2020-11-30 Steam Update, Bug Fixes, Startup Crash

[Haxus]

Steam Update
Steamworks has approved Hazeron Starship for distribution on Steam. I can post the 'Coming Soon' notice whenever I feel ready. That starts a two week countdown for the actual release.

I will likely post the Coming Soon notice later today.

The following changes are in the update posted today. Many of these things came out of testing the solo play version.

Startup Crash
Client program was crashing at startup.

Fixed missing ifdef needed for solo play.

Story Spacecraft
Story was failing to create Dr. Karlov's space ship.

The script was referencing a non-existent blueprint id. It is fixed.

Travel Direct Order
Travel direct to system. Ship arrives in the oort cloud and does not advance closer in to the system like it used to. This also leaves that order active and does not automatically progress to the next queued order.

NPC AI was improved to fix this. It works much better now.

Crew Confused
Crew said, "We are in orbital proximity of WSY'AB'NF'e Alpha Va, the ring's parent planet." The world was a titan at a gas giant.

Fixed crew confusion resulting from some travel orders.

Remote Cameras Broken
Remote cameras do not work for my new avatar.

Fixed a bug when restoring last used camera from local settings and there wasn't one.

Ringworld Snafu
Story engine needs to find a sector containing a ringworld to proceed to the (currently) final chapter. This fails when no wormhole has ever been explored in the sector. This really breaks the story in solo play.

Fixed universe generation to identify ringworld systems sooner.

Star Map Select Option
The list of places in the star map includes an item for my avatar. It would be nice if the right click menu for my avatar had an option to select my current sector.

Added an option to star map right click menu to select current sector, when the right-clicked object is your avatar.

QPainter Bug
I started seeing this bug reported: "QPainter::begin: Cannot paint on an image with the QImage::Format_Indexed8 format"

Reformatted 8bit bitmaps that are used in paint operations to be RGB.

Pressure Tent
Pressure tent does not settle to the ground like its supposed to. Sits high. Looks funny.

Fixed item CG error.

Obnoxious Ship Movement
Crew ordered to be in orbit should not move when someone gets near their ship. When crew are following an orbit order, the pilot will move the ship if anything moves too close. This makes docking aboard a ship impossible in that situation.

Fixed pilot AI to stop avoiding obstacles when the ship's location satisfies the mission order.

[Norm49]

Will the solo game have NPC empire or different pirate to have some challenged?

[Haxus]

Solo game is not different from the online game.

Pirate empires are unfinished. Only the two weakest ones are done. They get more difficult in the size of cities they build and the types of ships they use.

As pirate empires get finished, the changes will be updated in both the online game and the solo game. This is true of all features added to the software, since it is the same software in both applications. The update process for Steam is nice and easy. It is already integrated into my regular update procedures.

[Rockinsince87]

Travel Direct Order

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Travel direct to system. Ship arrives in the oort cloud and does not advance closer in to the system like it used to. This also leaves that order active and does not automatically progress to the next queued order.

NPC AI was improved to fix this. It works much better now.

NICE! 

Obnoxious Ship Movement

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Crew ordered to be in orbit should not move when someone gets near their ship. When crew are following an orbit order, the pilot will move the ship if anything moves too close. This makes docking aboard a ship impossible in that situation.

Fixed pilot AI to stop avoiding obstacles when the ship's location satisfies the mission order.

SUPER!

Nice selection of quality of life patches. Thanks Haxus!

[Haxus]

I decided not to push the button today, to post Hazeron Starship as coming soon. I'm not in a big hurry and some things remain to be done. A few interruptions are heading my way related to the Christmas season. It is better not to rush.

[Rockinsince87]

I decided not to push the button today, to post Hazeron Starship as coming soon. I'm not in a big hurry and some things remain to be done. A few interruptions are heading my way related to the Christmas season. It is better not to rush.

Respectable decision.

[Snowmantis]

Might want to do what soooo many indie developers do on Steam and simply generate interest by posting an estimated 2021 Q1 release of Hazeron Starship. Get stats on those that add it to their wish list, have the forums start to "buzz" a little bit. I would HIGHLY suggest to find an even minded community manager/moderator (volunteer) to assist with Steam community postings.

Look at WURM Online as a kind of success model... a game developed and improved upon over many years (like SoH) they suffered from low subscribers and no real means of advertising. With the Steam release they propped up two new servers and within a month they had to create 2 more server worlds to handle the influx of new players. After the initial interest, the population has somewhat stabilized, but Steam also keeps bringing in new players that want to try it out. Some stay, some leave, some have already come back again to continue their journey.

Looking forward to seeing Hazeron on Steam!

[Deantwo]

Look at WURM Online as a kind of success model...

I will confess that I installed and tried out WURM Unlimited a couple days ago. I got the game cheap (as part of a bundle I think) a long time ago. It is their equivalent to Hazeron Starship really, but it is based around privately hosted servers since WURM isn't really a singleplayer game.

I was surprised to see that the launcher for WURM Unlimited has a advertisement for WURM Online. I am not completely sure what is actually allowed on Steam like this, but it might be a good idea to copy if it is allowed.
That is, adding an advertisement for Shores of Hazeron the MMO game in Hazeron Starship's launcher or main menu.