2024-02-29 Helicopter Bugs, Lighting Bugs, Prone Movement, Falling Damage

[Haxus]

Helicopter Too Feeble
Helicopter is too feeble to taxi up the ramp on Gulliver.

Fixed a bug that determined the air pressure in a room, due to the ramp room being an outside room. The helicopter was unable to move because it was reading zero air pressure in its environment.

Helicopter Stuck in Ceiling
Helicopter in vehicle bay on Gulliver gets stuck in the ceiling quite easily. Just take off.

Fixed.

Prone Movement Buggy
Moving on a hill while prone is quite an experience. Sometimes you get dragged uncontrollably around the terrain.

Fixed.

Falling Damage
Creatures, vehicles and spacecraft are not damaged by crashing into terrain. I can fall from orbit and land unhurt on the terrain.

Falling damage was disabled for a long time due to the previous prone movement bug. That bug invariably ended up killing you due to falling damage.

This is reported as "collision with terrain" in messages that report damage.

Due to the deadly nature of this change, a setting was added to enable/disable falling damage. It can be found on the Program page of the Settings window.

Lighting on Gulliver Ramp
Lighting of the helicopter is incorrect on the vehicle ramp on Gulliver. It is pitch black.

Fixed.

Toxic Smoke
When real bombs explode, there is a high concentration of carbon monoxide in the crater. Could the smoke in bomb craters be toxic in the game?

Smoke in bomb craters is now toxic. It causes suffocation damage, not poisoning.

Smoke from fissures is also toxic.

Smoke from volcanoes is not toxic.

New Avatar Bug
I started several new avatars that never seemed to enter the game.

Changed the algorithm for finding a homeworld. The requirement for a neighboring ringworld became more stringent, causing the old algorithm to spend a lot of time searching, sometimes with no success.

[Haxus]

Celarious I have not ignored you. My next item to work on is to investigate the increased memory usage.

[nellyborn]

Haxus, I noticed that when creating a gen4 character (at the beginning of the game) you can't upload your DNA

[Haxus]

Oops I saw your comment earlier and intended to look at it before posting the update today. Sorry I got busy. Will put it back asap.

[Haxus]

I restored the Load button.

It creates a bit of a mystery because there is no current way in the software to create a .dna file. The gen 4 dna editor is still disabled.

[nellyborn]

I restored the Load button.

It creates a bit of a mystery because there is no current way in the software to create a .dna file. The gen 4 dna editor is still disabled.

That's great! Now I'm a goblin

[Deantwo]

It creates a bit of a mystery because there is no current way in the software to create a .dna file. The gen 4 dna editor is still disabled.

I am not sure it is the full gen4 creature editor, but there is one when you are opening the offline designer from the main menu. It will ask you which DNA you want to enter the designer as, and it does have save and load options too.

[Haxus]

Would you mind sharing the .dna file with me. Just curious. I won’t do anything with it except use it for testing.

[nellyborn]

Would you mind sharing the .dna file with me. Just curious. I won’t do anything with it except use it for testing.

In fact, there are not enough "sliders" to regulate strength, endurance, etc. I think it's not that hard to add. Here are my best practices.

P.S. It would also be nice to diversify the texture of the eyes, as it is done in gen3 (by the type of lizards or other predators).

[Haxus]

When I do reptiles I will add appropriate eyes. Likewise with other creatures.