2020-02-28 Unverse Restarted

[Haxus]

Universe Restarted
Sorry for posting this a bit late. It was a busy day yesterday.

The game universe was restarted yesterday. That required some work to finalize and post all of the building and spacecraft designs for the public exchanges and for the pirate empires.

Then of course I had to get busy building a new civilization. Who could resist? I got kind of a crumby starting location but they all work; I'm playing it out. My homeworld is one huge continent and a couple of little islands. I started on the larger of the two islands. When I next log in, I should be ready to build my first space rocket. Then I can find out why Gagarin is not appearing for people. It seems the rocket training mission is temporarily out-of-order.

The solar system map shows an asteroid belt between me and the sun, quite visible in the daytime sky, and another habitable planet co-orbiting with mine, opposite the sun. Maybe it is nicer. Can't wait to go there and see.

Some people reported their initial spawn location was on an airless moon. They suffocated and died. Spawned somewhere else. Lost their knife.

That bug is my first priority to fix this morning. The rocket trip will have to wait.

If that happens to you, I recommend restarting with a new guy. Nothing is invested yet in the one who died. If you choose to continue after the initial death, your new homeworld will not be targetted by an asteroid. If you want to experience that scenario, your only choice is to restart.

Here are some last-minute things that got done before the restart.

Gravel in Rings
The gravel in space should increase in density when in or close to a planetary ring.

Gravel density increases in rings now.

Spacecraft Recovery
Spacecraft that are recovered from destruction used to get minimal repairs to hold orbit and seek further repairs. They are no longer fixed when recovered.

Spacecraft recovered from destruction now get minimal repairs. Repairs are hit points only. Broken parts are not repaired.

• All control stations are repaired.
  
• Maneuver drive repaired up to 5%.
  
• Power plant repaired up to 5%.
  
• Life support repaired up to 5%.
  

"Old" Stuff
A bunch of old stuff to support old versions of data can be removed.

Old deprecated stuff removed. This housekeeping seems to have broken the server status page on the web. Something is out of sync.

Star System Map Loses Selection
Star system map loses selection after a few seconds. It can be annoying.

Fixed star system map selection loss.

Paper Mill Button
Paper mill button needs a better location.

Paper mill button moved to the next page where there was an empty spot.

Demiavatar Bug
New demiavatar was born. Would not remain in the scene, vanished instantly after switching avatars.

Fixed demiavatar scene presence bug. Demi was there, just not visible.

Arena Crash
A server crashed last night when someone entered an arena.

The crash is fixed pending the next server restart. Please do not attempt to enter an arena before the next server restart. I'd like to find/fix the deadly world spawn bug before restarting.

[Nitro2030ce]

Arena Crash
A server crashed last night when someone entered an arena.

The crash is fixed pending the next server restart. Please do not attempt to enter an arena before the next server restart. I'd like to find/fix the deadly world spawn bug before restarting.

Yeah that was me, sorry.. :(

[Haxus]

lol, not to worry. It's supposed to work.

[Vooker525]

Server seems to lag a lot. Also there is a bug that prevents fetching tools and items from city inventory

[Deantwo]

Also there is a bug that prevents fetching tools and items from city inventory

Cities don't have inventories anymore, so that doesn't really make sense.
You have to locate which building has the commodities and check if it has a trade connect to whatever is trying to fetch.
That said it is easier if you make a bug report rather than write it here.

I do know that there is some weirdness with buildings after capturing a world. Buildings that changed ownership will for sone reason not let other buildings fetch from them.

[Mal]

Loving the asteroids! One thing I noticed was that the physics of landing on an asteroid is a bit.. strange.

It seems that even if you match the velocity of the asteroid, as soon as you enter the 'atmosphere'/gravity well of it your speed relative to the asteroid changes instantly. The result is you end up going from -slowly trailing behind the asteroid at roughly the same speed- to -suddenly zooming past it at 3500m/s-.

If you are not holding down the brakes preemptively you will zoom right past. I don't know if that is something that could be tweaked but thought it worth mentioning!

