Jan 1, 2023

EmptyEpsilon - Daid

SOLDate: 20230101: Deepspace broadcast

Captains, recruits, trainees, main-screen-operators and officers. I welcome you to a new SOL cycle. As you all know, we still measure the passing of time in rotations of our home planet Earth around its star. I guess this makes us all feel more connected. Or just nostalgic.

Looking back on our last SOL, we have had a few good updates:

The transition from the old SFML based engine to SDL2 engine went smoothly without many engine hickups.
Our French and German speaking officers finally no longer need to depend on sticky notes on their screens but can configure their screen in their native language.
Many of our training scenarios have seen some update, and we have a brand new scenario The Omicron Plague, which reminds us that plagues should be taken seriously.
Many small repairs to various systems.
We've started to connect to a new source of recruits. While integration is still happening, hope to expect new recruits from the Steam side of the universe.

Steam

On that last point. I would like to welcome any new recruits from Steam. We are gearing up to give you access to your stations soon. Until that is done, you can always go to a non-steam station to connect with your fellow officers.

All preliminary checks for steam access have been done. But there is still one final checklist to process before high command gives the all-clear for steam access.

Looking forward

Looking forwards, our engineers have some exciting new things planned. To start off, officers from Steam should be able to join us somewhere in the first few months.

Next, some engineers are working on retrofitting a lot of parts to allow for a higher degree of customization. This work is many months from finished, but once done, it will allow a lot of things that were previously impossible. Like fitting stations with weapon systems, giving asteroids shields or removing the self-destruct button (but not sure why anyone would take that risk) More details will follow once this work starts to crystalize into a working state.

Connecting with your fellow officer

This is a reminder, if you are looking for fellow officers to fly with in an online session. The USN discord is where weekly games are organized, open for anyone. https://discord.gg/xs4V9wCj

Jan 1, 2023

Happy New Year from All of Us Here at Core Keeper!

Core Keeper - Bridie

Welcome to 2023! We’re very excited to ring in the new year with such an amazing community, and we hope you’re all looking forward to what this year will bring for Core Keeper.

You can expect a new roadmap from us this year, with details on the Crystal Biome and beyond! You’ll also be pleased to know that our seasonal events will be recurring throughout 2023, and we miiiight just add some new content to these if the opportunity presents itself. Though we can’t say much at the moment, we can assure you that there’ll be plenty to look forward to over the coming months, so keep an eye out for news and updates in the Steam announcements – as well as over on our Twitter and Discord channels.

You can probably tell that we’re raring to go full steam ahead into the New Year, but we also think it’s important to take the time to look back and reflect on what a great year 2022 was for us. Here are our highlights!

Launching Core Keeper in Early Access in March:

This was an amazing moment for us, and it was made all the more special by the fact that we already had a dedicated community waiting for the game. From testing and open alphas, all the way to our very first public demo, we were so very grateful for your support as we brought the game into Early Access.

Our First Seasonal Event at Easter:

We had our very first seasonal event not long after our Early Access launch, and this was a fantastic learning opportunity for us. The Easter Seasonal Event lasted for just two weeks and, originally, we had planned for the eggs from our egg hunt to disappear from the world when the event ended.

Thanks to your feedback, we soon realised that it’d be much more fun if certain items from seasonal events remained in the game for you to enjoy year ‘round. We also realised that time-locking seasonal events wasn’t ideal for Explorers who were busy or unavailable during the event windows, and we set the plans in motion to change this for our next seasonal event.

Our First Major Update – The Sunken Sea:

After Easter (and a little work adding dedicated servers to the game), we were ready to bring you our first major update: The Sunken Sea! With a vast ocean and mystical sub-biome just waiting to be discovered, you set off in brand-new boats to battle the likes of Morpha the Aquatic Mass and Omoroth the Sea Titan. We added so much new content to the game for this update, including Portals, Sprinklers, the Dresser mechanic, map markers, new food, new enemies, new music, and more!

