After one of the most recent updates it seems we are unable to drop items on the group. This completely prevents the construction of the first stone quarry.

This also seems to affect all placed items on ships. I loaded my save-game and my Gulliver starship is now empty, so the effect of the bug seems somewhat retroactive.

I attempted to toss some dynamite, no item appeared and explosion.

Killing creatures seem to not drop any carcass or items.

Items just seem to not appear in the world at all, or maybe they vanish instantly.

This has been confirmed by multiple players, and no one is reporting to not be affected.

Lockup Bug
Two different cases of program lockups were reported. One occurred at the moment the avatar gave the vulcium knife to Xian at the University, something I have done hundreds of times. The other lockup occurred at the moment a spacecraft entered a wormhole, another activity I have done hundreds of times. Both of these juicy bugs were captured in save game files.

I lumped these two bugs together because the same program error was causing the problem. Oddly the bug was introduced some time in 2015. It is fixed.

Billion Hit Point Buildings
Pirate buildings report billions of hit points. This makes them very difficult to destroy.

This problem is caused by an inconsistency between the building subsystem volumes and the overall volume of the building itself. This error also afflicts some spacecraft blueprints.

I updated the building and spacecraft blueprint finalize functions to catch this situation and report it as an error. It also tells you how to fix it, which simply requires a refresh of the obstacles data and then to Ok the properties. A careful look at the subsystem volumes is recommended.

I also fixed the total hit points function to return a reasonable number when this situation occurs.

The default building and spacecraft blueprints should be reviewed and republished as necessary. There is no time for that today. I'll do it some time next week.

An error in Prospector is showing a duplicate attribute name.

https://hazeron.com/mybb/attachment.php?aid=86

Parts of My Hull are Orange
Some parts of the hull of my ship were weirdly orange. Later they were black and green striped.

Fixed a texture error that was introduce when making decals respond to room lighting. A texture was not restored after rendering the decals.

I regret that this bug made it into the final Win32 build. I will build a Win32 update with the latest changes if someone asks for it.

Empty Transporter Module
A ship built with empty transporter modules can still use its transporters.

Fixed.

Ringworld Seasons
"It is always summer on ringworlds but the plants have their flowers. Think of it as early summer."

I could not be satisfied with this. After mulling over several possible ways to induce seasons on a ringworld, I settled for modulating the day length as follows.

Shadow panels now modulate the width of the sunlight gap, down to half the normal day length in winter. This is done continuously around the ringworld so all four seasons are present all the time, each in a different quadrant of the ringworld.

When a stargate is opened the shadow panels retract to their summer configuration, with maximum aperture. This means you can no longer look up to see when the shadow panels are in position to open a stargate. Instead the obelisks at the corners now show a light at the top when the shadow panels are in position to open a stargate.

The Control Center story chapter was updated to impart this information.

Ringworld Shadow Panel Connecting Cables
The shadow panels orbit independently of each other. They should be interconnected to give them a coherent structure.

Cables were added at the corners to connect adjacent shadow panels. These "cables" appear to be very thin; they are 90m in diameter. They look as thin as hairs on the statue at the control center if you actually see them.

Potted Plant Growth
Potted plants should grow.

Potted plants now start as a tiny seedling. The plant grows to full size in 5 minutes for ground cover, 10 minutes for shrubs, and 20 minutes for trees. They flower at that time. That is also the first time the plant can be harvested. A potted plant can be harvested every 10 minutes after that.

Tropical and Polar Latitudes
Tropical and polar latitude calculations should consider axial tilt. Current calculation is still a holdover from before worlds had axial tilt.

Done. This will affect existing worlds.

Atmosphere Density Description
Improve atmosphere description with some adjectives at key transitions.

Atmosphere density description now includes these terms. Comments about plants and breathability only apply to worlds in the inner, habitable, and outer orbit zones. Frigid and inferno atmospheres are never breathable or ok for plants.

• Vacuum = 0% density, not breathable, no plants
  
• Trace = 1% to 9%, not breathable, no plants
  
• Very Thin = 9% to 14%, not breathable, plants ok
  
• Thin = 15% to 39%, breathable but not good enough for a homeworld, plants ok
  
• No density term = 40% to 70%, breathable, plants ok
  
• Thick = 71% to 85%, breathable but not good enough for a homeworld, plants ok
  
• Oppressive = 86% to 100%, too much pressure to breath, plants ok
  

• Suns - Axial Tilt, Orbital Period for companions.
  
• Spherical Worlds - Axial Tilt if not a planetoid, Orbital Period, Rotation Period if not a planetoid
  
• Ringworlds - Orbital Period, Day Period
  
• Rings - Orbital Period
  

I was told that homesickness was cured. My Officer from my home planet that was destroyed by the asteroid scuttled his ship and supposedly went home yesterday.

It took 30 days to happen, but it did. Dean suggested I post it as a bug.

   

Seasons
There have been requests for seasonal variations of plants.

Planets now determine the current season at the viewer's location. This is shown on the Compass window, where the current weather conditions are shown. 

Season determination is based on the position and movement of the world's sun. Other suns in the solar system do not affect season.

Plants and ground texture change appearance with season. Season changes are not gradual. There is no scene generation time between seasons; the rendering change is instantaneous. Winter to spring is quite abrupt when all the trees and plants suddenly have leaves and flowers and everything turns green.

Non-aquatic plants:

• Spring - Leaves, flowers
  
• Summer - Leaves, no flowers
  
• Autumn - Leaves in fall colors, no flowers
  
• Winter - No leaves or flowers.
  

• Spring - Leaves, no flowers
  
• Summer - Leaves, flowers
  
• Autumn - Leaves, no flowers
  
• Winter - Leaves, no flowers
  

My game crashes when attempting to complete the relic mission immediately after Xian picks up the knife. I have tried diffrerent dialogue speeds but this had no effect. The picture above is the moment the game crashes. Similarly, my game crashes the moment I enter a wormhole.

Link to my save file (I couldn't upload here as it is 65mb) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EVrR7Rd...drive_link

I notice Dr. Millton is spelled Millton in the Control Center story description, but his name is Dr. Millford in the story dialogue, see here



And then, in the next story, Particle Harvester, he's called Millford in the description again

Celarious' Game File
Celarious allowed me to download a large saved game file, in excess of 4gB. He was curious about why the file was so large. That file flushed out some bugs.

The original file is used more or less like this:

• 5mB of game data, empires, and species.
  
• 4gB of building blueprints, 329 of them.
  
• 300mB of spacecraft blueprints, 32 of them. Nice spaceships!
  
• 30mB of Universe and its atoms.