On windows build designer sometimes teleport you into primeval world when it's left unattended for some time.
Steps to reproduce:
- Open any design
- Minimize designer completely
- Do any tasks on PC for 5-15 minutes (web surfing, watching videos, playing games)
- Open up designer. Most of the time it will load primeval world
Designer just did that while i was writhing this post. Debugger remain silent

Designer can crash, usually randomly. I had most crashes while using face mode and/or texturing parts close to camera (1-2 meters or closer)
One time debugger catch exception "std::bat_cast at memory location". Dunno what that means and i don't know how to use debugger anyway

Save game became corrupted after one day of playing. I recall saving manually then exiting the process normally. When attempting to reload the save the game simply crashes to desktop seconds after clicking play also unable to create another character without removing the save files entirely due to same crash on character creation. if the save file is of any use for your debugging I can send it to you.

I believe a "simple" solution to the issue for now is making the game able to recognize file corruption instead of crashing along with an option built into the game to enable a certain number of automatic save backups by simply pushing the previous save file into a backup folder.

I think this will would help significantly when the game goes live as loosing hours of work can be extremely frustrating if we don't manually backup game saves and would result in a negative play experience

Exchanges now show the rating for blueprints, based on the thumbs ups and downs on a blueprint. The overall rating is provided by steam as a floating point number in the range of 0 to 1. It is described as, "The bayesian average for up votes / total votes, between [0,1]." The game translates that into a 0 to 5 star range, with halves. The tool tip on the rating shows the total number of votes.

To rate a blueprint, select it in the exchange and press the button to view it in the Steam Workshop.

There you can give a thumbs up or thumbs down, post comments, give awards, and other kinds of things.

Several people reported a crash when the current list of items in the Steam Workshop was requested from the building exchange.

Debug traces showed some insanity going on when getting that listing, in particular when requesting the preview images for the items, which have to be requested and downloaded separately.

I reworked some of the code involved.

Please give it another try.

--

Sorry for the slow response on this. I lost a day this week when we had to go out of town for the day.

In the construction menu, selecting a blueprint that has a high resolution preview image forces the window to accomodate the full width and height of the image. On a 1920x1080 monitor, this causes the construction window to be unnecessarily wide, and taller than the vertical resolution of the screen itself.

This seems to be happening with the default blueprints and custom blueprints finalized after the latest update.

With custom blueprints finalized before the latest update, the construction window behaves "normally", and can be resized down to a manageable size.

Screenshot:


Construction menu with one of the new building previews. The window cannot be resized smaller than this.

Steam Workshop
The big change in this update is integration with Steam Workshop. At risk of repeating what was already posted, I'll summarize the entire workshop integration here.

Steam Workshop is a feature of Steam that enables users to post content for a game that other users can share. This is a perfect fit for sharing building and spacecraft blueprints created in the game.

The connection to the workshop is handled entirely through the in-game blueprint exchanges, both for buildings and for spacecraft. Existing functionality of the exchanges was not changed. A few buttons were added to integrate with the workshop.

Publish to Steam - Uploads a blueprint to the workshop that was created by you.

Unpublish from Steam - Deletes a blueprint from the workshop that was uploaded by you. All subscriptions to the blueprint are canceled.

Subscribe - Downloads a blueprint from the workshop to your computer. After the download is complete, the blueprint is added to the appropriate library and an exchange entry is created for the library entry. If a subscribed blueprint is updated in the workshop, your game will automatically download the changes.

Unsubscribe - Stops keeping a blueprint in sync with the one in the workshop.

List - Gets a list of blueprints from the workshop. It attempts to associate workshop blueprints with exchange items that appear to be identical. Things can get out of sync if you restore an old game, for example.

Workshop blueprints are added to the exchange with a special type of item that looks slightly different (gray text color). When you select one of these items you see the preview image, design report, and terms of access, just like when you select a regular exchange item. Then you can subscribe to workshop items that you want to use. The item is downloaded to your local library and added to the exchange.

Access terms for a blueprint were simplified. There are only two possible options now: Full and Restricted. Full access grants full unrestricted use of the blueprint. Restricted access enables you to only build using the blueprint; you cannot open it in a design studio. The "view only" option was nerfed. The architect of a blueprint can always open it, regardless of the published access terms.

Workshop items can be monetized through Steam. I'm not sure how this is done yet. It may be possible right now since it is all handled through Steam. There is an API response when subscribing to an item within the game that requires me to open a certain web page. Perhaps purchase options will appear there when an item is monetized. We'll see as I find out more about this topic.

Blueprints with an association to a workshop blueprint are tracked for playtime stats. All ships and buildings trigger playtime tracking when they exist. A given blueprint, though it may be in use by several spacecraft or buildings in your game, is only tracked when its usage starts and ends. Tracking doesn't count each and every instance of the blueprint in a game so ten ships using the same blueprint won't increase the playtime by 10x. Playtime tracking begins when the first game object uses the blueprint. Playtime tracking stops when the last game object stops using the blueprint.

Architect Id Snafu
Exchange items show the architect of the blueprint. That architect information was previously your avatar name and id. Those things have no correlation to anything on Steam.

The architect id on blueprints and exchange items is now the Steam Id and Steam Name of the architect.

That means that any exchange items created by you prior to this update will no longer be recognized as yours. You won't be able to publish them in the workshop until that is fixed.

You will have to finalize your designs all over again, so the proper architect id is stored with the blueprints.

Then you will have to republish those designs into the exchange, again so the proper architect id is stored in the exchange.

Then you will be able to publish those blueprints to the Steam workshop.

Your current Steam name is stored as the architect name. You can change your name on Steam. That will not change the name that was stored in blueprints. Simply having the id is not sufficient to query Steam for a name. The only way I can show an architect's name is if I store it when I have it.

