Weekly news #14 - Discussion

[Lurler]

Blogpost: http://atomictorch.com/Post/25

Main addition to VoidExpanse this time is a new ship which you can see in the screenshot below. I think you can guess its purpose from its look. Yes, it is a cargo vessel. It has very spacious cargo holds ideal for trading missions or transportation of mined ore. Now, thinking about it, it is actually a very smart idea if one player does mining in a specialized engineering ship, while other player helps him to transport ore to a processing facility in one of neighboring star systems. I should certainly try it to see how much more effective it is compared to mining alone.

And here is our usual detailed list of other important features this week:
* Crates. Now it is possible to loot destroyed ships. Or you can jettison some or your cargo for others to pick up. The crates themselves were done some time ago, but this week we finally implemented UI for actually picking up these crates, or rather their contents.
* Better planets. We have adjusted how the atmosphere is displayed and increased the polygon count for the planet models.
* Better shaders for the sun, now they take into account actual 3D space fore more realistic look.
* Energy calculation. Generator, capacitor and all energy requiring equipment now take into account all associated ship stats. That means you can be left off without energy if you spam-shoot your weapons non stop for some time.
* Tractor beam. You can use it to draw containers closer to your ship if you are too lazy to pick them up manually. I know, I will certainly use it often!
* We have also started working on the galaxy editor that would help us in creating the campaign for the game later on. For now though, it is mostly needed to tweak the galaxy generation in the game.

[PepperJ]

What happens when a ship is wrecked ? What happens with the ship, cargo and the player ?

[Lurler]

What happens when a ship is wrecked ? What happens with the ship, cargo and the player ?

It depends on what kind of ship we are talking about and also on what mode you are playing.
For now in SP mode we want to go easy on the player, so even if your ship is destroyed you don't lose anything. I think it would be just too much. But in multiplayer it is entirely possible for server admin to make it a hardcore server where you would lose your ship if you are destroyed. So, you would be able to destroy other player's ships and loot their wrecks.