2021-02-19 Dimensions, Mantifloss, Story Asteroid

[Haxus]

Dimensions
Dimensions were eliminated from the universe. All galaxies now occupy one single dimension.

Discontinuities were removed from the universe.

Intergalactic wormholes were added to connect the two separate groups of galaxies. This is depicted on the updated universe map in the wiki.

Mantifloss
Mantifloss was added as a new commodity. This is a plant based resource that occurs naturally on a very rare few worlds.



Mantispice
Mantispice was added as a new commodity. Mantispice is a psychoactive pharmaceutical made from mantifloss tendrils. Mantispice can only be handcrafted; no industry manufactures it.



Mantifries
Mantifries were added as a new commodity. Mantifries are a yummy food made from mantifloss roots. Mantifries can only be handcrafted; no industry manufactures them.



Wiki Uploads Broken
Uploading of pictures to the wiki was not working because the new web server was missing a software package. It has been installed. Wiki uploads work fine now.

Story Asteroid
A story function was added to trigger the asteroid. It is documented in the wiki as worldScheduleAsteroid.

Rocket Motor Patent
"Large Rocket Motor, Method for Making using Nitrate Explosive" patent doesn't require the "Small Rocket Motor" patents like the other "Large Rocket Motor" patents do. This could make people think that they have to use "Nitrate Explosive", which they don't.

Fixed.

Sailboat on Water
Sailboat floats on top of water. Probably same issue Pressure Tent had? Maybe Submarine does too.

This was caused by low tessellation of the water surface. It also caused creatures to appear to swim too high or above the water.

I increased tessellation of the water surface quite a lot. I hope this does not cause performance issues for anyone.

This caused me to work on the splashing water noise you hear when wading in the surf. It suffers from the same problem. Your altitude is determined by a calculation, not a polygon under your feet. The polygons of the water surface and land surface are an approximation of the calculated terrain so they can be incorrect between vertices. The water sound is important because that is the same calculation used to determine if you are standing in lava or not, which is deadly.

I made some adjustments so that you should never (or rarely) hear the splashing noise when you do not "appear" to be standing in visible water or lava. That means that sometimes you will be walking in shallow water or lava without hearing a splashing noise; it is much safer that way.

Extra Targoss
When the tutorial story goes to the stone age, another Targoss gets created. The new Targoss doesn't look like the old Targoss.

Fixed a bug in the code that looks for an existing character before creating a new one. The same bug was affecting your avatar's memory of a character, which prevented Targoss from being restored the way the avatar remembered him.

Targoss Won't Stop
Targoss calls to me then runs past back and forth before he finally stops.

Fixed a bug in story character behavior that was introduced during the npc object consolidation.

Captain of Atlantis
Lost Atlantis should assign capt berth.

The scenario did assign the capt berth. Fixed a bug that caused the capt berth assignment to be lost immediately after taking it.

Dark Matter Death
Conditions under which a spacecraft or vehicle are destroyed by dark matter were relaxed a bit.

Dark matter is a form of cleanup that occurs when vehicles or spacecraft transition from one solar system to another.

Vehicles are now destroyed by dark matter only if unoccupied. No occupant has to be on line.

Spacecraft are now destroyed by dark matter when they do not have an AI first officer and there is no avatar aboard. Spacecraft are not destroyed if an AI officer or an avatar are aboard. Nobody has to be on line.

[Deantwo]

Mantifloss
Mantifloss was added as a new commodity. This is a plant based resource that occurs naturally on a very rare few worlds.

This sounds interesting. I have always felt that some more advanced and rare plant resources would be interesting.

Some special underwater plants would be cool too. But I think I covered some of those ideas in an idea thread I wrote a while back. The thread never got too much discussion though.
Here: (Idea thread) Exploring Resource Tiers

Wiki Uploads Broken
Uploading of pictures to the wiki was not working because the new web server was missing a software package. It has been installed. Wiki uploads work fine now.

I had been meaning to tell you that was broken. Just didn't know what the issue was, so I wasn't sure how to really tell you. Happy to see it fixed though! I already uploaded a couple pictures I had been waiting to upload.

There also seems to be a folder permission issue with the forum, preventing editing of configuration files. If you feel like looking at that too at some point.

[Haxus]

The “on line” state of an avatar in the solo game is active while you are controlling the avatar. Other non-current avatars are considered to be “off line”.

The on line state lasts for a short while after switching avatars, so they remain in the scene. This enables interactions between avatars.

[Nitro2030ce]

What kinds of interactions between avatars are possible? Trading? Breeding? Can we still make Highbornes or Demiavatars?

[Haxus]

Trading and breeding. You can still make demiavatars and highborn avatars.

[Phoenix]

I tried to use the intergalactic wormhole between the SoH Galaxy and the In'Kar Border Region Galaxy. Unfortunately this resulted in my character entering into a "limbo" state where I can only see a background of stars and a subtle effect over it. This is similar to what I saw on the live server when a character was stuck in limbo.

