2023-03-15 Refinery, Asteroids, Shipments, Avatar Page Return, Atoms Stop Processing

[Haxus]

Refinery Bug
Antiflux and borexino precipitate can be collected with a refinery even if they are not present in the environment.

Fixed. Existing processes will be unaffected; they will continue refining those things.

Asteroid Belt FPS Issues
Asteroid belt causes FPS issues.

A scene setting was added to adjust the asteroid density, from 0% to 100%. This controls the number of asteroid rocks rendered to show the belt.

Shipments
I created a trade agreement at a broker that should have been automatically accepted. It didn't work.

Fixed.

I also changed the interval for filling and sending shipments. Shipments are now filled once per minute and they are shipped on six minute intervals when filled. Previously shipments were filled every six minutes and shipped hourly.

Return to Avatar Page
It would be nice to be able to return to the avatar selection page to create a new avatar, without having to exit the program and reload the game.

Done. Note that time does not stop in the universe when you return to the avatar selection page. Things keep chugging along doing their thing but no avatars are considered to be "on line".

I tested this quite a bit on Linux with no problems. I have not tested this on Windows. Could someone please say if it works or not.

A key binding was added to the Window Controls list. No default key was assigned.

Atoms Stop Processing
Sometimes atoms just stop doing anything, like they are being ignored by the atom manager threads. In my case, my crew stopped moving or doing anything. They just sat motionless at their consoles until I kicked one of them. In another case a building would not finish a manufacturing process.

Fixed.

[Celarious]

Thank you so much for the atom fix, that's absolutely huge! Am on windows 10, will test the avatar page asap

Edit: Works perfectly, instantly returns me to the avatar page and successfully created a new avatar afterwards

[Haxus]

Works perfectly

That is the result one likes to hear.

Thank you for testing that.

[Celarious]

I may have spoken too soon lol, although this might be intended, but creating a fresh new avatar and returning to avatar selection seems to put you back at scenario selection, and creates another avatar with the same name if you click "go" again

Also, just checked and seems like the ship atom freezing no longer happens, I can command my officer remotely no problem now, so thank you again for the fix on this!

[Haxus]

I posted another update that fixes the issues with returning to the avatar selection page after creating a new avatar.

1. Returns to the list of avatars to choose.

2. Adds the new avatar to the list.

[Haxus]

ship atom freezing no longer happens

Good to hear.

That was caused when atoms were removed from your scene. They were also being removed from the atom manager's queue so they no longer got any CPU time. Atoms that were never in your scene during a session were not affected.

This was not a problem when the atom managers lived on the server. It became a problem when the client began running atom managers.

The root cause was a global object that should have been encapsulated as a member of a class object, instead of being global. Making that change solved the problem entirely.

[Rockinsince87]

Nice update. 

I can confirm I had a few ships that were affected by the atom issue. After this update, they seem to be working fine now. 

The refinery bug fix is awesome, I was hoping it would also fix the random Q level bug when rings were present in orbit with a refinery on the surface, but it seems as a result of this update the local planet side refineries are no longer capable of refining anti-flux at all now but the option is there from the construction menu. 

Edit: Yes I rebuilt the refineries. 

[Celarious]

I was hoping it would also fix the random Q level bug when rings were present in orbit with a refinery on the surface, but it seems as a result of this update the local planet side refineries are no longer capable of refining anti-flux at all now but the option is there from the construction menu. 

I think the now-fixed bug may have caused some confusion here: As far as I know planet-side refineries with a planetary ring (not asteroid belt) were never intended to be able to harvest from the ring. The "random Q" in that case seemed to be the same thing as the random Q antiflux found on any other body without antiflux in its survey or a ring in orbit, and wasn't specific to planets with rings. 

I can confirm my planetoid (asteroid belt) colony refineries still work fine, even after deleting and re-adding the process:


As you can see it can't extract air or hydrogen or make fertilizer out of the atmosphere, because it doesn't have any

The construction menu has always showed all harvest options, so that isn't related, for example a mine will show bolite always, but in the actual process configuration UI you won't have bolite as an option if the mine can't access any

[Rockinsince87]

I think the now-fixed bug may have caused some confusion here: As far as I know planet-side refineries with a planetary ring (not asteroid belt) were never intended to be able to harvest from the ring. The "random Q" in that case seemed to be the same thing as the random Q antiflux found on any other body without antiflux in its survey or a ring in orbit, and wasn't specific to planets with rings. 

Ok that makes perfect sense.

[Haxus]

Correct that refineries on a world do not harvest from its rings.

I will look at limiting the process options when you can’t use them.