It’s finally here! Apologies for May’s forgotten event, that was the weekend of my last uni exam for the year and then I was away the following weekend.

So to cut to the chase this event will include +150% XP, double DG and drop mod chances for six days (ending July 2nd, 13:00 server time).

Finally, starting with this event, all future weekend events will be every four weeks rather than the third weekend of every month and BobboBot on our IRC knows when the next event will be, which you can find out for yourself by sending ‘!countdown event‘ to him.

Enjoy the weekend folks!

The special bonus event:
In Improcerus there is a wave spawner, configured to spawn 9 iconic-ish AI in series. Improcerus only allows tech 0 ships and no slaves.

Provide me (post it in the forum) with a screenshot of the kill (in event chat) + your squad, and I’ll reward your squad once verified. The rewards will go to the squad leader, to be divied up.

For each kill there is a credit reward
1b credits for the first kill,
2b credits for the second,
4b for the third,
6b for the fourth,
8b for the fifth,
10b for the sixth,
14b for the seventh,
20b for the eighth and
40b for the ninth kill.

Additionally, if your squad makes over 30b your squad will get a free Zebucart skin (which’ll go on all Zebucart variations), if your squad makes over 10b your squad will get a permanent unique holoprojector.

Another week full of fun things and interesting news! This is going to be an interesting one, since The Vert has a big update (Which is on the forum as well, I’ll link it later in the blog). Also, some information regarding Steam as well!

So, who’s done what?

Jeff

Jeff has been working on advertising. We also have a new landing page, check it out here!

Blue Dwarf

Bobbo thought the monthly event was supposed to be next weekend. Derp.

Furthermore, he’s been cleaning up the content folder (It’s really big!), like deleting old stuff from client 1.

As a final change, live (right now already!) the Plantarium (Starting next uni, it’ll be called the Planetarium) has been changed to f2p only instead of being level 200-. Enjoy!

The Vert

Vert’s found something with the spawners of Nightfury’s, Hives, Delquads and some more. We’re going to look into that.

Also: colonies! Yes, the issue that you guys wanted us to look at. Vert’s analyzed it all now. From looking at it himself to checking player feedback from 2 years ago up to the present day, he’s found the good and bad aspects of the Alien layer. His full update can be found here.

Theodore and Col Legno

Theodore and Col Legno have been going through the subspace missions, to find every bug possible. They’ve found a bunch, we have a proper list of that now. This varies from missions saying they’ll reward a ship while actually rewarding an item, or safety lock not working properly.

Jey

Jey wasn’t here for the meeting. However, we had his updates through the notes. From what we’ve read, he’s done more client optimization.

Suit

I’ve taken the feedback on the wiki, and I’ve proposed it to the dev team. However, Jey and Ryan weren’t here for this meeting. Wiki generally is a pain, Jey and Ryan have most knowledge of this.

The idea for the wiki would probably be along the lines of: If it’s been on the market place, it’ll come to the wiki. I’ll give you guys an update on this next week.

I didn’t like how we didn’t have an event this weekend. I’ve bothered Blue Dwarf to activate it tonight already, but he’s doing it friday and he’s going for something fun. If it doesn’t happen this friday (meaning: he forgot), I promise you guys, there’s going to be a MASSIVE event as a compensation.

Player questions!

Question 1: Whens the alien colony feature going to be fixed?

Vert: Check out my forum post.

 Question 2: hey Suit. Can we widen the Transference effect back to c1 levels? So you can actually see it is a Yin Yang instead of just being an oval cut in half.

Jeff: I don’t really see a problem with them at this moment, I can see it. However, if somebody from the dev team wants to play around with it, I wouldn’t mind.

Suit: I like the idea. Lower techs are still quite wide, but when you get more range you’ll have more of a beam-like instead of the actual transference effect.

Col Legno: I agree, transferences like the Emp Wand are quite narrow, but still okay. Where the real issue comes in is the alien ones. They’re really thin beams and don’t even look like shield transferences.

Theodore: I noticed the alien ones as well, those can be annoying from time to time.

Blue Dwarf: First world problem: Not seeing your yin yang anymore.

Question 3: When is the game going to be officially released on Steam? I just keep hearing “soon”(TM)

Blue Dwarf: SoonTM.