I would also note that travelling long distances at this point in the beta is very difficult. I must have attempted to launch my ship from the starting cluster to the center of the galaxy 20-30 times and I was only successful twice. In my experience I found that the game was usually fine if I was there to move the controls every so often (I did this in both my successful attempts) however the game was prone to freeze if left unattended for the 6-7 hours required to travel to the galactic center at warp 9. I have no idea what causes this issue, but it is highly frustrating as the game reverts to the last manual save point when it crashes like this. Hence why I needed to attempt the journey 20-30 times.

At this point I cannot recommend other players try to make the journey to the galactic center. Overall it was very difficult to successfully complete and ultimately I am not sure if transitioning to another galaxy is feasible at the moment. Crossing so much territory has caused my save to be pretty unstable as well. The game sometimes crashes unexpectedly and takes sometimes 5-10 minutes to load in.

To end on a positive note I would like to say that I greatly appreciate your efforts so far and willingness to let us share in the beta. I also appreciate the ability to use another avatar to build colonies or whatever while another is in transit. I am not a person to make complaints without a suggestion to solve the issue, so please consider this as an option. I think perhaps the size of the galaxies should be reduced in order to simplify these types of issues and reduce journey time to the galactic center. I'm not sure if there is a compelling gameplay reason for the journey to be 6-7 hours rather than something like 1 hour.

[Celarious]

By the way Haxus, just wanted to make you aware of a minor but annoying graphical glitch since the MMO. Graded areas seem to overlap with building sites, causing trees and vegetation where there shouldn't be any. Tiny thing, but would look a lot better if was fixed

[Deantwo]

I would also note that travelling long distances at this point in the beta is very difficult. I must have attempted to launch my ship from the starting cluster to the center of the galaxy 20-30 times and I was only successful twice. In my experience I found that the game was usually fine if I was there to move the controls every so often (I did this in both my successful attempts) however the game was prone to freeze if left unattended for the 6-7 hours required to travel to the galactic center at warp 9. I have no idea what causes this issue, but it is highly frustrating as the game reverts to the last manual save point when it crashes like this. Hence why I needed to attempt the journey 20-30 times.

You also seemed to encounter the "Spacecraft Lost in Deep Space" bug a few times too. Allowing you to be at the coordinates <0,0,0>, but actually be in a solar system that was far away.
Bug report: https://www.hazeron.com/mybb/showthread.php?tid=538

And yes, some options for auto-saving would be nice. Such as after avatar creation, after founding a new city, after every system transition, and at an hourly time interval.

To end on a positive note I would like to say that I greatly appreciate your efforts so far and willingness to let us share in the beta. I also appreciate the ability to use another avatar to build colonies or whatever while another is in transit.

As far as I understand, this has just been changed to do just that. Dark matter no longer hit ships that have an offline avatar onboard. At least I assume that this means that AI pilot will also travel into unexplored solar systems while the offline avatar in onboard. See:

Dark Matter Death
Conditions under which a spacecraft or vehicle are destroyed by dark matter were relaxed a bit.

Dark matter is a form of cleanup that occurs when vehicles or spacecraft transition from one solar system to another.

Vehicles are now destroyed by dark matter only if unoccupied. No occupant has to be on line.

Spacecraft are now destroyed by dark matter when they do not have an AI first officer and there is no avatar aboard. Spacecraft are not destroyed if an AI officer or an avatar are aboard. Nobody has to be on line.

[Rockinsince87]

Story Asteroid
A story function was added to trigger the asteroid. It is documented in the wiki as worldScheduleAsteroid.

That's a really cool idea. 

Dark Matter Death
Conditions under which a spacecraft or vehicle are destroyed by dark matter were relaxed a bit.

Dark matter is a form of cleanup that occurs when vehicles or spacecraft transition from one solar system to another.

Vehicles are now destroyed by dark matter only if unoccupied. No occupant has to be on line.

Spacecraft are now destroyed by dark matter when they do not have an AI first officer and there is no avatar aboard. Spacecraft are not destroyed if an AI officer or an avatar are aboard. Nobody has to be on line.

Very nice changes and it makes sense. 

I would also note that travelling long distances at this point in the beta is very difficult. I must have attempted to launch my ship from the starting cluster to the center of the galaxy 20-30 times and I was only successful twice. In my experience I found that the game was usually fine if I was there to move the controls every so often (I did this in both my successful attempts) however the game was prone to freeze if left unattended for the 6-7 hours required to travel to the galactic center at warp 9. I have no idea what causes this issue, but it is highly frustrating as the game reverts to the last manual save point when it crashes like this. Hence why I needed to attempt the journey 20-30 times.

And yes, some options for auto-saving would be nice. Such as after avatar creation, after founding a new city, after every system transition, and at an hourly time interval.

Yeah auto-save is a must. I don't know about hourly though. Why not every 10-15 minutes, or make it configurable? 

[Neils Iyssada]

Mantifloss
Mantifloss was added as a new commodity. This is a plant based resource that occurs naturally on a very rare few worlds.

Bumping as we wondered if it actually exists in current Hazeron Starship release or if it was abandonned.