It was brought to my attention that nobody can log in to the forum any longer. People who are already logged in seem to be ok. If you log out, you cannot log back in again.

I believe this problem started when the web site switched to using https.

An updated version of the MyBB forum software is available. I am upgrading the forum to the newest version. There could be outages before everything is stable again.

Inverted Atmo Dive
Crew orbiting over a city. Mission ordered to orbit over another city. Ship proceeds to go there. Change ship orientation policy to fly inverted. Pilot dives into the atmosphere. Everybody dies.

Fixed problems with NPC pilot flying inverted.

Servers updated. Client unaffected.

Gagarin Should Smile
Yuri Gagarin was famous for his smile. The NPC should smile.

Story engine now has functions for controlling facial expressions of characters.

All story scripts were updated to incorporate facial expressions. These have not been tested. Some tweaking could be needed.

Gagarin Should Say Location
Gagarin should say his lat long so I can find him easier.

Gagarin now states his lat long coordinates when the story begins.

Ship Contact
Sometimes players return after a long time; their ship is gone; and they don't realize it exists and can be recovered. Ship probably should hail whenever you log in, just to welcome you back.

When an avatar logs in, the ship they hold a berth aboard sends a welcome message. The message says the ships location and condition, similar to the reply to a hail.

Hail reply and contact message text was improved. When life support is not working, it now says the consequence of this, that nobody can recall to a berth. When the ship is in stasis, it now says the ship can be recovered at an airport repair shop.

Lock/Unlock Button
The door lock button always says "Lock", even if the door I am looking at is already locked.

Door lock/unlock button now changes based on locked state of the door. The locked icon has a red color, to make the locked state more obvious.

Login Server
One of the login servers stopped responding, which prevented a lot of people from logging in to the game. It appears that the ethernet port for the back side network is malfunctioning on that server.

Removed the broken server from the grid. Configured a different server to replace the broken login server. Updated all servers with the latest builds and restarted them.

As title says, a harvest operation by bay/module/particles/whatever will not work if the target is an asteroid. Nothing happens, and I tried all three types of missions. Some asteroids have antiflux particles so this is an issue.

I can do it manually via the firing console, but that takes forever.



Note the absence of 'asteroid' in 'Sun, Ring, or Gas Giant'. The asteroids do not even show up as potential targets. I am guessing that's why the crew missions aren't working.

Additionally, there is presently no way to mine particle resources such as antiflux using buildings as the resource nodes do not appear. - nevermind about that last point, thanks dean

Launcher Fail
Launcher update for Windows does not work. Reports communications error.

Launcher updated, for both Windows 64 bit and 32 bit builds. It does not fail on Linux but I will build and post those platform builds as well, just to be sure everybody is on the same page.

I also added the build date to the version, per DeanTwo's suggestion.

FWIW, the launcher does have a mechanism for checking for updates to itself. It will report when a new version is available and if getting that update is required or not.

The changes from HTTP to HTTPS prevented any communications with the server at all, which meant the program could not determine the latest version of itself. The program could not know that an update would solve the problem.

HTTPS Hazeron.com
This has been a nagging topic for years. I never gave it much priority because we don't handle or store any sensitive information. However, the web has moved to the point that a regular HTTP site might as well have COVID-19.

All Hazeron.com web pages are now secured through Network Solutions LLC.

Confirmation pages when creating a new account and when changing your password now show the password.

Client should be updated but it isn't needed, due to URLs that need to be https: instead of http:. Buttons to open the web site or the wiki might not work.

The current Launcher no longer works, due to URLs that need to be https: instead of http:. You can still run the 'Shores of Hazeron.EXE' file directly. It doesn't expect anything on the command line.

New clients and launchers are building now. They will be posted as they finish.

A HUGE THANK YOU to AnrDaemon for expert help setting this up. It was a real struggle. Internet went down early last evening, leaving things dead in the water all night. Html POST transactions to send form fields to the server stopped working, which took considerable head bashing to figure out, most of today. Without AnrDaemon's assistance, this would not be working.

In preparation to discussing technology systems and progression, lets take a look at the current resources in the game and try to put them into tiers. Not necessarily to propose changes, but feedback and ideas are always nice.

In a lot of games we have three basic tiers: early-game, mid-game and late-game. This is mainly interesting to us so we can see where the game might be lacking in things to search for.


Starter - Tier 0
First of all the start of the game has a number resources found on your homeworld as part of early-game, but they are either useless or better alternatives exist in tier 1.

• Logs
  
• Stone
  

• Ore
  
• Oil
  
• Minerals
  
• Crystals
  
• Gems
  
• Coal
  
• Radioactives
  
• Ice
  
• Water
  
• Air
  
• Hydrogen
  
• Eludium
  
• Lumenite
  

• Cryozine
  
• Ioplasma
  
• Phlogiston
  
• Magmex
  

• Vulcanite
  
• Bolite
  
• Myrathane
  
• Antiflux Particles
  

• Preons
  
• Borexino Precipitate
  
• Polytaride
  
• Flomentum
  
• Adamantite
  
• Viathol
  

Rocket Training
Rocket training starts. Where is Gagarin?

Several errors were found in the story engine.

• Story engine failed to find a new rocket to start the story, unless the player was standing at the building with the rocket when the story engine checked for it.
  
• Initial placement of Gagarin was calculated incorrectly. He kept being placed exactly in the middle of the rocket, with his feet sticking out of the rocket main booster.
  
• Gagarin's story repeats until it is completed by the avatar. The story now asks at the beginning if you want the training.
  
• Some of Gagarin's comments were updated to reflect changes to the game since the script was written.
  
• Found/fixed a bug in the story engine when evaluating compound if conditions.
  

• The body took a point of bleeding damage after being de-fibrillated, which caused it to die again.
  
• The body took a point of bleeding damage after I picked it up, which caused its pose to change.
  
• The doctor did not immediately attend to the patient when dropped in the surgery unit. The patient died while the doctor just stood there.
  
• When attempting to enter the surgery unit while clothed, I got the fail message twice, which was annoying.
  

Gunfire
I hold the trigger on my AK. It fires once, PEW! Then I see the rounds counter ticking down, no more pew pew.

Fixed bug in gun fire effect.

Explosions
Vehicles vanish with no explosion at all.

Fixed bug in visibility range calculation for explosion effects.

Self Destruct Bug
When I self destruct the ship I am aboard, the ship is destroyed but it remains in my scene. I can walk around but I cannot interact with the ship, like opening a door. I am stuck until I relog then the ship is gone and everything seems fine.

Fixed bug when the ship you are aboard is destroyed.

Self destruct was not a factor. The destruction could have been caused by any means. The result would have been the same.

Refit Bug
When refitting a ship, the repair shop sends a proposal. There is no accept option on the right click menu for the proposal.

Accept option added to right click menu for refit proposals.