Space rocks and patchers – Development Update 004

We’re a little later than usual, but once again we come bearing goodies. As of today Interstellar Rift will be using a launcher with a built-in patcher. This way you’ll just have to start the game and wait for it to find and install updates. No more downloading rar files and guessing which file you need to run, just open the launcher and click play when it has finished updating.

We are also bringing a test asteroid field into the game. Just take a look out of the window of your ship. Now, these asteroids aren’t just for show. Each one is synced over the local network. For the player this syncing doesn’t do much as of yet. So if multiple players would join they would see the asteroids the same way, in preparation for one of the coming networking updates. We’re venturing into some new and exciting territory here with these asteroids and other space based objects. But in the end we believe it’ll result in a space game unlike any other out there.

But wait, there’s more! In the last patch, we introduced the first phase of the power systems. This time we’ve made a few changes and added in the ability to save them. So from now on you don’t have to worry about losing all your work when you’ve set up a very fuel efficient ship. There are more things that we’ll be adding to this system in the next few updates, and we have some ideas on how to improve it, so please give us your thoughts and any feedback you’re willing to give will help us to greatly improve this system.

Interstellar Rift v0.0.5 can be downloaded here.

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Interstellar Rift Vidblog 002

We recorded a small video to talk a bit about the new power distribution system and how you can connect systems. These new additions to the game are not in any way complete and will have bugs and issues. In the coming updates we will build on this system and slowly open up the possibilities to control your ship.

You can download the latest version of the ship builder here.

Please let us know what you think, you can discuss the changes on our forums.

Interstellar Rift Development Update 003

Another two weeks have passed and its time to update again. We have lots of stuff going on under the hood this time, networking is where the focus is right now, and we will be sharing more information about this soon. But we have some new features for you guys to play around with as well. This fortnight, we bring you sound! Thats right, we have some early music in this week! Composed by Pim ”Sir Xemic” Schreurs. For the moment it’s just the one song, but expect more to come in the near future as we build on our sound engine and start supporting more audio.

 

Apart from sound, we’re also introducing the basics of power distribution and system connectivity. This system is a very early work in progress, but we want to get it into your hands and see what you think about it right out of the gate. This system needs refining and might change a lot over the coming weeks and months but we want you guys to be comfortable using it, since it’s going to be the backbone of your starship.

We’re also adding support for multi block props, this feature is necessary for tech II and higher ship systems and certain large props. This automatically creates room space for the placed prop. This will also enable us to place things like the hyperdrive we showed you in the devblog without it poking through the hull on all sides. For this update however we have only added the tech II hydrogen generator. But expect a lot more to come soon.

You can find the new editor available for download here. We appreciate any input and critique you guys are willing to share.