2023-03-17 Pirate Incidents, Construction, Fail Dialog

[Haxus]

Pirate Incidents
When a shipment is plundered by pirates, a diplomatic incident is now generated. Previously this only appeared as a log entry in a city report which was easy to miss.

Startup Icons
Added space helmet icons next to names at startup. Changed font size. Changed avatar delete button to be a helmet.

Construction
Refineries and mines show processes that cannot be run on the world they are being built.

The list of available manufacturing processes when constructing a building is now filtered to remove processes that cannot possibly be run in the environment.

Startup Fail Dialog
Steam must be running when the app is started. If it is not running the app was quietly exiting. Now it displays a window explaining why it refuses to run.

Add All Processes
A button was added to the manufacturing page to add every possible process. One worker is assigned to each new process until the number of shops is depleted. The first process added is the default process for the industry.

[Celarious]

Good call on the diplomatic incident, the reports are very easy to miss! Also liking the new avatar list, the helmet seems more appropriate than the old button
Generally very good quality of life update!

Edit: The new add all button is super useful, thank you Haxus!

[Rockinsince87]

Construction
Refineries and mines show processes that cannot be run on the world they are being built.

The list of available manufacturing processes when constructing a building is now filtered to remove processes that cannot possibly be run in the environment.

Honestly this will help new players quite a bit. Really nice.

[Haxus]

I also made an experimental change. I'd like to hear any feedback.

The result of the change is when the distance from your eye to your target is less than 2 meters, a change to the perspective projection is made that causes the object of your attention to get bigger on the screen, as if you zoomed in on it slightly. The amount of apparent zoom is greater as the eye distance gets shorter.

This stemmed from work on improving the near clip plane distance. I was able to bring it in closer to the face than it used to be.

This experimental change bears a bit of explanation about what is going on, if you are interested. It's a bit technical.

The perspective projection matrix has a factor called the near clip distance. Anything closer to the camera position than the near clip distance gets clipped away. You see this all the time when you walk through plants and people and get close to walls. This value cannot be zero; the closer to zero it gets, the worse the scene degrades.

For example, if the camera position is the center of your eyeball, the ideal near clip distance would be the radius of the eyeball.

Unfortunately that does not work. As the near clip distance gets smaller, distant values in the scene get less and less accurate. This causes ugly polygon surface collisions. The value needed to render scenes in the game is actually much larger than the eyeball size due to the distance to things in the near scene, such as coastlines when viewed from up in the air in a space fighter.

Far things are rendered in a separate pass that is unaffected by this value. I should say it uses a near clip distance different from the near scene.

To compensate for the larger near clip distance, the eye camera is moved backward from the eye until the clip plane is just in front of the face. As the camera backs up, more of the scene is visible, as if you were standing just behind your avatar. The near clip plane clips your avatar away so you don't see it.

With that understanding, this change causes the near clip distance to be reduced when you are looking at something close by. Keeping the clip plane just in front of the face, the eye camera thus moves closer to the back of the eyeball. Things appear larger just as though you moved closer to them, but you don't really move. It is intended to feel responsive to things nearby that have your attention.

For example, when sitting at the capt chair on the bridge of the Atlantis, there is a display screen on the left arm rest. When I look at it now, it gets bigger and easier to read.

I would prefer not to add a setting for something so esoteric to explain. If this is disturbing or annoying for people, I may simply nerf it.

[Celarious]

Am using 75 FOV:
Tested walking into ship crew a bit and it doesn't seem super noticeable, at least when looking straight ahead
If I look downwards, towards my avatar's body, the perspective change is obvious and kind of "snaps" between points the further you look down, especially if slowly, but otherwise seems fine

Recorded a video example: https://files.catbox.moe/qabs1z.mp4

[Vooker525]

This is noticeable when looking at panel, FOV changes when doing so, acting as magnifying glass. I think it's better to be optional.
Would be nice if you to check this idea too: https://www.hazeron.com/mybb/showthread.php?tid=2907

My save is broken, so i can't test on other designs. Bug report is here https://www.hazeron.com/mybb/showthread.php?tid=2926

[Celarious]

Haxus, you mentioned the dark matter restriction was lifted, but it seems officers still refuse to enter unexplored systems if I'm not on-board. I've sent one to go scan a sector by itself, and it freezes in deep space unless I berth teleport into it, in which case it instantly resumes moving

Edit: the system transition also instantly happens when I teleport onto the ship, meaning they still freeze at the system transition