Blueprints Folder
Blueprint .SoH files are no longer distributed with the software. That reduces the game software download by about 80MB. All of those blueprints are available in the Steam Workshop if someone wants them.

The .SoH files are not required to play the game. The game startup data already includes those blueprints, finalized and ready for game play.

I'm not sure that the Blueprints folder was easily accessible when managed by Steam.

Finalize Preview
When finalizing a blueprint, you can now select the preview image from a file. Previously you just got a screen grab of the designer when you started the finalize process.

I found the preview mode of the designer worked well for getting screen grabs of things before finalizing. The appearance is more like how the thing will look in the game environment. I noticed that doors on buildings in the preview do not appear; I logged it as a bug.

Finalize Result
Finalizing a blueprint used to remove things that were not needed to use the object in the game, things like door jigs. That also meant removing crucial states of turbo lifts that left them broken and unable to create more lift stops. This made a finalized design unsuitable as a design drawing.

When finalizing a blueprint now, nothing is removed from the design automatically. You can still mark parts that are to be omitted from the final design; only those things are removed.

Design Description Bug
In the properties of a design is a box to let you type in a description. While working on the workshop I discovered a bug that caused that description text to be stored with html encoding. This is hardly noticeable except that the text always seemed a bit small. Unfortunately, that html encoding appears as raw text in the description that appears on the item in the Steam Workshop. It's very ugly.

There is a simple fix. If your drawing has any text in the description field, simply open the properties dialog and press Ok. This cleans up the text if you do so using this update.

Steam Overlay
The Steam overlay does not work in the game. There is some discussion about it on line; it sounds like games based on Qt do not support the Steam overlay. I've tried getting it to work to no avail.

Relic Story Ringworld Sector
The Relic story gets to a point where you must go find a sector that contains a ringworld. This has perplexed players in the past when they have searched countless sectors without ever finding a ringworld.

A slight change was made in a previous update. I think I mentioned it in a previous post. When a homeworld system is located for a new avatar, the code was changed to insure there was a ringworld in one of the 27 sectors (3x3x3 box) centered on the homeworld sector. Note this is not done if the "Remote" starting proximity option is selected.

In this update, the storyline finds a nearby ringworld sector by performing a radial search out from your location. In most cases, this will be within one sector distance of your current location. Xian reveals this sector as the Dangerous Exchange story segment ends, when she implores you to find Dr. Millford.

This is a new one: my ship went up into orbit, and then just stayed fixed in space as if it was stuck on something and unable to move once it left the planet. Taking the helm didn't do anything, and any input was including thrust. Cycling power on the ship didn't do anything. This issue persists through the save game. Welp, at least the ship didn't fly off into deep space.

There is an issue airports where spacecraft will hover high in the air rather than land on the pad. The crew report that the ship is landed, but it will still take damage as if it isn't at an airport.  The land underneath was modified with the grading tool, or it was placed on a platform.

Areal platforms also are a bit bugged when placing buildings.  The airport I placed on top of one allowed be to fall through the floor and inside the areal platform.  Placing the "haxus colony mine" resulted in it exploding once manufacturing jobs were set.

Accessing the hold or damage report can cause the game to lock up. This is an issue in the current Windows client, though I have reported this as being an issue before for the Linux client.  My guess is this happens more often in Linux because the Linux kernel is more unforgiving of protected mode memory access violations than Windows is.

This is largely random, but it happens quite frequently enough. You should be able to make use of Wine's debugging tools in Linux to investigate further.

I also found this happening when adding new mission orders to a ship during harvesting operations. These hangs seems to happen more frequently when the ship is actively doing something.

As you can see I did not post an update this week. Here is where things are at. 

Steam Workshop

The Steam Workshop integration is complete. I learned more about the workshop in the process. Here is how it works, which contradicts my previous statements, sorry. 

Publish - Uploads your blueprint to Steam. 

Unpublish - Deletes your blueprint from Steam. Cancels all current subscriptions to the blueprint.

Subscribe - Downloads a blueprint from Steam, including your own. Keeps your local copy in sync with changes to the blueprint on Steam. I think a Steam based micro transaction is triggered if the item is monetized. 

Unsubscribe - Stops keeping your local copy in sync with the Steam blueprint. Does not remove it from the local library or exchange. 

Note that there is no current way to update or change a published blueprint so there won’t be any syncing. Also monetizing and micro transactions have not been implemented in the game. I may not have to do anything more in the code. This may be entirely handled by Steam. It’s been a low priority so I just don’t know much about it yet.

Once downloaded, nothing causes your local copy to be removed from the library. Existing ships and buildings are unaffected by unsubscribing. This could change once I figure out how returns of monetized items are handled.  

If you restore a previous game or start a new game, subscribed blueprints are restored, unless they have been unpublished and no longer exist on Steam. That may be incorrect because Steam caches blueprints that have been downloaded. Your own blueprints can be restored by loading a .SoH file or by subscribing them in the Steam workshop. 

Game Startup Data File

I am reconstructing a file that contains data the mmo client used to get from the servers, mainly the initial spacecraft and building libraries and exchanges. 

The file used to be created using an sql query on the mmo database. Since that is no longer available, I had to do a little coding to enable the solo client to construct the data. 

The spacecraft library and exchange have been reconstructed and published to Steam. 

The building library starts with 82 blueprints so it will take a day or two to rebuild it. I have all the SoH files so that part is easy.

I added a feature to the finalize dialogs so you can pick the preview image from a file and it can be a lot bigger. I’ll need to preview each blueprint in the designer and get a screen grab, which will take a little extra time. 

When that is done I will post an update. Likely to be some day this week.