Spiritus Astrum

The next goal that I am working on is allowing the state of the players AI crew and companions to be saved consistently between zones.

Currently, they only work properly within the same zone.

I will need to make changes to the server, client, and database, to support the AI’s zone as well as their position, etc.

I have been working on a concept for these changes, however, and it seems to work ok.

I have made several improvements to the gui systems within the project.

It is now possible to select items in menus more easily, and I have made font sizes and colours more legible.

I have also made improvements to the persistent objects in the game, and fixed some more minor bugs and other improvements.

I have been looking into adding LUA scripting support to my project.

I have decided not to add this yet, but at some point in the future I intend to use it to allow players to create their own dynamic quests, stories etc.

It should also be possible to allow the player to create and customise enemies, weapons, ships, etc. This will be crucial for the roleplaying sandbox type world that I am trying to create.

I have also made improvements to the guis system in the project, and added additional options for selecting text in menus.

I have fixed quite a few minor bugs with the project, and made some minor improvements.

In addition, I have fixed one major bug which was in the project for some time.

This was related to the day/night cycle that I have created. Under some conditions, a planets surface would have a different “time of day” than it should.

So, flying to a planet and landing on the “day” side would actually be night, etc.

This seems to be fixed now.

I have added code to the server to allow it to spawn new players on the surface of any planet.

I intend to use this to randomise the spawn locations or conditions of new players, so that they may not spawn in a starship.

I am also considering having a combined tutorial and story for the first few hours of gameplay, which will teach the player how to play the game by spawning them in a random location and gradually providing access to the games features and resources, until they eventually gain full access to the sandbox mode of the game.

This will take some time to implement though.

Debugging is still going well.

I have fixed a long standing bug related to landing on ringworlds, and I have improved the item mechanics further.

I have also fixed more minor inventory management issues.

I have also made minor improvements to the NPC AI system. Some of the NPC’s attributes were not being stored persistently, this is now fixed.

I have fixed a large number of bugs and made several improvements.

Most of the improvements are related to the item system, in particular, with respect to weapons.

It is now possible to reload while pressing a key, instead of having to manually reload by entering the inventory.

It is also possible to partially reload, IE, if a player has more rounds in their magazine than their weapon can hold, the weapon will now be fully reloaded, and the magazine will remain in the inventory, and the remaining rounds can be used again later.

Previously, magazines were single use, so partially emptying a magazinewould cause the remaining rounds to be discarded.

I have made extensive improvements to the UI system in the game.

The UI system is world space, and I want to keep it that way, since it is far more immersive.

One of the problems with this though is that in some cases items in the world clip through the guis (such as walls, etc).

Normally, this would be fixed by using a nested camera system, where the UI is on a different layer, however this did not work in my case, probably because I already have a complex nested camera system in place, as well as various post processing effects, etc.

Instead, I modifed all of the UI shaders and some of the standard shaders that I am using to render them on top of everything else, so that I get the effect that I want without causing any additional rendering issues with the world.

This is also a lot more efficient that creating another camera.

I have been doing more debugging and making more improvements to the project.

The most important bug fix was related to an issue with player physics.

Due to the fact that all planets have different forces of gravity, the player was often bouncing or bounding when running. This was realistic, but very annoying.

I have added the ability for players to turn on and off “gravity boots”, which basically negate the gravity of whatever planet they are on, and allow the player to walk and sprint normally without bouncing. This is less realistic, but much more immersive.