Jeff: We have a list of things needed for the introduction of Star Sonata to Steam. Steam gave us feedback on some things they wanted us to change, we’re doing that at this moment. We’re about halfways on the list, this is stuff like changing the ‘Create account’ dialog, or pushing Steam Wallet stuff.

Would you like to see your question featured in a Dev blog? Ask them here!

Well… That’s it! See you next week!

Yay, more meeting stuff!

First off, let’s welcome a new member on the team… Theodore will now help us improve the game!

What’s changed since last week?

Now, for stuff we’ve done since last week for Steam!
The account creation for Star Sonata is going to be slightly different. There will be an e-mail recheck and a confirmation if you’ve typed your password correctly. This is to improve the first startup of the game. It’s nothing exciting right now (in terms of looks), but we’re working on this. Functionality had the first priority.

We’ve also enabled SS to autofill the content of your account name etc, for a faster account creation for steam users.
Steam Wallet will be live soon.

So, who’s done what?

Jey

Jey’s been working on the client, basically non-stop all week. This is to add some of those fancy login features, but also performance wise. The client should be improved greatly! He’s testing using a 40 bases vs 40 bases setup firing at max rof. That’s his benchmark. So, having a client optimized to be able to handle that… Pretty neat, don’t you think?

As a comparison, the old client at low will freeze on load. The current beta client gets 8fps. The new client will get 15 fps. With lagkiller on, the new client reaches 80 fps. Since the load from the scenario is mostly cpu and not render- related, there’s basically no difference between low and high settings.

He’s also confirmed that every player could, in theory, use the Steam Client, even if you don’t use it on Steam. This doesn’t really affect you guys, but it makes it a LOT easier for us to push updates.

Blue Dwarf

Blue Dwarf’s made some of the changes to the account creation dialog. He’s also added some decimals to the team xp tithe report (so you won’t see just 1 xp all the time).

The Vert

Vert’s added a t22 version of the Flamberge! It’ll be called the Voulge.

He’s also been chatting with yclepticon, about station slots for galaxies. Right now attackers get unlimited slots, which defenders get a 25 base limit for unattached slots. This should be changed, and we’re looking into it for possible solutions.

Ryan

Ryan’s been prepping to update the webserver code in preperation for steam. Ran into a few issues on his test server, but managed to fix them.

He has also been looking into a long-standing vis issue with seers, but couldn’t find anything yet. He’s waiting on a list of affected characters to compare them to non-affected characters and track down the issue.

He also fixed an issue with BvB kits. Yay for bug fixing!

Theodore

Theodore’s busy with setting up to see what can be done. Stuff like haunting the bug forum, hopping in the game and asking around, or anything of the sorts.

Suit

I’ve gathered your questions and selected a few. It did come to my attention that some players used the question area to complain about the game. Sorry guys, but the dev questions is for QUESTIONS! I’m getting a lot of complaints in there. I asked you guys for questions. I’m sorry, but I’m not presenting those complaints to show in the blog as well. We’re aware of a lot of the complaints anyway, and we’re looking into those. Getting a 5 page story about something you don’t agree on (without any questions in there!) doesn’t help me when I’m looking for questions.

Player questions!

Q1: Is there any planning on new content zones similar to Arctia, Vulcan, Mira and Jungle coming soon?

Jeff: No. At this moment we’re focussed more on getting accepted by Steam
Vert: I have some ideas, but the progress on this has halted for now.
Jey: I’m not content!

Q2: When is BobboBot coming to the SS client?

Blue Dwarf: BobboBot himself will never come to Star Sonata because he’s an IRC bot. However, if you’d like something added to the game (such as colony suitability, work needed and the sorts), you could always ask.

Q3: How is the effort going to improve documentation? Such as linking the wiki to in-game descriptions so all us players can provide our labor in fixing this rather than having to point out inaccuracies and typos in the bug forum.

Jeff: Linking the wiki to ingame descriptions isn’t easy, and it would not be recommended. A real-time link is heavy (load-wise). More likely we would export the balance sheets and have a converter to convert it to the wiki. If we wanted to do it, that would be the way.
Suit: The main issue is also that some stuff is not available to the players, and we’d prefer to keep it that way.
Ryan (in response to Suit): We could add a tag that it’s been on the player marketplace, in this way everyone can have seen it.
Jeff: If people would like to see this link to the wiki, it could always officially be suggested.

