected
Fixed HBNoteBoxes not fading properly
Fixed Spectator not working as expected sometimes
Fixed in-game links that were no longer available
Fixed UI elements that shouldn't be blocking, blocking
Fixed Adjustment Tool (builder) slowing down the game immensely
Increased fog distance dramatically
Added "GameTime" to equation box ("time")
Reworked Wing mechanics to work with new World System
This breaks Propellers made with wings and Rotator and Hemi Servo!
Reworked Gadgets
Reworked Buoyancy to be more accurate
Reworked most chat commands
Reworked Chat
Reworked Terrain Shaders
Reworked Steam Integration
Reworked Default Vehicle Installer
Reworked Settings
Added Y-Invert option in Settings
Added quick-switch between Qwerty and Azerty in Settings
Added Weather Controller (see "/weather" in chat)
Added Rain
Added Tornado
Added Vegetation and Vegetation Manager
Added new Builder Tutorial (text-based)
Added new Gameplay Tutorial (text-based)
Added new Terrain (Desert)
Added new Race Track in Desert
Added new Airstrip in Desert
Added new Airstrip in the main Valley
Added Arc in main Valley
Added Danny & Joe in the Airfield (Desert)
Added HB13 Valley rework
Added Discord Integration (lua based)
Added async Part/Vehicle Browser
Added Ambient Sound system
Added Hints in chat (toggleable with /togglehints)
Added new Shadow-System for vegetation
Added Steam Display-picture loading in servers/chat
Added Blimp AI
Added Runway lights in Valley and Desert
Replaced Default Vehicles with a new batch
Removed Wheel Collision on your own Vehicles
Removed multiple unused meshes and Materials
Removed HE rounds from Vulcan
And many more internal changes and speedups.
Lua and Console Changes
There've been huge lua changes in HB, most noticably Lua has been upgraded to 5.3 from 5.1, allowing us to use the full range of RAM available instead of the first 2GB of your RAM, a ton of helper functions, and a lot of speedups. Another change to lua is how the lua files are formatted.
The old method required a main function, where you set some basic things like "self.gameObject", that is no longer required.
local mod = {}
function main(go)
myMod.gameObject = go
return myMod
end
function mod:Start() -- triggers on start of script
end
function mod:Update() -- triggers every tick
end
The new method doesn't need this anymore.
local mod={}
function mod:Start() -- triggers on start of script
end
function mod:Update() -- triggers every tick
end
return mod;
As some of you might notice, at the end of the lua file, we now return the mod table. The other change is that your lua table doesn't need to be the same as the filename. So you can create all your mods with
local mod = {}
Making everything far less prone to errors!
If you want to learn more about Lua, or if you're not sure where to get started, be sure to hit us up on our Discord server, and ask around in #Moddinghelp. Needless to say, all our gadgets and world-mods have been updated to fully utilize these changes.
The Console also got an overhaul, it's far more efficient, and no longer requires you to switch between lua and console shell. You can simply type in any lua code and have it run, or trigger a console command!
EDIT:
We forgot to mention some additions to the equation box!
-Fix for flex bridge editor bug -Fix for broken enemy shoot hits -Fix for acid drops not hurting you (acid drops are actually derived from enemy shots) -Fix for saws only hurting you once.
Was half way through moving the switch code around in preparation for expanding what it effects, I've tested and it still seems ok, but watch out for switch issues. Doing this build now because of the above issues that needed fixing.
This week more of the new assets and enemy spawners have been placed in the level and the AI are being polished across the board as we progress. New effects and icons make it easier to see and differentiate the items in the world that can be harvested for materials and the spear and grenade are being tested and are nearly ready for designers to start balancing them.
Here’s what we’ve been up to:
John - Lead Designer
Back into the rigmarole of production. Been pushing the guys to get aspects of the UI working and in place, with some impressive item location hints being visually implemented with a similar look to glinting objects in the Bioshock games. The main focus herein is quality in the individual locations and gameplay engagement in those areas, which all act as a benchmark to future points of interest.