Cozy Caverns:

We knew there’d be a little time before our next seasonal event and a little more before our next major update, so we wanted to bring you some fun, decorative content in the interim! Our Cozy Caverns update included lots of new and paintable items, and we added mechanics that would allow you to paint existing items such as rugs, dressers, and pedestals.

We added new mechanics such as the ability for players to sit on objects like chairs, stools, thrones, and (of course) the Caveling Toilet. We also had lots of requests for an update that would allow players to place Torches on walls, and Cozy Caverns seemed like the perfect opportunity to introduce this. It was a joy to see all the ways you got creative with this update.

Terraria Crossover:

We’ve always admired the team over at Re-Logic, and our community had long been asking if there was ever going to be a Core Keeper and Terraria crossover. Well, in September 2022, we were beyond excited to bring King Slime to the world of Core Keeper and to see Caveling Pets as a feature in Terraria!

Our Halloween Seasonal Event:

Things got super spooky in the underground in October when we introduced our second seasonal event for Halloween. We added creepy variations to our enemies, introducing the Dracularva, Spookavelings, Frankenbrutes, and Pumpkings to the game – plus an extra-scary variation on The Hive Mother! We also introduced new equipment and cosmetics, such as the Pumpkin Lantern and Spooky Blanket Cape (because who doesn’t want to dress up as a ghost, right?). Our creepy enemies were dropping some interesting Halloween loot including delicious candy and Grumpkin seeds!

We also updated the way seasonal events worked so that, once a seasonal event has launched, players can activate it at any time by changing their PC’s time and date settings to the window within which the event was running.

Our Second Major Update – The Desert of Beginnings:

After adding so much new content to the game for The Sunken Sea, we were extra proud to be able to bring you even more for our second major update: The Desert of Beginnings. In this update, players were invited to comb the desert sands and battle their way through The Molten Quarry in search of new valuables that would help them in their battle against Ra-Akar the Sand Titan.

You upgraded your equipment with out-of-this-world Galaxite Ore, fought your way past six new enemies, stomped on new critters like beetles and worms, improved your circuitry skills, uncovered new fish, and crafted your very first Go-Karts! And that barely scratches the surface of all the wonderful ways we’ve seen Explorers enjoying The Desert of Beginnings.

Our Christmas Seasonal Event:

As the year drew to a close, we knew we wanted to bring something special to wrap things up (pun intended). Our Christmas Seasonal Event began on the 13th of December, turning the underground into a winter wonderland. A blanket of snow covered certain biomes and enemies got new, festive variations – some of which were almost too adorable to kill. We added a new Seasonal Merchant, as well as lots of new cosmetic and decorative items to the game. Oh, and we added fireworks too!

This felt like the perfect note to end the year on, and we’re looking forward to recurring seasonal events, the Crystal Biome, and more in 2023!

Jan 1, 2023

Azulgar 0.46

Azulgar: Star Commanders - Muad'Dib

It has been a long time, too long, but new content update is finaly here. New way of aquiring resources has been added to the game. You can upgrade your ship with asteroid drill and mine asteroids. This will give you more yield than salvaging the debris with salvage laser. Asteroids have different pockets of resources in them, you have to scan the asteroid to see where the deposits you want are. You can then choose what to mine. Scanning speed is determined by your sensors module. Mining speed by the number of drills on your ship.

Other content updates in this release are cockpit view and ship tab in inventory window, where you can view your ship's stats and modules. Another small feature is that content of your inventory now spawns after death into a cargo box.

On a slightly different note. Azulgar Star Commanders has been in Early Access since 2017. We started as a team of people, but soon after release whole team fell apart due to lack of funding. Since 2018 it has been mostly me developing the game alone in my spare time. Volunteers came and went, mostly 3d artists who left their footprint, but 99% of code in the game was done by me. Hence the reason development is extremely slow. But it won't stop. Following is a roadmap of planned features, without any specific timeframes.

Tomas „Muad'Dib” Koza

Roadmap:

Bugfixes & Rebalance