Don’t go down with your ship – Interstellar Rift Development Update 116


Trading cards, escape pods, deathstates, oh my! The new next patch is ready for primetime! Introducing the ship deathstate, dropping your inventory on death, Steam Trading cards, Discord rich presence, and a lot more.

Ship deathstate, the escape pod and the dropping of the player inventory are closely tied together. And we had to make sure all 3 were done before we could implement any one of them into the game. But it’s all here now so Enjoy!

The Ship deathstate is there to give players a chance to grab their valuables and escape. But how do you escape a burning ship you ask? Why I’m glad you asked, because from now on you will be able to escape using the new escape pod!
This new device can be placed on the side of your ship, and can be launched at any time! Once launched players will be able to fly to safety for a brief period. Escape pods can warp away quickly once launched. Additionally once you’ve gotten away you can salvage the escape pod for some resources that will help you get on your way again.

But since players now drop their inventory on death, players will now have more options to save themselves from the destruction of their ship. When you die a holographic projector droid is spawned on your position, containing all the stuff in your inventory, resources and tools. These little droids stay around for five minutes, after which they simply disappear.

The ship deathstate will last longer the bigger your ship is. Which means there will be an opportunity for the attackers to raid large ships once they have destroyed them.

But there is more as well. We’ve added in discord integration into the game. Which means you can now join your friends through discord and see what they are doing in their name tags.

And we’re also adding Steam trading cards to the game for you to collect and enjoy, these should be dropping as of posting this.

For all the details on the changes we made, please see the link to the patch notes below. It will go into detail about the new escape pods, all the bug fixes, and some of the optimizations we’ve done this patch.

As always, we’d appreciate any feedback you’re willing to provide, it will only help us make the game better. We have also set up a public discord server which you can join!
Feel free to drop by and have a chat, we’d love to hear your opinion and feedback!

Thank you all for playing and see you starside!

-The Split Polygon Team

Patch Notes for IR Alpha 0.1.55

Feedback thread

IR Discord Channel

The Little Drone That Could – Interstellar Rift Development Update 114


Time for another Interstellar Rift update! After simmering in the experimental branch for a little while, this new update featuring drone automation, and the new Medium Rift Generator, is ready for prime time.

The new Medium Rift Generator works very similarly to the small and large rift generator, but it is able to send ships through rifts with a mass rating up to 1 million. Meaning that it can only use regular Xanthium and Di-Xanthium. This is ideal for medium ships or small ships that wish to be able to use the same rift multiple times.

In addition we are also adding automation options to the heavy drones. This will allow you to put drones to work by sending them out to gather resources, return, automatically unload their goods, and then go out again. It also allows the drones to automatically respond if the ship is attacked. Meaning they will launch by themselves, and attack anything that is attacking the ship.

Of course you will be able to cancel their commands, and retrieve them before their programming is up. The cartridges required for these automation functionalities can be made in the 3D Printer, or bought at stores that happen to sell them.

We’ve also made some changes to the point defense drones that players can deploy, from now on they require drone components, and when first created they will be empty. Meaning that players will now need to add ammo to the drone. Ammo can be added in the assembling machine, which also allows you to create drones that come with a full magazine by including the ammunition with the rest of the resources. For the time being point defense drones can only use standard ammo.

As always, we’d appreciate any feedback you’re willing to provide, it will only help us make the game better. We have also set up a public discord server which you can join!

Feel free to drop by and have a chat, we’d love to hear your opinion and feedback!

Thank you all for playing and see you starside!

-The Split Polygon Team

Patch Notes for IR Alpha 0.1.54

Feedback thread

IR Discord Channel

Attack of the Drones – Interstellar Rift Development Update 112


The long awaited Drone bay is finally here! Today the drone bay hits our live branch of Interstellar Rift, bringing with it the ability for players to construct and direct their own heavy drones. 

Once the bay is constructed aboard your ship, you will need special drone components to build the drones (you’ll find the recipes in your grip’s encyclopedia and in the patch notes, as well as on the drone bay terminals.)
Your drones are fully customizable, you can change the color, their name and their load out from the control console on the second floor of the bay.

Drones can serve several purposes based on their loadout. A drone with cargo pods attached can carry resources around and sell them for example, and a drone with the engine attachment can fly much longer on the same amount of fuel. If you also equip that drone with a mining laser it can gather resources for you. Or if you’re looking for a more combat oriented version. You can equip the drone with missiles and two turrets. But unlike the drones that are activated via the disposer, these require fuel and ammunition. Which can be loaded into the drone using the resource hopper.

In addition there are also a bunch of improvements to the chat system, the cursor can now be moved, the chat commands for the console and ingame chat are now unified, and we added new commands, and updated the old ones where needed.

We’ve also made some changes to the underlying code which should result in performance gains on some systems. You should also see improvements to how you see other players. Which should mean less sliding around, more fluid animations, and a reduction in micro stuttering.

As always, we’d appreciate any feedback you’re willing to provide, it will only help us make the game better. We have also set up a public discord server which you can join!
Feel free to drop by and have a chat, we’d love to hear your opinion and feedback!

Thank you all for playing and see you starside!

-The Split Polygon Team

Patch Notes for IR Alpha 0.1.53

Feedback thread

IR Discord Channel[discord.gg]