We’ll be sharing a playthrough video next week which will be incredibly exciting to share with everyone and, you’ll be glad to know that Andy and I are now in the process of working through the full timeframe needed to solidify the date of the next release, which is currently slated for the end of July, we’ll get the actual date to you next week once we’ve bottomed it all out.
FYI - Core features still remaining to do;
- Fuel system (Now have it as part of the player’s suit, just requires hooking into a stat and also implementing into structures) - Manual Power/Structure connection gameplay - Character selection (Basic) - Death gameplay loop/new saving and loading
If we find anything else to share i’ll let you know in the comments this weekend!
Thanks for all of you who have faith in us, can’t wait to get this release out to you :)
Matt - Art Director
With the grace of time to give some tlc to the interior of the drop pod, I’ve been embellishing the space with atmosphere and markings that have really brought it to life. Hopefully you get this sense from the footage we’ve included as well.
Moving on I’ve still got a bunch of signage to put in around the interactive panels that control the airlock doors, otherwise the rest of the game is starting to follow suit with the next level of quality we’re aiming for.
Lee - Technical Director
This week I have mainly been concentrating on some debug issues which I hope to finally put to rest in the next could of days to do with spawning issues around navmesh not being generated properly. I’ve also started expanding the hit reaction system for AI so that Lauren can put in different animation thresholds depending on the damage they take.
Tristan - Lead Developer
This week I have been helping look over some of the grenade projectile and spear work with Ricky. It is looking really good and is now ready for some stat tweaking and animation polish.
Ricky - Senior Developer
Grenades and Spears as inventory items are in the testing phase and almost in now so animations and dev can start making them work nicely in the game.
Marcin - Designer
I have finished the first pass of implementation for the objectives system, with support for creating various missions and controlling their flow via campaigns. That also includes the first version of a functional user interface. The majority of the work however was spent hooking the system to the saving and loading, because nobody likes their progress forgotten. I also had to make sure that objects that are no longer relevant, usually associated with a mission that has been completed are properly disposed of to prevent memory leaks.
Joe - Lead Artist
Tweaking and prodding of various UI bits this week, I finished off the UI for environmental effects (Low Oxygen environments!) and tidied up the HUD stats, making it more obvious when your stats are taking a hit. I’ve also been overseeing Sam’s crate designs, which will contain some rather nice loot. “Loot Crates” if you will.
Tom Whaley - Artist
It’s been an exciting week, finally seeing everything coming together from all the disciplines inside Flix! I’ve finished modelling/animating the camp’s transmitter/relay station, as well as implementing various blood and footprint decals around the camp-site, using the environment to give the players a bit of a murder mystery to solve.
On-top of that, various bug-fixing and material magic to make things all blend together nicely :)
Tom H - Designer
This week I have been venturing into the Dam area of the starting section. Here I have been making sure that the spawners for all our wonderful creepy crawlies are set up correctly and ensure a balanced but challenging experience. As well as this I am ensuring that they are varied in ways that will make combat more fluid and less repetitive.
I have also been in the planning stages of the new art designs for the Bridge up to the Dam, meaning lots of documentation and meetings. Fun! But this will all come down to a highly polished section of gameplay that will provide players with a nice early section filled with exploration, combat and scavenging.
Sam - Concept Artist
Ahoy! For those of you who remember the rather underdeveloped crate image from last week, the first half of this week was allocated to getting that design to a better place. Since you last saw it, it has been through a few revisions and is now looking a lot more “smashable”, which of course is a large part of its in-game function.
Whereas other versions of the crate may have looked more functional and coherent, with handles and hinges, they were all in all coming up looking too robust and solid. Keeping the crate’s structure divided into thin-looking corrugated metal palettes remedied this issue, and so we have stuck with that option.
Most recently I’ve been working on some eye-catching new features for the UI, which will be replacing some of the notifications which are currently just plain text. Until next week!
Lauren - Lead Animator
A lot of smaller tasks this week and a fair few meetings to boot including reviewing the AI in general and helping design the new cumulative stability. I have been making various refinements to animations, namely the Stalker feeding animations and Charge attack.
I have made a start on the 3rd person animations for the new Spear and Shiv/Knife weapons, while fixing up the player animation blueprints to be easier to read and debug, and fixing a few miscellaneous bugs with the weapon anims.