Q4: How’s your day going?

Jeff: Right..
Blue Dwarf: Good, had pub dinner!
Jey: I’m hungry
Suit: Wat.

That’s it!

Would you like to see your question in next week’s blog? Ask it here!

See you next week!

Awww yeah. We’re back!

What’d we miss?

Jeff’s been on holiday (explains the no meeting part, partially).

There’s been a few developer applications. We might have some new people in our team soon!

Steam has sent us feedback on our client. We’re fixing those issues, it’s some basic stuff (e-mail confirmation, creating an account, etc). I’m not going into detail on this, but we’ve had a long discussion on this.

So, who’s done what?

Jey

Jey did some client data gathering, mainly with BvB action (a LOAD of data to go through) to improve the client. This is to avoid lag, crashes and the sorts. Jey will post his own blog about this, since it’s a huge story!

Also, a few hiccups on the server have nbeen fixed. Backups were using too much bandwith.

Blue Dwarf

Blue Dwarf’s found a bug, special galaxies didn’t have a t19 blueprint limit in the Earthforce layer. It’s been fixed! (Yay or boo, depending on how you look at it.)

Yclepticon

Some features on BvB were checked and not really working as intended, we’re looking into this. Nothing big, but worth looking at and improving, for you guys.

Ryan

Ryan’s finished some webserver stuff, we need to patch to the live web server for the Steam Wallet. Also, Space Point Exchange’s been finished.

Team XP for killing bosses has been implemented, just needs to be patched in. Exciting!

Suit

I had a question from a player; Will armada drones be looked at? (Base drones)

Blue Dwarf will look at them. Some are indeed underpowered, and he’ll see what he can do about it.

This added a new idea for me… Player input into our weekly blog! I’ve made a link where you can put your questions, perhaps we’ll answer it in our next meeting/blog. Post your questions here!

That’s it for this week. See you next week, everyone!

I didn’t even make the meeting. But hey, here’s another update! It’s a very short one, since it was a quiet meeting.

So, who’s done what?

Blue Dwarf

Blue Dwarf’s added a special tag to galaxies, if warp beacons are allowed or not.

The Vert

Vert’s discovered a bug with warp beacons. It’s been tested, and Blue Dwarf fixed that. There’s also some other minor bug fixes.

The big UrQa Capship boss had some tiny bugs, those fixes should be in soon.

Any other news?

No.

Well, kind of. I’ve had some hectic times, which caused me to be unable to make any meetings or do any work. If everything continues like this, I should be fully back by the end of this week. At least I made this blog again!

See you next week!

Hijacked again! I’m getting good at this. Also the first meeting of the new universe, which went very smoothly I think we can all agree.

The updates

Jey

Jey has been working tirelessly tracking down the crash that appeared around 10PM server time a few days ago and was effecting us again around the same time yesterday. He found the source which involved slaves that used fueled energies.

Jey has also fully enabled that backup system, which allows us, as in other developers, to retrieve saves of the universe, useful for tracking down bugs and suchforth.

The Vert

The Vert has created superitems for some of our newer player ships, the Kalthi ships, Harrier, Mercant Navy Contriver, UrQa’qa Qu’ishi Qa and Divine Behemoth.

He’s now looking into designing some new overloaders for stations.

Blue Dwarf

A player had reported that a Subspace shortcut had been generated between a Wild Space galaxy and Perilous Perilous Space galaxy, having decided that this is not intentional I’ve moved the exit wormhole in Perilous Space and fixed the issue for future universes.

The balance god, yclepticon, requested that the base series of drones, that is Apollo Drones through to Andaman Drones, had their Transference Resistance removed and replaced with +100% Transference Efficiency so that they would not be such a liability to use in galaxies. Also for Ambrosia and Andaman Drones specifically I’ve reduced the number of pellets (projectiles) the Gourd weapons shoot to 1, less projectiles mean less lag in those intense battles, such as when fighting in Anatolia.

A note about Suit

There is a high chance that I’ll also be covering next weeks blog post.
Unfortunately Suit’s partner got involved in an severe incident and is currently in hospital and our thoughts are with them.

We’re currently experiencing some unexpected downtime following the micro patch to address the source of the recent crashes.

It seems that the server is crashing on load and we’re currently looking into it.