[Haxus]

It is due to the instant geosyncronous orbit as you enter the zone of the planetoid. It might help if the zone was larger.

[Haxus]

Later...

I apologize for the Friday evening restart of the servers. Two related problems were causing servers to crash and it would have been a long weekend if I tried to nurse them along.

Arena Crashes Server
Attempting to enter an arena causes the server to crash.

Fixed crash due to failure to acquire a species for the officer and crew.

Pirates Crash Server
Pirate encounters crash the server.

Fixed crash due to failure to acquire a species for the officer and crew. People could avoid entering arenas but they can't avoid pirate encounters. This problem was going to get worse as more people got into space.

Empire Flag Size
A request was made to increase the size of empire flags.

Empire flags can now be up to 256x256 pixels. To compensate for the extra pixels, flags are now reduced to an indexed palette automatically. This can result in graininess if the picture is very detailed. Normal flags reduce fine. The sample flag on the new empire window is the reduced result, so you can see before submitting it.

You can change your empire's flag on the Policy page of the Governance window. Just click on the flag there.

You will need a new client program to use larger flags. It is building as I write this and it will be posted when ready. The client update was not essential for the server update so I decided not to wait for everybody to be built at once.

Horseback Trick Riding
My first farm made a great big "horse". They are handy when you haven't developed vehicles yet. I mounted the noble steed and found myself riding sideways, head sticking out to one side.

Fixed initial positioning when mounting a horse.

An updated client is needed. It is still building.

Clinic
Basic hospital design has 400 offices! That's a lot of jobs when your first town's population reaches 80 and they start asking for a hospital.

Created two new hospital designs: Clinic and Colony Clinic. They look strangely identical to each other. Each has 2 offices.

Modified the Hospital design so it only has 8 offices now. I'm not sure why it had 400. This is published as a new design. Existing 400 office hospitals are unaffected.

Ship Mooring Snafu
My ship is stopped next to a station. I bring up the helm, moor the ship, and turn off the engines. As soon as I leave the console, the pilot turns the engine and power plant back on and unmoors the ship.

Pilot no longer unmoors the ship unless the current mission order is a travel order or there is a nav waypoint set. Since the ship remains moored, the pilot no longer feels the need to turn on the engines.

Butcher Head for Stomach
I butchered a head. A stomach came out.

Fixed error in butchering code.

Fog Top Down View
Fog is supposed to be disabled automatically in top down view.

Disabled some remaining fog code that was affecting terrain. Other objects were not fogged.

GD File Error on Mac
After launcher installs all the files on MacOS, attempting to run primeval world reports the GD file is missing. You are supposed to be able to try this without logging in to any servers.

I think this is fixed. Simple test passed. Needs more thorough testing.

[Haxus]

Window client update is posting now.

The updated Blueprints folder contains the new Clinic.SoH and Colony Clinic.SoH blueprints and the updated Hospital.SoH blueprint.

[expert700]

Later...

I apologize for the Friday evening restart of the servers. Two related problems were causing servers to crash and it would have been a long weekend if I tried to nurse them along.

-snip-

Empire Flag Size
A request was made to increase the size of empire flags.

Empire flags can now be up to 256x256 pixels. To compensate for the extra pixels, flags are now reduced to an indexed palette automatically. This can result in graininess if the picture is very detailed. Normal flags reduce fine. The sample flag on the new empire window is the reduced result, so you can see before submitting it.

You can change your empire's flag on the Policy page of the Governance window. Just click on the flag there.

You will need a new client program to use larger flags. It is building as I write this and it will be posted when ready. The client update was not essential for the server update so I decided not to wait for everybody to be built at once.

Thank you for bumping the flag resolution up. Just to let you know, however, your system to reduce the color palette seems a bit dodgy. It turned the areas of my flag that were solid red into an alternating pattern of bright and dark red. Compressing it down to 256 colors in GIMP first before uploading it fixed that though, so not a big problem.

EDIT: Turns out there are some minor scaling problems