Other than that I have been setting up more spawners, passing that over to the level designers and overseeing the placement of those spawners in the world, making sure they are set up how they should. I have to say they are working really well so far, we hope to get some footage to show for next week!
William – 3D Artist
Thanks to some material magic, many of the terrain rocks can be scaled to a large degree without losing detail, making them very reusable in a lot of areas. So, for the past couple of weeks, I have been giving these assets more accurate collision, in order to ensure that players don’t feel like they’re floating, particularly on rocks/cliffs that are scaled up a large amount.
Andy - Lead QA
The team and myself have been looking into the lots of smaller tweaks with animations, a in-depth review of the remaining AI tasks and getting my hand of the new destructible assets inside the lost colony bases.
I'm happy to add French and Chinese to the supported languages (see your options screen), thanks to the excellent hard work and attention to detail from Jean Serfati and Kai Shao. That brings the supported languages up to 6 as these two new additions join English, Japanese, Spanish, and Italian. It's exciting to welcome in a new group of players. :)
To celebrate, enjoy the 35% off sale for a limited time!
While there are major things in the works for Invisigun, I still can't announce any details just yet. However this patch also brings a few more updates and bug fixes. Thanks to the Discord community (http://discord.gg/invisigun) for continuing to post suggestions and report any issues.
New
New localization: French
New localization: Chinese
UI: Language selector is presented on first launch
UI: Some title screen layout adjustments for localization (complete reskin later)
Updates
CRONUS: Finally has a unique victory pose (like the rest of the cast)
Fixes
GAME: GIF export files are properly closed when canceling
GAME: Fixed empty powerup crate falling once on clients if all powerups are disabled
GAME: Fixed not being able to split shots on clients if projectile is already destroyed on the host
GAME: Fixed possibility for two projectiles to create a blast barrier instead of hitting objects
GAME: Fixed missing left ember spawner on The Catacombs
GAME: Random map is refreshed when returning to the lobby from a match
GFX: Fixed the tint of Epi's ghost in his victory pose
UI: Fixed sorting of UI dialogs when in-match
UI: Fixed resolution "free" label value change when changing languages
UI: "Keyboard" is now properly localized on player selectors
UI: Fixed potential for game to stall if localized text parsing fails in some edge cases
UI: Better spacing in GIF end cards for multi-line Steam usernames
UI: Fixed Connect button being selected after removing IP digits using the GUI
UI: Various minor layout fixes for different locales
UI Fixed ready up indicator minor scaling issues
AUDIO: Fixed replays always playing SFX at max volume
EPI: Fixed ghost Epi getting hit instead of real Epi if standing in the same spot
I've dediced to do a bit of marketing to go along with Void Destroyer 2's new look and feel.
If you enjoyed Void Destroyer and are looking for a space sandbox game, that lets you fly anything, build up fleets, capture bases and wage war - be sure to check out Void Destroyer 2!
New season holds many interesting updates: 1. Top 100 ladder players, along with winners of the tournament would receive special badges in internet shell, which would remain for the next seasons. In case player was in top 100 during different ladder seasons, only the best results badge would be displayed. 2. The rating system would be ELO. The game options are 5000 with 15 pt 2x2. Previous ladder would be reset.
Starting of the new season, would mean that last one would have a glorious ending! We congratulate top100 players, who've got unfading glory and respect in our community. We'd wish to highlight the three ladder leaders, since achieving a victory on such a long distance is an admirable feat: 1 place - [KR.S]fair_snow 2 place - [GFF]Rifman 3 place - [GFF]Petru_BwM
The winners of the first official team-based tournament "Season Clash 4" would also receive special badges: 1 place - 10fps ([-RA-]SAnek_PCT и Oldman) 2 place - Golden Guys ([GFF]Petru_BwM и GoldenBoy) 3 place - Воины кебаба ([-UNION-]testopal и [KR.S]Dandy)
Good luck in a new season and may the strongest win!
the new Escape the Pacific version 'Alpha 14' is now available.
For this update we were mainly focusing on Animal AI. There is a new animal debuting. Some UI elements were refined and we were also able to fix some issues too.