Thank you for your patience.

+ Asteroid belt fix for the belts that are small and only contain one type of asteroid (asteroids were spawning in under 30 seconds, was supposed to be 5 hours, now is far less and more in line with what other belt spawners are).


* Emperor Tithe is now 10% of scooped credits, items sold to colonies, and items sold to AI stations.
* Fixed a bug where prospecting nodes in Perilous Space would be able to appear in the lowest danger factor of Perilous Perilous Space.
* Fixed a bug where vacuum scoops were not pulling in items due to the changes that did not let them act on items the owner could not scoop.
* Increased scoop autoshutdown from 30 sececonds to 2 minutes.
* Tweaked decay message to add details if its not the active ship.

Suit isn’t here this week, so I’ve taken over his lovely weekly blog!
Don’t forget that universe reset is this weekend guys.

So, who’s done what?

Jey

Jey’s been tracking down and fixing a bug involving high CPU usage when alt-tabbing.

Once he’s got that fixed, he’s preparing a patch to fix Vacuum scopes, increasing the timer from 30 seconds to 120 seconds and the pulling. Additionally any other fixes other devs need in.

Ryan

Ryan implemented the changes to Emperor’s tithe as well as added the additional Imperial Chest drops that we discussed last week. He’s been fixing the leader-board issues on the website and its mostly back in order but there is still a bug with the player rankings. He’s is currently looking at a bizarre slave healing bug that causes aggression.

Jeff

Jeff has handed out some reward skin items to players which ergosphere has produced for us and has been taking care of business stuff.

Blue Dwarf

I’ve done the scaling spawn times on spawners that we mentioned last week. If the time between kills is short then the spawn time will be reduced, specifically for The Nexus to help deal with potential heavy influx of players.
I’ve made it so that peons will be able to abandon/transfer their stations now, just like their lonely-teamless friends.
More error checking is performed when setting up mining slaves.
Slave ‘Show Status’ will contain the state of durability of the slave’s gear
I’ve fixed the wild AI XP reward capping bug and a bug during universe generation occasionally causing small asteroid belts having a spawn rate that is too high.

This is a patch containing a lot of internal changes that were required for our steam integration to work, not all that much to say about it in patch notes until everything is actually turned on.

None the less, here are the notes.

* 14 new server crash found and fixed.
* 8 different client crashes tracked and fixed (around 3 crash left that i know off but was unable to pinpoint, keep those dmp flowing)
* A few minor client optimisations, especially when in a ship with a lot of different items.
* Achievements are now enabled, but cannot be rewarded unless you have a steam client (which are not available yet), When you get an achievement on regular client you receive a message in event and it will be awarded to you as soon as you connect using a steam client (no need to redo them)
* Added all the files needed for steam support on the server side.
* Added bonus XP for the first time capturing an AI with each different type of hull. Added /caps chat command to list how many and which unique hulls you have captured. At least for now, capping a new ship type is set to give a flat 500 XP.
* Made Ambushinmatrixes (Seer Radar Jammer items) not trigger if your weapnos’ damage is less than 0 (shield transferences)
+ Fixed a spawner bug in protoplasmica that caused spawns to only start dropping keysyncs on the second spawn.
+ Added experience tag to a lot of spawners under 120 in low/mid level galaxies so the spawned ai will provide experience.
* Removed augs from ares warriors and replaced them with an OL
* Made it so that vacuum scoops will not effect items that the owner is not allowed to scoop
* Vacuum scoops will now shut themselves off after 30s
* Improved the speed on sp related transactions (the delay should be a lot shorter now)
* Made energybanks report their energy per second rather than energy per generation interval (1.2s)
+ Fixed particle emitters. Player/ ai Holo projectors as well as particle emitters in effected galaxies have been fixed.
* Fixed a display error for skill point debt/credit
* Item factories no longer work on abandoned bases
* Small changes to the roaming UrQa’qa Qu’ishi boss
* Added a new functionality to prevent specific items (ai only items) from being used by players.
* Fixed an issue where Lunarian and Selenite Ray and Beam had their stats swapped around
* Added fires to several heat damage weapons from Perilous Perilous Space
* Small improvements to Lunarian Bank and Selenite Bank
* Improved the Hybridized Paximinus to make it in line with the Paximinus stats