The Animal AI has gotten some new features: Crabs aren't traveling on their sides and when they "see" the player approaching from the front they try to escape. This feature provides an interesting experience, now that crabs are easier to catch from behind. The turning mechanic has been also upgraded a little so it is less possible that they walk in place and try to push some heavy object behind them - they rather turn over and walk away. The next interesting feature of the AI is that the crabs are wandering based on the Suns altitude - on the mornings and evenings they are walking more away from the water and near noon they are staying mostly in the water.
We have added a new animal - the Loggerhead turtle. Those make use of the same AI the crabs use but they will learn how to swim, how to eat underwater weeds. There will be implementations for useful turtle parts continually (shell for catching water, teeth for various tools, ...).
We have added an animated progresbar to the startup screen with game logo and also the Help screen texts were checked and corrected for errors.
We have fixed a very serious issue when the player was in swimming mode standing on his raft after loading the game. The issue with chopped down palm trees which were missing their parts/trunks after loading was also solved.
Changelog:
Animals:
01. Added: Animals (Crabs and so on) are now correctly following the terrain relief and aren't travelling on their sides 02. Added: Loggerhead turtle 03. Added: Turtle basic movement 04. Added: Crabs don't try to push objects and rather turn over and walk away 05. Added: Sun altitude influences crabs wandering 06. Added: When Crabs see the player approaching from the front they try to escape
General:
01. Added: Animated LogoScreen ProgressBar 02. Fixed: Checked english Help screen texts 03. Added: Multilanguage support for the Help Screen 04. Added: Spanish Help screen texts 05. Added: German Help screen texts 06. Added: Chopped palm trees don't lose their parts/trunks after loading 07. Tweak: "Force Single Instance" option turned off 08. Fixed: The first chopped trunk from a very tall palm is correctly saved 09. Fixed: The player character is no more locked in swim mode when standing on the raft after loading
We will continue with general rechecking of all of the game features and will fix issues as they appear. The sailing system will also need some tweaking and tuning. We plan to work on further improving the Crabs AI and make the Turtles AI capable of swimming.
There will also be some new gameplay elements, models and functionality added as fixing the remaining issues will allow us, which we'll take care of based on their severity.
Thank you for your patience and for your constructive feedbacks helping us to get rid of the issues as fast as is possible.
Please be aware that during early access phase game code could change as much as affecting gameplay when loading/saving savegames from earlier versions. To always be on the safe side make sure to start a new game with each update. Thank you!
G4GTeam.
If you have any further questions do not hesitate to ask us. We will try to answer your questions in detail.
Seeing as the game has changed it's look and feel dramatically over the past few months - I've decided to do a bit of a marketing push. So I've created and added new trailers/videos and screenshots on the game's store page.
For those interested in what's been going on going on since the game launched on Early Access - here's a summary:
Tons of bug fixed, tons of bugs added, tons of bugs fixed
Tons of new ships, bases and other objects
Better fleet management
Fuel mechanic added (faster overworld travel)
Bunch of auto generated missions
Bunch of scripted missions (faction missions)
Ship capture
Black market bases
Field ownership
Rapid travel gates added
Base capture/blockades/ownership/management
Base - building ships and platforms
Remote interface (turning the game into a quasi 4x game)
Mobile bases
Multiple fleets and non-player fleets
Trade interface (expanded trade ship management)
Dynamic economy and rebalance
New skyboxes
New dynamic skybox system
For those interested in what's on the agenda before release - here's a summary:
Main story
Faction response to base war
Proper implementation of carriers
More dynamic sandbox (events?)
Better implementation of "Kind" faction (missions auto/scripted)
More ships (focusing on larger ships)
More features - that I didn't even think of yet (!!!)
More bug fixes
More polish
While the above list may seem small... Adding a main story requires multiple months of thinking up and scripting missions/events/happenings, the addition of new ships, upgrades, bases, objects, etc. New features/mechanics/tweaks to support the story - and various other things I can't even think of yet.
Thank you very much for your incredible support - without you Void Destroyer 2 in it's current state wouldn't have been possible as with many indie/one man projects - sales fund development.
I hope that you are as excited as I am about the future of the project!